The lesson of stories gone untold

[This is taken from a talk that I delivered on May 22, 2013 at my installation as a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University]

Thank yous are on me – to Pres. Schapiro, Provost Linzer, Katherine and Nancy McCormick; to my faculty colleagues who recharge the batteries with me every day; to my students, the ones here and the 30 years’ worth who are out there spanning the globe and putting hopeful lessons into practice and passion; to my family – Margie [who is in large part responsible for me choosing to take the position at NU in 1986] Sylvie and Noah – who are my lifeblood; to my in-laws – Sheldon & Jewell – who’ve taken over for my parents; and to my parents, Marcus and Dora, who provide the dramatic tension and irony for this reflection. 

On paper, federal income tax forms, for instance, my parents were department store salespeople. They told me virtually nothing about their past, where all the dramatic tension resided. I never knew any of my four grandparents, and to this day, know very little about them. I went into life rootless or root-free. I was always a good student; motivated when a teacher and I conspired to click, and adept at cruise control, for instance, when a 6th grade teacher would turn me upside down in a garbage can, or an 8th grade arts teacher would force me to get on my knees and push a paint brush around with my nose. 

By the time I got to NU-Medill to teach, I’d divined that teaching is a collaborative process that can hit its glory days through transformative experiences. For inspiration, I would periodically walk over to the theater building to visit a colleague, with whom I’d gone to school at Grinnell. I’d sit in on an improv or story theater workshop, and like diving into Lake Michigan in the spring, I’d get revitalized. The puzzle, that I still haven’t solved, is how to transport the energy jolts, self-discovery and emotional liberties into a journalistic learning environment. In search of a metric equivalent, I lean on the likes of Rives Collins to bottle the elixir of storytelling. It is part of a potent formula, but it’s not all of it. 

Periodically I meet someone who knew my dad. We talk and I find out that my dad was a Talmudic scholar, one of considerable measure, who became a Rabbi at the age of 21, and who underwent a number of rounds of electroshock therapy en route to working as a salesman at Goldblatt’s. 

I was sitting in my mom’s apartment, where I’d grown up. I was post-college, probably late 20s, with my Israeli cousin Uri. We were telling stories. I was noting that his mother was the eldest of the family when he corrected me. To the side, my mother was saying, “shhhh, shhh,” only to have my cousin say, “don’t you tell him anything?” Turns out my mom was the oldest of her siblings, that in obtaining phony papers before leaving home in Sanok, Poland, during the Holocaust, she reduced her age on the document by five years so she and her sister who lived as Catholics in Krakow during the war could appear to be girlfriends of the same age rather than sisters. When my mom came to the United States a few years later, she kept the age, thinking that changing it would trigger suspicion. So my mom’s passport and her social security benefits years later are based on lies, fraudulent documents, just the telltale proof to have her deported. 

Stories for my parents to tell, gone untold. 

For the past few years, I’ve taught a class, Immigrant Connect, that has students venturing off campus into communities to tell stories, and they do an impressive job of it. We’ve met and told evocative stories, of Ahlam Mahmoud, an Iraqi refugee who’s become a single-source safety net for other refugees; of Eugene Peba, who was deported back to Nigeria as my students were documenting to the government that his marriage to a Chicago woman wasn’t a sham; and of Poe Clee whom I accompanied to Myanmar-Burma which he was preparing to call home though he’d never lived there before. We in journalism have recently come to define what journalism is as all about as storytelling, just as theater is all about storytelling, and other disciplines from the sciences to the classics are being schooled to appreciate the verities of storytelling. True, but not true enough. 

When I observe in classes that something educational and informative has flashed into something exhilarating and transformative, I’m sensing that it’s less often the final product, the varnished story itself, than it is the process - the interview (in journalistic terms) - but more than that, the inter-connecting, the exchange, the give-and-take, or as we at Northwestern have come to call it, the engagement – global, civic and interpersonal, both on campus and away from the cocoon. 

There is something incalculably empowering in listening as well as telling. It is often said that the highest calling in journalism is to give voice to the voiceless. A true virtue, but there’s something more that is at the heart of journalism and of teaching…and that is to give voice lessons to the voiceless. True for the teacher to the student, and also true for the student to those in the community whose stories we commit to tell. 

So thank you very much for this opportunity to tell this story, for listening to it, and for engaging with me in a reflection on the exhilaration of teaching. 

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Steve Goodman is a doorway to my life and heart

 [Adapted from Storied Stuff, published originally on March 16, 2022]

I bought this album used for $2.

Steve Goodman album cover, 1971

I didn’t own a stereo until freshman year in college, when some of my high school buddies hitchhiked from Chicago to Grinnell to present me with one. My family had no stereo or record player, so growing up, I played no albums or 45s. I spent most of my time at home, watching TV with my parents. Otherwise, I listened to music on AM radio.

The stereo gift and the weekend sojourn to Grinnell were surprises rendered insignificant by the happenstance delivery method that accompanied the gift and my friends. The guy who picked up my hitchhiking buddies was Steve Goodman, for us one of the most exhilarating performers we hitched our wagons to. I'm told my buddies got into the car and Goodman asked where they were headed. They said Grinnell and he said, “What a coincidence, I'm playing at Grinnell tonight.”

The gig was in an intimate setting. At one point, Goodman said, “Apparently somebody here has a birthday. Why don't we give that person a chance for a request.” I asked for I'm My Own Grandpaw, a goofball song from the’40s that Goodman sang with relish.

The Goodman connection doesn't end there. When I met Margie--who would become my wife--our first date was to go to Milwaukee Summerfest because they were featuring Steve. We fell in love that day, of course.

Early the following fall, on Sept. 24, 1984, the Cubs clinched their first post-season opportunity since 1945. Goodman, possibly the Cubs’ most enduring fan, didn’t get a chance to celebrate. Twelve years into his bout with leukemia, he died four days before the Cubs clinched. He had written “The Go Cubs Go” anthem and “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” which he'd been singing since 1981.
At the time, I was working at WBBM Newsradio and was responsible a few months later for writing a year-ender about Goodman.

