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From the Los Angeles Times

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A small town answers a hate crime with solidarity

Vandalism at a mosque in Madera, Calif., is met with anger from the community.

By Diana Marcum, Special to the Los Angeles Times

September 4, 2010

Reporting from Madera, Calif.

This is a small mosque in a small town about as far as you can get — in more ways than one — from New York City.

Its minaret rises between a car lot and a veterinary hospital on Road 26, a couple of miles north of town. There are nothing but wide-open fields across the street from the recently vandalized Madera Islamic Center.

The men praying here on a recent night included a cardiologist and a pediatrician from Pakistan; two grocers from Yemen; a part-time farmer from Morocco; the owner of a trucking company who was born a McAllister, a member of a black family that arrived in Madera during the Dust Bowl; and a 77-year-old retired mechanical engineer from Syria who takes a shortcut through the fence to get from his house to the mosque.

Many mosque members have lived in the community 30 years or more. There are some 200 Muslims in Madera, and about 20 of them are doctors. They've slapped the bottoms of newborns who are now grown-up community members and adjusted people's high blood pressure medicine.

"We're not travelers. We live here. We're Americans. We're Rotarians!" said Dr. Mohammad Ashraf, a cardiologist.

Yet it was here, in one of a series of events, that a brick almost smashed a window. A sign was left: "Wake up America the enemy is here." Then on Aug. 24, more menacing signs appeared, including "No temple for the god of terrorism."

The Madera County Sheriff's Department has classified the vandalism a hate crime. A group called the American Nationalist Brotherhood claims responsibility. Sheriff's officials said they have never heard of the group in this largely Latino city of 58,000.

"Obviously, people are connecting this to New York, the debate on whether they should or should not build a mosque near ground zero," said Erica Stuart, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Department. "But, still. Here? What in the world does any of that have to do with Madera County?"

Now the FBI is in town. The Islamic Cultural Center in Fresno, the nearest big city, held a news conference at the Madera mosque Thursday to combat what they say is growing anti-Muslim sentiment stirred up by the Manhattan debate, especially on local talk radio.

And a Central California farm town with laid-back ways is navigating exactly what it means to stick up for your friends and neighbors.

*

The day after the latest vandalism at the mosque, Denise Salazar, office manager for Dr. Muhammad Anwar, and Maricela Garcia, the receptionist, were initially silent. They had seen the signs at the mosque on their drive to work.

"I was riled up. But I was at work. I didn't feel it was right for me to bring it up," Salazar said.

"I've seen these Muslim doctors help people who have no money, no health insurance; start free clinics; run food drives. Dr. Anwar is my boss, my friend and a caring person. I feel like I would lay down my life for him. But what do you say and who do you say it to?"

That afternoon, Thomas Lewis, a 58-year-old retired delivery driver, showed up for his doctor's appointment.

"Can you believe those idiots?! That vandalism?! I cannot accept linking all Muslims to 9/11," he said, loud enough for everyone in the reception room to hear.

"He was so passionate," said Garcia. "I was glad he brought it up. After that everyone started talking about how terrible it was."

Lewis said he plans to correct anyone who draws a connection between the whole religion of Islam and terrorism.

"Me and the wife, if we hear somebody talking bad about Muslims, we speak up and say 'to me, that's un-American,' " Lewis said. "There are some people who are just mean-like, and they want to find a reason to hate. Most people are good, but they're silent. You have to speak out what you believe in your heart."

That same day, a Pepsi delivery driver heard a radio report about the vandalism. He back-tracked on his route to run in and tell Shaukat Mohammad, who works at the Union 76 Station, that he was sorry to hear what happened.

Mohammad had watched the faces of his sons, Qasim, 17, and Saim, 13, when they had seen the latest vandalism at the mosque the night before.

The Pepsi driver was the only one outside the Muslim community who expressed condolences to Mohammad.

"But it made him feel good. One person matters," Saim said.

Saim, all arms and legs and knees and elbows, is old enough to reference a Tennessee zealot's threat to burn the Koran this Sept. 11, but young enough to wonder if he should tell the teacher when kids call him a terrorist.

"No," advises his big sister, Zunaira Shaukat, 19. "It will just make it worse. They'll call you a snitch."

Zunaira wears the traditional head scarf outside her home. In school, girls once offered her $100 to take it off. She refused. One girl ripped it off, and the pin scratched Zunaira's chin, drawing blood.

"It's hard. I used to think: Will people not like me because I'm Muslim?"

Qasim tells of a YouTube video popular with Muslim youth.

"A man is in his office praying. A woman walks in, and all of a sudden he pretends he's doing push-ups. It's funny, but it's also sad. He is afraid to be seen practicing his faith."

Saim said he loves going to the mosque to pray. Even when he was a 4-year-old in Pakistan, the family had to keep an eye on him because he'd trot off alone to the mosque when he heard the call to prayer.

He was wakeful all night after the vandalism. The next day at school no one mentioned it, even though the trouble at the mosque was all over the news.

"I kept expecting someone to say something. But no one did. Not a teacher. None of my friends. I just thought someone would say they were sorry that this happened because it is a place of prayer."

*

It is Ramadan, a month when observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.

Pediatrician Aftab Naz, Saim's uncle, has had no food or water since early morning. It is afternoon and he has patients in several rooms at his office.

He greets each child with a hearty "How are we today?" varying the language depending on the family. He's fluent in Urdu, Punjabi, English and Spanish.

In his free time, Naz often acts as master of ceremonies at Pakistani events.

"You would find my jokes very funny if you spoke Urdu," he says.

After he disappears into another examining room, one of the clinic workers whispers that Naz doesn't charge when his patients are in financial trouble — but that she's not suppose to tell anyone.

"In his religion, good deeds are secrets," she says.

When Naz moved his family to Madera from Chicago, his wife didn't like the change. But one day she bought him a coat at a local store and asked if she could return it should he not like it.

"Oh, just take it home, Mrs. Naz, and if your husband doesn't like it, bring it back. If he does, send us a check," they told her.

The Nazes decided then that maybe there was something to small-town life.

Now, almost half of Madera's Muslim population are members of Dr. Naz's extended family. One brother is a manager at Wendy's; another a cook at Chevy's Tex Mex; a third is a pharmacy tech at Wal-Mart; and the fourth, Mohammad, works at the gas station. There are nephews and nieces and grandchildren and in-laws.

There were always misunderstandings about the family's religion, but before 9/11 they seemed harmless and well-meant.

A patient once wrote to Dr. Naz telling him he was loving, honest, hard-working and full of charity — the perfect Christian.

"I wasn't offended at all. These are the same traits of a good Muslim," he says. "They are just the traits of any good person."

