Wherever you go there you are
View of the Presidential Range from the Bretton Woods, N.H. resort. It was also the site of the 1944 international conference called to make plans for the Free World’s post-World War II economic system.
“My outer world and inner make a pair.
But would the two be always of a kind?
Another latitude, another mind?
Or would I be New England anywhere?’’
— From “New England Mind,’’ by Robert Francis (1901-1987), American poet and teacher who lived most of life in Amherst, Mass. Here’s the whole poem.
Dream on, America
William James in 1903.
“The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. … The nation blessed above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.”
William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was based at Harvard. Many consider him “The Father of American Psychology”. He was the brother of Henry James, the novelist.
Gifts from the sea
“Neptune's Platter” (ceramic, metal, glaze, patina), by Sally S. Fine, at Boston Sculptors Gallery through Dec. 8
— Photo by Will Howcroft
Michael Carrafiello: The Mass. Bay Puritans and the quite different ‘Pilgims’ subsect
“The Early Puritans of New England Going to Church,’’ 1867 oil painting by George Henry Boughton.
‘OXFORD, Ohio
Every November, numerous articles recount the arrival of 17th-century English Pilgrims and Puritans and their quest for religious freedom. Stories are told about the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the celebration of the first Thanksgiving feast.
In the popular mind, the two groups are synonymous. In the story of the quintessential American holiday, they have become inseparable protagonists in the story of the origins.
But as a scholar of both English and American history, I know there are significant differences between the two groups. Nowhere is this more telling than in their respective religious beliefs and treatment of Native Americans.
Where did the Pilgrims come from?
Pilgrims arose from the English Puritan movement that originated in the 1570s. Puritans wanted the English Protestant Reformation to go further. They wished to rid the Church of England of “popish” – that is, Catholic – elements like bishops and kneeling at services.
Each Puritan congregation made its own covenant with God and answered only to the Almighty. Puritans looked for evidence of a “godly life,” meaning evidence of their own prosperous and virtuous lives that would assure them of eternal salvation. They saw worldly success as a sign, though not necessarily a guarantee, of eventual entrance into heaven.
After 1605, some Puritans became what scholar Nathaniel Philbrick calls “Puritans with a vengeance.” They embraced “extreme separatism,” removing themselves from England and its corrupt church.
These Puritans would soon become “Pilgrims” – literally meaning that they would be prepared to travel to distant lands to worship as they pleased.
In 1608, a group of 100 Pilgrims sailed to Leiden, Holland and became a separate church living and worshipping by themselves.
They were not satisfied in Leiden. Believing Holland also to be sinful and ungodly, they decided in 1620 to venture to the New World in a leaky vessel called the Mayflower. Fewer than 40 Pilgrims joined 65 nonbelievers, whom the Pilgrims dubbed “strangers,” in making the arduous journey to what would be called Plymouth Colony.
Hardship, survival and Thanksgiving in America
Most Americans know that more than half of the Mayflower’s passengers died the first harsh winter of 1620-21. The fragile colony survived only with the assistance of Native Americans – most famously Squanto. To commemorate, not celebrate, their survival, Pilgrims joined Native Americans in a grand meal during the autumn of 1621.
But for the Pilgrims, what we today know as Thanksgiving was not a feast; rather, it was a spiritual devotion. Thanksgiving was a solemn and not a celebratory occasion. It was not a holiday.
Still, Plymouth was dominated by the 65 strangers, who were largely disinterested in what Pilgrims saw as urgent questions of their own eternal salvation.
There were few Protestant clerics among the Pilgrims, and in few short years, they found themselves to be what historian Mark Peterson calls “spiritual orphans.” Lay Pilgrims like William Brewster conducted services, but they were unable to administer Puritan sacraments.
Pilgrims and Native Americans in the 1620s
At the same time, Pilgrims did not actively seek the conversion of Native Americans. According to scholars like Philbrick, English author Rebecca Fraser and Peterson, the Pilgrims appreciated and respected the intellect and common humanity of Native Americans.
