I'd planned to write something about my paternal grandfather Moses, or M. G., as we called him, because I saw similarities between his emigration to America and the arrival here of uprooted children fleeing gang and other violence in impoverished Central America.
Eight-year-old M. G. came to America by boat in 1884 escaping Russian, Czarist-dominated Eastern Europe.
He re-joined family members who had settled in Vermont in the 1870's to escape anti-semitism, violence and forced, 25-year/death-sentence conscription into the Czar's armies.
The maternal side of my family came to America under similar circumstances from what is now the Republic of Georgia.
Then I saw Rick Horowitz's Friday evening commentary on Milwaukee public television about the current outbreak of anti-immigration paranoia in the country, and he said it all much better than could I.
Here it is.
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