During a short break between patients, Naz recounts brutal episodes of American history, from the killing of Indians during the westward expansion to the internment of the Japanese during World War II.

"Eventually there was shame for these things. So eventually America will decide that we Muslims are OK too," he says.

He is of two minds about the debated Islamic center in Manhattan. Two-thirds of New York City residents want it to be moved farther from ground zero, according to a New York Times poll released last week.

"As a Muslim, I take a pragmatic view and think 'move it.' When people did not accept him in Mecca, the prophet moved 3,000 miles away. But as an American, I have a problem with that. I believe everyone has an equal right to practice their faith, and hate should not change that."

His next patient is 10-year-old Jarred Bennett, who has a cough.

"I used to take care of his dad. Also his aunt," Naz says as he puts a stethoscope to Jarred's chest.

Lucille Bennett, Jarred's mother, didn't hear about the trouble at the mosque until she got to the clinic. While still in the waiting room, she determined she would say something.

The Bennetts are African Americans and Jehovah's Witnesses. A couple of months ago her husband was canvassing a neighborhood when a man on a bicycle hurled racial epithets at him.

"The other neighbors all came out and they profusely apologized to my husband. It means something when somebody else shows they're concerned," she says. "You don't feel so alone."

After quizzing Bennett on various colors of phlegm, Naz concentrates on his computer screen, filling out a prescription.

"Dr. Naz," Bennett says to him. "I heard what happened at your mosque. It's horrible."

Naz pivots and gives her his full attention, meeting her eyes.

"I've been here 30 years. Thirty years," he says. "But these things happen, right?"

"No," Bennett says. "It's horrible."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0905-madera-mosque-20100830,0,6238620,print.story

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At Chile mine, help comes in many forms

For a month, 33 Chilean copper miners have been trapped in a 'refuge,' after surviving a cave-in. As Chile and the rest of the world watch transfixed, experts have swarmed to offer advice on coping.

By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

September 4, 2010

Reporting from the San Jose Mine near Copiapo,

Above ground, the scene is alternately somber and surreal: Anxious loved ones, fingering crucifixes blessed by Pope Benedict XVI. Four scientists from NASA, warning that light deprivation is their greatest worry. A Mexican norteno band in black suits and cowboy hats, offering a USB flash drive with its songs for the men. And now, giving advice on keeping spirits up, survivors of the 1972 Andean plane crash that inspired the movie "Alive."

Below ground, a stomach-dropping 2,300 feet down, almost as deep as two Empire State Buildings laid end to end, are the men.

They cannot see the floodlights that illuminate TV reporters from as far away as Japan and France as they interview family members. The only light to pierce their midnight darkness is the shaky beams from their headlamps and the eerie green glow of little plastic tubes that yield their chemical glimmer when snapped in half.

For a month now, the 33 Chilean copper miners have been trapped together in their 600-square-foot "refuge," after they miraculously survived an Aug. 5 cave-in at the San Jose mine here in northern Chile. As a nation, and the rest of the world, watches transfixed, experts have swarmed the site to offer advice on how to cope.

But only "Los 33," as they call themselves, really know what it is like to live with the awful darkness and isolation.

In their room, about the size of a modest one-bedroom apartment, the men have endured 90-degree temperatures, suffocating humidity, the skin-crawling feeling of being buried alive —and the knowledge that they may remain trapped for at least two more months as rescuers dig through solid rock to reach them. In two videos released by the government, the men are shown sweaty and emaciated but bravely smiling, waving a Chilean flag and saluting the camera.

Andre Sougarret, the lead government engineer in the rescue effort, said Friday that three competing holes will be drilled 200 yards from one another in efforts to open up an escape hatch for the miners as quickly as possible. One is in progress and has so far been dug down 130 feet. The second will start operation Sunday, and the third by Sept. 18 —Chile's independence day. Engineers have told the miners that the targeted rescue date is sometime in the second half of November.

Keeping the miners healthy, physically and, perhaps more important, mentally, is the daunting task the Chilean government now faces. At a Friday news conference, NASA and Chilean officials acknowledged that they have considered the possibility that one miner could crack and harm others.

Alicia Campos agonizes over the emotional health of her 27-year-old son, Daniel, one of the trapped men.

"I'm worried that the whole experience could leave a scar on his mental state, the effect of being down there so long," said Campos, who traveled more than 500 miles from her hometown of Marchigue to be close to him. "It's natural to think it is driving him crazy."

*

Each of the miners has undergone a simple psychological evaluation during a one-hour medical consultation with a team of five doctors and has filled out a long-form questionnaire.

Alberto Iturra, a psychologist who is a member of the team monitoring the miners, said he believes the miners generally are "very healthy." The written answers are more telling than the brief appearances the workers have made in the two videos, he said.

"The force of the handwriting, their mental organization it shows, gives us more to work with," Iturra said.

But Adriana Espinoza, a psychology professor at the University of Chile, expressed worry about their emotional states.

"Psychological concerns are high because when they first found the 33 miners, they realized there were five of them showing symptoms of depression, and they were worried that could have an impact on the rest of the people, the rest of the miners and on the family members," Espinoza said. "That could be detrimental because they are going to be there a long, long time."

At the Chilean government's request, NASA last week sent a team from the Johnson Space Center to share experiences and give pointers gleaned from sending astronauts into space for long periods.

Michael Duncan, the NASA team leader, said the challenges of the rescue are "unprecedented."

"The Chileans are basically writing the book on how to rescue this many people, this deep, after this long underground," Duncan said.

At a news conference Friday evening, he detailed the advice the U.S. space agency gave to the Chileans, noting the similarities between the situation of the miners and the "long-duration isolation" that astronauts experienced.

The miners, he said, need to be compensated for the loss of daylight, both in the vitamin D they are missing and in the "sleep-waking" routine that's been interrupted.

"We've been impressed with the planning, quality of healthcare, compassion and support provided to the miners and their families," said Duncan, who is a physician. "All the world is hoping this will be successful."

*

A 4-inch-wide shaft is the men's lifeline to the world above.

Spirits have improved, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said, since officials have been able to deliver shirts, rubber shoes and cots to the miners through the narrow tube. The men call it La Paloma, or the pigeon.

Officials also lower daily rations of food through the tube. (On Friday, the men had bread and honey, cauliflower and rice, fortified milk, pork pate and pasta salad.) The miners use a chemical toilet also sent down via the shaft; they've placed it in a tunnel far from their communal "living room" and travel back and forth to the privy in a small gas-powered mining vehicle.

The fact that the miners can now brush their teeth and wash their hair and clothes has "lifted their spirits," psychologist Iturra said.