An early example of Pilgrim respect for the humanity of Native Americans came from the pen of Edward Winslow. Winslow was one of the chief Pilgrim founders of Plymouth. In 1622, just two years after the Pilgrims’ arrival, he published in the mother country the first book about life in New England, “Mourt’s Relation.”
While opining that Native Americans “are a people without any religion or knowledge of God,” he nevertheless praised them for being “very trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe witted, just.”
Winslow added that “we have found the Indians very faithful in their covenant of peace with us; very loving. … we often go to them, and they come to us; some of us have been fifty miles by land in the country with them.”
In Winslow’s second published book, “Good Newes from New England (1624),” he recounted at length nursing the Wampanoag leader Massasoit as he lay dying, even to the point of spoon-feeding him chicken broth.Fraser calls this episode “very tender.”
The Puritan exodus from England
Puritans barricading their house against Indians. Artist Albert Bobbett. The Print Collector/ Hudson Archives via Getty Images
The thousands of non-Pilgrim Puritans who remained behind and struggled in England would not share Winslow’s views. They were more concerned with what they saw as their own divine mission in America.
After 1628, dominant Puritan ministers clashed openly with the English Church and, more ominously, with King Charles I and Bishop of London – later Archbishop of Canterbury – William Laud.
So, hundreds and then thousands of Puritans made the momentous decision to leave England behind and follow the tiny band of Pilgrims to America. These Puritans never considered themselves separatists, though. Following what they were confident would be the ultimate triumph of the Puritans who remained in the mother country, they would return to help govern England.
The American Puritans of the 1630s and beyond were more ardent, and nervous about salvation, than the Pilgrims of the 1620s. Puritans tightly regulated both church and society and demanded proof of godly status, meaning evidence of a prosperous and virtuous life leading to eternal salvation. They were also acutely aware of that divine-sent mission to the New World.
Puritans believed they must seek out and convert Native Americans so as to “raise them to godliness.” Tens of thousands of Puritans therefore poured into Massachusetts Bay Colony in what became known as the “Great Migration.” By 1645, they already surrounded and would in time absorb the remnants of Plymouth Colony.
Puritans and Native Americans in the 1630s and beyond
Dominated by hundreds of Puritan clergy, Massachusetts Bay Colony was all about emigration, expansion and evangelization during this period.
As early as 1651, Puritan evangelists like Thomas Mayhew had converted 199 Native Americans labeled by the Puritans as “praying Indians.”
For those Native Americans who converted to Christianity and prayed with the Puritans, there existed an uneasy harmony with Europeans. For those who resisted what the Puritans saw as “God’s mission,” there was harsh treatment – and often death.
But even for those who succumbed to the Puritans’ evangelization, their culture and destiny changed dramatically and unalterably.
War with Native Americans
A devastating outcome of Puritan cultural dominance and prejudice was King Philip’s War in 1675-76. Massachusetts Bay Colony feared that Wampanoag chief Metacom – labeled by Puritans “King Philip” – planned to attack English settlements throughout New England in retaliation for the murder of “praying Indian” John Sassamon.
That suspicion mushroomed into a 14-month, all-out war between colonists and Native Americans over land, religion and control of the region’s economy. The conflict would prove to be one of the bloodiest per capita in all of American history.
By September 1676, thousands of Native Americans had been killed, with hundreds of others sold into servitude and slavery. King Philip’s War set an ominous precedent for Anglo-Native American relations throughout most of North America for centuries to come.
The Pilgrims’ true legacy
So, Puritans and Pilgrims came out of the same religious culture of 1570s England. They diverged in the early 1600s, but wound up 70 years later being one and the same in the New World.
In between, Pilgrim separatists sailed to Plymouth, survived a terrible first winter and convened a robust harvest-time meal with Native Americans. Traditionally, the Thanksgiving holiday calls to mind those first settlers’ courage and tenacity.
However, the humanity that Pilgrims like Edward Winslow showed toward the Native Americans they encountered was lamentably and tragically not shared by the Puritan colonists who followed them. Therefore, the ultimate legacy of Thanksgiving is and will remain mixed.
