When I was growing up, my father and aunt would sometimes talk about what life had been like in Manchester, NH during the teens and 20s and beyond. Their stories made a strong impression on me.
There were the times that French Canadian tenement dwellers were awakened in the night by thugs running down the metal fire escapes dragging empty milk cans behind them, making a thunderous and terrifying noise for the occupants.
For a while, new Greek immigrants, residing near each other for safety and familiarity, gathered in a neighborhood park on summer evenings to visit with each other. Thugs started to threaten the Greeks until, one evening, the men and boys of the community gathered in their park, each silently whittling on a stick. Upon arriving, the terrorists quickly understood that these people were going to stand up for themselves and they quietly left.
And people of that generation surely remember the era during which the Irish were the scorned people, rejected and turned away with signs that read: “Irish need not apply”.
One year, Catholic men gave their free time to build a new church only to find that their work had been disassembled during the night. This went on for several days until, one night, a Protestant gentleman took up a position in the scaffolding wielding a rifle and stayed throughout the night. He did this for several days, allowing the church construction to progress to completion. It took the generous gesture of a single man to put an end to the abuse.
Today it is the “brown and black people” who are scorned and hated and for no more reason than the Canadians, the Irish, the Greeks, the Catholics were rejected back in the day. Additionally, our present government has made it much more difficult for them to come here legally than any of our forebears ever had to deal with.
We are the descendants of those dreamers who sought a better life for themselves and who came to America in that search. At the expense of the indigenous people and their land, it was our ancestors who built the country we live in today. It is time we “play it forward” and give those who are seeking asylum and a decent life the same opportunities that our ancestors were afforded. On Tuesday, do the right thing and vote to make Greenfield a Safe City.
Louise Amyot is a 45-year resident of Greenfield.