The men, whose ages range from 19 to 63, have organized themselves into work teams with specific jobs "so they don't think about their disappointment," said Clementina Gomez, aunt of 19-year-old miner Jimmy Sanchez.

One team handles food and water, another cleanup activities and a third mine work, including operating La Paloma.

Their daily routines also include regularly scheduled periods for prayer, exercise — walking around their chamber — and games, including dominoes and dice throwing.

Victor Segovia, 49, has emerged as the miners' chronicler and is keeping a daily account of their activities. His daughter Maritza, interviewed at the tent where she and four siblings keep a vigil, said he is a compulsive writer who leaves lengthy notes every time he leaves the house or goes shopping to explain in detail what he is doing.

"He has also written me a letter every day since they were found. Here is what I've just received from him," Maritza said, waving a crumpled notebook sheet covered on both sides with her father's blocky handwriting.

According to several family members, Mario Gomez, the oldest of the miners, is the spiritual leader and organizes the prayer sessions. His wife, Liliana Ramirez, said perhaps it is her husband's stable personality and deep religious faith that have made him someone the men turn to.

"He's a spiritual man of very few words, but he is friendly to everyone. He has worked in the mines since he was 12 years old," Ramirez said.

When she talked to him, she said, "all he has said is, 'Don't worry about me.' He's more concerned with how the family is doing."

On Saturday, four of the survivors of the 1972 crash of a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team appeared at the mine to give encouragement to the miners via a newly installed fiber-optic line.

"We're going to tell them to celebrate that they are alive, that no one was killed in the accident, to enjoy every moment," said Gustavo Servino, one of the survivors, whose story of living more than two months in the snowy Andes was turned into a book and movie. "We have to concentrate on solutions, not problems."

*

Juan Vergara, a staff psychologist in the Copiapo municipality, said the families have shown considerable resilience in light of the fact that two days after the cave-in, the government said efforts to rescue the miners had failed and withdrew rescue equipment from the site.

"Many assumed it was a lost cause," Vergara said.

But after some family members complained that it was too early to give up, the government drilled several holes, three of which found the refuge and tunnel system where the men are sequestered.

In addition to worrying about the miners' rescue, families are also concerned about their future livelihoods in light of the mining company's declaration of bankruptcy late last month. Will the miners have jobs to go back to?

The government moved last week to allay those fears, promising to find other jobs not just for the 33 trapped miners after their hoped-for rescue but for all 300 San Jose mine workers out of work because of the closure.

On Friday, representatives of the Underground Mine Workers Union appeared at the mine to announce that they were giving each of the trapped miners $13,000. An international fund to support the miners had collected $750,000.

*

"He seems happy with the little he has," said Campos, the mother, whose son had been working in the mine for six months when the accident happened, attracted by relatively high wages offered by the owners. "He told me in our talk that he was happy that he has quit smoking down there."

But she said that although her son was accentuating the positive, she knew he was afraid and desperate to get out. She vowed not to leave the mine until he is rescued, however long it takes.

"You can't get anything positive from this," she said. "He is suffering down there."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chile-miners-20100905,0,6134152,print.story

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Thousands protest deportations of Gypsy immigrants in France

Authorities say 77,000 protesters hit the streets in 130 towns across France in opposition to Sarkozy's program to dismantle illegal Roma camps.

By Devorah Lauter, Los Angeles Times

September 4, 2010

Reporting from Paris

With the fast beat of Gypsy music rousing the crowd over loudspeakers, thousands marched in Paris and other cities Saturday to protest the French government's deportations of Roma immigrants in the name of crime prevention.

Police said 77,000 protesters, led by left-leaning political parties and human rights organizations, hit the streets in 130 towns across France in opposition to President Nicolas Sarkozy's program to dismantle illegal Roma camps. As part of his new security policy, nearly 1,000 Roma have been sent back to Bulgaria and Romania since the end of July.

In Paris, Jeannine Otte wore the first article of the French Constitution plastered across her body: "France assures equality under the law to all its citizens, without distinction of origin."

"The president violated this article by saying that not all French people should be punished equally for the same crime," Otte said. "It's a very heavy message to send to society, and especially to poor youth."

Otte works with minority youths in France's suburbs, where many come from immigrant families. Despite being born in France, many complain of being viewed as un-French.

"It's always the same people who are stigmatized," said Souad Djouahra, a French woman of Algerian origin. "He is saying that immigration is linked to crime, but there are immigrants who work, and are educated, like me. We feel so French.... They don't like us, and to them we'll never be French."

Although Sarkozy's programs have drawn the ire of the U.N. and the European Commission, as well as leading clergymen and bipartisan politicians, the majority of French appear divided over the issue.

On the sidelines of Saturday's protest, Barua Riton stood guard at his souvenir shop, where the Eiffel Tower could be found plastered on almost every object for sale.

A recent immigrant from Bangladesh who is applying for French citizenship, he says he understands why Sarkozy wants to be firm against Roma.

"I see them come to steal from my shop! And pickpocket tourists," he said in broken English. "They don't pay tax. They work illegally. That's why [they] create some problems. I pay tax. I am obedient to government."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-france-protests-20100905,0,1947836,print.story

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America Out of Work

For many unemployed workers, jobs aren't coming back

The U.S. unemployment rate will remain elevated for years, experts say, a grim prospect for Americans who have exhausted their benefits.

By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times

September 5, 2010

The U.S. economy will eventually rebound from the Great Recession. Millions of American workers will not.

What some economists now project — and policymakers are loath to admit — is that the U.S. unemployment rate, which stood at 9.6% in August, could remain elevated for years to come.

The nation's job deficit is so deep that even a powerful recovery would leave large numbers of Americans out of work for years, experts say. And with growth now weakening, analysts are doubtful that companies will boost payrolls significantly any time soon. Unemployment, long considered a temporary, transitional condition in the United States, appears to be settling in for a lengthy run.

"This is the new reality," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "In the past decade we've gone from the best labor market in our economic history to arguably one of the worst. It's going to take years, if not decades, to completely recover from the fallout."

Major employers including automakers and building contractors were at the core of the meltdown this time around. Even when the economy picks up, these sectors won't quickly rehire all the workers they shed during the downturn.

Many small businesses, squeezed by tight credit and slow sales, similarly aren't in a hurry to add employees. Some big corporations are enjoying record profits precisely because they've kept a tight lid on hiring. And state and local governments are looking to ax more teachers, police officers and social workers to balance their budgets. Meanwhile, U.S. legislators have shown little appetite for a new round of stimulus spending.

It all points to a long slog for the nation's unemployed. In May, a record 46% of all jobless Americans had been out of work for more than six months. That's the highest level since the government started keeping track in 1948, and it's about double the percentage of long-term unemployed seen during the brutal recession of the early 1980s.

