Codger: A cold season

When the barbarians reached the gate last week, actually breaching the North Ferry line, Codger felt the depth of this mean and stony cold season. There was no more comfort in the cocoon of Shelter Island. Masked agents were roaming Greenport, harassing and arresting residents. They were only a short boat-ride away.

Codger was raised in the post-World War II “It can’t happen here” era; his parents’ generation had defeated the Nazis for all time, he was taught. That democracy, like a faith or a marriage, needs tending, has been mostly taken for granted. Codger understood that life as he had lived it was under attack, but there was still some distance, he thought, some time to respond. Republicans would come to their senses. The monster would be brought down.

Codger, like most of his friends, has been thinking of little else for too long now, yet his own sense of denial began to melt only three weeks ago in a freeze-frame after the big snowstorm: He was sitting in his warm house watching three Latino men wrestle with his snow. He knew and liked them from past work. He did not know their citizen status or if they were targets of the same gang of thugs currently terrorizing Minneapolis and making sporadic forays into the East End. He assumed he was safer than they were. But maybe only for now. Citizens were being gunned down.

This was one day after Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse, was killed while observing ICE incursions, 18 days after Renee Good, poet and mother of three, was killed.

It was all coming closer. What would people like Codger and his friends, seemingly unaffected so far, do about it? A week later, Shelter Islanders held a vigil in front of the Community Center, at night in 18 degrees.

Codger thinks a passive demonstration evokes both pathos and courage. Pathetic in the sense that non-violence always seems weak in the face of blatant aggression, however brave in its restraint and promise of commitment. It is also the strategy most likely to succeed in the long run. The history of the campaigns for civil rights and women’s rights is the best current lesson: Keep coming and ultimately the secret police and the criminal lunatic who sent them will get the message.

Codger felt very proud of his neighbors at the vigil that night, especially those who participated in the ceremony, including the Rev. Stephen Adkison, pastor of the Presbyterian Church; Julie Fanelli and Cat Brigham, who read messages from other activist groups; Erland Zygmuntowicz, who sang and played the guitar; and Lora Lomuscio, who read a poem honoring the most prominent recent victims of ICE. 

As media shrinks — and too often shrinks from its duties to bear witness and inform — the involvement of everyday people who may not as yet have been directly affected by the crisis becomes more critical, even if it is seen as preaching to the choir. But not for too much longer, as ICE moves closer, and preparations for response evolve. At one point, reminding people of their rights not to speak to agents or allow them to search their homes and cars without a judicial warrant, seemed important. Less so now as rights and court orders are increasingly disregarded.

More important now, according to activists here and in Minneapolis, is organizing groups to lower the vulnerability of people who may be targets of the secret police by driving them to work sites, doing their shopping and acting as look-outs. The shrilling of warning whistles has become a sound-track of resistance to totalitarian actions. 

An organization in the vanguard of rapid response to ICE is Organizacion de Latino Americana (OLA), which describes itself as the East End’s largest Latino and immigrant focused nonprofit. Those who might want to join its “Operation to Stand & Protect” to witness and document ICE activity can text their names to 631-500-5001.

Codger hasn’t given up on the ballot. Every election from school board to presidency becomes a test. A good goal is getting rid of Rep. Nick LaLota, who trumpets the administration line to the detriment of all, Codger thinks, his constituents.

Last week, a quarter of Greenport’s students stayed away from school as armed masked agents moved through the streets. Three men were reported arrested, all long-time residents of the area, none with criminal records. One of them was Hugo Leonel Ardon Osorio, reportedly pulled off the North Ferry line on his way to work at Marcello Masonry. Crone remembers him on the crew several years ago that rebuilt Codger and Crone’s driveway. 

The snows returned last weekend, and so did the three men who cleared it away last time. Codger was happy to see them. He has a whistle.