Original script for WBBM Newsradio year ender

Fast forward to children. We have two. A couple of years ago, Noah the younger and I decided to create a game together. It's evolved into Lines n’Lyrix, an online game that riffs off of song lines. From the lyrics on the screen, you guess the name of the song, who's known for singing it and who wrote it. We release five questions online a day.
If you play, and we hope you will, we’re providing the readers of Storied Stuff an exclusive hint and two teases. You’ll find I'm My Own Grandpaw in the country edition.

You can find five Goodman tunes buried in various editions. You might want to play to unearth them. It’s worth it. Where else would you find, “Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car, ​penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.” ?

Goodman's spot in my life doesn't end there. There's mystery afoot. For that, check out A Dying Cub fan's last bequest.

#########

Jack Doppelt is an emeritus journalism prof who’s created a music lyrics game with his son.

Chicago's global immigrants: Beyond the American dream

At a time when Trump and his Hestafo agents are publicly reveling in rounding up and deporting immigrants and refugees with ruthless, indiscriminate "shock and awe" and taunting the courts to do something about it, according to Politico, it might help to recall the countless ways America's immigrants bring the US and the world profound benefits. 

Trump ads on X

This story from 15 years ago reminds us of how the American dream can serve us all.

[Aired on WBEZ in Dec. 2009. Transcript published here] 

Since the days when stock yards and steel mills bustled on Chicago's West and South Sides, the region has been a magnet for immigrants from around the globe. They came to be Americans and live the American Dream. The region has transformed from these early days of bootstrap commerce and so have the dreams of many immigrants who continue to come. They still dream about building a life here but they don't stop there. 

As part of our Chicago Matters: Beyond Burnham series, producers Jack Doppelt and Edie Rubinowitz tell the story of four remarkable Chicagoans - Valdas Adamkus, Sam Pitroda, Zelalem Gebre and Maricela Garcia - who are redefining the American dream by staking a claim to the future of the country they won't leave behind. 

Valdas Adamkus was born in war-torn Lithuania. He spent his early years in a German refugee camp. He moved to Chicago after World War II when Bridgeport was home to Chicago's Lithuanians. 

Official portrait, 1998

ADAMKUS: I grew up with the democracy, with the understanding what a free man is, what freedom is, what an open society is, and what a free press is. Being a part of this community meant being active in Democratic movements back home. 

Adamkus has just finished two terms in the highest elected office in Lithuania – President. He's back in Chicago to reconnect with the Lithuanian community that had supported him all these years. 

ADAMKUS: This is I'm signing the European Union's constitution. 

 

He's staying with a friend from the old days who lives in a townhouse in Bloomingdale. He's showing us pictures. 

ADAMKUS: This is with the Queen Elizabeth in Lithuania, and this is in my office working. That's the Queen of Holland, Beatrich. 

He remembers the day he came to Chicago in 1949. No family here, little money, and he spoke almost no English. 

ADAMKUS: It was a shocking experience. It looked like a dirty city, the streets, I mean, the winds were blowing and just, carrying the newspapers and all kind of a dirt, especially originally what I saw in Bridgeport, the old wooden buildings. 

He needed a job, any job. So he worked the night shift in a Ford factory at 75 cents an hour. He remembers his punch card number-303, and he remembers the electric drill. 

ADAMKUS: I could not hold the drill, it was jumping all over there. First time in my life, the blisters came in after the first night or second night. On the third night, I mean you came into work. Blood was running all over because the blisters were just simply opening up. 

After only a few weeks, he was about to give up. 

ADAMKUS: If there would not be an Atlantic Ocean, I would have walked back to Germany which was destroyed after World War II. That bad. 

But he stayed. He lived in Bridgeport, then in Marquette Park, among a Lithuanian community that had two daily newspapers and three radio stations. He was active in the community and the protests against the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. 

ADAMKUS: I even prepared, in '58 I believe, what we called a Lithuanian youth petition to President Eisenhower asking for the support to the Lithuanians actually being exiled in Siberia. 

He took classes, graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology and became an engineer. In 1970, he took a post at the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency. By the 1980s he was regional head. He led the fight against dioxin poisoning in Lake Michigan. In the end, he served as regional director under six American presidents. He had become a somebody in the U.S. But for Adamkus, the American dream was only half a dream. The other half was in Lithuania. He recalls that first trip back. 

ADAMKUS: That decisive moment after 27 years of absence from Lithuania, came to Lithuania in 1972, July the 9th. 

He was with the EPA at the time. President Nixon sent him to Moscow as part of the first delegation on environmental cooperation. While he was there, he decided to figure out a way to get from Moscow to Lithuania's capital in Vilnius, a stretch of 500 miles of Iron Curtain. He sought permission, went through channels. 

ADAMKUS: After a couple of days, the answer came, definite no. So I said, 'No, we cannot give in just on one bureaucrat's 'no.' Finally word came. He could go to Lithuania for five days. While he was there, the president of Vilnius University, who was high up in the Communist party structure, took him outside for a walk. They talked about smuggling in literature and about freedom. [Lithuanian national anthem plays] 

Little by little as the Soviet Union thawed, Adamkus began going back as an environmental envoy. When he was there, he talked openly about environmental issues, and between the lines…about Lithuanian independence. His name became known. 

ADAMKUS: The Adamkus in Lithuania became the household name. I didn't have to introduce myself. (he laughs) Sometimes I heard stories about me in Lithuania, I mean, I couldn't believe it myself. 

In 1990, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. And the Lithuanians in the Chicago region were intensely involved. Adamkus' church is Blessed Matulaitis Lithuanian Church in Lemont. Father Anthony Saulaitis recalls just how active the community became in Lithuanian politics during the independence movement - with a distinctively American touch. 

SAULAITIS: They did their best to do the American way of making buttons and banners and stickers and everything else which were unknown in Soviet times. And they shipped them off to Lithuania. 

In 1992, Adamkus took a short leave of absence from the EPA to manage a campaign in Lithuania's first presidential election. His candidate lost. Chicago politics was a readily exportable commodity. Soviet-controlled Lithuania had been so corrupt that by the next election six years later, the country was looking for an outsider, and it would be someone from Chicago. 

