Speaking on history of immigration in Maine, Portland, Jan. 18

Portland Ovations is convening a panel discussion on the history of immigration in Maine on January 18th at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and I'm pleased to be taking part. It kicks off at 1pm and is free and open to the public.

Here's the description from Portland Ovations:

When we talk about immigration to Maine, we start with white settler-colonialism. What has been the impact of immigration on Maine’s land and people from the first French explorers in 1604 to the present? What are the drivers of recent immigration movements, and how does each new wave shift Maine’s economy and culture? What specific challenges do Maine’s environment and population pose for new arrivals; and how do we support Maine’s first peoples?

**PANELISTS**

- Tilly Laskey, Curator of 'Holding Up The Sky' and Native art and culture specialist at, Maine Historical Society
- Alain Nahimana, Executive Director, The Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center
- Maulian Dana, Tribal Ambassador, Penobscot Nation
- Colin Woodard, Journalist, Author of American Nations and The Lobster Coast
- Moderator, Linda Nelson, Deputy Director, Portland Ovations and Bowdoin College graduate in American Studies.

The Maine nurse saving lives in the Mediterranean

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram I profile Tim Harrison, a veteran Medecins sans Frontiers nurse from Union, Maine who has spent decades saving lives in some of the most dangerous and unstable parts of the world. Now he's on an MSF rescue ship off the coast of Libya, saving thousands of migrants fleeing war, torture, and sex trafficking in their home countries, which are spread across the Eastern Hemisphere.

European governments, for their part, tried to shut them down, refusing scheduled refueling stops or even threatening prosecution (because the rescuers don't return migrants to Libya, the lawless country they are fleeing from in overloaded rubber rafts.)

Details in the story.

Reviewing DeParle's book on migrants in Washington Monthly

Jason DeParle, a George Polk Award–winning reporter for the New York Times, embedded with a family of Manila slum dwellers thirty-three years ago and has kept contact with them ever since, allowing him to do something remarkable in his new book. A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves tells the story of global migration through the experiences of a single migrant family over three generations in intimate, often eyewitness detail. It’s a journey that starts in a one-room shanty open to rats and rain and ends on a cul-de-sac in a newly constructed Texas City subdivision. 

I had the privilege of reviewing  the book for the new issue of Washington Monthly and hope you'll take the time to read it and the book. It's a story that will leave you better understanding how the world works today and where we’re likely headed.

Rep. Pingree tours child detention sites in Texas, Rep. Poliquin speaks out against practice

I've been covering the Maine delegation's stance and reaction to the Trump administration's separation of migrant children from their families and the effort to reunify them for the Portland Press Herald.

Two developments:

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-ME01, is in southmost Texas (where I once lived) to inspect child detention centers there. Here's my dispatch -- still updating at this hour as her tour continues -- on what she's found. [Update, 6/24/18: this story now includes latest information on what bills or legislative actions Pingree, Poliquin, Sen. Angus King, and Sen. Susan Collins are taking on the issue.]

Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-ME02, who for a time avoided discussing the issue, has taken a strong stance for immediate reunification, backing a new bill to that effect. Details in my story yesterday.

It not only can happen here, it's already started

My congressional representative here in Maine is heading to southmost Texas tomorrow to join a score of her colleagues touring federal detention centers where migrant children taken from their parents are being held. Her questions -- and the fact that they're all legitimate ones -- illustrate where we're at as a country: where are the detained girls? where are the detained babies? are reports that caregivers aren't allowed to touch or hug traumatized children true? Or that kids are being kept drugged to pacify them? how is the government going to reunite children -- especially babies -- with their families, particularly if the parents have already been deported? are they even going to?

The central message of American Character was that liberal democracies fail when the balance between the two pillars of freedom -- individual liberty and the maintenance of the common good -- gets too far out of whack. Written in 2015, before Trump was considered a serious candidate, it warned that the US was in danger of falling into authoritarianism for this reason, and that all the warning signs were present.

This week we learned that we're already there, replete with detention camps for babies and children, border agents effectively kidnapping children to terrorize migrants, and a stunning set of lies and reversals issued from the pulpits of the Trump administration on the issue.