Jobless Americans such as Mignon Veasley-Fields of Los Angeles don't need government data to tell them that something has changed. A former administrative assistant at an L.A. charter school, she has searched fruitlessly for employment for more than two years. She's losing hope of ever working again.

"If I were 18, I'd say, 'I can bounce back.' But I'm 61," said Veasley-Fields, a dignified woman with graying, close-cropped hair. "It's really scary. It's like someone just put a pillow over your head and smothered you."

Laid off in June 2008 from her $45,000-a-year post, Veasley-Fields at first wasn't overly concerned. A college graduate, she had always enjoyed steady employment, including a long stint as a research manager at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. She crafted a crisp resume, networked through job clubs and navigated online employment sites like the seasoned researcher that she is.

But weeks stretched into months, with hundreds of unanswered job applications. California's jobless rate in July stood at 12.3%, the third-highest in the nation, behind Nevada and Michigan. Veasley-Fields' unemployment benefits have run out, her credit cards are maxed. She fears losing the tidy mid-Wilshire District bungalow where she and her 77-year-old husband are raising two granddaughters. Above all, she's stunned that a middle-class life that took decades to build could unravel so quickly. She recently visited a food bank to secure enough staples to feed the girls.

"I'm just hanging on a thread," she said.

Veasley-Fields suspects her age isn't doing her any favors. Indeed, 50.9% of unemployed workers 55 to 64 have been out of work at least 27 weeks. That's the highest percentage of long-term employment for any age group.

But young workers are suffering too. In August, the unemployment rate for workers 16 to 24 was 18.1%.

Research has shown that economic downturns can stunt the prospects of these new entrants to the job market for a decade or longer. Some college graduates unable to find jobs in their chosen fields are forced to trade down to lower-skilled, often temporary work. That translates into puny wages, missed opportunities and a slower climb up the career ladder.

The challenge is even tougher for those with less education. Juan Trillo, 23, was laid off from his $8-an-hour maintenance job two years ago. Trillo, who didn't finish high school, said he now finds himself competing against seasoned veterans for entry-level work.

He recently rode the bus from his home in Boyle Heights to interview with a company that administers professional exams. The job would consist mainly of rudimentary tasks like handing out tests and collecting them. Trillo, who sports a thin mustache and neatly trimmed hair, wore his nicest clothes — slacks, a tie and a fresh dress shirt. What he saw when he arrived made his heart sink.

"There was a waiting room full of people, all kinds of people, a lot of older people and a lot of them were college graduates. And I'm not," he said.

Trillo said he thought the interview went well but hasn't heard back from the recruiter. In the meantime he's studying for his high school equivalency exam and scouring online job sites, applying for as many as a dozen positions a week.

His parents, both immigrants from Mexico, let him live rent-free in their half of a cramped duplex. His father works long hours driving a big rig. His mother is a caretaker for an elderly couple. They've been supportive, always offering encouragement. That, Trillo said, sometimes stings worse than a rebuke.

"I don't really even feel like a man, because I have no work," he said.

For the U.S. labor market to regain all the jobs it had when the recession started in December 2007, employers would need to boost their payrolls by 7.6 million positions. That figure doesn't include the roughly 125,000 jobs a month the country must create just to keep up with new entrants into the labor force.

To get the national unemployment rate back to 5%, where it was before the downturn, would require the economy to generate about 17 million jobs — or about 285,000 a month for five straight years — according to Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

To appreciate the enormity of that employment hole, consider that U.S. employers have shed 283,000 jobs since May.

Ask economists to project which industries might spark robust job creation and the news isn't encouraging for America's 14.9 million unemployed workers.

Sectors that traditionally have led the nation out of recession — including home building and financial services — are laboring amid a housing glut and a credit freeze. The U.S. auto industry, long under assault by foreign manufacturers, just completed a brutal downsizing. Outsourcing of call centers and other service jobs to places such as India is growing too. Meanwhile, U.S. productivity grew steadily through 2009 and into the first quarter of this year, in part because many employers have replaced people with technology and are working their existing staffs harder.

"It's going to take a long time to get back," economist Shierholz said. The nation is looking at "eight or nine years of elevated unemployment, and we just haven't seen anything like that."

The U.S. safety net wasn't designed to withstand such a strain. The extent and duration of unemployment benefits vary by state, but 26 weeks is typical. Several federal extensions have increased that to 99 weeks in California and other hard-hit states. Even so, an estimated 3.5 million Americans will have run out of benefits by the end of the year. About 180,000 Californians have already fallen off the rolls.

There are few other places to turn. Applications for federal food stamps and state programs such as CalWorks, which provides temporary assistance to families with children, are up sharply in recent years. But because asset limits for applicants are so strict, many of the unemployed don't qualify.

Veasley-Fields, the unemployed secretary, is now considering applying for Social Security benefits when she turns 62. That will mean reduced benefits in her later years. But with the job market so poor and retraining opportunities limited for someone her age, she said she may have no choice. Others are coming to the same conclusion. A record 2.74 million seniors applied for Social Security in 2009; more than 70% of them sought early benefits.

Desperation is growing, said Ofer Sharone, an assistant professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who has spent the last year interviewing dozens of long-term jobless workers.

"The U.S. is clearly not equipped to deal with this high level of unemployment," Sharone said. "People are running out of benefits, health insurance, retirement and pensions."

Many are turning to traditional networks of family and friends.

Two years ago, Southern California native Ryan Payne was a mergers and acquisitions associate at a Manhattan investment bank earning a base salary of $140,000 a year. Then came the Wall Street meltdown. As one of the newest members of his firm, he was among the first to go when the layoffs came. Saddled with $100,000 in student loans and consumer debt, the 33-year-old moved back in with his parents in Malibu. He now trades commodities online from his home computer.

Handsome and genial, Payne uses his ample free time to exercise and pursue whims such as improv comedy. He formed a club of other jobless professionals that he cheekily named the Westside Unemployment Appreciation Team. Members, known as "enlightened slackers," gather occasionally for low-cost outings and a few laughs.

But in more reflective moments, Payne, who holds an MBA and a law degree, admits he's not where he thought he'd be at this time of his life.

"I live with my parents and I drive a Saturn," he said. "I need to figure out how I contributed to this.… I need to get some core, organic sense of success back."

Turmoil on Wall Street and in the nation's banking and mortgage industries has hammered financial services workers. Nearly 800,000 have lost their jobs since employment in that sector peaked in December 2006.

Other classes of employees have experienced outsized pain as well. More than 1 million clerical and administrative workers have lost their jobs in the downturn. Some of those positions won't return even when the economy improves. To reduce labor costs, companies increasingly are requiring employees to handle their own calls, appointments and travel arrangements with the help of smart phones and laptop computers rather than secretaries.

