All It Takes Is A Little Love

A couple of years ago my husband Mike and I traveled to Maine to help our granddaughter move from the apartment where she had lived for the summer to the house to which she was assigned for the coming school year. She had been attempting to move her belongings using a bicycle, the only form of transportation that she had for getting around Brunswick, Maine where her college, Bowdoin, was located. 

We turned her request into a good excuse for a road trip and were soon headed up north from Houston, Texas. Unfortunately the timing coincided with an international music festival that Bowdoin College sponsors each summer. People come from all over the world to enjoy a week of musical bliss. That meant that most of the hotels and motels were already booked so we had to do some searching before we found a motel on the edge of town that had one vacancy left. 

It was not exactly a five star residence. It fact it would have been a bit of a stretch to give it three stars but upon arriving we saw that it was clean and quiet and only a few minutes away from where we would meet up with our granddaughter each day. We felt fortunate to have a place to rest that seemed to just be old rather than run down.

The first thing we noticed as we were checking into our room was that there were a number of pickup trucks from out of state. A couple of them were from Texas. We soon learned that this motel was a haven for migrant workers who came to do construction jobs. Each afternoon they would arrive covered in sweat and dust. They would smile and nod their heads at us and once they reached the doors of their rooms they took off their work boots and left them outside so that they would not bring dirt into the room. Then they would quietly spend the evening relaxing and sleeping until it was time to leave for work the next morning before sunrise. We felt humbled by the work ethic that had made them our temporary neighbors. 

When I heard that yet another immigrant was killed by ICE this week I thought of those young men who were so devoted to a grueling routine that took them out to work before we had begun our daily adventures only to return just before dark each evening. Most of them spoke only enough English to get by but they were always pleasant when we encountered them. I saw that we have a workforce in our nation comprised of individuals from many parts of the world who have come to our nation not to cause trouble but to take on the jobs that most of us would not want to do. This has always been the case. 

Our nation began with slaves being forcefully brought to our shores to do the brutal work on plantations. They even built the White House. People came from China to forge the railroads. People from Ireland and Italy and Germany came to America looking for work. My own grandfather came from Slovakia to toil in fields and then ultimately work inside a meat packing plant. The riches of our nation were achieved with the hard work of immigrants from all over the world. Their stories have never ended. They changed the face of America even as the first generations were often treated with disdain. Somehow many of their descendants refuse to acknowledge that their ancestors were once treated with the same kind of ugly rejection that many of today’s immigrants experience. They speak of rigid adherence to laws as excuses for terrorizing today’s immigrants, many of whom are in our nation legally just like the poor soul who was killed in Maine on his way to work this week. 

Joan Sebastian Guerrero was an immigrant from Colombia with legal work permits. He was only twenty six and leaves behind a wife and a three year old child. He was going to work early in the morning when he was stopped by members of ICE who were actually searching for someone else. In the terror of the moment an agent shot into his car and fatally wounded him while his young child sat in the backseat. Once again the shooter claimed that he was attempting to protect people when it appeared that Mr, Guerrero was using his car as a weapon. 

On the one hand we have Americans who commend ICE for doing a job that is long overdue. They insist that people who are stopped should simply comply with ICE agents and they will not be harmed. On the other hand we know that many of the ICE officers were selected without much background information and with little training in law enforcement. They often travel in unmarked cars wearing masks without understanding that there are many better ways of enforcing laws without violence. All too often innocents who willingly follow ICE orders are sent away to detention centers before having opportunities to prove their legal status. Other times they are thrown to the ground and treated inhumanely. Just being subservient does not seem to insure their safety.

Most police departments run applicants through a series of psychological tests to determine how they might respond under stress. Those who show problems are not usually hired. The ones who are selected attend an academy for training that lasts much longer than what members of ICE are getting. Therein lie many of the problems that have ended in deadly encounters with ICE. Sadly I see no inclination to improve either the selection or training of ICE officers. Without many changes like taking off those masks, having visual identification, and using body cams nothing will change what is happening. I worry that the unreasonable deaths will continue until and unless the powers that be realize that they must to their utmost to insure that the unwarranted killings stop. So far those in charge only defend their incompetence and that of their agents. Maybe our votes in November can force a positive change if enough of us demonstrate that we demand improvements. Until that time I worry that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of unwarranted deaths.

