World

Postville Redux

New book shows how Iowa town
and the U.S. continue to suffer.

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

since, as the town's population was
decimated and its infrastructure
destroyed.
San Francisco
Media coverage of the
Agriprocessors story has focused on
ostville, Iowa, home of the
the Jewish angle, the specific ten-
now-defunct Agriprocessors sions caused by Orthodox Jews mov-
slaughterhouse, is a rural
ing to the town and creating their
town struggling with diversity,
own separate, privileged world. But
brought down by political indiffer-
while the book's authors acknowl-
ence and a failed immigration pol-
edge the "greed" of the plant's for-
icy,"a little town
mer owners, and
... on the losing
say it was the
end of global
Jewish element
forces bigger than
of the story that
itself and even its
kept the story in
country."
the news, they
That's the
insist it was not
premise of
the deciding fac-
Postville, U.S.A.:
tor in Postville's
Surviving Diversity
downfall.
in Small-Town
Viewed through
America, sched-
a broader socio-
uled for publica-
logical lens,
tion later this
Postville's demise
month. It's an
emerges as even
analysis of what
more tragic than
went wrong 20
it appeared in
years after the
media reports,
MARK DAVE
Brooklyn-based
if
only because
MICHELE DEVLIN
Rubashkin fam-
of
how easily it
ASTON GOLDSMITH
ily created what
could happen
would become the
elsewhere. It's a
nation's largest kosher meatpacking
situation repeated in hundreds of
plant.
towns across the Midwest, say Grey
The slim, 155-page volume is an
and Devlin, as formerly unionized
insider's story by Mark Grey and
factories, facing an increasingly dif-
Michele Devlin, sociologists at the
ficult economy in the 1980s, hired
University of Northern Iowa who
immigrants willing to work for low
specialize in the changing demo-
wages and no benefits.
graphics of the Midwest, and for-
mer Postville City Council member
U.S. Implicated
Aaron Goldsmith, a Lubavitcher
The feds are complicit, they charge:
Chasid active in business and city
While some of the immigrants
politics.
arrived voluntarily, others were
The book's main strength is its
resettled in these towns by federal
authors' intimacy with the story.
agencies and offered up to local
All three spent more than a decade
industry as a compliant workforce.
examining the fragile modus
"This is America's new heartland,"
vivendi constructed as the town's
Devlin said. "Twenty to 40 percent
white, Christian population of 2,000
of the population in these towns are
absorbed some 400 Chasidic Jews
immigrants. The towns can cope
and several thousand immigrant
with the influx from Mexico and
laborers, mostly Latino, who arrived
Central America — they all speak
to work at the kosher plant.
Spanish. But when they get people
The authors provide a month-by-
from Sudan, Somalia, Micronesia,
month chronicle of the time leading
Palau and the inner cities, it's a big
up to the May 2008 federal immigra-
tion raid at the plant and the year
Postville Redux on page 16

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