Mary Bueno lost her $44,000-a-year job as an office manager early last year. The 52-year-old has sent out hundreds of resumes and worked online job sites, but found little on offer besides domestic work.

She has burned through her savings and retirement nest egg trying to hang on to the Bellflower home she shares with her young son. Her 26-year-old daughter, a bank teller, recently moved back home to help out with the bills. Bueno has no health insurance, so when she needed to see a doctor her daughter paid the tab. Bueno said she's blessed to have such good children. But she's humbled. And scared.

"No one wants to rely on someone else, especially your kids," Bueno said. "You want to be the one who's there for them."

Bueno is now considering switching careers, maybe pursuing her dream of becoming a substance abuse counselor.

Bernie Doyle, 54, just wants to get back on a building site.

Before he was laid off in 2009 he made nearly $90,000 a year as a construction supervisor on high-end apartment projects in San Diego. He bought a 26-foot boat that he and his wife, Suz'Ette, took out nearly every weekend. He had a sense of pride each time he finished a job on schedule.

"They'll slap me on a job and it's nothing but bare dirt. By the time I leave, the thing is built," said Doyle, his accent betraying his New England roots. "I love it. I live it. I like the pressure. I like dealing with people. I like getting the job done on time."

But the hangover from the nation's building binge is likely to last for years. There are simply too many empty dwellings and too few buyers.

Doyle figures he has applied for more than 100 jobs, including an apartment building handyman and a Home Depot salesman.

"I've had two interviews," he said. "I didn't get either one."

With depression mounting, he once shut off his telephone for three days, stopped checking his e-mail and isolated himself from friends. He's since turned the phone back on but remains discouraged. He now smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. The boat he and his wife used to cruise every weekend is now up for sale. He can no longer afford the payments.

"I never thought I'd be in a spot like I am now, not in a million years," Doyle said. "I guess a lot of other people feel like that too."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-america-unemployment-mainbar-20100905,0,1306277,print.story

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Bollard Fence, Los Algodones, Baja California (David Taylor / Special to The Times)

The 'Great Wall of America' and the threat from within Cynicism, hypocrisy and an entirely un-American urge to exclude are the foundation of the barrier that stretches along the border with Mexico. OPINION by Richard Rodriguez September 5, 2010 Between cynicism and hypocrisy lies the 2,000-mile U.S.- Mexico border. America is raising a wall in the desert to separate Mexican drug exporters from American drug consumers, to separate Latin American peasants who will work for low wages from the Americans who would hire them. The Great Wall of America, straddling less than half the length of the border, descends into canyons and across the desert floor. For the Mexican, it represents a high hurdle. For the American, it is an attempt to stop the Roadrunner's progress with an Acme Border Sealing Kit.

In some places the wall is made of tennis-court-style cyclone fencing or dark mesh of the sort used for barbeque grills in public parks. In other places the wall is a palisade of 20-foot-tall bars that make a cage of both sides. The most emphatic segments are constructed of graffiti-ready slabs of steel.

On the Mexican side, if you stand with your back to the wall, you will see the poorest neighborhoods, built right up to the line. These frayed, weedy streets have become the killing fields in an international drug war; they are more daunting than the dangers of climbing the wall.

The traditional Mexican accommodation to moral failure — the bribed policeman — has degenerated to lawlessness in places such as Juarez and Tijuana, where police kill federal soldiers who kill police who kill drug gangsters who kill other gangsters of the sort who did kill, apparently with impunity, at least 15 teenagers celebrating a soccer victory. Punch 911 and you get the devil.

On the American side, if you stand with your back to the wall, you will see distance, as the United States recedes from the border. There is a shopping mall with big-box stores half a mile away. There is a highway that eventually leads to suburban streets laid out in uniform blocks, and cul-de-sacs where Mexican gardeners are the only ambulatory human life.

The suburban grid belies America's disorder. Grandma's knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag is so full of meds it sounds like a snake rattle. Grandma shares a secret addiction with her drug-addled dude of a grandson, whose dad prowls the Home Depot parking lot in his Japanese pickup, looking to hire a couple of Mexicans to clear out some dry scrub.

From a distant height, America's wall might seem a wonderful stunt, like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Running Fence" of 1976 — a 24-mile-long curtain that ran over the Northern California foothills to the sea. Before it was dismantled, "Running Fence" rippled and swelled with breezes off the Pacific.

David Tomb, an artist known for his studio portrait paintings, has for several years been hiking the Southwestern borderlands, drawing the birds of the region. Tomb tells me he has noticed how often the American wall interferes with the movement of the many animals that inhabit the desert and canyons — wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, even snakes. His bird subjects are able to fly over the wall, as are butterflies, as are Piper Cub cocaine consignments.

In the remotest regions of northern Mexico, the terrain is so treacherous that nature itself forms the wall against America. Desperation moves migrants to attempt ever-more-treacherous terrain to achieve U.S. soil.

In recession America 2010, the lament most often heard is that the middle class is losing its grip on the American dream. (We have redefined the American dream as the ability of a succeeding generation to earn more than its preceding generation.)

On patriotism-for-profit talk radio and television, the illegal immigrant is, by definition, criminal. She comes to steal the American dream. But in my understanding, the dream belongs to the desperation of the poor and always has. The goddess of liberty in New York harbor still advertises for the tired and the poor, the wretched refuse. I tell you, there is an unlucky man in the Sonoran Desert today who will die for a chance to pluck dead chickens in Georgia or change diapers in a rest home in Nevada.

Great empires expand beyond their own borders. Empires in decline build walls.

As it stands, the Great Wall of America is a fraction of the length of the Great Wall of China. China's dragon-spined ramparts, once a wonder of isolation, are now a draw for tourists, even while China trespasses its own borders to forge the Chinese century. The dragon flies to Africa and to Latin America. While American soldiers die in Afghanistan, the Chinese venture to Kabul to negotiate mineral rights.

The nearer precedent to the American Wall may be Israel's wall in the West Bank. More than 400 miles long, the Israeli "barrier" — in some places a fence, in others a concrete mass nearly twice the height of the Berlin Wall — was constructed, according to Israeli officials, to deter terrorists. After Sept. 11, the fear one heard in America was that agents of violence from the Middle East might easily disguise themselves as Latin American peasants and trespass into our midst.

What more obvious reason is there for a wall than protection? Any nation should police those who come and go across its borders. But in the United States, as in Israel, the wall has created a new anxiety. Once the wall is in place, anxiety about the coming outsider changes to an anxiety about who belongs within.