Again, Father Saulaitis remembers: 

SAULAITIS: The situation was ripe for someone who would be an honest person. He has no reason to steal or to cheat because he already had a house, a car and a television. Filmmaker Arvydas Reneckis had just immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania. Here's what he remembers of Adamkus, the Chicagoan. 

RENECKIS: If you know the sign of Lithuania, it's a grand duke on a white horse, you know. To me, as I saw him, he was the one (he laughs) who was riding that horse.

Historical national flag of Lithuania

The campaign hadn't yet begun when Adamkus boarded a plane for Lithuania in 1998. At 71, years old, the American citizen didn't know that he himself might be enlisted to run for president. But he was…and after a few months of campaigning, he won. He served as president for 10 years, and he now lives full time in Vilnius. He is a European statesman from Chicago. 

ADAMKUS: In Chicago, I did not have to fight for the right to be Lithuanian. Instead Chicago helped me to foster and develop my national identity. In this city, you can be an American and a proud Irish, Italian, German, Polish or Lithuanian at the same time. 

And he'll tell you, he couldn't have done it without Chicago. 

Sam Pitroda will tell you the same, but he is leading a different kind of revolution. In Chicago, he's virtually unknown outside the Indian community. In India, he's a national icon. Just check Google or Youtube. [sound from two youtube stories, first in Hindi] Satyana-rayan Pitroda came to the United States in 1964 as a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology. His name changed when he got his first paycheck. It said “Sam Pitroda.” From that point on, he's been known simply as “Sam.” During the 1970s, Pitroda became a wealthy American executive for Rockwell Industries. On one particular business trip to India he tried to get in touch with his wife back in Chicago, but the phones wouldn't work. He got to thinking. 

PITRODA: I had seen the importance of telecom communications in the US especially for someone like me who had never used telephones before coming to America. 

He envisioned a plan to jumpstart a telecommunications revolution by bringing public telephones into every village across the subcontinent, no matter how remote. With just the right combination of arrogance and ignorance, as he puts it, he went straight to the top, to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He was offered a ten-minute appointment. 

Pitroda: And I said you can't really do anything in 10 minutes so I said if she's really interested, she should give me an hour, and people said, ‘are you crazy,' why would the prime minister of a country give an hour appointment to some guy who's just hanging around here from Chicago who thinks he wants to fix India's telephones? So I said, fine, then I don't want to talk to her. He got his hour and what emerged was a lifelong commitment to give back to India what he had learned and developed in Chicago. 

PITRODA: You know, it's a romance with a nation. I mean, many times I tell my wife that when I was in my 20s, I fell in love with her, and when I was in 40s I again fell in love...with India. 

In 1985, Pitroda and his family moved back to India. He committed himself to public service. He refused to accept money for it and had to give up his American citizenship to do it, as India doesn't allow dual citizenship. 

PITRODA: I was convinced that information and communication could transform India in a big way. India went from a nation with 2 million telephones in the early ‘80s to one that now has 500 million. It was a communications revolution...and I had an opportunity to be a part of it, to help drive some of this. But his life was about to change. Pitroda's family moved back to Chicago so his children could finish high school here. In 1990, Pitroda, who was still in India, had a heart attack. The next year, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, as his mother had been years earlier. After 11 years, it was time for Sam to return to Chicago. 

PITRODA: I had no money, I changed my nationality so I didn't have a visa, I had a tourist visa. I couldn't work on a tourist visa. I had children ready to go to college. 

At 53 years old, he started over as an immigrant. He had gone from someone with an expensive car and driver in India to someone who worried about retaking his driver's test. And he was broke. 

PITRODA: Life was tough. But nobody knew any of these things; none of my friends knew, even my immediate family did not know any of this, so I had to just…you know, survive and rebuild my life. 

This is Pitroda now, perpetually in motion. He's built a thriving software development company. He's in Schaumburg for a summit convened by the Indian Institutes of Technology. People see his silver mane, black mustache and beard from across the room, and flock to get a minute of his time. 

Pitroda at the India Economic Summit 2009

PITRODA: I was in Canada a month ago…we had some good meetings….I think we have to check because the Indian pm is going to be in the U.S. so we could use a couple of days in between. 

He's once again a successful American businessman. And he's still tied to India. In fact, he was just appointed to a cabinet level position as India's education czar. That's what he's talking about to this group. 

PITRODA: The government of India has decided to spend $67.5 billion. They've decided to build 13 new national universities, 6,000 new schools. 

In India, he's gone from transforming the telecommunications industry to re-envisioning India's educational system. His base now…Chicago. Green card holder here, citizen there. Entrepreneur here; celebrated public servant there. 

PITRODA: When you leave a place, you get many advantages; one is that you can see it from distance; the view is very different than you see it when you're there. You are detached from the local nitty gritty, politics, perceptions, mindset, which says it can't be done. 

Zelalem Gebre works as a parking garage attendant in Chicago. On a relatively quiet Sunday night, he makes change and small talk with drivers as they come and go. When they greet him, he flashes a warm smile. Gebre was a prominent journalist in his home country of Ethiopia. On July 4th, 2006, he came here knowing few people, little English and just a few things about his destination. 

GEBRE: Mmmm, I know about Chicago a little bit, like Chicago Bulls and Chicago basketball. When I was eighth grade or something I learned about Mr. Lincoln in the history but I don't know the detail in Chicago, all about that. 

He knew no more about Chicago than Chicagoans know about Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital and Gebre's home. But he knew politics. He knew politics too well. [Ethiopian music] Gebre was the managing editor of Men-ah-lick, one of Ethiopia's few newspapers that wasn't government controlled. In early 2005, he published a story about Ethiopian pilots seeking asylum in Belarus, something the government didn't want the public to know about. He was jailed for three day and beaten by police. When he emerged from jail, his right hand was mangled. One policeman told him – he had gone too far. 

GEBRE: We have to cut this hand because you write in the news and you write false statement things…and after that, he beat me. Not long after that, Gebre was in the newspaper office working on a basic crime story when he got an anonymous phone call from someone in the government. 

