Saturday, January 1st, 2005
A New Year is beginning, and I must say I'm having trouble keeping my spirits up. The unspeakable horror of the tragedy in Asia one day after Christmas was no help.
"All Christmas trees should be turned off, all New Year's Eve parties should be canceled," said Ricardo Cevallos, a young Ecuadoran immigrant.
"I feel that the whole world should stop to mourn for this horrible human tragedy, and that every country has an obligation to help," he said Wednesday at a Corona restaurant.
Yes, the magnitude of the horror and devastation inflicted by nature upon Asia demands that kind of pained solidarity.
Life, though, goes on and the rest of the world still joyfully welcomed 2005 - and the hopes and possibilities every new year brings with it.
We asked several New York activists what those hopes and possibilities were for them. We did not find any wide-eyed optimism among them, just a solid commitment to go on struggling.
For Leslie Cagan, leader of United for Peace and Justice, organizer of the city's largest marches against the war, 2005 means a lot more hard work.
"The Bush administration's long-term plans are not clear," she said. "But there is no indication that they plan to leave Iraq. This means that the horrors of the war will continue with thousands more dying.
"This year more anti-war activists will join the peace movement, and we plan to escalate our tactics," Cagan added. "There will be more civil disobedience and new actions directed [at] the companies that are profiting from the war.
"This month or in February, Bush plans to ask Congress for $100 billion more for the war," Cagan said. "But if they have that kind of money, it should not be used for further destruction. It should be used to help the hundreds of thousands of victims of the tragedy in Southeast Asia."
The Rev. Carlos Mullins, an Argentine Catholic priest who works at St. Dominick's Church in the Bronx, has been a force in the community for many years. He is not optimistic.
"I confess that I start 2005 with few illusions that peace will come to Iraq, which I think is an unjustifiable war," he said. "But we cannot be total skeptics because we have to keep working for peace and for the well-being of the people of New York."
Ana María Archila, the youthful executive director of the Queens Latin American Integration Center, had this to say:
"I hope that in 2005 President Bush will use his political capital to push for a sensible, fair immigration reform, because the one he has proposed is not acceptable. What he has proposed is long-term deportation, with immigrants doing tough, low-paying jobs and paying taxes for a number of years only to be sent back to their countries."
"Also," Archila added, "2004 has been a bad year for immigrants. We've been unjustly criminalized with the excuse of national security. We'll work very hard to change that in 2005."
Finally, we spoke with Dr. Lucy Cabrera, president and CEO of the Bronx-based Food Bank for New York City, the country's largest food bank. Her organization helps thousands of hungry New Yorkers every year.
"Peace in the world is my greatest wish for 2005," she said. "For New York my wish is that people have jobs that pay living wages so they can support their families and not depend on emergency food assistance."
Peace, justice, solidarity and a measure of prosperity. Those are the hopes of these activists for the new year. And we support them wholeheartedly.
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