The question that has lately been debated in the Knesset is bluntly stated: Who is a Jew? In Israel, the answer to the question concerns religion and citizenship. But it entails further practical considerations. Israel has decided to rid itself of 400 children of illegal foreign workers (some of whom built the West Bank wall), children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew as their mother tongue and know no other country.

The question that has lately been taken up by U.S. senators is bluntly stated: Who is an American? Republicans have proposed excising the part of the 14th Amendment that guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina refers to foreign women who come to this country to "drop" their babies. Graham chooses diction that describes inhuman beasts of burden.

I cannot guess whether this new nativism — though it overrules nativity — is serious business or merely a play for reelection. The irony remains: The land of the free that the wall was built to protect — the literal "homeland," soil so infused with sacred legend it was deemed by the makers of the Constitution more important than blood in determining citizenship — is threatened from within. And the wall that is supposed to proscribe the beginning of America becomes the place where America ends.

Richard Rodriguez is the author of many books, including "Brown: The Last Discovery of America." He works for New America Media in San Francisco.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-border-20100905,0,1961620,print.column

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From the New York Times

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A Crash. A Call for Help. Then, a Bill.

ABOUT a year ago Cary Feldman was surprised to find himself sprawled on the pavement in an intersection in Chicago Heights, Ill., having been knocked off his motor scooter by the car behind him. Five months later he got another surprise: a bill from the fire department for responding to the scene of the accident.

“I had no idea what the fire truck was there for,” said Mr. Feldman, of nearby Matteson. “It came, it looked and it left. I was not hurt badly. I had scratches and bruises. I did not go to the hospital.”

Mr. Feldman had become enmeshed in what appears to be a nascent budget-balancing trend in municipal government: police and fire departments have begun to charge accident victims as a way to offset budget cuts.

Ambulance charges have long been common and are usually paid by health insurance, but fees for other responders are relatively new. The charge is variously called a “crash tax” or “resource recovery,” depending on one's point of view. In either case, motorists are billed for services they may have thought were covered by taxpayers.

Sometimes the victim's insurer pays. But if it declines , motorists may face threats from a collection agency if they don't pay.

The AAA opposes such fees, said Jill Ingrassia, managing director for government relations and traffic safety advocacy. “Generally, we see that public safety services are a core government function that should be properly budgeted for with general taxes and not addressed by fees after the fact,” she said.

Ms. Ingrassia says such charges can place an “undue burden on motorists who can't choose the size or duration of an emergency response,” which means they cannot control the size of the bill they may get. “We also really don't want to discourage any motorist involved in a crash from calling for police or rescue services if they fear they are going to be billed for it,” she said.

Mr. Feldman received a bill for $200. The Chicago Heights Fire Department told him the fire truck had responded in case there was a fire at the scene.

But Mr. Feldman, 71, had another question: “Why are you charging me? I didn't do anything wrong. Charge the other guy.”

Neither Mr. Feldman's insurance company, nor that of the man who struck him, would pay. Mr. Feldman finally paid the bill with some of the money he received from the insurance company of the person who hit him.

“This is my personal opinion: it is a rip-off and a scam,” he said.

The Chicago Heights fire chief, Thomas Martello, referred inquiries to the mayor's office, which did not respond to three phone messages in early August or to another on Thursday. (Mayor Alex Lopez died of a heart attack on Aug. 27. )

There appears to be no group that tracks the jurisdictions charging such fees or the number of bills sent. But police or fire departments are charging in at least 26 states, said Robert Passmore, senior director for personal lines at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. The group has lobbied against the fees, saying they amount to double taxation. It also says on its Web site, “The role of police and fire departments should be to serve and protect, not serve and collect.”

But Regina Moore, the president of Cost Recovery, a billing company in Dayton, Ohio, that tries to collect the fees for municipal departments, said property taxes paid for fire crews to be “on ready standby” and for police to “protect property and citizens from crime.” She argued that “traffic crash response is outside the scope of the primary function of both law enforcement and fire services.”

The people who cause the problems should pay for such services, she said, not other taxpayers or accident victims who are not at fault.

Jeffrey Johnson, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said that some fire departments had charged for service calls for years, but that it was happening more often as departments tried to avoid reducing services.

“It is more prominent recently as economic times drive responders to look for ways to pay for their services,” said Mr. Johnson, who just retired as chief of Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue in Aloha, Ore. People are accustomed to bills for ambulances, which are routinely paid by health insurance, he said. “So what we are really talking about is the leap from paying an ambulance fee, which people expect, to paying a first-responder fee.”

Mr. Johnson said the fire chiefs' association had taken no position on such charges. “We believe that is a local decision,” he said.

But the association does have what it calls a partnership with Fire Recovery USA of Roseville, Calif., another billing company.

In an e-mail, Ann Davison, a spokeswoman for the fire chiefs' association, said that relationship was focused on helping to explain the pros and cons of the practice to fire departments. Fire Recovery does donate “a portion” of its revenue to the association, she said.

Often departments charging fees are in communities with busy Interstate highways, where crews often respond to crashes involving travelers who do not pay local taxes, Mr. Johnson said.

That is the case with Salina, Kan., which responds to accidents on Interstates 70 and 135. In 2008 , the city's fire department received permission to start billing people involved in accidents to help cover costs, said Mayor Aaron Peck.

In about two years the department has sent out bills for 63 accidents, averaging about $390 each. He said the city sent about $10,000 a year in bills and received payments amounting to about half that much. The rest of the money is lost to the city because some people refuse to pay and some of the money goes to a billing agency.

The billing services make money by taking a portion of the funds they collect. “The average is 10 percent, and if they don't get paid, we don't get paid,” said Ms. Moore of Cost Recovery.

Rick Benner, chief financial officer for Fire Recovery, said that for his company about 20 percent would be “a fair representation.”

Billing agencies like these have made it easier for fire departments to charge for services, and that has the effect of encouraging more departments to send bills to motorists involved in crashes, said Mr. Johnson of the fire chiefs' association.

The insurance industry argues that billing companies trying to drum up new business are a main reason the practice has been spreading.

But Mr. Benner says Fire Recovery is simply trying to help departments avoid service cuts.

Typically, departments send billing firms copies of accident reports and information on how many people and how much equipment responded. On average, the bill is about $200 for police and $600 to $800 for fire departments, Ms. Moore said.

Whether taxpayers are billed for crashes in their own jurisdictions varies by location.

There are also variations in whether the bill goes only to the motorist at fault or to all the parties involved, in which case the billing companies say the insurers determine fault.

If the insurance company refuses to pay, whether the motorist is billed depends on the jurisdiction, Ms. Moore and Mr. Benner said. If the motorist declines to pay, some departments drop the claim. Others take legal action.