GEBRE: Who are you? I am just asking him. "I am not telling you anything about my name, I'm just telling you, you have to leave from this country," he say. 

The next day, the leading government newspaper featured a wanted photo of him, his boss at the newspaper and two dozen others. Fourteen of them would be rounded up, tried for treason and imprisoned. Gebre escaped. He left the newspaper office and never returned. He hid with his aunt in southern Ethiopia for three weeks, until the government got curious. 

GEBRE: When they suspect something, they searching that home. So at that time, she [his aunt] asking me, please, “Can you leave from this place and go somewhere?” Ok, I'll leave. 

He left Ethiopia on foot for Kenya. It took three days. He went straight to the police with a copy of the newspaper in his hand. His wanted photo was his ticket to safety. He stayed a year. He couldn't go back, he couldn't go anywhere else, until his refugee papers were finalized and he was whisked off to Chicago. Now, Gebre lives in a sparse, one-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, in the shadow of the el tracks. So close he can hear the train announcement in his kitchen. A poster on the wall features an Ethiopian woman in traditional wrap headdress – and a bikini. It reads – “Ethiopia – 13 months of sunshine.” 

He misses that sunshine but seems to have created a new life here. He says he likes the winters and snow. He leafs through his photo album. It's now full of pictures of his Chicago friends… and the family he left behind. There are his two adopted daughters. He stops on a photo of his brother who became a target of Ethiopian authorities after Gebre left. 

GEBRE: They ask him every day about me but he doesn't tell them, and sometimes he tells them like he's not here, but they don't believe him so they suspect him every time and they ask him every day. 

Gebre considered returning to Ethiopia, even though his life would be endangered if he did. He called his family back home. They told him it was too late. They'd killed his brother in front of his home and his daughters. He blames himself for his brother's death. The guilt follows him. He says he takes strength from the name his father gave him. 

ZELALEM: My name is called Zelalem – Zelalem means everlasting when you translate into English, so I am a really strong guy. 

Gebre can often be found at the Ethiopian Diamond Café on Broadway near his apartment. 

This day, he's reading poetry, at the opening of the second Ethiopian Diamond Restaurant on Howard and Clark. Almas Yigsaw is the restaurant owner. 

YIGSAW: He tries several things, and he wanted to do a program every month here, like reading poem and developing some kind of talent show here. So every month we meet; a couple of times he developed a show where people read about different stories. And also, recently, we lost a hero, a good musician that everyone loves – and they talk about him and they wrote poems about him and they had a candlelight here. 

Gebre is part of the Ethiopian Free Press, a group of journalists in exile who publish stories about events back home. Their web-based stories are blocked in Ethiopia. Gebre has a facebook page and keeps in touch with others in the Ethiopian diaspora that way. He's created an extended family here. 

YIGSAW: So that's how I get to know Zelalem, very closely here. 

Gebre hopes to bring at least some of his family to Chicago. He calls Ethiopia almost every week, speaking in Amharic. He talks with his two teenage daughters – Selam and Radette. He hasn't seen them since the day he left the newsroom offices. They tell him of their struggles in Ethiopia. There's no rain, people aren't working. He tells them life here isn't easy either. Gebre knows if he doesn't bring them here, their lives won't improve at all. His ambitions are those of India's Pitroda or even Lithuania's Adamkus. And like theirs, his ambitions take him far beyond the American dream. He wants to take journalism classes and start up his own radio station in Chicago for Ethiopians. 

Maricela Garcia has transnational ambitions, too. And you could say the American spark that lit her fire was small but powerful - plastics. One warm Saturday many years ago, she got invited to a Tupperware party, was served tea and cookies, and had an epiphany. 

GARCIA: And all of the sudden, I thought, huh, this is what I should do with the weavings from the women's co-ops in Guatemala, organizing house meetings to talk about the situation in Guatemala, get them signed on some actions to stop the war and sell those beautiful weavings so I can send the money back to Guatemala. It was really wonderful because it worked. 

It worked so well that Garcia had a three-month waiting list for people wanting to host the house meetings. And then, instead of talking about the weather and plastic containers with lids, she says, women were talking about life and death issues in Guatemala. Garcia founded a human rights group called Casa Guatemala. She's now with the Chicago office of the National Council on La Raza, a job that keeps her traveling to D.C., training community organizers from around the country. After decades of activism, she's now able to influence policy back home. This could be any business meeting at an airport hotel, complete with water bottles and a projection screen but for the two flags – one Guatemalan – one U.S. on the back wall. Garcia and other Guatemalan activists invited their foreign minister and government officials to Chicago to talk about supporting Guatemalans abroad. 

During the talk, Garcia emphasized how hard it is on families under American law to go to and from Guatemala. She says it wasn't easy getting the Guatemalan politicians to come to the U.S., but now they're starting to realize the importance the diaspora play in politics back home. An estimated 1.6 million Guatemalans live in the U.S., and they matter. 

Garcia left Guatemala in the early ‘80s because she had to. She was a student activist in college and her life was at risk. 

GARCIA: I probably didn't know when I was in high school that when I started how dangerous it was to work on behalf of human rights, to the point that many of my classmates who were also human rights activists were killed or kidnapped and very few of us were able to leave the country. 

When she immigrated, Chicago had the largest population of Guatemalans outside Guatemala. Garcia attended Truman College and waitressed in Uptown. She improved her English, using Sue Grafton mystery novels. She went on to Northeastern Illinois University - - and was naturalized. She got married and had two children here. And in Guatemalan tradition, she buried their umbilical cords in her Chicago backyard. 

GARCIA: Where I come from, there is a story that wherever your umbilical cord is buried is where you belong. And so, when I buried the umbilical cord of my children in this country, I felt that we all belong here. 

But Garcia's own umbilical cord is buried in Guatemala. 

GARCIA: And I think that that calls me sometimes. To look back and to try to make a tremendous contribution there and that's what I think is a reality for many immigrants - that home then is both places. 

