I was surprised to encounter my hometown of Altoona, Pennsylvania, near the back of the U.S. section of the New York Times today. I wish it had been less ignominious news:
Altoona, With No Immigrant Problem, Decides to Solve It
I hadn’t heard about this ordinance passing. I can see how this might have played out as good political theater — a revenge drama against all those gun-toting illegals who are no doubt just waiting to roll in over the Alleghenies to take over Altoona — but I think it’s a real shame, an echo of the racism and the deep, deep bitterness that seems to haunt the area. The triple homicide that made national news last year has been used as a lever to foist narrow-minded legislation on a frightened population in the name of safety and security. (Does this sound familiar?)
Fittingly, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Councilman Rieker, after he finishes tarring the ACLU as “a nutso organization” standing between him and the maintaining of the “rule of law” in South Central PA, lays all his cards out on the table:
He said he worries more about the viability and livability of a rust-belt town that continues to lose population. He says he is weighing whether to resign his council seat and move his family and his insurance business to North Carolina.
This really gets me: a political opportunist not afraid to tarnish my home town’s reputation with a ridiculously overreaching “solution in search of a problem,” but also unwilling to stick around and deal with the consequences of the course he’s charted. I hope Altoona can somehow see past the small-mindedness of this kind of leadership, and past the isolationism and xenophobia that’s festering at its root; otherwise it’s doomed to decline and extinction.
Altoona should be listening to its religious leaders, who, happily, haven’t forgotten that Christianity carries at its core a message of inclusiveness and tolerance.
[Bishop Joseph V. Adamec of the local diocese] is not swayed by those who say that the three murders might have been prevented if the ordinance had been in effect in 2005.
“The one who did it, he came here when he was a boy and went to our schools,” Bishop Adamec said. “He didn’t come here already formed. He’s one of us.”