Tough time to be a patriot - musing on the belief 'from many one'

Congressman Richie Neal

I hate to say I told you so, but…

Last week, I wrote about ongoing tensions at the 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan.  I suggested that factions had to come together because, to many younger New Yorkers, the events of September 11 are as hazy as the events of

Pearl Harbor or Guadalcanal or Lexington and Concord.

If the process for planning the memorial drags on, or does not tell the story of 9/11 accurately and vividly, future generations might not grasp the magnitude of that terrible day.

Lo and behold, what happened this week? A bunch of middle school kids took a field trip to the 9/11 Memorial and trashed the place.

But what’s the answer?  More museums?  Better memorials? More severe punishments for misbehaving kids?

With the Fourth of July once again upon us, it is a fair time to raise these questions.  If the loutish behavior of these kids at the 9/11 Memorial proves that some don’t know what it means to be a real New Yorker, it’s also pretty clear we still don’t know what it means to be a real American.

Every Fourth of July, for example, we hear about a ceremony in which 100 or 1,000 immigrants are officially declared U.S. citizens.  This will be comforting, in part because the U.S. Supreme Court on

Monday upheld a key provision of an Arizona law allowing local police officers to investigate the immigration status of suspects detained for other alleged crimes.

Do you have your papers?  Great!  Happy Fourth of July to you, too!

Of course, it’s silly to believe anything so staid and quaint as a museum will douse the longstanding suspicions many Americans have about immigration.  Still, such institutions do play an important role. 

At their best, they remind us of the ideal contained in the immortal phrase E Pluribus Unum.  That motto (“from many..one”) might as well be the alternative name for the

National Museum for the American People, a proposed Washington D.C. museum that would attempt to tell the stories of all immigrant groups (among other groups). 

This might ultimately help visitors see just how “American” so many of these stories really are.

Congressman Richard Neal and the Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus have already signed on as supporters of the National Museum of the American People.

“The genesis for the idea to build a new national museum occurred more than 10 years ago as I walked by the Agriculture Department headquarters building along the National Mall in Washington,” Sam Eskenazi has explained. 

Eskenazi is spearheading the effort to construct the National Museum of the American People.

“I asked myself, ‘If this were a museum, what kind of museum could it be?’ The answer -- a museum that would tell the stories of all of the peoples coming to this land.

“I came up with a name for the museum on the spot. It is a testament to the need for the museum that many people, when told about the proposal, were surprised that such a museum doesn't already exist.”

Such a proposed museum would serve as a testament to both the unique stories of all immigrant communities, as well as their common obstacles and goals.

Some have even dubbed Eskenazi’s proposal the National Immigration Museum or the “Melting Pot” Museum.

Of course, things are not so simple. 

For example, there is currently a proposal to build a separate Irish American museum in Washington D.C. Indeed, many ethnic groups already have their own, or want to build their own, museums.

And let’s not forget the bumpy road of the American Catholic Museum, which finally closed in 2012.

Several Hispanic heritage groups have also chosen not to support the National Museum concept.  They and others understandably feel their stories are so unique and powerful they need to be told individually, rather than as part of a broader narrative.

Eskenazi has years of experience working at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, not to mention leading a U.S. Army platoon in Vietnam.  He looks like the right man to lead the cause of the National Museum of the American People.

But, for now, we remain a nation split between the “pluribus” and the “unum.” Happy Fourth of July!

Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.

Mission of 9/11 Memorial is to recall the day's events and honor those who died

Police Officer Moira Smith

I am a high school English teacher.  Next September, a new crop of ninth graders will enter my high school.  And on September 11, we will surely acknowledge the 12th anniversary of the attacks that changed New York forever.

Eventually, we will also acknowledge another important point -- that most of the students were about three years old on September 11, 2001. 

Meaning the attacks were not personal to them.  They are, literally, history.

And in the years since, young people have learned as much about the attacks from crackpot Internet conspiracy theorists as they have from family, friends and history books.

This is what occurred to me this week as governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie called on the federal government to save the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center site.

Specifically, the governors of New York and New Jersey called for the National Park Service to become a central player in funding and managing the museum and memorial site, which is currently open to the public but incomplete.

"As governors of the states with jurisdiction over the World Trade Center site, we believe that federal support through the National Park Service would ensure long term stability of the memorial and museum, ensure the best possible visitor experience by taking advantage of the Park Service's expertise," Cuomo and Christie said in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
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Some in Congress and the Senate support the funding.  Others think it is irresponsible to spend money the federal government doesn’t have unless deeper cuts are made elsewhere.