I never demand that any person should agree with me one hundred percent. My husband and I will have been married fifty eight years in October and while we are mostly in sync with our beliefs there are some points of disagreement here and there. It is unlikely that I would ever find someone with whom I have no differences of opinion. 

I am always wary of judging people. I try to abide by the advice that I should judge not lest I be judged. I am as imperfect as any other human that has ever walked on this earth. Even my heroes like Abraham Lincoln had moments of weakness that seemed out of character. I know the we humans mostly do our best to be good people but that our definitions of how that should be vary widely. 

I don’t usually care what an individual’s political beliefs are unless they support racism or cruelty. I have never found a politician running for office with whom I totally agreed. Over my lifetime I have watched Democrats and Republicans lead this nation and most of the time I simply rolled with whomever was in charge as long as I did not detect criminal behaviors. I had great concerns about Richard Nixon even as he also did some very good things. When I learned of his lies and dirty tricks I felt certain that he needed to be removed from office. 

There have been moments when I was conflicted over who the better person was in our presidential elections. When Barack Obama ran against John McCain I could not help but notice what an heroic and honorable man McCain was. I actually believed that we would be okay as a nation with either man at the helm. I was especially impressed when John McCain insisted that Obama was a good man when a woman accused Obama of being evil.

When I heard the full story of McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam I was in awe of his honor. Over time I saw him again and again following his conscience and doing the right thing even when it went against his Republican party. I liked that about him so when I saw him with his friends Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham I felt that those three amigos represented what was best about our American system of governing. They did not always agree with each other but they were able to get along and work together for the betterment of our nation. 

Eventually John McCain died and Joe Lieberman retired but I still remembered the delightful way that Lindsey Graham had behaved during the times before Donald Trump came along. I disagreed with him on many issues but I saw him as someone willing to work hard and in tandem with the Democrats to make our nation a better place. I heard him speak of Joe Biden, a fellow Senator, as one of the nicest people he had ever known. Back then Lindsey Graham was the kind of leader that I thought I would want to be, fair and honest.

When Trump first came into the picture Lindsey Graham warned us about the danger of electing a man whose boasts showed him to have little character. He was adamant that Trump would bring an end to the United States as we had known it. Once again I admired Lindsey Graham for his willingness to speak what he believed to be the truth even though I disagreed with many of his other political beliefs. 

I have to admit that I felt betrayed when Lindsey Graham eventually left his former self behind and bowed to Trump even after condemning him over the horror of January 6, 2021. The rapid turn around confounded me. To this very day it makes little sense to me. It seemed so out of the character that I had believed represented Lindsey Graham. It felt humiliating to me and so I essentially just wrote Graham off as yet another hack willing to to anything to keep his power. 

When I awoke on Sunday morning to find that Lindsey Graham had died I was shocked but I also felt deeply betrayed by the man that he had become in his final years. I suppose that I will never understand how or why anyone can change as dramatically as he did. Instead of standing his ground like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney in opposing Donald Trump he bowed down and humiliated himself. In the process I lost my respect for him but also quietly wondered what had driven him to change. I suppose that more than anything I felt sorry for him. The demise of character that overtook him reminded me of the story of Benedict Arnold who had once been one of the great characters of the American Revolution. His fall from grace became synonymous with being a traitor and so it seemed to be the fate of Lindsey Graham.

I never wish ill on another person and I will not judge Lindsey Graham one way or another but I will grieve his change of heart that I will never understand. Perhaps he wrongly believed that he had to go along with Donald Trump or be sent away by the voters thus losing any influence that he might have had. Whatever his reason it tainted his legacy forever and that is truly a shame.

Just after July 4, Adam Kinzinger wrote an essay that gave me much hope for our nation. Instead of listing all of the problems that we have, which are many, he spoke of the remarkable progress and determination of the American people over the last two hundred fifty years. His piece reminded me of the kind of ideas that my grandfather mentioned every single time we visited him. I suppose that I always left his home feeling refreshed and optimistic because he had such a positive way of viewing the world, and in particular, the United States.