Michael Carrafiello is a professor of history at Miami University
He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Shades of da Vinci
“Bird and Butterfly,’’ by the late Varujan Boghosian, in the show “Varujan Boghosian: Material Poetry,’’ at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Mass., through Dec. 22.
The museum explains that the show includes collages and mixed-media pieces that span Boghosian’s career, including rarely seen artworks from the collection of his daughter, Heidi Boghosian. “Well-known as an art professor at major American universities, Boghosian played a large role in the Provincetown art colony, influencing generations of artists and writers.’’
History teardown
"The intact facade's now almost black
in the rain; all day they've torn at the back
of the building, "the oldest concrete structure
in New England," the newspaper said...''— From “Demolition,’’ by Mark Doty (born 1953), American poet and memoirist
— From “Days of Me,’’ by Stuart Dischell
James T. Brett: Priorities for our region in the lame-duck Congress
BOSTON
After a long and brutally divisive election season, Congress now returns to Capitol Hill for the final weeks of the 118th Congress, AKA its ‘‘lame-duck session.” After an historically unproductive two years, their to-do list remains long.
However, a looming Dec. 20 deadline to pass legislation to continue to fund the government presents an opportunity to incorporate a variety of other pieces of legislation.
There are three proposals in particular that the New England Council, which I lead, believes are critical to economic prosperity and quality of life in the region, and remain our top legislative priorities for the remainder of 2024.
Extending telehealth flexibilities. Congress recognized the critical role of telehealth in health care delivery by expanding coverage during and after the COVID-19 public health emergency. Most recently, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 extended several Medicare telehealth flexibilities through Dec. 31, 2024.
Among these was a provision allowing patients to use telehealth regardless of where they are located. These short-term extensions have been important to expand access and ensure continuity of care. We know that telehealth has been particularly beneficial in ensuring access to much-needed behavioral health services, and has enabled patients in rural and underserved areas to receive quality health care services.
However, without Congressional action, these flexibilities will expire at year’s end. Fortunately, the House Energy & Commerce Committee has advanced bipartisan legislation that will extend these flexibilities for another two years. The New England Council supports this extension, and encourages Congress to consider making these flexibilities permanent.
Affordable connectivity program. Established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in late 2021, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) ensures that all Americans have access to high-speed internet, which has become vital to economic success in the 21st century.
Administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the ACP provided a monthly subsidy of $30 for eligible households to use for broadband Internet. It also provided a one-time $100 benefit toward the purchase of a tablet, laptop or other device that facilitates Internet access.
Since its launch in Dec. 2021, the ACP helped more than 23 million American households gain access to affordable broadband, including over 800,000 across New England. Unfortunately, funding for the program ran out in April 2024. Bipartisan legislation has been introduced to infuse another $7 billion into the program, and we are hopeful that this provision will be included in any year-end spending package so that we do not lose ground in the effort to ensure digital equity for all Americans.
eDelivery. A third top priority for the lame-duck session is passage of legislation that would make electronic delivery (“eDelivery”) of financial statements and disclosures the default method of delivery to investors. Bipartisan legislation passed the House earlier this year as part of a larger capital markets package, but has languished in the Senate.
Not only is eDelivery more environmentally friendly as it decreases paper usage and waste, but it is also a much more secure and efficient method for delivering sensitive financial information to investors — particularly amid widespread reports of postage delays and the thefts. Perhaps most importantly, eDelivery is preferred by consumers.
A July 2022 survey conducted by the Securities Information and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) found that 79% of retail investors already participate in eDelivery programs, and 85% are comfortable with eDelivery being the default. Congress should heed their constituents and include this practical update in any year-end package.
All three of these proposals represent common-sense solutions, and perhaps more importantly, they all have strong bipartisan support. The New England Council will continue to urge our leaders in Washington to consider these proposals as key deadlines to advance legislation fast approach.
