Further confirming my priors that people who hold anti-immigration views are, outside a small core of people like the lady with the allergic 5-year-old, generally a group of bigoted, impotent, cowardly whiners who subconsciously enjoy making things up in order to scare themselves and justify random acts of cruelty against those they don’t view as worthy of human rights. I hate them just as much and probably in the same way that they hate immigrants.
Lowlights:
>“Let’s see how many people they can get,” the man said.
>“Never ends here.”
>“You think they’re getting some walking-around money when they show up here?” Adam asked.
>“Where are they gonna walk to?” a mechanic named Jack said.
>“They’re gonna walk up to Dunkin’ Donuts and Walgreens,” Adam said.
>…
>In the aisle, people lined up for a turn at the microphone. “I am angry,” one woman said. Her son, who was disabled, had lost his health insurance, she told the state officials on the stage. “I’m an *American* citizen. Americans should get help first.”
>Instead, the Norfolk Republicans wanted Kevin to talk about why the state had “railroaded” and “handcuffed” the town. They asked whether the migrant families moving to Norfolk would be able to “just go out and roam the streets and all that,” and they wanted to know what Kevin was going to do about it. “We do not want this going on,” the chair of the Norfolk Republicans told him. “So, I mean, just don’t roll over and die.”
>“Well, we’re not,” Kevin replied.
>“We want somebody in there fighting for us.”
>“Well, we are fighting for you, but we can’t fight out in the street,” he said.
>…
>The morning after the forum, she’d found a voicemail waiting for her at the office. It was another angry voice, but instead of screaming, the man on the tape spoke calmly as he used racist slurs to talk about migrants and described scenes of sexual violence. “My mom always taught me not to wish bad things on people,” Kate heard the man say, “but I hope it comes out to every one of you motherf—ers.”
>…
>Taiese Bingham-Hickman was home with her two sons one night when she got a call from an unknown number. When she answered, she heard a man yelling, “Get on your knees,” and then she heard him say the n-word, and then she hung up and called the police. When her kids asked why a squad car was parked outside the house that night, and the next day, and the day after that, Taiese didn’t want to tell them the truth.
>…
>Now Bill Crane, 83, a man Kevin knew, stood up to address the room. He ran a local talk show on the town’s public-access television channel, and before that had been a teacher at a church, where the older students used to complain all the time about Norfolk. “It’s a stupid little town, and there’s nothing to do,” they would say, and he would tell them, “Now just hold your horses. You’re gonna grow up and, God willing, live here in Norfolk again and raise your family here — and you will find that this stupid little town with nothing to do is a safe oasis.” There was no crime here, he said. There were safe, open spaces.
>“We want to keep Norfolk the way it is. We don’t want to see it degraded.”
1 Comment
Further confirming my priors that people who hold anti-immigration views are, outside a small core of people like the lady with the allergic 5-year-old, generally a group of bigoted, impotent, cowardly whiners who subconsciously enjoy making things up in order to scare themselves and justify random acts of cruelty against those they don’t view as worthy of human rights. I hate them just as much and probably in the same way that they hate immigrants.
Lowlights:
>“Let’s see how many people they can get,” the man said.
>“Never ends here.”
>“You think they’re getting some walking-around money when they show up here?” Adam asked.
>“Where are they gonna walk to?” a mechanic named Jack said.
>“They’re gonna walk up to Dunkin’ Donuts and Walgreens,” Adam said.
>…
>In the aisle, people lined up for a turn at the microphone. “I am angry,” one woman said. Her son, who was disabled, had lost his health insurance, she told the state officials on the stage. “I’m an *American* citizen. Americans should get help first.”
>Instead, the Norfolk Republicans wanted Kevin to talk about why the state had “railroaded” and “handcuffed” the town. They asked whether the migrant families moving to Norfolk would be able to “just go out and roam the streets and all that,” and they wanted to know what Kevin was going to do about it. “We do not want this going on,” the chair of the Norfolk Republicans told him. “So, I mean, just don’t roll over and die.”
>“Well, we’re not,” Kevin replied.
>“We want somebody in there fighting for us.”
>“Well, we are fighting for you, but we can’t fight out in the street,” he said.
>…
>The morning after the forum, she’d found a voicemail waiting for her at the office. It was another angry voice, but instead of screaming, the man on the tape spoke calmly as he used racist slurs to talk about migrants and described scenes of sexual violence. “My mom always taught me not to wish bad things on people,” Kate heard the man say, “but I hope it comes out to every one of you motherf—ers.”
>…
>Taiese Bingham-Hickman was home with her two sons one night when she got a call from an unknown number. When she answered, she heard a man yelling, “Get on your knees,” and then she heard him say the n-word, and then she hung up and called the police. When her kids asked why a squad car was parked outside the house that night, and the next day, and the day after that, Taiese didn’t want to tell them the truth.
>…
>Now Bill Crane, 83, a man Kevin knew, stood up to address the room. He ran a local talk show on the town’s public-access television channel, and before that had been a teacher at a church, where the older students used to complain all the time about Norfolk. “It’s a stupid little town, and there’s nothing to do,” they would say, and he would tell them, “Now just hold your horses. You’re gonna grow up and, God willing, live here in Norfolk again and raise your family here — and you will find that this stupid little town with nothing to do is a safe oasis.” There was no crime here, he said. There were safe, open spaces.
>“We want to keep Norfolk the way it is. We don’t want to see it degraded.”