Over the Weekend: Unwanted Immigrants in Austria, Bums in Manhattan
Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal reported a crisis in a migrant camp outside Vienna. Glossing over the article leaves you with the impression that the folks living in tents need mercy and compassion. By way of contrast, we learn of this "right wing" party leader's views:
I'm not from Vienna, have never been there, but I have read history. The next story, though hits closer to home. It's one you may have missed Friday's NY Post story.
In any case, the story does hit closer to home. In the 1970s and 1980s, the church to which the article refers was the scene of groups of bums - mostly drug addicts, with a smattering of drunks, lying in singles and groups on the sidewalks. Since we occasionally attended Mass at this church, as a family which means with our young children, I can tell you that it was a great relief when the City of New York finally got its act together and cleared the bums out. Now it seems they're back.
The point of all this is that we read a story and don't always get the real story. In Vienna, thousands of Muslim immigrants, most entering the country without invitation - in other words what we call "illegal" immigrants - now squat on the outskirts of Vienna. Not quite the armies of Ottomans threatening to conquer the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be sure, but you might imagine some of the locals see that connection, as well as sense that these people, who typically express no desire to assimilate in the local culture, represent a new kind of threat. Does mercy and compassion have a role to play here? Probably does. But it's a complex situation and the locals - right wing or not - need to be heard here, without the overtones we read here.
As for the bums, they too have always been with us, only these days we don't call a bum a bum. They're part of the "homeless" problem requiring our mercy and compassion - only if they're really and truly bums, mercy and compassion needs to be served up after they're told to shape up or ship out. The streets are dirty enough in that neighborhood without the added filth of those bums. Really.
One senior local party official, Reinhard Langthaler, said his wife no longer shops in town because she felt uncomfortable being around so many refugees. The local party head, Anton Lojowski, said parents have forbidden children from using the tram stop near the refugee center. As a woman in a burqa walked by, Mr. Lojowski motioned toward her and said: “It’s clear—that over there is not our culture.”We sense a lack of mercy and compassion in such words, don't we? Sounds rather harsh and uncaring. Of course, as is typical in such reporting, the report suppresses what should be the obvious key point: these migrants are Muslims. While the fact that they're Muslims who've entered the country without invitation, whose culture clashes with the locals, doesn't mean they're not deserving of mercy and compassion, the storyline does expand a bit here, doesn't it? Centuries of conflict between the Christian culture of Austria, and Muslim culture, primarily represented by the Ottoman Turks, who for centuries attempted to overrun Vienna may play at least a small role in the attitudes expressed here. At least one might suppose. The salient point here is the story is not simply one of hard-liners taking a stand against a blameless bunch of unfortunates needing mercy and compassion.
I'm not from Vienna, have never been there, but I have read history. The next story, though hits closer to home. It's one you may have missed Friday's NY Post story.
“I have seen drug deals, public urination, defecation, masturbation in broad daylight in the Taras Shevchenko alley,” a Cooper Union faculty member told The Post.
“It’s a place where many homeless congregate to sleep — right in front of a church and between a high school and a college,” the faculty member added.Again, we find similar suppression of the operative word that screams at us through the less dense, but nonetheless somewhat misleading reportage: not Muslims, of course, but bums.
Rosa Hernandez, 48, of Park Slope, sees the group of loiterers every day as she drops her 13-year-old son off at La Salle Academy nearby.
“I’ve seen them drinking beer in the morning,” said the mom.Yes, friends, these are bums, an apt description one simply never sees in print anymore. It's all "homeless" these days, no matter the person's appearance or background. One big lump of "homeless."
In any case, the story does hit closer to home. In the 1970s and 1980s, the church to which the article refers was the scene of groups of bums - mostly drug addicts, with a smattering of drunks, lying in singles and groups on the sidewalks. Since we occasionally attended Mass at this church, as a family which means with our young children, I can tell you that it was a great relief when the City of New York finally got its act together and cleared the bums out. Now it seems they're back.
The point of all this is that we read a story and don't always get the real story. In Vienna, thousands of Muslim immigrants, most entering the country without invitation - in other words what we call "illegal" immigrants - now squat on the outskirts of Vienna. Not quite the armies of Ottomans threatening to conquer the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be sure, but you might imagine some of the locals see that connection, as well as sense that these people, who typically express no desire to assimilate in the local culture, represent a new kind of threat. Does mercy and compassion have a role to play here? Probably does. But it's a complex situation and the locals - right wing or not - need to be heard here, without the overtones we read here.
As for the bums, they too have always been with us, only these days we don't call a bum a bum. They're part of the "homeless" problem requiring our mercy and compassion - only if they're really and truly bums, mercy and compassion needs to be served up after they're told to shape up or ship out. The streets are dirty enough in that neighborhood without the added filth of those bums. Really.
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