The tug of war between her cultural roots and her current identity came to a head when Guatemala emerged in December 1996 from a generation of civil war. Peace meant that Garcia and other Guatemalans had a chance to return for good. A production crew from Univision came to her home, and sat her down for an interview at her living room table. 

GARCIA: "Is this an opportunity for many Guatemalans to go back to Guatemala," that's what she asked, and I couldn't answer the question because all of the sudden, I wasn't a refugee anymore. Choosing to stay here after the war made me an immigrant. And just that change at that moment made me think profoundly about my identity. Now I choose to stay here. The Lincoln Park conservatory is one of her favorite sanctuaries. 

GARCIA: I love to come to this place in Lincoln Park, the botanic garden. It's one of the places that remind me of home. I remember the rainy days of Guatemala. It's just really beautiful, the banana trees, the plantain trees, the papaya trees, the orange trees, the coffee trees, all of that reminds me of home.

[Update as of May 2, 2025:

Valdas Adamkus is 98 years old and lives in Vilnius. He served as Lithuania’s president for two terms: 1998–2003 and 2004–2009.

Sam Pitroda's book, The Idea of Democracy, was published in April 2024. He lives in Villa Park, outside Chicago, is considered one of the leading advocates of bridging the digital divide, is currently chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, and is a regular contributor on social media.

Zelalem Gebre now lives in Atlanta, is a cybersecurity engineer and runs his own cybersecurity company Tech Shield Solutions.

Maricela Garcia is CEO of Gads Hill Center, former Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and founding Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum. 

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Haggadah Reflections on Resistance

Passover is here. For the Passover Seder dinner, we read from a Haggadah, a collection of folklore, parables, anecdotes, ethics, symbolism and mysticism.

For this year’s Haggadah, we focus on resistance, on conjuring what the Israelites did before they went forth from Egypt. Each year, we remember and retell stories that have resonated with us about slavery, plagues, the exodus, the desert, and the Bible, with introspection and jarring lessons of being the oppressed and of the oppressors. This year we will also imagine and recognize how humanity and inhumanity collided, how they keep resonating, and we’ll grapple with the crucibles of silence, acquiescence and resistance. 

The Biblical saga of Passover tends to gloss over the resistance to which the Israelites must have resorted to endure slavery. We tell of Aaron being dispatched to demand of Pharoah that he let the people go. Pharoah refuses and doubles down on his reign of terror against the Israelites. The Israelites resist, we’re told, and are not released from bondage until a series of ten plagues befalls the Egyptians.                

Were the Israelites the only slaves? What did the Israelites do to resist? Did resistance intensify Pharoah’s reign of terror? Was the terror targeted or did it indiscriminately punish all Israelites? 

We learn of Jochebed, Moses’ mother, who places her infant in a basket in the Nile River to evade Pharaoh's decree to kill Israelite baby boys. Moses is found by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as her own. She knows he’s an Israelite and even lets Jochebed nurse him. Is she knowingly providing him sanctuary? 

As Moses grows up, we’re told that one day on a stroll from Pharaoh’s palace, Moses sees an Egyptian striking a slave. He rescues the slave and kills the Egyptian. Was Moses immune from punishment because he was family, or had he taken a huge risk? 

As we know, the world has not seen the end of slaves and oppressors. More than a thousand years later, during the Roman empire, there was a slave revolt. Spartacus was a gladiator and an escaped slave. In the movie Spartacus, there’s a memorable scene. The slaves are captured. They’re sitting en masse on a hill. The emperor sends word, “Your lives will be spared. Slaves you were and slaves you remain. The penalty of crucifixion has been set aside on the single condition that you identify the body or the living person named Spartacus. As Spartacus begins to rise and turn himself in, the two fellow slaves chained to him notice, rise with him, and announce together, “I’m Spartacus.” One by one, all the slaves confess. “I’m Spartacus" resonates throughout the valley. 

Are they all slaughtered? ________________________________ 

Pesach Has Come to the Ghetto Again 

(by Binem Heller, Warsaw, April 19, 1943) 

Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

The wine has no grape, the matzah no grain, 

But the people anew sing the wonders of old, 

The flight from the Pharoahs, so often retold. 

 How ancient the story, how old the refrain! 

The windows are shuttered. The doors are concealed. 

The Seder goes on. And fiction and fact 

Are confused into one. Which is myth? Which is real? 

"Come all who are hungry!" invites the Haggadah. 

 The helpless, the aged, lie starving in fear. 

"Come all who are hungry! 

And children sleep, famished. 

"Come all who are hungry!" and tables are bare. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again, 

 And shuffling shadows shift stealthily through, 

 Like convert-marranos in rack-ridden Spain 

Seeking retreat with the God of the Jews. 

But these are the shards, the shattered remains 

Of the "sixty ten-thousands" whom Moses led out 

Of their bondage…driven to ghettos again… 

Where dying's permitted but protest is not. 

From Holland, from Poland, from all Europe's soil, 

Becrippled and beaten the remnant has come. 

And there they sit weeping, plundered, despoiled, 

And each fifty families has dwindled to one. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

The lore-laden words of the Seder are said, 

And the cup of the Prophet Elijah awaits, 

 But the Angel of Death has intruded instead. 

 As always -- the German snarls his command. 

As always -- the words sharpened-up and precise. 

As always -- the fate of more Jews in his hands: 

Who shall live, who shall die, this Passover night. 

But no more will the Jews to the slaughter be led. 

The truculent jibes of the Nazis are past. 

And the lintels and doorposts tonight will be red 

With the blood of free Jews who will fight to the last. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

And neighbor to neighbor the battle-pledge gives 

The blood of the German will flow in the Ghetto 

So long as one Jew in the Ghetto still lives! 

In the face of the Nazi -- no fear, no subjection! 

In the face of the Nazi -- no weeping, no wincing! 

Only the hatred, the wild satisfaction 

Of standing against him and madly resisting. 

Listen! How Death walks abroad in the fury! 

Listen! How bullets lament in the flight! 

See how our History writes END to the story, 

With death heroic, this Passover night!