There is a tendency to see this just as yet another skirmish between local and national politicians, a cheap squabble which leaves you tempted to hate everyone involved.

But think back to my ninth graders and even younger students.  At best, they will soon equate 9/11 will other important historical events such as Watergate or Pearl Harbor.

And if you’ve ever heard an average ninth grader talk about “important historical events,” you should be concerned.  Very concerned.

The Irish American community, in particular, should make sure a thorough portrait of the events of that terrible day is presented at the memorial and museum. 

Think of the selfless heroism of New York police officer Moira Smith, or firefighter Sean Tallon.  The sheer number of uniformed rescue workers with Irish names who served that day remains staggering. 

Then there are the white collar workers who were the first in their families to go to college.  And the ironworkers who helped clear the site in the harrowing weeks after the attack. 

It is no exaggeration to say that you can tell the history of the Irish in New York through the events of 9/11.

Anyway, that is a small part of what subsequent generations of New Yorkers should walk away from the memorial and museum understanding.  And maybe they will.

But right now, that mission is in jeopardy. And money is only a small part of the problem.

There are also problems with what should and should not be included in the exhibits.  Some families, for example, were upset when it was announced that photos of the terrorists who flew the planes into the towers might be included in the museum.

Others – such as Tallon’s family – object to the sensitive topic of human remains at the site.

As The New York Times recently noted, “Many families are upset about a plan to place approximately 14,000 unidentified or unclaimed remains of those who died — typically bone fragments or dried bits of tissue — in the museum below ground. Seventeen family members have filed suit against the city as part of an effort to reopen the decision. They view it as degrading to set the remains in a museum below ground.”

Debates such as these are grueling. However, they are not only necessary, they are healthy. 

So long as everyone has a single goal in mind -- to vividly recall the events of that day and honor those who sacrificed.

If we don’t ultimately accomplish that mission, it will be yet another heartbreaking loss for future generations of New Yorkers.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The Fighting Irish and evolution of ice hockey in the US

Now they want to blame the Irish for all of the fighting and violence we see in hockey?

Okay, so it’s not quite that simple.  But there’s a theory going around that the Irish played a central role in the evolution of hockey, and in particular the sport’s infamous acceptance of violence.

It’s been a tough week for hockey fans in the New York area. 

First the New York Rangers – led by Irish American captain Ryan Callahan and Massachusetts-born star Brian Boyle – were bounced from the Stanley Cup playoffs after a stellar season as arguably the best team in the league.

Then, in the Stanley Cup finals, the New Jersey Devils went down three games to none to the Los Angeles Kings.  The Devils fought back, winning two games, before getting spanked 6-1 in Game six, giving the L.A. Kings their first hockey title ever.

Either way, it is worth noting that the Stanley Cup battle was fought between two American teams.

This even though hockey is the quintessential Canadian sport. 

Not only that, but it is the only sport in which, even today, fighting plays a more or less acceptable role. 

Yes, whenever two players throw down the gloves and start hammering each other, they will face a penalty.  But not before someone is declared a winner, and both understand they will probably be fighting again someday soon.

The question has lingered: Why does hockey have this casual attitude towards fighting?  That’s where the Irish come in.

Those attempting to untangle this relationship between hockey and fighting inevitably go back to the roots of the game.  The most intriguing theory of late comes from author and New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik. 

Gopnik, a Canadian, suggests that fighting on the ice was a result of broader ethnic tensions in Canada.

“The first organized hockey games were played (in Montreal) in 1875 by English-Canadian rugby players looking for a winter sport,” The New York Times noted back in December, in a report about Gopnik’s theory.

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 “For the first 20 years or so, the players were mostly members of Montreal’s English and Scottish elite; French Canadians joined in the 1890s, when the Catholic Church in Quebec started to drop its resistance to sports. Montreal’s Irish, as English-speaking Catholics, occupied a kind of middle ground between the Protestant Anglo-Scots elite and the Catholic French majority.”

Naturally, international politics manifested itself on the ice.

The Times noted, “They all had their own hockey clubs, some of whose names are still etched on the Stanley Cup: the Scottish, represented by the thistle on Montreal’s flag, had the Victorias; the English, with the rose, had the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association; the Irish had the Shamrocks; and the French, of the fleur-de-lis, had the National and the Montagnards.