Grandpa was born in 1878 somewhere along the North Carolina and Virginia border. His mother was Marion Roarke Mack, or so he was told by relatives. He never knew her because she died of complications from giving birth three days after he was born. Grandpa’s father was William Mack, a man who became frightened at the prospect of raising a child alone so he put his baby boy in the back of a wagon and high tailed it to his mother’s home in Virginia. There he left my grandfather with a woman who would raise him into his teens. 

Sarah Reynolds taught Grandpa to read and write and made sure that he had good manners. She showed him how to combine herbs to create medicines for neighbors who lovingly called her Doc Reynold’s. She died when Grandpa was only thirteen and left him a small inheritance. He chose an uncle, John Little, to be his official guardian but mostly he set out on his own like young boys often did back then. Because his Uncle John Little was an honorable man and a graduate of the Military academy of West Point Grandpa changed his name to William Mack Little, the moniker that he had when I was born. 

Grandpa was a progressive who fully appreciated the evolution of the United States. He remembered a time when he first saw a town that was lit my electricity and he marvelled over the brilliance of Orville and Wilbur Wright who conquered the sky with their plane. Grandpa saw the history of modern America unfold year by year, invention by invention and he liked to say that current times were “the good old days.”

Grandpa had seen hunger, disease, men and women who were desperate at a time when wealthy men ruled the roost. He appreciated the changes that brought improvements in our government for the common folk. He loved to read about history and quote his heroes like Thomas Jefferson. He just missed going to war but he had great admiration for those who supported our nation. He appreciated Franklin Roosevelt for creating programs that would help American citizens. He was overjoyed when Medicare became a program that would save others from using all of their savings when someone became ill like he had to do for my grandmother. He cheered the Civil Rights movement and insisted that even when things look horrible we Americans find ways to keep our country moving forward in a way that includes everyone. 

I have been feeling down since Donald Trump became president again. I doubt that my grandfather would have voted for him. Trump represents the destruction of so many of the things that Grandpa insisted were important for the people of the United States. He would have been upset by the return of super wealthy oligarchs who think that they know best how to take care of America. He had seen the depression during the Gilded Age when people were starving and a man named Coxey created an army of people willing to march across the land to Washington D.C. to protest the hunger of far too many in the nation. 

Grandpa was a well read and learned man even though he did not get very far in school. He knew what was communism and what was not and found the “Red Scare” of McCarthyism to be dangerously absurd. He would have recognized Donald Trump’s latest accusations that Democrats are communists as a way to cover the problems that he has created. He would also assure me that we will eventually find our way back to the kind of leaders who work together to create a better world for all Americans, not just certain ones who have the right complexion or pedigree. 

Adam Kinzinger’s essay was uplifting just like Grandpa had always been My grandfather died at the age of one hundred eight when I was in my forties. It’s been a very long time since I had the benefit of sitting with him while he smoked his pipe and spread wisdom and information that always kept me calm. I miss him but need to hark back to his story once again. He was an American through and through but he realized that our work is never done and that looking backwards and attempting to emulate a time that has passed is rarely a good thing. It is in the amazing progress and evolution of the last two hundred fifty years that we have become a better and better nation. The very idea of going backwards would have been anathema to Grandpa and so it is to me. 

I feel a bit better now. Like Adam Kinzinger I believe that we Americans always find a way to find repair the damage of anyone who tears down the ideals and progress that are the continual thread of our history. The only catch is that each of us must make it happen by paying attention and casting our votes. There is no time for simply complaining while a man is spending his time as president enriching himself and his family, while tearing down so much that is good about his nation. We all have work to do to move forward once again.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed on a Houston street in the early morning hours of July 7. His death came from the bullet of an ICE officer under circumstances that are still hazy and without a thorough investigation and evidence from witnesses to the event we may never know what exactly happened at an intersection of Canal Street and and Wayside Drive. 

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo came to Houston from Mexico thirty five years ago and settled into the anonymity of Houston’s east end, a place of which I am quite familiar. My own grandfather purchased land and built a home in that area back in the nineteen twenties after coming from the area of Europe now known as Slovakia. He was attempting to get away from the subjugation of his people by the empire of Austria Hungary which was determined to create one culture. My grandfather’s language was outlawed in public spaces including in church. He saw a move to the United States as a way of beginning anew with infinite possibilities. Back then people were free to just arrive in the United States with few exceptions.