#####

At Trump’s Zoo

Someone tweets that it's all happening at his zoo

I do believe it
I do believe it's true

It's a dark and trembling journey
From Mara Lago to DC
Just a firm and fascist ramble
To Trump’s zoo

People disappear from street to bus
If it's raining or it's cold
And ICE will love it when they do
As they do, now

Somethin' tells me it's all happening at Trump’s zoo

I do believe it
I do believe it's true

His monkeys have no honesty
Lawmakers insincere
GOP elephants are cowards and they're dumb
Orange guy acts sadistically
With changes from his rages
And the defense guy is very fond of rum

The zealots are reactionary
All hell bent as missionaries
War hawks plot with no secrecy
And Musk turns out workers mercilessly
What a mess, can’t believe what you see
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo

https://www.doppeltlines.com/simon-answer-8.html

 

Song parodist: Jack Doppelt with enduring thanks to Paul Simon

Read their lips, tweets and releases: If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you’re probably an illegal immigrant and deportable

The other day, on Feb. 25, Kristi Noem, Trump’s head of the Hestafo (Homeland Security Task Forces), tried to make things as clear as possible. 

If you’re not a citizen, you’re probably an illegal immigrant and deportable. 

Don’t take my words for it, though I tried to make that known a month ago after 12 Senate Democrats collaborated with the Republican consensus to enact the Laken Riley Act, which along with Trump’s Executive Order Protecting the American People from Invasion signed nine days earlier meant that almost all aliens, including green card holders (lawful permanent residents), asylum seekers, refugees, even some students on F1 visas are illegal, according to Trump and Hestafo. 

I wrote then that it “can matter in nefarious and intended ways.” 

[Read Enter the Hestafo and language resistance

https://jackdoppelt.blogspot.com/2025/01/enter-hestafo-and-language-resistance.html]

Few watchdogs noticed. Most glaringly the 12 Senate Democrats - Cortez Masto, Fetterman, Gallego, Hassan, Kelly, Ossoff, Peters, Rosen, Shaheen, Slotkin, Warner and Warnock – chose not to notice. 

Time to notice now and read Noem’s words. Warning: Watch out for slick double speak. Here’s her announcement:

Please take the time to note that the release opens with the familiar undesirables - “illegal aliens,” who go hand in hand with criminals, like those spelled out in the Laken Riley Act, “who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting” or those now called out on ICE’s official X account as “THE WORST FIRST.” 

Keep reading Noem’s pledge. Hestafo is seeking out aliens who “willfully fail to leave the U.S.,” who fail to register with the federal government and be fingerprinted,” who “fail to apprise the federal government of changes to their address.” 

If you’re thinking that applies only to “illegal immigrants,” you’re missing the slick trick. Those acts are what make ALL aliens illegal, and as Noem wrote, “For decades, this law has been ignored-not anymore.” 

It continues: “The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws-we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce.” 

With the reminder that they’re now illegal, aliens are being asked to leave voluntarily, or self-deport, now. 

That tends to change the message from THE WORST FIRST” gunslinger image to an OTHERS, HEAR ME: OUT NOW Hestafo message. 

The day after Noem's Feb. 25 message, she issued another one, boasting that under Trump, "more than 20,000 illegal aliens were arrested. That's a 627% increase in monthly arrests, compared to just 33,000 at large arrests under Biden for ALL of last year."

Seemingly out of the annals of Monty Python's British comedy routines, these numbers are a collection from the Ministry of Made Up Apples and Oranges data extracted from someone's butt to sound like they're well-oiled stormtroopers, not Keystone Kops. 

Dangerous though for DOGE-guided federal government agencies with badges and guns to make stuff up just as they emerge from hiding behind outdated daily stats last published on Jan. 31 on ICE's official X site that portrayed a different picture. That picture was accompanied by stories in the NewsNation: Tom Homan: ‘I’m not satisfied’ with number of ICE arrests: Trump says immigration arrest numbers are 'too f—— low' and in The New York Post that The Trump administration is demanding at least 1,800 arrests per day. 

 #####

ICE and Hestafo arrest tracker here [updated as of April 25, 2025]

[Read Enter the Hestafo and language resistance and Read their lips, tweets 

and releases: If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you’re probably 

an illegal immigrant and deportable]

---------------

Resistance to deliberate dehumanization

A must listen. It's haunting. - The Sidewalk Where She Vanished

FBI arrests Wisconsin judge for obstruction of ICE agents: Kash Patel-April 25, 2025-Axios

American doctor receives email from immigration officials telling her to leave the country immediately: Dr. Lisa Anderson, 58, was born in Pennsylvania and is a U.S. citizen-April 17, 2025-NBC News

DOGE is collecting federal data to remove immigrants from housing, jobs: Officials working with the U.S. DOGE Service are pushing agencies to turn over information on where people work, study and live-April 15, 2025-Washington Post

Venezuelan man tackled in courthouse and sent by ICE to Texas-April 14, 2025-Associated Press

Social Security Lists Thousands of Migrants as Dead to Prompt Them to ‘Self-Deport’: By placing migrants in Social Security’s “death master file,” the Trump administration is seeking to cut off their access to credit cards, bank accounts and other financial services-April 10, 2025-NY Times

Around 1,000 march in Sackets Harbor (NY) to seek return of family taken by ICE--April 5-WWNY /
ICE frees mother and three kids after protests in US ‘border czar’s’ home town: About a thousand people marched outside of Tom Homan’s home in village of less than 1,500 after family was detained-April 5, 2025-The Guardian

IRS agrees to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with ICE: Agreement between IRS and DHS will give unprecedented access to immigration enforcers to aid in deportations-April 8, 2025-The Guardian / I.R.S. Agrees to Share Migrants’ Tax Information With ICE: The agreement is a major departure from the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to gain the trust of migrants and encourage them to file their taxes-April 8, 2025-NY Times

U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran prison; documents indicate most have no apparent criminal records-April 3, 3025-60 Minutes

Trump touted these ICE arrests. Half were already in prison: In the early weeks of Trump's second term, the Whie House highlighted 72 people ICE had arrested. A Washington Post analysis reveals at laest 36, or half, were already in prison-April 3, 2025-Washington Post

Trump administration says it mistakenly deported Salvadoran migrant: The government blamed “an administrative error” for the accidental deportation of : Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant married to a U.S. citizen. Officials claim they’re unable to return him to his family in Maryland-April 1, 2025-Washington Post

Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trump’s Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be. Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps-March 18, 2025-ProPublica

College students are the target du jour: 

Rubio says State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas: Marco Rubio said his department is “looking every day” for other visas to pull-March 27, 2025-Politico

ICE detains Harvard researcher from Russia who protested Ukraine war: Kseniia Petrova’s visa was revoked as she returned to Boston last month. She fears deportation to Russia because of her opposition to its invasion of Ukraine-March 28, 2025-Washington Post

UA [Univ. of Alabama] student reportedly detained by ICE-March 26, 2025-The Crimson White. The Iranian student was a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering. His F-1 student visa was revoked. A Hestafo spokesperson said only that the student posed  "significant national security concerns." 

