Robert Scheer (The Nation): My Mother, the Illegal Alien

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Dated Wednesday May 3

My Mother, the Illegal Alien
By Robert Scheer

It was Monday night, and there I was on a downtown Los Angeles street corner as dusk fell, watching the pro-immigrant marchers stream past, as they had done all day, heading toward City Hall.

I had just been moved to tears by one sign carried by what seemed to be a family stating, "We are workers not criminals," when a fellow spectator began heckling the marchers. Reacting without thinking, I heckled him--there was this instant hatred between myself and this man I had never met.

It startled me, this pent-up yet still-raw rage over the persecution of immigrants. I know where it comes from: My immigrant mother always lived with the fear of deportation . . . .

I don't know exactly how my mother, Ida Kuran, got into this country but unlike my German Protestant father who had a far easier time, her name does not appear on the Ellis Island immigrant rolls. What I do know is that she fled Russia soon after the Soviet revolution when the Communists, upon consolidating their power, began imprisoning members of the leftist Jewish organization for which she was a very active youth organizer.

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[TomInTib]

1. A great story and read.

recommended

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. K & R. nt.