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Feedback on the Marcelo Lucero Case From American Samoa

Posted April 1, 2010 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Hate Watch

From time to time, LIW highlights reader comments. Here’s feedback from Mark Wexelbaum, a reader in American Samoa who has been following the Marcelo Lucero murder case:

To the Long Island Wins bloggers and staff,

I am originally from Long Island—grew up only a few miles away from where these hate crimes have been perpetrated. It makes me angry and somewhat ashamed.

I just wanted everyone to know that I think all of you are doing excellent work and fighting the good fight, and that your message is even getting out to a somewhat remote place like American Samoa, or AS, as we call it. AS is a very small, unorganized, unincorporated U.S. South Pacific island territory west of Hawaii, about 500 miles from Fiji, and just south of the equator, in the tropical zone.

I agree with what you folks are doing, but I simply wish someone could tackle another problem that contributes to this immigration problem, that being the long and poor history of U.S. - Latin American relations. It can be argued that this relationship contributes to the extremely poor / low standard of living in many
of the Latin American nations that many of the immigrants—documented and undocumented—are running from in the first place.

Additionally, I also would like to praise the fine writing of Maryann Sinclair Slutsky as it relates to the Long Island Wins trial coverage. I was especially pleased to see the use of the phrase “common humanity” at the end of the third to last paragraph. Unfortunately, this is not a more commonly used phrase in various aspects of public discourse, but nevertheless it is a phrase that resonates with me, because common humanity in our multicultural world lies at the heart of all we have.

Thanks again for all of your good work!

Sincerely,

Mark Wexelbaum

A quick response:

Mark-

Thanks so much for your feedback, and for putting us on the map in the South Pacific (literally, our web traffic stats now include American Samoa alongside many Long Island towns).

There’s surely a correlation between U.S.-Latin American economic policy and migration patterns. While Long Island Wins doesn’t generally deal with foreign policy and global economics, in January I traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, as part of a delegation examining the root causes of migration.

While in Oaxaca, I blogged extensively about what we saw and heard. That included a trip to a Oaxacan migration shelter, lectures about the impact of NAFTA, and a visit to a small village decimated by migration. One of these days, I’ll write up a summary of the entire trip and post it to the website, but for now, you can click here for an index of the blog posts.

In the future, however, I’d like to write more about the roots of migration, and I appreciate the suggestion.

Best-

Ted Hesson

Tags : american samoa, hate crimes, marcelo lucero, oaxaca, roots of migration

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