Federal authorities detain Tufts student in Somerville: The university received notice that an international graduate student was detained off campus- The student is a Turkish national and doctoral candidate, and is being held in federal custody in Louisiana-March 26, 2025-Tufts Daily

Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trump’s Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be
Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps-March 18, 2025-ProPublica

As Trump Broadens Crackdown, Focus Expands to Legal Immigrants and Tourists: U.S. border officials are using more aggressive tactics at ports of entry as the administration scrutinizes green card and visa holders who have expressed opposition to its policies-March 21, 2025-NY Times

ICE, and Hestafo should stick with deporting criminals. Stop making immigrants we all know into illegals by including lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, refugees, even some students on F1 visas if they’ve failed to register as aliens or failed to carry registration cards.

Stop running the country like a junta, ignoring judicial orders and dehumanizing people to stoke anger.

'We’re not stopping': Trump border czar vows deportations to continue despite court orders-USA Today-March 17, 2025

Homan talking tough guy: "I'm comin' to Boston. I'm bringin' hell with me."

They bolstered their wholesale mass deportation frenzy by getting a dozen paralyzed Senate Democrats to go along with the Laken Riley Act that fits into Trump’s goose step hopscotch that starts in square one with upping the illegal ante to crossing the border without authorization to shoplifting to being charged with any offense, even if not convicted, then to failing to register as aliens or failing to carry registration cards, two violations that heretofore haven’t been prosecuted. That goes for lawful permanent residents too.

If people are arrested and disappear into a system and detention centers without notice or hearings, mixed in with dangerous “worst, first” criminals and dispatched to who knows where (not the families), that’s the price of demagoguery. It comes in the following forms in the following locations. This is only two days worth and Trump is apoplectic that the roundups aren’t going faster:

New Hampshire-German man with green card ‘violently interrogated’ by US border officials: Berlin checking if US immigration policy has changed after Fabian Schmidt becomes third German to be detained-March 18, 2025-The Guardian.

New Mexico-Lawyers and advocates say 48 people are unaccounted for after ICE raid in New Mexico-March 17, 2025-NBC Real Change News

Midwest-Families impacted by ICE raids denounce Trump administration’s arrests, file emergency motion-March 18, 2025-Chicago Tribune

Going, going, gone. Not a criminal among them.

Click on photo to check out story and video
Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants 
even as a judge orders their removals be stopped

As Trump Broadens Crackdown, Focus Expands to Legal Immigrants and Tourists: U.S. border officials are using more aggressive tactics at ports of entry as the administration scrutinizes green card and visa holders who have expressed opposition to its policies-March 21, 2025-NY Times

Georgetown University researcher detained by immigration authorities, lawyer says…:

Indian national Badar Khan Suri was detained outside his Virginia home for spreading “Hamas propaganda,” DHS said. His lawyer said he was innocent-March 19-Washington Post

German man with green card ‘violently interrogated’ by US border officials: Berlin checking if US immigration policy has changed after Fabian Schmidt becomes third German to be detained-March 18, 2025-The Guardian

Lawyers and advocates say 48 people are unaccounted for after ICE raid in New Mexico-March 17, 2025-NBC News

Families impacted by ICE raids denounce Trump administration’s arrests, file emergency motion-March 18, 2025-Chicago Tribune

ICE arrests Columbia graduate student and activist, lawyer says - March 10                                                                His attorney said the "ICE agents who arrested him claimed his student visa had been revoked — even though he is a legal permanent resident and not in the U.S. on a student visa." DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the arrest in a statement on Sunday night. A Columbia University spokesperson issued a statement acknowledging “reports of ICE around campus.”

“I thought they were going to be targeting criminals. No one mentioned during the campaigning of Donald Trump that residents … legal residents … were going to have to go through this,” said Estefany Peña, 30, from Lincoln, California, who supported Trump for reelection. Her husband, who came to the country legally in 1999 and has a green card, went to an immigration office in San Francisco for a check-in in late January and still hasn’t come home, she said. “Everything just came crumbling down” when immigration officers wouldn’t let her husband leave. Cal Matters, Feb. 11

ICE and The Hestafo [Homeland Security Task Forces] have been unleashed. They've boasted that they've deported nearly 40,000 people during Trump's first month in office. The daily data on the ICE sites appear to be current only through Jan. 31. The official figures don't reconcile. The 37,660 people that ICE and Hestafo claim to have been deported, Reuters reported on Feb. 22, are below the monthly average of 57,000 removals in the last full year of Biden's administration.