My mother and her family lived at 517 North Adams street in the shadow of downtown Houston. Much as with today’s immigrants they endured insults and taunts from neighbors but my grandfather urged his children to ignore the noise and become good citizens of this country and so they did. Such seems to be the story of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. From accounts from his family he was a man of routine who worked hard every single day to provide his family with a stable life. Because of his hard work they bloomed just as my mother and her siblings had done in the same part of town a century ago. 

The main difference between my grandfather and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is that Grandpa was able to come to the United States without any kind of permission. He showed up in Galveston and went to work building a life. For Mr. Salgado Araujo it was different. His coming to America was deemed illegal even though Mexicans had been crossing into the United States without question for decades until quotas and rules changed the status quo. Thus Lorenzo was no doubt hiding in the East end among legions of Mexicans and Hispanics who lived and worked there. In the meantime he appears to have been a model citizen save for the secret that he held in his heart. He created a business building homes. He paid taxes and provided jobs for others. He rose early and went to work and came home late to sit on his front porch to enjoy the life that he had built. He had three sons that he sent to college. One graduated from the University of Houston and became a teacher just like I did. Another went to Tufts University, an elite school for very bright students where he earned a degree in engineering. A third son is presently attending college. 

On July 7, Lorenzo set out for work just as he had done for decades. He drove his van to the intersection of Canal Street and Wayside Drive to pick up some workers so that they might travel to a site in north Houston where they were building a house. The rest of the story is unclear. The ICE officers claimed that when they attempted to stop Mr. Salgado Araujo he tried to drive away and in the process seemed to attempt to harm one of the agents. 

While that scenario sounds problematic on the surface further investigation shows that the ICE agents were wearing masks and were in unmarked cars. Knowing how dangerous that part of Houston can sometimes be it does not take much imagination to understand why Mr. Salgado Araujo might have panicked. I can’t say that I would have done anything differently myself. I can only imagine the terror of the poor man’s last moments of life. There is no telling what thoughts raced through his mind. Fear creates very dangerous situations.

The description of this man from his family and friends and neighbors is of a good man who somehow believed that coming to this country was necessary even as it was illegal. Over the years he had worked on the possibility of getting legal permission to stay. He had three all American sons and was a model citizen in every other sense of the word. He was not all that different from my grandfather whose focus was on providing his family with a good life through his labors. Ironically toward the end of his life my grandfather was beaten over the head by an officer with a baton in downtown Houston just because he looked foreign and out of place. Grandpa soon after had a massive stroke and weeks later he died.

Houston is mostly a welcoming and friendly city that in many ways seems more like a small town. We live and work together in harmony, helping each other in difficult times. People come here for the opportunities to find work. This is not a beautiful place but a very practical place, one where we mostly get along. We honor hard work like Lorenzo was doing. We are one of the most diverse cities in the nation. Everyone here has the kind of opportunity that my grandfather was seeking. It is heartbreaking to me that masked men in unmarked cars felt that it was justified to pursue a man just going to work mostly because he probably looked foreign to them. Even if he had politely complied he and his passengers might have simply disappeared without anyone knowing why. As it is nobody knows exactly where the other two men who were in the van were taken by ICE. 

It would be easy to just assume that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo brought this moment on himself from the time that he entered the United States illegally. Some will say that he should have just complied with those masked men in unmarked cars but I wonder what any of us would have done in such a frightening situation. It’s easy for those of us who did nothing but be born in the United States to talk about following the law. Only someone fleeing a life of difficulty might understand what brought this man to Houston in the first place. He had shown that he was a good man, a hard working individual contributing to our nation with his skills and with his three brilliant sons. His should have been an American dream, not the horror that ultimately changed the course of his life and his family’s life forever. His death is a blot on our nation. The full story of what happened on the day of his death must be told.

