[Mb-civic] Grannie, Look What They're Doing To the Land of Freedom

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1382435,00.html

Grannie, Look What They're Doing To the Land of 
Freedom

Guardian (London) 3 Jan 05
 by Sara Paretsky

 * Sara Paretsky is the author of Blacklist and winner of the Crime
Writers' Association Diamond and Gold Daggers



My grandmother came to America from eastern Europe in 1911, when she 
was not quite 13. Her father had been murdered in a pogrom in front of his
family. Her mother was afraid the mob would turn on her next, so she sent
her eldest child, alone, to the new world.

My grandmother often talked about sailing into New York harbour and 
seeing the Statue of liberty, like a second mother, welcoming her under its
outstretched arm. She never saw her mother or most of her family again:
they perished in the Holocaust.

Her education ended when she left Europe. She worked as a finisher in 
the garment industry for 50 cents a day, became active in the Garment 
Workers Union, became pregnant and married at 15. But she knew when 
she sailed in under the statue that her life would not be in danger again 
because of who she was or what she thought or said. She had come 
home to freedom.

I recently completed a speaking tour in Europe in connection with my 
novel Blacklist, which is set partly in the McCarthy era and partly in the 
world of the Patriot Act. The book has generated hate mail from people 
who accuse me of hating America and loving terrorists. When I walked 
into the US consulate in Hamburg and saw a sketch of the statue on the 
wall, 1 thought of my grandmother and wept.

Grannie, this is what we're doing now:

We imprisoned an artist in upstate New York for an installation piece he
was creating around genetically modified food. When his wife died 
suddenly one morning and he called 911, he was arrested for having 
micro-organisms in the apartment. He was held without charge until a 
postmortem was completed and showed that the benign, legally obtained 
organisms in his home had not caused his wife's death. He faces trial in 
January for having benign, legal organisms in his house, his travel is 
restricted, and he is subject to frequent drug tests.

We arrested a library patron in New Brunswick for looking at foreign
language pages on the web. We held him for three days without charging
him, without letting him call a lawyer, or notify his wife.

We arrested a man at St John's 'College in Santa Fe for making a 
negative comment about George Bush in a chatroom from the college 
library. We put a gag order on all the students and faculty, forbidding them 
from revealing that this arrest had taken place: the staff member who told 
me about it could be imprisoned for doing so.

We pressured a North Carolina public radio station to drop a longtime
sponsorship from a reproductive rights group, claiming that it is
political and therefore not permissible as a donor.

We've seized circulation and internet-use records from a tenth of the
nation's libraries without showing probable cause. We're imprisoning
journalists for their coverage of a White House vendetta on a CIA agent.
We coerced newspapers in Texas and Oregon to fire reporters who 
criticised the president's behaviour in the days immediately after 9111. We 
have held citizens and non-citizens alike for more than three years in 
prison, without charging them, without giving them any idea on how long 
their incarceration might be, and we have "out-sourced" their torture to
Pakistan and Egypt.

When George Bush spoke at the Ohio State commencement in 2002, we
threatened protesters with expulsion from the university.

We imprisoned an 81-year-old Haitian Baptist minister when he landed at
Miami airport with a valid passport and visa. We took away his
blood-pressure medicine and ridiculed him for not speaking clearly 
through his voicebox. He collapsed and died in our custody five days later.

In Germany, there is a feeling of terrible loss and betrayal in the wake
of the presidential election. People in their 60s told me that growing up
in postwar Germany, they idealised America. Even when our faults were
obvious, as with lynch mobs and segregation, these Germans saw 
America as struggling to become true to its ideals of justice and equality. 
Now, as Germans see the many ways in which we are turning our backs 
on those ideals in the name of protecting ourselves from terror, they feel a
betrayal deeper than the loss of a lover. They fear, too, that as America
moves the definition of radicalism to new points on a rightwing compass,
other nations will follow suit. They fear that in a world without a beacon
of liberty, there will be no curbs on totalitarian behaviour anywhere.

I never met any anti-American sentiment in Germany, despite the
bewilderment that people feel. People were supportive and helpful, even if
no one is very hopeful right now.

In Dresden, a man in his 70s said that anyone who thought the worsening
war in Iraq, and a worsening US economy, would turn Americans against 
this administration should look to Germany. He said he remembered the 
second world war vividly, when people were willing to shed the last drop of 
their blood for a regime which had destroyed their economy while plunging 
them into senseless wars.

In Munich, the consul told the audience that the fact I was allowed to say
things at odds with our government was proof that free speech was alive
and well. He walked out when I was explaining that the State Department
had removed all of Dashiell Hammett's books from consular and embassy
libraries, after Hammett refused to name names during the McCarthy
witch-hunts.

The consul in Frankfurt said that between 75 and 120 casualties from Iraq
were flown in every day to the military hospital there, but we aren't
allowed to see these wounded on television, nor are we allowed to see the
coffins of our dead.

My taxi driver in Frankfurt was a devout Muslim who fled Iran to protect
himself and his wife from state imposed religious and moral standards. 
He had served in the Iranian army during the Iran-Iraq war, and had lost 
his mother and both grandmothers. "Why does America want to rule by 
religion?" he asked. "Religion makes a cruel government!'

On the plane coming home, I sat next to an Englishman, urbane, fluent in
four languages, travelling every month to South America or the Pacific
rim, who told me "you Yanks" had done the right thing in giving Bush four
more years. "He's protecting you from terror," the man explained.

I told him about the arrests and interrogations of writers, artists,
ordinary citizens. He paused, then said: 'You Yanks put a lot of your
people in prison, anyway." I was bewildered. He said: "It's a necessary
price to pay for protection against terrorism. You'll be glad 10 years
from now that you did it."

Grannie, you know that's what a lot of people said in Germany in the 30s
-- that the torture of Jews, communists, homosexuals and the mentally
retarded was a necessary price to pay for moving Germany in a better
direction.

When I think of you sailing into New York harbour alone, terrified, and
seeing "the Mother of Exiles" lift her lamp beside the golden door, I feel
my heart breaking.

Sara Paretsky


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