We believe that including these three proposals in any year-end legislative package will have a tremendous positive impact on individual New Englanders, as well as our region’s economic well-being.
James T. Brett is president and chief executive of the New England Council.
Linda Gasparello: Peripatetic Thanksgings
Marshes on Tangier Island. They are a major reason that seafood is usually so plentiful there.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Taking to the road over Thanksgiving is an American tradition, and AAA projects that a record 71.1 million Americans will drive to their dinner destination.
My husband and I will join the driving throngs. But our Thanksgiving tradition is to set out for no particular dinner destination and with no expectations. Over the years, we have had the best of dines and the worst of dines at restaurants where we have just walked in.
The Ram’s Head Tavern, in Annapolis, Md., is at the top of our Thanksgiving spins chart.
One year, as walk-ins, we enjoyed the tavern’s clubby conviviality and its Chesapeake Bay seafood-laden Thanksgiving menu, which included oyster stew and oyster stuffing. I share H.L. Mencken’s passion for large Maryland oysters, which he described as "magnificent, matchless reptiles" and a "thing of prolonged and kaleidoscopic flavors.”
Another Thanksgiving spin, in my husband’s Cessna 182RG, to Tangier Island, we rank at the bottom of our holiday dinners, mostly because no dining happened.
We flew from Dulles International Airport, in northern Virginia, to the island in the Chesapeake Bay, off the coast of Virginia, with a friend of ours who is also a pilot. Mike was always up for a flying adventure. To our knowledge, he had no reverence for food — it was just fuel, like Avgas for a plane.
It was my first trip to Tangier Island. I had read that some of the 600 inhabitants of the island spoke with the Elizabethan accent of its founders. We didn’t encounter any of them or, for that matter, anyone.
After we landed at the airport, which seemed to be unattended, we started walking to the town center.
Along the way, we passed a house surrounded with a chain-link fence. A Siberian Husky stood in the front yard. My husband and I owned one — he was a friendly fellow, a breed trait.
He called to the husky and put his fingers through the fence to pet him. The brute nearly made a Thanksgiving dinner of them.
When we reached the town, none of the restaurants were open; so no Maryland crab soup, no crab cakes, called “world famous” on Chesapeake Bay restaurant menus.
On our walk back to the airport, I grabbed a few crab recipes, printed on small squares of paper, which are left in boxes in front of some houses. One of them, “Daddy’s Crab Salad,” has an intriguing endnote: “The secret of this recipe is not what’s not in it. Let the crabmeat be the main ingredient.”
We flew to Washington National Airport, not because our stomachs were empty but because we were nearly out of fuel. The pumps at the island’s airport were on holiday, too.
We filled the plane’s two tanks at National and flew to Dulles, the plane’s base. Then we drove home, wondering if we had enough milk in the refrigerator for a bowl of cereal dinner.
Our neighbors saw us pull into our driveway and called to see if we wanted some pie. Did we ever! We ate all kinds of pies for dinner, and we gave thanks for all the good, sweet things and the family love that went into making them.
Linda Gasparello is producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. Her email is lgasparello@kingpublishing.com and she’s based in Rhode Island.
Red, white and green
In Shrewsbury, Mass.
The Bartlett barn in Redding, Conn.
“{New England villages} are one of the great sights of the Western World — red buildings to house the cattle, white ones to hold the spirit, and trees like the spirit itself abroad in the countryside.’’
— Jane Langton, in “New England Classic,’’ in New England: The Four Seasons (1980)
Water and sand make art for beachcombers
“Coke to Seaglass” (oil on wood), by Diane Athey, in the group show “Elemental,’’ at Mad River Valley Arts, Waitsfield, Vt. through Dec. 19.
The gallery explains:
“Elemental’ is about water and its soulful impact on our daily lives. Artists share the ethereal beauty of water and ask us to reflect upon our deep connection to this element of nature. Unusual materials and whimsical forms in their varying creative practices force the viewer to contemplate colors, textures, and emotions of imaginal landscapes, and to evoke the connection between them through the balance of harmony and disharmony, structure and chaos and the dance between light and shadow.’’
