Silence is no longer an option

In these hard, divisive and nasty times, many Americans are searching for a way to make a difference, to do the right thing.

Sometimes it means taking action in your community. Sometimes it means speaking out, writing a letter to the editor of your newspaper or just telling somebody you disagree: it’s not right, it’s not humane.

After I wrote recently about the merciless separation of more than 2,000 migrant parents and their children at our southern border — now in some cases being reunited, thanks to a court order — I received some auguished responses from readers. So many people are wondering what they can do.

Jen Tucci of Guilford sent me an email saying President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy is outrageous. She wrote, “I am stunned by the inhumanity of Americans who somehow convince themselves this is an acceptable situation.”

“We are a military family and I have always been proud to be an American,” she said. “But I have to say I am not proud of what America has become in the last 18 months. I am ashamed at what this country will tolerate and condone. It is despicable and flies in the face of everything I hold dear.”

Tucci, like many of us, said

she “feels frustrated at being helpless to do anything.” But she has found a way to take action.

“Recently our church began looking into what it takes to become a sanctuary church and I’ve decided I’m in,” she said. “It’s the only thing I can see that I can take an active part in and make a small difference. If I can be part of a team that helps one family stay together and resist Trump’s idiotic policy, I will do it.”

I also heard from a person who asked me to refer to her only as “Paula from West Haven” in order to protect her privacy. She said in an email she is tired of hearing people who approve of “zero tolerance” tell her: “Oh, my relatives came here legally.”

“They look at me with blank stares when I tell them that in the early 1900s, when my relatives and my husband’s relatives came here from Italy and Russia, there were basically open borders. When my grandparents came from Italy and arrived at Ellis Island, they did not need a visa. Barring any extreme illnesses, you were in. My husband’s grandfather walked across Europe from Russia and walked in from Canada.”

Paula added, “The hatred that many Irish, Polish, Italians, Jews,

etc. experienced during those times was abundant. The very same reasons that are given today against refugees and immigrants are no different than what the immigrants of yesteryear experienced. ‘They don’t speak English, they’ll take our jobs, they’re uneducated’ were just a few of the insults directed at immigrants. And did I mention the powers that be at the time hated Catholics?”

Paula cited the angry phone message I received, and reported on, from “Bob of East Haven.” He called immigrants at our southern border “degenerates.” He claimed they are carrying drugs. “They can’t speak English. They’re uneducated.”

Paula of West Haven said Bob of East Haven should study our history of immigrants. She asked: “I wonder where his ancestors came from?”

Meanwhile, John Carusone, a former mayor of Hamden, sent me a letter expressing disgust over a Trump rally participant who criticized the media for showing “fake pictures of (refugee) children in cages.”

Carusone said this reminded him of an incident in 1969 when he was assistant superintendent of Hamden schools and with Superintendent of Schools Frank Yulo oversaw a public hearing for Ridge Hill School. The school system officials were proposing that the school be the

first in Hamden to have carpets. This drew an outburst from a man in the crowd: “Yulo and Carusone are communists! The carpet is being installed so that it will muffle the sounds of teachers teaching communism!”

Carusone also sent to me a copy of a letter written to him by a ranter who was angry about Carusone’s public comments opposing Trump. Much of that letter was laced with obscenities. Here are some of the words that can be printed: “You’re a liberal hack. Guys like you is the reason Trump won, because of stupid thinking and corruption.”

The angry man said Hillary Clinton “should be hung” for her “corruption.”

Carusone enclosed in his mailing an essay he wrote titled “Is the worst of history repeating itself in America now?” This is how he described Trump’s political strategy: “Criticize everything your opponents ever said or did, never present any real alternatives, use fear as a strategy, making your opponents appear dangerous and untrustworthy and always present yourself as the outsider looking at all the imagined chaos and only you can ‘drain the swamp.’”

Also: “Continually berate the mainstream press as ‘fake news.’”

Carusone said his “Uncle Frank” left Italy in 1926 when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had taken over.

“Uncle Frank as a young man had gone to a socialist gathering to meet girls. The meeting was raided by the blackshirt police. Uncle Frank was given the option of joining the blackshirt party or leaving the country. He chose to leave and settle in America.”

Carusone said his uncle was a paisan of another man who left Italy and came to America: Nick Mussolini, a distant relative of the dictator. He arrived on our shores in the 1930s. Carusone got to know him after World War II.

“Nick would spend hours telling how Mussolini ruined Italy after his entry into the war with the Nazis,” Carusone recalled. “But what was more interesting was how Mussolini pror to the war captivated most Italian citizens with his constant public pronouncements about how great and smart he was and how lucky Italy was to have him. He eliminated all news sources and only one outlet remained, which of course was a supporter of his.”

“Why do I bring all this up now about Mussolini?” Caursone asked. “Because our president has exhibited most of the same chacteristics as Mussolini. Nick Mussolini said it was a shame that the early Mussolini supporters were not smart enough to see he was such a phony.”

What can any of us do? Shortly before July 4, I came across two members of the Greater New Haven

Peace Council who were handing out leaflets on the steps of City Hall. The leaflet began this way: “As you prepare to celebrate Independence Day, it just might be appropriate to reflect on what liberty, democracy, freedom, justice and equality really mean, especially in these very troubling times.”

The message added that those words “still echo the hopes and dreams of millions of people here and around the world who risk everything to get to America. Please keep in mind that if you are not Native American, then you are an immigrant or descended from immigrants.”

The leaflet quoted the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The leaflet noted: “In a real democracy, children, toddlers and babies are not criminalized. In a real democracy, familes are not torn apart and separated.”

“To remain silent and sit on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.”