Thursday's Columns
September 19, 2024
The Venezuelans
Luis, Paola and Sebastian
A Father/Daughter Duet
on a Discordant Theme
The Daughter's Perspective
by Elli (Gauthier) Monroe
After last night's debate, with Donald Trump spewing so much hatred towards the Venezuelan immigrant community, I feel compelled to tell you a little about my friends Luis and Paola, who I met through a group of moms that was supporting recent Venezuelan immigrants.
It was December and we were organizing a coat drive as the weather was bitterly cold. As many of my friends know, I have an old VW van that means the world to me. But as much as I love it, it was sitting in my driveway, serving no real purpose. Through the moms group, I got connected with Luis and Paola who arrived in Denver just before Christmas with their eight=year-old son Sebastian, and – in what some might consider a stupid or reckless move – I offered them the van for the time being, thinking it could be a safer alternative to their other current options, as there was a real threat of losing their space in the shelter.
Over the last six months - as they moved into an apartment and got Sebastian set up in school - we’ve developed a unique and special friendship. Although language is a barrier, we all try our best and mostly use translation apps. We don’t talk about their journey here; I’m sure there’s trauma. We do talk about the food or music we love. We make jokes, ask about the kids, and talk about how we can support each other. We laugh together. We are friends.
I went into this situation thinking I was going to help this sweet Venezuelan family. But the reality is that they’ve done more for us than I've done for them. They help our aging parents in Denver. Luis has done so much work on the van getting it into better shape. He’s done work around my house, and the houses of good friends. They are religious, and at the beginning I was nervous about how I would be received, as a gay mom. But they have had nothing but open arms for me, my wife, and other LGBTQ+ folks in my circle. They are reliable, honest, and principled - and I trust them as much as I trust any of my good friends.
I still don’t know much about their journey here, but I do know that there is no easy or safe way. And I know that to take Sebastian on such a journey means that there simply wasn’t another choice. I’m hopeful that if I was faced with the same choice, I would have the same courage and optimism that Luis and Paola demonstrate so beautifully.
It breaks my heart to hear the rhetoric displayed in last night’s debate. Especially knowing that US economic policy has played a giant factor in the migrant crisis: years of US efforts to destroy the Venezuelan oil economy and overthrow their government has really fueled this humanitarian catastrophe.
If you are concerned about the impact the Venezuelan migrants might have on your community, I encourage you to get involved. Make new friends. Find ways to be part of the solution. You just might surprise yourself too.
The Father's Perspective
by Lawrence Abby Gauthier
I know Culley Jane and I won’t perish this winter if I don’t put up ten cords of wood for the fireplace. Winters here in Colorado are nothing like the winters in northern Michigan where I grew up. We have a brand new high efficiency furnace. If the power goes out, we’ve got propane and wood.
I like wood. Some people like to harvest garden tomatoes. I like to harvest wood. I like the feel of my chainsaw in my hands, the smell of freshly cut pine and oak, splitting the rounds and stacking the finished creations into artistic rows in the backyard. My grandpa Wahlstrom was a logger. For a time during the 70s, when I was young and strong, I worked as a logger in the Pacific Northwest. I ran a monster 52-inch-bar Stihl chainsaw. But I’m 76 years old now and run a 14-inch-bar Ryobi, and even then my bones complain for days.
One stormy night last spring a big wind blew a giant pine in the city park behind our house into our back yard, destroying the fence, but just missing the shed.
Inspecting the scene in the morning, my aging muscles and bones cried out for analgesics when informed what they would be expected to do.
Lucky for me, just then Luis showed up to help, like an angel from another part of the world.
I like to sit on our patio and watch him work. It’s like watching myself when I was young and strong.
Luis knows how to work; I could see that right off the bat. He doesn’t get rattled when things don’t fit just right but finds a better way to get ‘er done. He moves piles of wood in hours that would have me laid up for days. Culley Jane speaks Spanish and translates so we’ve gotten to know one another. He has a background in agriculture and can run tractors and backhoes. I can see that he’s good with tools and machines, that he can think his feet.