Avian angst
“Birds in Ballgowns” (encaustic, collage), one of several paintings by Nancy Whitcomb at the 120th Annual Little Pictures Show & Sale at the Providence Art Club through Dec. 22. As works are sold, as this one was, they are taken away and replaced.
120th Annual Little Pictures Show & Sale at the Providence Art Club. Over 700 works by 130 artists. As works sell they are taken home and then replaced. The show changes daily until it ends December 22. Open daily, 12-5.
Calvin Coolidge: ‘Not to selfishness’
Calvin Coolidge in 1919.
Date: Jan. 7, 1914
Calvin Coolidge, later Massachusetts governor (I919-1921) and U.S. president (1923-1929) here accepts his election as president of the Massachusetts Senate with gratitude and an overview of the values of the senate and country and the work that is to be done in his famous “Have Faith in Massachusetts’’ speech.
(See video on Coolidge below.)
Honorable Senators:
I thank you – with gratitude for the high honor given, with appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed – I thank you.
The commonwealth is one. We are all members of one body. The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. Industry cannot flourish if labor languish. Transportation cannot prosper if manufactures decline. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all. The suspension of one man’s dividends is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of laws. The latest, most modern, and nearest perfect system that statesmanship has devised is representative government. Its weakness is the weakness of us imperfect human beings who administer it. Its strength is that even such administration secures to the people more blessings than any other system ever produced. No nation has discarded it and retained liberty. Representative government must be preserved.
Courts are established, not to determine the popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and enforce rights. No litigant should be required to submit his case to the hazard and expense of a political campaign. No judge should be required to seek or receive political rewards. The courts of Massachusetts are known and honored wherever men love justice. Let their glory suffer no diminution at our hands. The electorate and judiciary cannot combine. A hearing means a hearing. When the trial of causes goes outside the court room, Anglo Saxon constitutional government ends.
The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.
Man is born into the universe with a personality that is his own. He has a right that is founded upon the constitution of the universe to have property that is his own. Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated. Each man is entitled to his rights and the rewards of his service be they never so large or never so small.
History reveals no civilized people among whom there were not a highly educated class, and large aggregations of wealth, represented usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspiration has always come from above. Diffusion of learning has come down from the university to the common school – the kindergarten is last. No one would now expect to aid the common school by abolishing higher education.
It may be that the diffusion of wealth works in an analogous way. As the little red schoolhouse is builded in the college, it may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation on which to build the prosperity of the whole people. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But profits must be the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.
Have faith in Massachusetts. In some unimportant detail some other States may surpass her, but in the general results, there is no place on earth where the people secure, in a larger measure, the blessings of organized government, and nowhere can those functions more properly be termed self-government.
Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.
We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people – a faith that men desire to do right, that the Commonwealth is founded upon a righteousness which will endure, a reconstructed faith that the final approval of the people is given not to demagogues, slavishly pandering to their selfishness, merchandising with the clamor of the hour, but to statesmen, ministering to their welfare, representing their deep, silent, abiding convictions.
Statutes must appeal to more than material welfare. Wages won’t satisfy, be they never so large. Nor houses; nor lands; nor coupons, though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it must respond as the magnet responds to the pole. To that, not to selfishness, let the laws of the Commonwealth appeal. Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man. Let the laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest citizen, performing the most menial task, the recognition of his manhood, the recognition that all men are peers, the humblest with the most exalted, the recognition that all work is glorified. Such is the path to equality before the law. Such is the foundation of liberty under the law. Such is the sublime revelation of man’s relation to man – Democracy.
Our very own wildfire hazards
Firefighters put out a recent brush fire in the Highbridge Park section of northwest Manhattan.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
How weird it has seemed to watch planes drop water and other fire retardants on big brush and woods fires in New England and other parts of the Northeast the past few weeks, recalling California.
We’ll be seeing more dramatic cycles of floods, droughts and fires.