“The Shamrocks often allied with French clubs against the English and the Scottish in disputes over who would be allowed into the top leagues.”

And so, since these ethnic groups hated each other on the national stage, it makes a certain kind of sense that if you handed them sticks and had them skate at each other at high speeds, they might start brawling.

On the other hand, others believe Gopnik’s theory might be a little simplistic.

Historian Michel Vigneault is considered the first scholar to link hockey violence with Canada’s ethnic tension.  He did so in his 2001 Laval University doctoral thesis.

Now a teacher at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Vigneault has suggested that the actual roots of hockey violence might lie in lacrosse. This was Montreal’s most popular sport in the mid-to-late 19th Century.

“In lacrosse then, fights were legendary,” Vigneault told the Times. “Most of the hockey players were lacrosse players then.” 

Others have even suggested, as the Times notes, that “ancient Gaelic field games Irish hurling and Scottish shinty…sometimes played on ice, contain the seeds for hockey’s violence.”

Perhaps.  Though that’s no comfort, right now, to Devils and Rangers fans.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Don’t forget the Irish rabble rousers - 'Activist New York'

Activist New York  exhibition opens at Museum of the City of New York    

The year was 1981.  It was early May, the weather was turning warm, and the New York Yankees were on their way to another World Series – though not before Major League Baseball players went on strike, resulting in a short, strange season.

On May 5, 1981, Irish New Yorkers poured out into the streets when news came out of Belfast that Republican hunger striker Bobby Sands had died. An estimated 10,000 people closed off several blocks in Manhattan near the British consulate. 

On the waterfront, longshoremen called for a one day boycott of British shipping, while others proposed a national boycott of British Airways. Finally, Transit Workers Union head John Lawe called for members to drive with headlights on all day to acknowledge Sands' death.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street and gay marriage, protest and the change it spurs is very much in the news.  So much so that the Museum of the City of New York recently opened a new exhibit called “Activist New York.” 

The exhibit, according to organizers, “explores the drama of social activism in New York City from the 17th century right up to the present. In a town renowned for its in-your-face persona, citizens of the city have banded together on issues as diverse as historic preservation, civil rights, wages, sexual orientation and religious freedom.”

The issues the exhibit explores are undoubtedly important. But it would have certainly added an interesting dynamic to the exhibit if it also explored the way various immigrants have championed their national causes and the way ethnic enclaves around New York responded.

Needless to say, Irish New York rabble rousers have had their share of moments in the “Activist New York” spotlight.

There was, of course, the moment when Sands’ death shed light on the problem of The Troubles in the North.  That was at the start of the 1980s. 

By the end of that turbulent decade, a Belfast fellow named Joseph Patrick Thomas Doherty -- and his many supporters --made Northern Ireland an important issue in the 1989 race to be New York City mayor.

Doherty was arrested while working at a Manhattan bar, accused of serving as an active IRA soldier.
The British wanted him returned to the U.K., and while serving as U.S. attorney in charge of the case, Rudy Giuliani earned many enemies in the Irish community.

That Northern Ireland would become a flashpoint in the 1989 race for New York mayor was unlikely, to say the least.  That year, crime and racial tension were spiraling out of control. 

David Dinkins was aiming to become New York’s first African American mayor.  And yet, both Dinkins and his opponent Giuliani were forced to have “full-fledged policies about the former Irish Republican Army guerrilla,” The New York Times reported at the time, adding that “the 'Doherty issue’ … could sway votes in the mayoral election.”

This, of course, was a testament to Irish organizers harnessing the network of Irish American support across the five boroughs.

Then again, perhaps this should be no surprise because the Irish have been loud and proud members of “Activist New York” for decades.

Many Irish New Yorkers were fierce in their support for the 1916 Easter Rising, and nationalist rallies in venues such as Madison Square Garden attracted upwards of 20,000 Irish American supporters.

Visits by the likes of Eamon de Valera were also popular – and controversial. 

After all, during the World War I era, many criticized the notion of “hyphenated Americans” who could feel loyalty for both Ireland and the U.S.

After World War I, Irish-born activists in New York used their political skills to found the Transit Workers Union. 

The Irish are a particularly interesting study in activism because subsequent visits by nationalist leaders – think Bernadette Devlin in the late 1960s – rallied support in some parts of the Irish American community, but also alienated many others.

So, if you go to visit “Activist New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, realize that it tells a good story. But it is only part of the story.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)