If man is to survive he will learn to take delight in the essential differences between cultures. To learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.  —-Gene Roddenberry

I was a young adult just out of high school when the original Star Trek first aired on television. Back then I still watched programming in shades of black and white because my family had not yet purchased a color tv. It was a show that fascinated me and I never missed an episode which was quite a trick back then because there was not yet a system of recording programs for watching them later. One either sat down at the given time or missed an episode until a future that none of us had imagined. 

What struck me the most about Star Trek was the diversity of the characters. The very idea that in the future people working together for a common cause would come from many different backgrounds and universes was enticing. I had grown up in Texas where contact with people unlike me and my family was rare. I would see the Black citizens of Houston at the back of the city bus that I rode to downtown with my mother but rarely had personal interactions with them. I knew where most of the Black people lived in segregated neighborhoods and sometimes was present when my aunt’s maid was cleaning her house, but mostly knew nothing about people who had lived in my city longer than my mother and her family had. 

In the last couple of years of my time in high school three black students enrolled and suddenly I was getting to know some of them on a very personal level. I remember that they came and there was not so much as a blip in our daily routines. As far as I knew they were generally welcomed and accepted and it made me proud to believe that their integration of my school had gone so smoothly. It was fifty years later before I learned from one of them that they endured many moments of prejudice and bullying that most of us were unaware had happened. It literally broke my heart to know that racism had existed within the walls of my school but it also reminded me of how naive about such things I had always tended to be. 

I married in October of 1968 while my husband and I were still students at the University of Houston. There I watched a Black woman become the first homecoming queen of our school. I followed the leadership path of Black students who rose to prestigious positions in student government. I wanted to believe that we were tearing down the walls of segregation and learning about one another with harmony. Of course it was my own view of people that all too often shrouded the truth of the struggles that Blacks in America would face all the way into the present decade. 

I suppose that I was fooled by those episodes on Star Trek that seemed to be precursors of a new kind of world in which individuals would be accepted just as they were, not according to some kind of classification that ranked people simply by judging the worth of their cultures and even colors of their skin. I had sat across from two lovely Black girls at lunch each day when I was in high school and because I embraced them so heartily I believed that everyone else did as well. 

I kept watching Star Trek even after it left prime time air time. I watched and re-watched old episodes each night with my husband as he returned home from work each evening. I wanted desperately to believe that our country’s original sin of slavery, segregation and prejudices was slowly but surely being eliminated. I created a hopeful idea in my mind that my generation was smarter and more open to differences than those of the past. I wanted to believe that day by day we were moving closer and closer to being a nation that had reached the ideal of all being created equally. 

Sadly as I matured I realized that the fairytales that my father read to me and the hopes and dreams of Star Trek were still unrealized as one year bled into another. Some of my minority colleagues and students would tell me that prejudice lived on in abundance and that I needed to be aware of the danger of thinking that all the work to create a more open and accepting society was done. It was in watching the hatefulness being aimed at our first Black president that I could see that we were still dreadfully behind in fighting racism and isms of many different kinds.

I worked with immigrant children some of whom became Dreamers, those brought into the United States as infants without legal admission. I had students of the Muslim faith who became despised after 9/11 even thought I knew them as delightful young people with beautiful customs that were in fact making our nation better, not worse. Then from out of nowhere came a movement that would be known as MAGA with a leader spewing the kind of hateful rhetoric and fear of differences that I never expected to see again. 

We are living in a backwards time when different lifestyles, cultures, religions and shades of skin are being demonized by our own president and a good percentage of the population. A crew of diverse individuals like the one on Star Trek is anathema to them. People are losing their jobs and their freedoms based solely on unreasonable fears of differences. Our president is working day and night to prohibit the value of women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, and essentially anyone who is not white and male and conservative. The Star Trek vision of delightful acceptance of our differences is being challenged on many fronts, taking us back to a terrible time that we should never desire to endure again. 

I have become a realist even as I cling to a hopefulness for our nation. Somehow I believe that the most Americans agree with Gene Roddenberry that diversity is exciting, not something to fear. I see those beliefs being acted upon in the daily life of neighborhoods and even at the FIFA games. We have become citizens of the world whether the MAGAs like it or not. It is not a naive set of beliefs that envision a more inclusive world but there is a subgroup that would fight our efforts to make it so. We still have work to be done just like the crew of the Enterprise. The question is whether or not we have the courage “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”