Scientists see man-caused global warming as behind the extreme shifts between wet and dry periods we’ve been experiencing. This means bursts of rapidly growing thick vegetation, which then dries out in droughts, providing fuel for fires of the sort that Northeast has experienced during the past few months.
Even climate-change deniers might decide soon not to live in fire-prone areas around here.
You might find this interesting.
But this fall’s weather has been so golden!
I wish you the best for Thanksgiving, including that you don’t have to travel.
Laugh or else
“Stickers,’’ by Ileana Doble Hernandez, in her show “My Dear Americans, It’s Not Enough,’’ at the Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, Mass., through Jan. 26.
Selma Hedlund: Denmark’s forced-assimilation approach
Along Nyhavn - a canal in Copenhagen.
BOSTON
History is full of examples of governments using forced segregation against ethnic minorities.
From settler colonialists coercing Indigenous peoples into reservations, Nazis forcing Jews into ghettos or the United States segregating Black Americans through redlining and zoning policies, displacement and housing have long been at the heart of institutional racism.
But in today’s Europe, an inverted trend of coercive assimilation is emerging in northern nations grappling with high levels of immigration. As a part of what has been described as both “ethnic engineering” and among the “harshest immigration policies” in the world, Denmark is forcibly uprooting people from neighborhoods they call “ghettos” and redirecting them to alternative housing.
In neighboring Sweden, politicians have expressed a desire to pursue similar plans.
The uprooting of whole communities is controversial. This winter, Europe’s highest court, the European Court of Justice, is set to determine whether Denmark is violating the civil and human rights of those being rehoused. As an expert in displacement and immigrant incorporation, I believe that the court’s decision and the progression of Denmark’s program have great implications for the future of Europe’s immigrants and the true meaning of European citizenship for its people of color.
Denmark’s ‘ghetto package’
Denmark’s radical housing policy is years in the making. In 2010, the country’s authorities began compiling lists of “non-Western,” immigrant-majority neighborhoods that were failing to live up to set standards on lawfulness, employment, income and education levels. Areas that fell short in two of the four of these criteria were officially labeled “ghettos,” or “tough ghettos” if they fell short of more than two criteria.
While these neighborhoods are home to people with a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, they are marked by having more than half of residents with backgrounds in non-Western nations, including Syria, Iraq and Somalia.
Areas with “Western” majorities that failed the same standards were labeled “vulnerable areas” in contrast to the “non-Western” ghettos.
A man offers free travel to Denmark for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In 2018, the social-democratic Danish government launched the “Ghetto Package,” a legislative program aimed at breaking up the “ghetto” neighborhoods – and the social fabrics that sustain them. The package did not entail the same measures for “vulnerable areas.”
Proposals to this end consisted of reducing public housing to no more than 40 percent of total housing in the neighborhoods and measures to encourage white, wealthier residents to move in.
As a result of the initiative, thousands of people have been displaced and removed from their family homes through sales, demolitions and forced evictions. Some of the homes were renovated while awaiting new tenants, while others were sold to private investors who planned on raising rents by more than 50%. Evicted residents are typically offered alternative accommodation in public housing in other parts of the city or region, but with no control over location or cost.
Denmark’s assimilation program does not stop at the breaking up of low-income, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods. Children born into “non-Western” families in state-designated ghettos must attend special programs for a minimum of 25 hours per week beginning at the age of 1, designed to immerse them in “Danish values,” including Christian holidays and Danish language education. Parents are not allowed to accompany them.
In addition, the program also wants to turn “ghettos” into “harsh penalty zones” in which crimes can be penalized twice as severely.
Residents and other critics of the package of measures argue that the designation of “non-Western” in practice means “nonwhite” or “Muslim,” pointing out the fact that non-Europeans such as Australians and New Zealanders are excluded from the criteria, and that Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion in 2022 were permitted to move into social housing that “non-Westerners” had been forced to leave.
Moreover, being a naturalized Danish citizen or Danish-born does not count as being Western for people of color; nonwhite, second-generation immigrants are formally considered non-Western under the program, implying a race-based criteria of belonging.
