The Observation Deck

There is an interesting article in Scene Magazine this week. It made the cover.

http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2006-1 ... _full.html

Immigrants are frequently from places that still have functional cities. That is to say, more functional than most of the areas around The Cleveland Clinic and CWRU. They are more capable of functioning in them and as part of them. It will take a generation or two for their kids to become disenchanted, or envious of the suburbs.

The marketing of suburbia is very pervasive. 2 years ago I went on a spree of watching Disney Channel original movies. A great deal of the footage is devoted to 2 or 3 people, as a family unit, entering and exiting SUVs. More footage is devoted to scenes of them casually driving the SUVs. More footage of high overhead shots of them pulling into and out of the driveways of their McMansions with 2 or 3 car attached garages. Still more footage is shown of the characters doing all the cool stuff that is cool: talking on cell phones, shopping at the mall, loitering at the mall, wearing new clothes. Time seemed to slow down and I thought to myself, "how is this important to the story?"

A similar thing happened when an old episode of Starsky and Hutch came on: They skid to stop, jump out of their car and beat up some lowlifes, then burn rubber just getting back onto the road despite no traffic.

Immigration was a good for this country because people generally left their old hatreds in the old country and became Americans. Is that still true?

It seems now more than ever that the immigrant recognizes the opportunity that this country offers while the native born don't seem to get it. I guess they know what hunger really is.

Sometime ago I was talking to a recent immigrant from Iran who was astonished that so many American students were disinterested in education. Her family originally moved to Cleveland but moved out because of the constant chaos in the classrooms. She said they got a better education in Iranian schools with no walls and shared text books than they were getting in the Cleveland schools.

invading lakewood? Immigrants aren't a form of beatle taking over crops.


I like how Skindell pointed out this:
"Lakewood is the first stop in becoming a citizen. They come here because they know family and friends. There's easy access to jobs and to grocery stores. But once they move up, you see them move to other parts of the community."

Also, the NCLB laws have made the grading for ESL testing so hard and strict, that even I haven't been able to get an "excellent" rating on my writing test. Yes, the last time I had ESL was in 5th grade, but they still make me take it year after year. In order to pass the test, you must get a 5 out of 5 rating (or excellent) and I don't think anyone has.

Take it from a future journalism major, who is graduating High School with six english credits. Writing is my strongest subject. If I can't pass the test, how will the students that don't know English pass it? And then, how will the School pass the NCBL rating?

Bill:

The article manages to capture some sense of Lakewood's niche in the regional political economy of class, labor and housing.

I'd say it's all about building an order for social uplift that engages the hungers, hopes and dreams of immigrants. Lakewood is investing mightily in the meat and potatoes of such precise platforms, platforms such as the public schools and public library, always critical to the bootstapping of the immigrant's desire to make it.

If you read Joel Kotkin (http://www.joelkotkin.com/), you will see that Lakewood's back to basics/social uplift meat and potatoes infrastructure investments are likely on the right track.

Like it or not, that's the class we're in here, given the order of asset ownership and the condition of property in the city. We can't let that order slip for either ourselves or the immigrants to the street-tough disorder that signifies power for the powerless.

Lakewood needs a constant flow immigrants, as does the region.

Connecting immigrants to the proper economic, educational and legal order is important, too.

I'd like to see us continue to advance a game plan that positions Lakewood as the premier immigrant gateway in the region.

And I think it's fair to say that Mayor George recognizes the importance of immigrants and their assimilation into Lakewood's civic tradition. While I am pleased the Scene article recognizes Lakewood's success with the immigrant community, I believe the article makes it appear that all this is a fortuitous accident. That's clearly not the case.

Likewise Mayor Cain worked closely with Arabic immigrants and organizations, especially around 9/11, to build trust and respect.

So there's a social practice and a modicum of intelligence and alignment in place here that the reporter did not get. Some of that very alignment comes from the good work of the City's Health and Human Services team.

On your other question about hate, I say that to hate is human and to love your enemies is exceptional.

It's important to realize that we are all in a global village, with communications and transportation, that allows for word and feelings to move speedily from the war zones of the world, where ethnic and religious hatreds are often fueled and used in battles for resources and power.

That's why what we do locally in the social practice of this community in order to become exceptional is so vitally important to ourselves and the world.

We can't be complacent about law and order and assimilation.

All that said, I think the article gives you another sense of why Lakewood is vital.

Kenneth Warren

You write as though you speak better english than many people born in Cleveland during the last 22 years. And everyone I've seen MTV. And maybe President Bush.

Ryan:

"Maybe President Bush..."

Ivor speaks as well as you or I.

Ivor is the Lakewood gold standard.

And he's right to qualify Doug's attempt to put down immigrant neighbors who have settled here.

You need to meet him face to face.

Kenneth Warren

I have gotten my hair cut at a nice Albanian-operated salon on Detroit (not the Madison salon mentioned in the Scene article)--Jolanda's Salon. I have previously made positive comments about the house at Nicholson and Lake, which is prominently featured in the article as Albanian owned and renovated. As far as alleged put downs, I am an equal opportunity basher. There is good and bad among every group, whether foreign born or not. In fact, Mr. Warren, one of the main themes of the article, as I interpret it, is that immigrants to Lakewood are helping to stabilize the city and prevent it from spiralling into decline, i.e. the immigrants having a positive effect on the city outweigh the ones having a negative effect. Maybe you spent more time reading my short introduction to the article instead of the articel itself. Perhaps the article explains why Lakewood has hung on to still be a pretty respectable place overall, despite the flight to Westlake and River and despite our proximity to the ghetto of Cleveland.