Luis and his wife, Paola, and their eight-year-old son, Sebastian, walked through central American jungles to get here.
It’s become a common story all across America. At first they slept in a tent in a church parking lot. Then Elli, my oldest daughter, offered them the use of her old hippy VW van. A private social organization got them off the street and into a one-bedroom apartment. It’s not a bad place. Lots of other recent immigrants live there. Sebastian has other kids to play with. The social organization paid their first month’s rent and then it would be up to them to come up with $1,200 every month or be back on the street.
By Denver standards, $1,200 for a one-bedroom is pretty cheap, but not if the family breadwinner is legally prohibited from getting a regular job paying a living wage. Luis has applied all over the place – restaurants, warehouses, construction, auto repair shops. Lots of places said they’d like to hire him, but first he has to get a legal “work permit” from the government, a bewildering process which requires the assistance of a lawyer and can take months to work its’ way through an overburdened immigration court system.
How to survive in the meantime?
Luis has found enough cash-under-the-table odd jobs – like helping me out – to keep food on the table, gas in the van and school supplies for Sebastien. And that’s about it. He spends more time looking for work than working and you don’t get paid for looking.
So for the past three months, Culley Jane and I have been faced with the awful choice of either paying their rent or living with the thought of a family we’ve come to know, trust and respect pulling their child out of school, seeking shelter beneath a highway overpass.
I ask you, what would you do?
Because the issue has become so personal, I watched the debate with interest. It felt almost evil to me… the smirk, the bombast, the insipid questions from journalists who should know better, the format, a Hollywood production designed to divert our eyes from what’s really going on – parents tucking a child into bed at night not knowing where he’ll be sleeping when the rent comes due at the end of the month, wondering if the elderly couple on fixed incomes – a retired professor and an exiled journalist – show up once more in answer to a prayer? Can an atheist and a fallen Catholic be angels? Must angels sometimes turn away from desperate, outstretched hands to serve a higher mission? We have grandchildren too and ourselves to take care of so’s not to be a burden on others.
Of course, the answer must necessarily be a new international monetary system acting as an agent for development throughout the world rather than as a hammer to bludgeon sovereign nation-states into compliance with an imperial fantasy of castles and serfs, destroying national economies, causing people to flee.
An international monetary system. It’s a complicated issue that I’ll continue to write about. With the exception of America, Canada, Europe, Israel and Australia, the rest of the world is moving in that direction under the banner of BRICS. Predictably, BRICS was never even mentioned during the debate. Not one question from the press. Outrageous!!! Probably the biggest story in the world. Are these journalists, or what?
So, ok, so the new international monetary system won’t happen in time to pay next month’s rent. That doesn’t mean we can’t patch the hole in our leaky boat. Just let Luis work. That’s all. It’s so obvious. There’s no end to the work that needs to be done on our planet in space. Everybody benefits. You’d think between two presidential candidates and a couple of high-profile ABC News celebrities somebody would have at least mentioned it. Obviously, if you force people out of their homes and invite them into yours and then not let them work, you’re going to get gangs. But I used to work for and was exiled by ABC News after it was bought up by a company started by OSS vets and run by a future director of the CIA, so I understand the lay of the land.
In a couple weeks, my wife and I will once again be faced with the devilish choice. Winter is coming. We’ve worked hard all our lives to be prepared. There’s firewood in our back yard, all cut, split and stacked in artistic rows.
BEFORE
AFTER
The Latest
from
Eric Chaet
Eric Chaet
What is my Role in the World
Going to Be
What is my role in the world going to be —
til my death, from the moment it becomes up to me?
How can I best serve the ones who need me?
How can my work become the way I’ll be free?
How can I do what I think I should do
when belief it’s impossible is near unanimity?
What will I offer, & how frame the terms
so those who’d reciprocate will learn — & agree?
Who, of the billions, will I work with, & how?
What will we do that’s never happened til now?