In response to the law, a dozen residents facing eviction from Mjølnerparken, a residential area categorized as a “tough ghetto” in Copenhagen, filed a case against Denmark’s Ministry of Social Affairs in 2020. In September 2024, the European Court of Justice held an initial hearing to determine whether the government’s Ghetto Package is discriminatory under Danish law, European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights. Deliberations are underway.
Pending a verdict, the United Nations has urged Denmark to suspend the sale of homes in affected areas, but to no avail.
Ghettos, ethnic enclaves and parallel societies
Immigrants congregating in the same residential neighborhoods is nothing new.
In American social science, the term “ethnic enclave” is a relatively neutral concept that refers to a community dominated by a certain ethnic group or population. Prominent examples include Little Havana in Miami, Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco, or Boston and New York’s Little Italy.
In New York City, Chinatown and Little Italy rub up to each other. AP Photo
Historically, these communities formed their own social support systems, networks and economies in lieu of government support and have become important cultural centers.
But amid high levels of immigration in recent years, many European countries have become less accepting of the idea of immigrant-majority neighborhoods.
In those cases, integration is increasingly being seen as the cornerstone of sustainable immigration policy, even as state policies can be drivers of segregation between ethnic Europeans and immigrant communities.
Indeed, accusations of failed integration are a common political response to rising rates in crime and gang violence in Scandinavia, and Europe more broadly, and are the reasons cited for more restrictive immigration policy. Built into this notion is the assumption that immigrants of non-Western backgrounds are a bad influence on each other – and, in turn, on Europe.
In many European countries, the term “parallel societies” has cropped up. It is used to signal a development in which immigrant communities – predominately Muslim or from the Middle East and North Africa – are deemed not just a threat to local European culture and values but also to public safety.
To some politicians – initially just those on the right, but increasingly in political mainstreams – parallel societies such as those on Denmark’s list are potential breeding grounds for antidemocratic values, delinquency and violence.
Targeting the community
Proponents of Denmark’s current immigrant policy say they want to avoid the rise of gang violence seen in some areas of Sweden and promote a more integrated society.
But opponents of the “ghetto” policy say there is little evidence linking the culture of immigrant communities to problems of public safety. Instead, they point to the seductive techniques of predatory gangs, often online and with leadership based abroad, that target the young, disillusioned or impressionable.
Others say Denmark’s program is an excuse for gentrifying up-and-coming urban areas. Mjølnerparken is part of Nørrebro, selected “the world’s coolest neighborhood” by Time Out for 2021, thanks to its multiculturalism and vibrancy.
While the “Ghetto package” claims to promote integration, it risks alienation. For immigrant communities and critics of the current policy in Denmark, the program raises the question of who is considered part of a national community and identity and who is considered an inherent outsider or threat to it.
“I felt Danish until recently,” an immigrant Danish resident told Al Jazeera in 2020. “The politicians created their ‘parallel society,’ with the bad reputation they’ve given Mjølnerparken so that ethnic Danes don’t want to live here.”
It is a feeling increasingly shared by immigrant groups across the continent. In recent years, European leaders have proposed and implemented anti-immigrant policies that would have been inconceivable in many political mainstreams just a few years ago – even as border crossings into Europe have decreased dramatically.
The Danish experience shows that this new wave of radical anti-immigrant sentiment is not targeting just incoming migrants but settled ones as well.
Selma Hedlund is a post-doctoral associate at the Center for Forced Displacement at Boston University.
Chris Powell: Conn.’s arrogant immigration-law nullifiers
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Upon his inauguration as governor of darkest Alabama in January 1963, George Wallace famously proclaimed his defiance of the federal government on the steps of the state Capitol in Montgomery: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
At a rally on the steps of Connecticut's Capitol this week the state's attorney general, William Tong, struck a similar pose of defiance. He pledged that Connecticut would never distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and would strive to obstruct enforcement of federal immigration law.