Doug

I read the article. I found it very positive. The article made me even more proud to live in Lakewood.

This little I know about diversity. Being statistically diverse does not make you diverse, though it is a great start. Lakewood has the statistical diversity...and improving by the day.

However, It is whole other thing to make diversity work, harness its energy and to leverage it as a strength as a community. To that end, I think both I and the community have more work to do.

p.s. I think the cover picture did the article a disservice, but I believe headlines and pictures often do articles (content) a disservice in all media forums.

I also thought the article was pretty good ... immigration is good for Lakewood, as it is good for the region. Face it, Cleveland was built on immigrants, and the city became the powerhouse it was in the early 20th century precisely because of the immigrant workforce that came here to do either skilled or unskilled labor (most people tend to think of immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th century as the "huddled masses" and unskilled, but Cleveland was fortunate to get many skilled workers who staffed the many machine tool companies in the area). New blood invigorates a city, and it appears that even today's immigrants are following the patterns established by earlier immigrant groups (such as the citizens of one village coming over to one particular city or region). If anything, one big difference is that today's immigrants to the U.S. are often well-educated, highly literate, and highly skilled, which usually wasn't true a century ago, as most immigrants came from rural areas and were mostly unschooled.

If anything, I think the article helps to illustrate more shortcomings in the No Child Left Behind mandate. Which is a shame, because today's immigrants will also probably follow the path of yesterday's immigrants ... many of the parents who come over will learn some rudimentary English; their children will grow up bilingual, but speaking primarily English. Their children will speak English, and perhaps know a few words in their family's mother tongue (like I only know a few swear words in Polish), and so on.

Hopefully one thing will change ... that as the generations pass, some of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants pick up various hatreds, and become anti-immigrant. It always amazes me to see someone who is only a few generations off the boat, crying out that they want America's borders closed, and that there should be no more immigrants allowed. If that was true a century or more ago, then most of us wouldn't be here today. Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed. I'm proud that all of my great-grandparents came over from Europe; that took a lot of courage, to leave their friends and families and come to a foreign land. I'm not sure I could have done it. But they did it, and I'm here doing my part to live the American dream because of them, and I think we as a people should welcome the new immigrants, because they're also in pursuit of that "American dream" and they and their descendents will ultimately carry that dream on.

So bring on the invasion!

It is a different era today. in the past skilled and less-skilled immigrants flocked here for industrial jobs. The boutiques, restaurants, barber shops, small machine shops, garages, laundries, and small grocery stores grew up to sell goods to this population. Our industrial growth already began shrinking by the time many rural blacks from former Confederate States began moving up here.

Putting the cart before the horse is possible when there are no longer carts or horses, but there isn't precedent for wanting many foreign immigrants in the post-industrial economy. There is only extrapolation: The ADHD post-industrial American and American family is more likely to be poor at functioning in cities. At least in Suburbs they are mostly out of sight and out of mind, medicated by a continual dose of big screen tvs, stereos, and video games. It is necessary for a community to be mostly full, so there is no room for people from worse communities to move in in sufficient numbers to transform it into a worse community. Immigrants from europe or palestine are preferrable to East Clevelanders.

I thought the article was positive myself.

..

When the whole staph infection thing broke out at LHS I posted a topic titled "LHS staph crisis" and was bombarded by PM's asking me to change the word crisis because it wasn't the best word to use for it.

oh and by the way, the talk around school is that we need two more cases of staph and the school will have to close down. One popped up this past week when a basketball player came down with it on his leg, and with the wrestling season picking up I'm hoping that my winter break gets extended.

whether or not the "two cases until close" rumor is true, I've been hearing it for the past month and a half. I don't know.

does "albanians and other immigrants invading lakewood" sound like a lakewood brand building topic?

from reading the article and experiencing things that I have experienced with being the "other" immigrant, I think "choosing lakewood" would work better than "invading lakewood".

just my opinion. I don't want fellow other immigrants skimming through the deck and getting the impression that they're not wanted in Lakewood. It's just something about the word invading that makes this post sound unwelcoming, as positive as it may be.

Please do explain why there is a distiction between those that come over our north, east, and west borders vs. the our south border.

If I recall the whole immigration debate was about illegal immigrants. Even for me, as an immigrant, the topic of illegal immigrants is touchy because they skipped the process that my family had to battle through and pay/work for. I think America is the best country to succeed in, to build a family in...etc. and I hope those immigrants outside the US borders, that are unfortunate and don't have the freedoms that we do here, will take advantage of any legal programs that will help them move to the US and take advantage of all the great things this country has to offer.

My family has struggled to work and keep money under our roof, and through my 17 years of fingerprinting, immigration offices, passport photos and waiting for hours in lines for paperwork, I wouldn't want to imagine that someone can skip all those things and get a higher status (US citizen) than us hardworking legal immigrants instanly. It's not easy being an "alien" in this world, that's for sure.

too bad lakewood isn't being invaded by Czechs. Most attractive women are from the Czech republic.