The federation is at a crossroads, and its soul at stake. Let's hope we pass through in one piece.

Reviewing Tom Gjelten's new book for the Washington Post

Fifty years ago, the United States liberalized its immigration regime, doing away with the racist reforms of 1924, which sought to prevent the country from becoming more diverse. Remarkably, neither proponents nor critics of the 1965 reforms sought to increase the country's racial and ethnic diversity; on the contrary, both camps argued the changes would not have this effect.

NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten's new book, A Nation of Nations, examines the consequences for the country in general and for Fairfax County, Virginia in particular. I review the book in today's Washington Post.

For readers of American Nations: Gjelten's detailed case study of Fairfax County provides ample evidence that at least this corner of Tidewater is likely transforming into something that looks and sounds an awful lot like the Midlands, and Fairfax's experience is likely replicated across much of fast-growing northern Virginia.

My last review for the Post was of former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Eleni Kounalakis's memoir of her years in Budapest, watching Hungary fall under the shadow of its autocratic leader, Viktor Orban (who I wrote about for Politico here.)

[Update, 10/21/15: The Denver Post picked up the review in their Sunday edition this week.]

[Update, 10/22/15: Australia's Financial Review has also reprinted the review.]

[Update. 10/26/15: The Kansas City Star as well.]

Giving Amy "Tiger Mom" Chua's new book an F in the Washington Post

My review of a new book by Amy "Tiger Mom" Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, is in today's Washington Post. It's not a glowing assessment:

Some of the techniques Chua used with her daughters — referring to them as “garbage” or refusing to accept the 4-year-old’s hand-drawn birthday card because “I deserve better than this” — led not a few to denounce Chua as a monster....Reading their new title, “The Triple Package,” many will wonder why the couple didn’t take their parenting advice to heart: Readers deserve a better book than this.

No doubt it will sell a lot of copies, however, as television and radio networks can't resist the story, which may have been the couple's idea all along.

For those looking for something else to read, my most recent book review for the Post was of Dan Jones's The Plantagenets back in August.

Reviewing "Seated By The Sea"

For the academic historians out there, my first review for a proper peer-reviewed journal can be found in the September 2011 issue of The New England Quarterly. The subject: Seated By The Sea, Michael Connolly's new history of the port of Portland, Maine in general and its stevedores in particular.

For those who don't have access to an academic library, the summary: Connolly tackles an important and long-neglected topic, and does an excellent job assembling the (largely Irish) stevedores' history, though his treatment of the associated history of the port has some weaknesses.

A hopeful sign for Maine politics

Mainers have been justly proud of their political culture which, compared to other parts of the country, has been remarkably civil, featuring lawmakers who often seem more interested in finding solutions that help the state's people, than getting caught up in partisan death matches, hyperbolic assertions, outright lies, and appeals to humanity's worst instincts. Augusta has many problems, to be sure, but nothing like those in Albany, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C.

But in recent years the worst pathologies of national politics -- elections awash in a sea of soft, difficult-to-trace soft money, the drafting of bills and gubernatorial policy being outsourced directly to corporate lobbyists and special interest think tanks, legislative initiatives that represent the interests of campaign donors rather than voters -- have infected the state. Gov. Paul LePage's administration has been a vector for some of the worst viruses, but plenty of others were quietly metastasizing in the body politic during the Democrats' long watch.

But don't give up on Mainers, yet. Yesterday, Rep. Kathleen Chase (R-Wells) asked a key legislative committee to kill her controversial immigration bill, modeled on the infamous Arizona statute. The reason is moving, even for cynical political observers like myself: she had an emotional, occasionally fiery face-to-face meeting with immigrant advocates Rachel Talbot Ross (of the Maine chapter of the NAACP) and Alyisa Melnick (of the Maine Civil Liberties Union) and, after a few days of contemplation, recognized the harm the bill would have done to people unlike herself.

MPBN's Josie Huang has the story, and its worth listening to the original three minute audio version. If empathy can survive in the corridors of power, there's hope for us all.