"This is the sovereign state of Connecticut," Tong declared. "We delegated limited powers to the federal government, but beyond those powers, Connecticut gets to decide how Connecticut wants to live."
But immigration law is entirely within the authority of the federal government. Connecticut has no sovereignty there. Connecticut doesn't get to decide to live outside federal immigration law any more than Alabama and the other nullification states of the segregationist South got to decide to live outside federal civil rights law.
That the federal government under the administration of Tong's political party lately has failed to enforce immigration law hasn't changed the law, and the recent national election has prompted a change of administrations largely because most voters -- even, it seems, most members of Tong's own party -- want immigration law enforced again. Most people object to the anarchic admission of more than 10 million or more immigrants without normal review and preparations for their housing, schooling, medical care, and policing — a policy failure inflicting much expense and social distress.
The mayors of Hartford, New Haven, Stamford, and Norwalk joined the attorney general at the Capitol, in Hartford, in pledging to defend all immigrants in their cities, legal and illegal alike. "Going after hardworking immigrants in our communities is not going to keep us safe," Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said. "It's going to lead to more fear and uncertainty."
How do Arulampalam and the other mayors know that every illegal immigrant in Connecticut would never do wrong and never become a public charge? How do they know that any criminals, spies, and terrorists who have entered the country illegally are staying outside the state?
Of course they don't. This is just an article of political faith among the woke. If challenged, some of them may sputter that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than the native-born, as if that excuses all crimes by illegal immigrants and excuses admitting anyone without rudimentary vetting.
But the attorney general, the mayors, Gov. Ned Lamont, and state legislators needn't worry about having to make distinctions between legal and illegal immigration; after all, many news organizations won’t ask them to.
Indeed, serious journalists would have asked them by now to comment about the immigration-fraud racket reported the other week by the New Haven Independent -- the marriage broker business operated out of New Haven and Bridgeport city halls by the vice chairwoman of the Bridgeport Democratic City Committee, ballot-harvester extraordinaire Wanda Geter-Pataky, who has been arranging marriages between young U.S. citizens and much older foreigners seeking the right to stay in the country, marriages of people who appear not even to know each other.
The immigration-fraud story was retold by other newspapers in the state, and the attorney general, the mayors, the governor, and state legislators almost certainly saw it, but only a few Republicans expressed concern about it. Presumably the others condone what is happening.
While the attorney general and the mayors were assuring Connecticut that unlimited, unvetted immigration -- open-borders policy -- is nothing to worry about, the police chief of Berlin, Germany, was warning Jews and homosexuals to avoid Arab neighborhoods because, as a result of Germany's open-borders policy, the culture there now threatens them.
That's how uncontrolled immigration has transported Europe back to medieval times. But in Connecticut the attorney general and the city mayors want the federal government to do nothing to restrict the entry of people who might undermine the country's democratic and secular nature. To the attorney general and the mayors, the threat to democracy is President-elect Donald Trump, who would restore ordinary controls on immigration.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
For breakfast?
“As I wait’’ (chromogenic print), by Merik Goma, in the show “Reflection: Remy Sosa & Merik Goma,’’ through Jan. 10 at ECOCA gallery, New Haven, Conn.
Accepting the floods
Northampton scene from the mid 19th Century.
“It is a wonder that Norwood was every allowed to venture so near to the low grounds of the Connecticut {River}; for it was early settled, not far from thirty years after the Pilgrims’ landing. How the temptation to build upon the top of the hill was resisted, we know not.’’
— Henry Ward Beecher on Northampton {“Norwood”), Mass., in Norwood; Or, Village Life in New England, 1868
He died but conspiracy theories seem immortal
The John F Kennedy Library, in Boston. It was designed by I. M. Pei.
Fcb981 photo
Kennedy was assassinated on this date in 1963. I (Robert Whitcomb) remember it well. I was in a high school biology lab cutting open a dead rat when a kid came rushing in saying that “some John Bircher (far righter) shot Kennedy.’’ As it turns out, it was a Communist — unless some exciting conspiracy theories are true. They’ll never die.