Hot Works Presents
North Oakland County Art Festival
August 14-16, 2009
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World class artists at Olds World Canterbury Village,
a 19th century village and designated historical landmark.
2369 Joslyn Ct, Lake Orion, MI 48360
FREE ADMISSION and FREE PARKING
Friday 6pm-9pm, Saturday 10-8, Sunday 10-5
Free Live Entertainment • Great beverages and food
• Interactive Demonstrations • More!
The Chadwick Group, VC, Teen Art Competition
Grades 9-12 or ages 1319
Produced by Hot Works, LLC, the same company that
produces the award-winning Orchard Lake Fine Art Show
www.HotWorks.org
you missed the Orchard Lake Fine Art Show, you wilt
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16
August 13 - 2009
Postville Redux from page 15
deal for these little towns. They're
overburdened and under-resourced."
Postville was handling its diversity
quite well, the authors claim, until
the massive immigration raid ripped
hundreds of families apart and
pushed Agriprocessors into bank-
ruptcy. In one particularly heart-
breaking chapter, Devlin and Grey
provide an eyewitness account of the
entire operation, including a detailed
look inside the makeshift detention
camp where detained workers were
held incommunicado.
The authors paint a damning
picture of the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security's immigration
arm, which conducted the raid, as
well as the federal court that cooper-
ated to railroad nearly 300 illegal
aliens, mainly Guatemalans, into
plea bargains obtained under false
pretenses. The U.S. Supreme Court
has since forbidden such tactics,
but that doesn't help Postville. To
date, the authors note, neither the
town nor its defeated workforce has
received any federal aid.
Grey and Devlin do not
investigate the role played by
Agriprocessors or its former owners
in Postville's downfall, saying they
are sociologists, not lawyers or
investigative journalists. Former
Agriprocessors manager Sholom
Rubashkin and three other plant
managers go on trial Sept. 15 for
federal charges, including harboring
illegal immigrants, plus wire,
mail and bank fraud. The four
defendants plus Aaron Rubashkin,
Sholom's father and president of
Agriprocessors, will be tried next
year on more than 9,000 charges of
state child labor law violations.
The authors' hands-off approach
to the plant and its owners is
understandable from a legal
perspective — as of press time, the
trials have not yet begun — but it
leaves a gaping hole in the book's
portrait of the myriad forces that
brought Postville to its knees.
Postville's population since the
raid has shrunk by 40 percent and
its tax base has been destroyed.
Fewer than 50 Latinos remain
from a former population of more
than 1,000, most of them formerly
detained illegals ordered to testify in
the Sept. 15 trial.
Approximately 250 Jews also
remain, unable to sell their homes
About half are Lubavitchers, some
of whom are worried, Goldsmith
reports, that they will not be rehired
by the plant's new owners, SFIF
Industries, a company formed in
May by Canadian plastics manufac-
turer Hershey Friedman. Lubavitch
kosher slaughter, or shechita, is
increasingly unpopular in many
Orthodox circles because of con-
cerns regarding Chabad Messianism.
Authors' Points
In a nine-point lesson list, the
authors demand an overhaul of the
country's immigration policy, more
help from government and industry
for towns struggling with the effects
of globalization, and ways to compel
industries and organizations that
deal with immigrants to adhere
to "the highest ethical, legal and
humane standards."
But, as long as Americans con-
tinue to demand cheap food, they
write, little will change.
"Many Americans are in absolute
denial that the bulk of their pro-
cessed and packaged food comes
from illegal labor:' Devlin says. "It's
a triangle: employers who want
maximum profit, workers who need
the work and consumers who want
cheap food."
Maybe people expected too much
from Postville, the book concludes.
"The town never was and never
could be a multicultural paradise," it
states. "Many outsiders — individu-
als, organizations, and the media
— believed they had the right to
make Postville what they wanted it
to be."
❑
Answering
Israel's Critics
The Charge
A guest columnist in the Wall Street
Journal last month noted that,
in the last three years, Israel has
been criticized 87 times by Human
Rights Watch.
The Answer
The columnist also pointed out
Human Rights Watch's unfairness
as in the same period it criticized
Palestinians only eight times,
Hezbollah just four times.
- Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Relations Council
of Metropolitan Detroit
© Jewish Renaissance Media, Aug. 13, 2009