Whether an insurance company will pay depends on the language in the policy, Mr. Passmore said, adding, “There are a lot of shades of gray.”

After adopting such programs, some jurisdictions — including Radnor Township, Pa. — later backed off in response to complaints from residents and visitors, news reports and lobbying by the insurance industry. In recent years 10 states have prohibited such collections, according to the property casualty association: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. But some of those prevent only the police, as opposed to fire departments, from charging fees.

Ms. Moore of Cost Recovery says these are examples of “big insurance” working against “innocent taxpayers” and public safety.

The insurance industry says it is protecting consumers and trying to hold down premiums.

The finger-pointing has left cities like Denver trying to figure out what to do. This year , the city considered fees for nonresident, at-fault drivers, said Eric Brown, a spokesman for Mayor John W. Hickenlooper. Mr. Brown said the city stood to recover about $500,000 a year for fire services.

But the proposal was criticized by taxpayers and the media. In an editorial, The Denver Post described the idea as unfair and unwise, saying it would put taxpayers “financially on the hook for supporting emergency services twice.”

The city decided not to decide.

“We shelved it for this year,” Mr. Brown said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/automobiles/05CRASHTAX.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Craigslist Blocks Access to ‘Adult Services' Pages

Craigslist, the popular Web site for classified ads, has blocked access to its “adult services” section and replaced the link with a black label showing the word “censored.”

Law-enforcement officials and groups that oppose human trafficking have been highly critical of Craigslist, saying that the adult ads helped facilitate prostitution and the selling of women against their will.

Craigslist, which is based in San Francisco, did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear whether the block represented a permanent shift in policy or a temporary protest against the outside pressure on the company, which has lasted several years.

Last month the attorneys general from 17 states sent a letter to Craigslist's chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, and its founder, Craig Newmark , asking the company to immediately remove the adult services section.

The controversy is the one of the most prominent in the debate over free speech on the Web, where anyone can easily and anonymously post anything: just how much responsibility does a Web site have for what is posted by its users, or for potential criminal activity that results from the posts?

The company, while promising to provide more rigorous oversight of the ads, has defended its right to run them and says it is protected under federal law — the Communications Decency Act — a position that judges and legal experts have generally backed.

“They can absolutely keep it up. The law is pretty crystal clear on this,” said M. Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet & Society. “What's happened here is the states' attorneys general, having failed to win in court and in litigation, have decided to revisit this in the court of public opinion, and in the court of public opinion, they have been much more successful.”

Richard Blumenthal , the Connecticut attorney general who helped lead the effort against Craigslist, said by phone on Saturday that “these prostitution ads did not promote a victimless crime. There is human trafficking in children, assaults on women.”

He said he was pleased that Craigslist appeared to be “doing the right thing voluntarily” but added that his office would continue to monitor the site and was trying to determine if Craigslist was closing the section permanently.

The ads in the adult section, which cost $10 to post and $5 to repost, are a big revenue source, analysts say. Craigslist is private and does not report financial figures. But adult ads are expected to bring the company $45 million in revenue this year, according to the Advanced Interactive Media Group, an organization that analyzes Craigslist.

Some Internet law analysts said on Saturday that Craigslist could be sending more than one signal — that it was both capitulating to law enforcement and thumbing its nose at it.

“There are multiple ways in which to censor speech — one is directly through the courts, and the other is through a form of protest that says, even if you can do this, stop doing it,” said Thomas R. Burke, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine who specializes in Internet law and is not involved with Craigslist. “Maybe their point in saying they were censored is that people need to understand the law better.”

But Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a nonprofit group that has urged Craigslist to shut the adult services section and screen the entire site for such ads, said the company should be held responsible for what appears on its site. She said Craigslist “has the legal responsibility as well as the moral responsibility” to close the section. Craigslist has taken steps to appease critics before. In May 2009, it removed its “erotic services” category and replaced it with “adult services,” for “postings by legal adult service providers,” and had all adult services ads manually screened by a lawyer before posting.

But criticism has continued, fueled by prominent cases like that of Philip Markoff , a Boston medical student who was charged with murdering a woman he had met on Craigslist. He pleaded not guilty, and he died in jail last month in an apparent suicide.

The section in question appears not to have been blocked abroad. In France visitors to the site have access to the Érotique link and can see material intended for adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/technology/05craigs.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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In Troubled Area, Students Have a Safety Net

At 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, Elizabeth Cazares and her 10-year-old daughter, Lesly, stood in front of a liquor store in the Tenderloin district, waiting for one of Lesly's fifth-grade classmates to join them and walk to school.

Lesly attends De Marillac Academy, a Catholic school that serves mostly low-income students. The walk is seven blocks, riddled with drug addicts and dealers.

With the start of the school year, the San Francisco Police Department has increased efforts to buffer children from the potential harm of the Tenderloin's streets. Now, between 7:30 and 8 a.m., two officers are stationed at the corner of Leavenworth and Turk Streets, a spot that the police say is one of the district's most popular for drug dealing.

The effect has been like a momentary truce. As children and parents line up for school buses, or make the walk to school, officers stroll up and down the block, repelling dealers and drug users.

“These three are waiting for us to leave,” Officer Gregory Watts said, pointing to a cluster of men who had circled the block seven times. “How absurd. Let the kids wait for the bus in peace, you know?”

Farther up Leavenworth, Lesly's classmate Litzy Cortez and her mother, Olga, arrived to walk to school with Lesly and her mother. Litzy's ponytail was fastened to the side of her head with an elastic band that matched her maroon and plaid uniform. The two girls fell in line behind their mothers and walked another block to Eddy Street.

At the streetlight, a shoeless elderly woman wearing pink pajamas glared over their heads.

“The dirt is bad for the girls,” the woman said, tilting back her head and dragging a finger across her neck. “Throat cancer.”

The light turned, and the group forged ahead.

The girls described a crime scene they saw near Turk a couple of weeks ago. A man had been shot to death, and as they walked past, their mothers wondered if he was anybody they knew. The girls got close enough to see the body covered by a white sheet.

“There's a lot of cholos on this block,” Litzy said. “You know, like gangs.”

Lesly pointed across the street to the victim's memorial, a brick wall decorated with votive candles, flowers and empty bottles of Rémy Martin and Hennessy.

The girls arrived at Golden Gate Avenue, where a crossing guard, another recent addition, helped them cross. A few buildings down, they arrived at De Marillac's gated door.

As her mother waited to say goodbye, Litzy fiddled with the clasps on her backpack. She paused to think about why drugs and fighting are bad.

“The earth was made so we could have peace on it,” she said, borrowing a lesson from school.

Lesly chimed in: “Yeah, and I think it is disrespecting God's property.”

