Mike Caron lives in Liberty.
In 1963, I was a student at Lewiston High when I watched youngsters about my age attacked on television with pressure hoses and by vicious dogs. Birmingham’s segregationist Public Safety Director Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered police and firemen to brutalize protesters. Connor had arrested Martin Luther King Jr. weeks earlier.
Today, students read “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in school on MLK Day. In 1963, few Alabama parents protested initially. Employers promised to fire anyone who marched. Instead, 934 children between the ages of 6 and 18 were jailed. The following day, 3,000 students and adults were arrested. One bigoted bully awoke a nation.
As I approach my 80th birthday, another male bovine, more notorious for antisemitic brickbats than Islamophobia, has succeeded in turning public sentiment against ICE. President Donald Trump’s Himmler-wannabe, Greg Bovino, transported a terrified 5-year-old to a nasty Texas concentration camp. Then his masked ICE-men gunned down two American citizens, recorded on dozens of cellphones from multiple angles.
Like Bull Connor, who claimed protesters were “commies,” Bovino asserted Alex Pretti, the Veterans Administration ICU nurse killed by his ICE-men, was a domestic terrorist intent on massacring his agents. Even some blind MAGA loyalists saw through his lies.
Bovino’s southern Italian ancestors were stereotyped as crime-prone papists. Most were law-abiding immigrants, not gangsters. Catholics were more widely feared in his grandfather’s day than Muslims are today. At Jordan Junior High, I overheard W.O.P. meant “Without Papers.” Prejudice feeds on bull crap.
When my Caron grandparents immigrated from Quebec, many Americans believed Catholics, Jews and other “swarthy” immigrants were diluting true American blood. Maine’s KKK was big in the 1920s. Maine and Indiana had more Klansmen than any southern state back then. Maine had few Jews and even fewer Blacks. Catholics, especially the non-English speaking Quebecois, were targeted by Pine Tree Klansmen. Many feared Catholics would obey the pope’s edicts over American laws, like that nonsense about Sharia law. Back then the pope was as vilified as Iran’s late Ayatollah Khamenei. Lewiston and other mill towns offered safety and jobs.
I taught soldiers how to conduct successful recon missions in Vietnam. Lesson one, avoid confrontation. That wasn’t our mission. After coming home, I served on the Kansas Special Operations Response Team. We were trained to quell prison riots and relocate angry convicts. I was certified to carry firearms on aircraft while transporting inmates. I know good training and its opposite.
In Maine, the ICE surge was called “Catch of the Day.” Unfortunately, masked agents can act unprofessionally without fear of consequences. ICE is top-heavy with what combat vets call “cherries.” New recruits.
In this instance, they are conspicuously lacking adequate training, with no regard for public safety. ICE agents can act unprofessionally without fear of consequences. Most have no clue how to deescalate, and even less interest in doing so. They must meet a quota to keep their jobs. When Mainers hear “quota” we think of fishing limits. ICE fishing turns that on its head.
Before my father deployed in World War II, Mom took him to meet her family in Oxford. The first words out of my great-grandfather’s mouth shocked Dad. “How can you live in that sh*thole Lewiston with all them dumb Canucks?” After Vietnam, my girlfriend told me about finding Klan paraphernalia in her grandfather’s attic after he passed.
Both men were products of their times. It was the heyday of eugenics. Many Mainers believed American blood was becoming more polluted than the Androscoggin River. In too many Maine classrooms, we are still uncomfortable acknowledging the days when Quebecois were feared as foot soldiers of the anti-Christ.
Our first federal immigration law, designed by men seeking to preserve white Protestant dominance, passed in 1924. “Swarthy” Greeks, Poles, Italians and Jews were not yet “white” enough to be genuine Americans. The Irish were just becoming “white,” a path found through policing other unwelcome immigrants.
Mémère Caron was pregnant when she crossed the border in 1923. Today, some would say she brought an “anchor baby” to Lewiston. Aunt Marie died in infancy before Dad was born. He was the only Caron conceived after they settled in Lewiston, the last of 16 kids.
I’ve heard more than a few crude jokes about those large Quebec families. Many are being recycled these days for deployment against Lewiston’s African immigrants.
After the Minnesota killings, students took to the streets of many places in Maine. Bovino is gone. ICE is under “new management.” Even Kristi Noem is gone, replaced by a plumber who hates diversity, equity and inclusion, yet milked his own Cherokee heritage to the tune of more than $75 million.
In 1963, Bull Connor called MLK a communist. Today, Markwayne Mullin calls Sen. Bernie Sanders a communist and fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul a “freakin’ snake,” because Paul doesn’t always support Trump’s perverse mission to preserve the fantasy of a white Christian nation.