Trump raids will now target migrant families who entered the U.S. with their children: New plans for operations across the country show that they will target families and unaccompanied children, even those who do not have criminal histories, NBC News has learned - March 6

Philadelphia  ICE Raids: Man recounts experience after ICE arrests his parents - Feb. 28

ICE struggles to boost arrest numbers despite infusion of resources: Trump has ordered a wartime effort to increase deportations, but ICE statistics show arrests have dipped so far this month, according to The Washington Post, Feb. 15, 2025

Greg Abbott Responds After Dallas Police Refuse to Join ICE Raids, according to Newsweek, Feb. 13, 2025

Top ICE officials reassigned amid strain to meet Trump deportation goals: The demotion of top two officials in ICE’s enforcement division comes as officers scramble to ramp up numbers of immigration arrests and deportations, according to The Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2025

Tom Homan: ‘I’m not satisfied’ with number of ICE arrests: Trump says immigration arrest numbers are 'too f—— low', according to NewsNation, Feb. 11, 2025

DHS Seeks to Deputize IRS Officers to Help With Deportation Effort, according to The Wall St. Journal, Feb. 10, 2025

White House pressures ICE to pick up pace of migrant arrests, sources say, according to CNN, Feb. 7, 2025

Some migrants arrested in Trump's immigration crackdown have been released back into the U.S.: Space constraints and court orders have led ICE to release migrants on monitoring programs after they’re arrested, according to NBC News, Feb. 3, 2025

High Immigration Arrest Figures Under Trump Come With Few Details, according to the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2025

ICE’s daily arrests, which averaged 311 in the year ending Sept. 30, stayed fairly steady in the first days after Trump took office, then spiked dramatically Sunday to 956 and Monday to 1,179. If sustained, those numbers would mark the highest daily average since ICE began keeping records, according to Fox 11 - Jan. 30, 2025

The Trump administration is demanding at least 1,800 arrests per day, according to The New York Post, Jan. 28, 2025

WH press secretary Leavitt said all illegal immigrants are criminals, as they broke U.S. immigration laws, YouTube, Jan. 28, 2025

ICE posts immigration raid info, photos and tweets regularly on X and Instagram, 

but it doesn't disclose how many of those arrested are released, remain in detention, 

have been deported or how many are undocumented or have criminal records. 

The data stopped being current on Jan. 31. The sites showcase photos of raids and ID by name those it calls "The Worst First." 

They include the two at the bottom of this page, one for overstayingthe terms of his admission to the US, one for firearm possession and another for assault. 

In his remarks to CPAC 2025, Border Czar Tom Homan clarified what Worst First means to him: 

"But you arrested non-criminals. Yah, damn right we did because you happen to be in our country illegally ,

which happens to be a violation of our law. Entering this country illegally is a crime and we're not gonna forgive it."

You can find ongoing coverage of immigrant raids from 2025 by location here [Note: some of the info in the stories is provided by ICE & Hestafo to show how successful their operations are. That info is seldom verifiable.]

Arizona    An Iraq War vet is facing deportation. This veterans' group is demanding his release - Feb. 12

Arizona Student Group Plans Event To Report Classmates To ICE - Jan. 31

Arlington, VA  Georgetown University researcher detained by immigration authorities, lawyer says…:

Indian national Badar Khan Suri was detained outside his Virginia home for spreading “Hamas propaganda,” DHS said. His lawyer said he was innocent-March 19

Aurora, COLO   Armed federal agents conduct immigration raids at Denver, Aurora apartment complexes: The DEA posted a video of agents raiding an apartment with a smoke grenade and an unknown number of residents were boarded onto a bus - Feb. 5

Baltimore  'Afraid to come out of their house': Business owners blame ICE raids for dwindling... Jan. 30 

California   ‘It was just a regular morning’: Californians picked up in recent ICE raids include kids, volunteers - Feb.11

Chicago & suburbs  Listen to the unauthorized raids on homes in Lyons and Elgin, IL  (WBEZ, Feb. 5, 2025) / Trump's immigration arrests in Chicago raise questions about 4th Amendment violations: President Donald Trump has said his administration is targeting dangerous criminals, but attorneys working with those detained in Chicago say many do not have criminal records - Feb. 5 / ICE Raids, Arrests In Chicago, Suburbs: What We Know So Far - Jan. 30 / ICE officers arrest  Chicago man after wife drops child off at school in Little Village: VIDEO - Jan. 29

Concord, New Hampshire - Venezuelan man tackled in courthouse and sent by ICE to Texas-April 14

Denver    Asylum seeker taken into custody during Denver ICE raid - Feb. 10 / ICE raids hit Aurora, metro Denver early Wednesday morning - Feb. 5

El Paso, TX   FBI, HSI, DEA, federal agencies begin immigration arrests throughout El Paso, Texas - Jan. 31

Guam.  ICE Raids Expand to Guam - Feb. 3

Houston - More than 100 arrested in Colony Ridge immigration raids, ICE says: The development outside of Houston has long drawn the ire of Texas Republicans who claim it’s a haven for undocumented people - Feb. 25 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday said more than 100 people were arrested during an operation the day before in a sprawling, majority Latino housing development outside of Houston — but only released information about one of the arrests.

Midwest-Families impacted by ICE raids denounce Trump administration’s arrests, file emergency motion-March 18

New Jersey   'Free-for-all': ICE isn't just targeting immigrants with criminal histories - Jan. 31 / Immigration enforcement operations ramp up in cities across the U.S. - Jan. 26

Los Angeles - Despite rumors of a massive immigration sweep in Los Angeles, numbers don’t add up - Feb. 23

New Mexico - Lawyers and advocates say 48 people are unaccounted for after ICE raid in New Mexico-March 17

New York   One Hundred NYC Immigrants Arrested in Week One of Trump ICE Raids: Little is known about where many of those arrested are being held, and immigration lawyers tell THE CITY they have had difficulty locating and contacting those detained - Feb. 5 /  Trump goes after New York migrants in publicity blitz, but arrests were routine -Jan. 31

Philadelphia  ICE Raids: Man recounts experience after ICE arrests his parents - Feb. 28

Sackets Harbor, NY.   Around 1,000 march in Sackets Harbor to seek return of family taken by ICE
-April 5-WWNY

San Diego, CA  ICE silent on immigration arrest numbers in San Diego - Feb. 17

Waukegan, IL  Man Taken By ICE In Lake Co. Arrested For DUI 20 Years Ago: Family - Jan. 29

Wisconsin FBI arrests Wisconsin judge for obstruction of ICE agents: Kash Patel-April 25

Jan. 28

[Read Enter the Hestafo and language resistance

        

CBS 8 San Diego

CBS 8 San Diego

https://jackdoppelt.blogspot.com/2025/01/enter-hestafo-and-language-resistance.html]

#####