The girls bounded through the gate. At the corner of Turk and Leavenworth, the mothers smiled at the officers. In 10 minutes, the officers would leave, and the truce would end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/us/05bckiddies.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Border News

OPINION

A nonpartisan study on illegal immigrants in the United States came out Wednesday. Here is the gist: Unauthorized immigration peaked three years ago, and is sharply receding. It is declining all over, but especially in housing-bust states like Florida, Nevada and Virginia.

Harsher enforcement probably has something to do with it. But so does the Great Recession, and while the total population of illegal immigrants has fallen somewhat, to about 11 million, there is no exodus. They are not flooding in as much, but they are not flooding out.

These striking findings, from the Pew Hispanic Center, suggest that it is probably time to focus on assimilating the people who are here and show no signs of leaving. It also argues for fixing immigration, so that when the economy roars to life again, we will be ready to handle a new influx that is lawful, orderly and above-ground.

But first we would have to get over our fixation on the southern border, a hard thing to expect at a time when anxieties there have erupted into a raging panic that gladdens the hearts of politicians on the right.

This is the year that Congress passed in a flash a $600 million border-security bill, which President Obama immediately signed. The homeland security secretary just announced that Predator drones, our eyes in the sky above Afghanistan, were guarding the line from San Diego to Brownsville, too.

It isn't just the feds. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the country's harshest anti-immigrant bill and went to the White House to lecture the president about border control. She raised the emotional pitch with lurid stories of beheadings in the desert. Her fellow Arizona politicians said the next step was to rewrite state laws and the Constitution to keep pregnant aliens from coming over to spawn terrorist babies on our soil. Senator John McCain won a tough primary by creating yet another new, tougher version of himself, who promised to complete the danged fence.

These Arizonans are selling a vision of border chaos and violence disconnected from reality. If it is about drug wars, someone tell the mayors and the sheriffs of border cities, where violent crime is down. Some of America's safest cities are in border states. Desert decapitators are a myth, unless Governor Brewer, who ducked questions about them last week, has evidence she is not sharing.

The border crackdown has been therapy for a nation spooked. But for solving the real problems of immigration, not so much. The terror babies are a fiction, but millions of unauthorized workers are not. At some point the economy will recover. The demand for immigrant labor will heat up, and illegal crossings will rise. Companies will go begging for legal workers. The drones and the boots and the fences will deter many new migrants, but not all. Eleven million people will still be living and working outside the law.

And the country will learn that it spent billions at the border to solve a problem a sealed border won't fix.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05sun2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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America's History of Fear

OPINION

A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don't. Most of the opponents aren't bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.

Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn't hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don't share their values, don't believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country. But they were manipulated by demagogues playing upon their fears — the 19th- and 20th-century equivalents of Glenn Beck.

Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others. But the assaults were possible because so many middle-of-the-road Americans were ambivalent.

Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

Perhaps the closest parallel to today's hysteria about Islam is the 19th-century fear spread by the Know Nothing movement about “the Catholic menace.” One book warned that Catholicism was “the primary source” of all of America's misfortunes, and there were whispering campaigns that presidents including Martin Van Buren and William McKinley were secretly working with the pope. Does that sound familiar?

Critics warned that the pope was plotting to snatch the Mississippi Valley and secretly conspiring to overthrow American democracy. “Rome looks with wistful eye to domination of this broad land, a magnificent seat for a sovereign pontiff,” one writer cautioned.

Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have).

In the 19th century, fears were stoked by books written by people who supposedly had “escaped” Catholicism. These books luridly recounted orgies between priests and nuns, girls kidnapped and held in secret dungeons, and networks of tunnels at convents to allow priests to rape nuns. One woman claiming to have been a priest's sex slave wrote a “memoir” asserting that Catholics killed boys and ground them into sausage for sale.

These kinds of stories inflamed a mob of patriots in 1834 to attack an Ursuline convent outside Boston and burn it down.

Similar suspicions have targeted just about every other kind of immigrant. During World War I, rumors spread that German-Americans were poisoning food, and Theodore Roosevelt warned that “Germanized socialists” were “more mischievous than bubonic plague.”

Anti-Semitic screeds regularly warned that Jews were plotting to destroy the United States in one way or another. A 1940 survey found that 17 percent of Americans considered Jews to be a “menace to America.”

Chinese in America were denounced, persecuted and lynched, while the head of a United States government commission publicly urged in 1945 "the extermination of the Japanese in toto." Most shamefully, anti-Asian racism led to the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

All that is part of America's heritage, and typically as each group has assimilated, it has participated in the torment of newer arrivals — as in Father Charles Coughlin's ferociously anti-Semitic radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Today's recrudescence is the lies about President Obama's faith, and the fear-mongering about the proposed Islamic center.

But we have a more glorious tradition intertwined in American history as well, one of tolerance, amity and religious freedom. Each time, this has ultimately prevailed over the Know Nothing impulse.

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Obama vows to work on restoring middle-class

September 5, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON --- A strong economy needs bustling Main Streets and a thriving middle class, not just a healthy stock market, President Barack Obama said in paying tribute to the American worker.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama on Saturday outlined what he's done to help the middle class, a group he says has been squeezed the most during the recession.

He spoke of efforts to create jobs, make college more affordable, help the middle class build retirement nest eggs, cut taxes on these families and stop health insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Labor Day is about more than grilling food and spending time with family and friends, Obama said.

"It's also a day to honor the American worker -- to reaffirm our commitment to the great American middle class that has, for generations, made our economy the envy of the world," he said.

But Obama said that, for a decade, middle-class families have experienced stagnant incomes and declining economic security while tax breaks were given to companies that shifted jobs overseas and Wall Street firms reaped huge profits.

"So this Labor Day, we should recommit ourselves to our time-honored values and to this fundamental truth: To heal our economy, we need more than a healthy stock market; we need bustling Main Streets and a growing, thriving middle class," Obama said. "That's why I will keep working day by day to restore opportunity, economic security and that basic American dream for our families and future generations."

"We?re fighting to build an economy in which middle class families can afford to send their kids to college, buy a home, save for retirement, and achieve some measure of economic security when their working days are done," he said. "And over the last two years, that has meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for far too long."

In the weekly Republican message, Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., criticized nearly 200 pending rules and regulations as a threat to job creation. Davis said many of the mandates would cost small-business owners who don't have the money or time to comply with them.

"The more time small-business owners spend pushing paper, the less time they have to focus on creating jobs," Davis said.

He highlighted legislation he introduced that would require Congress to vote on every major new rule before it can take effect.

"The sooner we rein in the red-tape factory in Washington, D.C., the sooner small businesses can get back to creating jobs and helping more Americans find an honest day's work," he said.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/2675934,obama-middle-class-090510.article

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