10 | SEPTEMBER 19 • 2019 

Views

Not A New Problem
Your readers’
 comments 
about the treatment of 
immigrants at our border 
with Mexico prompts me to 
add to the discussion.
Recently I read A Bintel 
Brief: Sixty Years of Letters 
from the Lower East Side to 
the Jewish Daily Forward 
(Doubleday, New York, 
1971). In it, I read a letter 
written in 1909, but which 
eerily describes the current 
situation at the border. One 
hundred mostly Russian 
Jewish males, “unfortunates 
who are imprisoned on Ellis 
Island,” wanted the world 
to know about their living 
conditions there:
“We are packed into a 

room where there is space 
for 200 people, but they 
have crammed in about 
1,000. They don’
t let us 
out into the yard for a little 
fresh air. We lie about on 
the floor in the spittle and 
filth. We’
re wearing the same 
shirts for three or four weeks 
because we don’
t have our 
baggage with us.
“Everyone goes around 
dejected and cries and wails. 
Women with little babies, 
who have come to their 
husbands, are being detained 
… men are separated from 
their wives and children. 
Children get sick. They are 
taken to a hospital, and it 
often happens that they 
never come back.” (p.98-

100)
Since that letter appeared 
110 years ago in the The 
Forward, Congress made 
periodic reviews and updates 
of our immigration and 
naturalization law. It is not 
as if Congress vegetated — 
between wars and economic 
crises they’
ve enacted 
legislation providing Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid 
and other beneficial 
programs. Legislation that 
provides humane treatment 
for large numbers of 
refugees, however, remains 
little more than a campaign 
promise of 21st-century 
election cycles.
Development of a 
workable, affordable 

letters

Detroit Edison, Michigan 
Consolidated Gas Company 
(MichCon) and Michigan Bell 
were putting up structural 
barriers to families when they 
most needed reliable utilities. 
The hefty deposit for new cus-
tomers, rigid billing practices 
and bureaucratic penalties — 
all by regulated utilities — put 
low-income families at undue 
risk of being cut off and left 
out in the cold.
3. Nothing about us with-
out us. The University of 
Detroit law clinic agreed to 
represent Westside Moms in 
their action against the util-
ities. After U of D secured 
power of attorney and reached 
a serviceable settlement with-
out consulting with their 
clients, Westside Moms fired 
them and rejected the settle-
ment. Instead, they worked 
directly with the Public 
Service Commission for more 
favorable terms with Detroit 
Edison.
Westside Mothers went on 
to win one lawsuit after anoth-

er, securing, among other 
things, an annual clothing 
allowance, standardized criteria 
for free school lunches and 
rules prohibiting schools from 
using “dry lunch” as a way to 
punish misbehaving students.
Selma never represented 
Westside Moms without at 
least one of them present and 
empowered to speak to her 
own experiences.
For all its judicial and regu-
latory success, Westside Moms 
was just as persistent in the 
court of public opinion. They 
picketed Michcon for weeks 
before securing a first-of-its-
kind payment play for ADC 
families that guaranteed no 
shutoffs for participants. 
In 1981 (“Julia was 17”), 
Westside Mothers marched 
100 miles to Lansing to pre-
vent welfare payments from 
being cut 5 percent. “Hello, 
Mrs. Goode,” Gov. Milliken’
s 
plain-clothes bodyguards 
would say with grudging 
respect and peace of mind 
that her stated goal to “hound 

Milliken to death” was figu-
rative. 
To boot, Selma wrote the 
editors of the Detroit Free Press, 
“We do need ‘
reform’
 in the 
food stamp program. Get rid 
of the phonies, who exist more 
in President Ford’
s imagination 
than in reality … but make 
food stamps available to those 
in need. That $50 a month 
bonus for a low-income family 
can be just enough to keep a 
family together.”
At its peak, Westside 
Mothers boasted 2,500 
dues-paying members, whose 
advocacy has touched millions 
of lives. All the more remark-
able to have captured such 
solidarity among the sick and 
tired — parents who just want 
their kids to have a chance 
at a better life. Parents who 
needed to hear the hook from 
Westside Mothers’
 print mate-
rials and Selma’
s stories so they 
could move from the singular 
to the plural:
“No problem is more 
important than yours ...” 

Jewfro from page 5
Tobin from page 8

in solidifying the alliance with 
Israel. The U.S. withdrawal 
from the 2015 nuclear deal and 
the re-imposition of devastating 
sanctions that have brought 
Iran’
s economy to its knees soon 
followed.
Still, having achieved so 
much, despite the opposition 
of the Democrats at home and 
America’
s feckless European allies 
abroad, T
rump is now interested 
in talking with the Iranians.
That appalled Bolton, as it did 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu. Both believe that 
negotiations with Islamist 
dictators will never achieve a 
thing, and both fear that talks 
with Iran will inevitably lead to 
appeasement. 
In theory, such a meeting 
doesn’
t undermine the “max-
imum pressure” policy that 
Pompeo and Bolton have been 
implementing. Indeed, an 
Iranian realization that they 
must talk with the United States 
and make concessions was the 
goal of that policy, not a war 
that no one wants.
No harm will come from a 
meeting as long as the president 
and his team stand their ground 
on the nuclear and terrorism 
issues. Most importantly, they 
must not pay for a photo oppor-
tunity by lifting the sanctions 
that are backing the Iranians 
into a corner.
Though he might not have 
enjoyed working with Bolton, 
T
rump benefited from his hard-
boiled and realistic view of bad 
international actors. If the pres-
ident chooses to listen instead 
to the voices urging him to 
undermine America’
s long-term 
security interests by abandoning 
its overseas responsibilities, then 
we may look back at this as the 
moment when Trump started to 
repeat some of Obama’
s mistakes 
in the Middle East. 

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of 
JNS — Jewish News Syndicate. 

continued on page 12

