border crossing

I had a really sad experience after a pleasant weekend up in Toronto for Gay Pride. I drove. Coming back to the United States, just after crossing the Peace Bridge, at Buffalo, I waited in the shortest line of cars I could see.

The line seemed to move pretty fast. I thought to myself, "Good. Maybe I got lucky and this guy -- I could see the officer getting chatty with drivers in his line, his hand on his heart through much of the conversations -- is a good one." I actually thought to myself, "Maybe he's one of the reasonable ones."

Well...

When it was my turn, I drove up to his window, and handed him my passport. I said, "Hello sir."

He looked at my passport and asked, "Did you land in Canada?"

I wasn't sure what he was asking or why he was asking that, so I hesitated a moment. "No." After all, we had landed in Canada a year and a half ago, and we had come straight home afterwards.

"Do you live there?" he demanded.

"No, I live here, in the U.S. I just went up for the weekend."

"What were you doing?"

"Visiting a friend in Toronto."

Then he asked, "Do you have Ontario plates on your vehicle?"

And I'm thinking..."Aren't you the one in the guard booth? Can't you see or didn't you look?"

"No. I live in the U.S."

"So did you renounce your Canadian residency?" His tone hadn't been warm and welcoming to begin with, but the tone was decidedly unfriendly now.

"No."...thinking to myself, "Why would I?" But I said, simply, "I am a U.S. citizen..."

"I KNOW THAT!" he said, sounding openly irritated as if I'd challenged his intelligence.

Trying to assuage any ruffled feathers, I continued, "I have Canadian residency but I'm American and live in the U.S. I was born here."

It's really not his business why I have Canadian residency, and, since the reason I went to the trouble of getting Canadian residency has everything to do with the fact I'm gay, I'm hardly going to disclose THAT to some unknown policeman at a border crossing, or anywhere else! Police have a long, long, long history of antigay hostility and raging homophobia...there's hardly a more macho-centric profession out there, so we can take no chances.

Then all of a sudden he demanded, in the tone of a dad who had just found an unused condom buried in his 12 year old's drawer of socks, "AND WHAT'S THIS?"

Seriously.

He had my passport open in his hand, and held it out the window of his little booth the way people who'd rather not have to walk someone else's dog might hold the little baggie of fresh poop. His thumb covered most of the information, so I could only see some Arabic script. I knew, from that, that it was one of the two visas from my Christmas trip. I couldn't see which. As I tried to focus (the eyes aren't as young as they used to be), he barked again impatiently, in the same tone as before,

"You went TO SYRIA?!"

Now, I thought to myself, "Yeah. There's no law against it." But I bravely and forthrightly (I thought) said, instead,

"Yeah. It was really great. An interesting place. We went there over Christmas."

"WHAT WERE YOU DOING THERE?" Again, the implied tone was, "you dangerous criminal, you."

Now by that point I was thinking to myself, "What the hell do you think I was doing there you idiot?" But again, I said my internal blessings on him and on myself, and tried to keep things calm and civil and simple, and answered, as he, not waiting for an answer, demanded, "Did you go there for work, or...?"

"Vacation. Christmas vacation."

Thus, if he's paying attention, I get to let him know I'm just a normal every day American. "Christmas", remember? That means I'm CHRISTIAN. Which should be okay in your book.

Then once again, in the same accusatory, hostile tone, he said, "I see you went to JORDAN!"

"Yes."

"What were you doing there?"

"Visiting a friend who lives there."

"Where ELSE did you go when you were overseas?"

Again, I hesitated, unsure what he was asking. I was thinking to myself, "Is he asking me to name all the places I've traveled overseas in my life...?" So, continuing to follow the general principle of simply supplying the answers they ask for, when dealing with cops, I stuck with the immediate topic that seemed to be on his mind, thinking he could supply clarification if he wanted more information...

"...uh, we stopped at Paris for a few days, on the way over..."

"I MEAN IN THE MIDDLE EAST." Again, he said "the Middle East" like it was a collection of really dirty words.

So then I'm thinking to myself, "YOU have my passport in your hand. Do you SEE any other destinations from the Middle East in my passport?!" But once again, I kept calm, then simply and politely supplied the answer.

"No. Only Jordan and Syria."

"When did you come back?"

"That was early last January." Again I repeated, at the risk of 'insulting' his intelligence, "We went over Christmas."

"Where do you live?"

Keep it simple, I thought to myself. If I tell him Maryland is my home, but I work in Pittsburgh, it's just going to complicate things, and then I'll have to explain I maintain my house in Maryland but have an apartment at Pittsburgh, and then I'm going to come off like some elitist who has more than his fair share to some guy who is basically a kind of turnpike attendant, who may only have a high school education, and lives in what is reputed to be one of the ugliest and most depressed cities in the country.

"Maryland."

"Where do you work?"

"I work for the VA."

"The D.A.?"

"The Veterans Administration."

He went back into his booth.

After a moment he emerged again, "What do you do at the VA?"

"I'm an interior designer."

"You're an interior designer?"

"Yes."

"HOLD ON."

He went back into his little booth.

He typed, and he typed. And he looked at a screen over and over again. Several times he looked like he was about to emerge once more, but he jerked back in again at the last minute. Finally, he stuck the passport out his window and said, "You can go."

I don't know if he was entering me into a database of suspicious persons, or checking for me in a database of suspicious persons. I only hope it's the latter. The potential tyranny of one lone jerkoff at a border crossing, whose ignorant, hostile attitude could put a real and lasting damper on my love of travel, for years to come, is just SO depressing.

That was a truly rattling experience, being treated as if I had done something wrong, simply in exercising my curiosity about other parts of this great big world. It was not as if I had gone to Cuba, or Vietnam before travel restrictions were lifted, or Iraq, or North Korea. We may not have diplomats in Syria at the moment but our President is about to change that...which I'd be surprised if this guy, with his ignorant and hostile attitude, even knows.

Then as I got onto the freeway, I saw signs for Lackawanna.

Lackawanna to an interior designer used to mean "leather" the way Detroit means cars. In our brave new Bush world, Lackawanna makes me think of the Lackawanna Six.

I'd be willing to bet my border cop knows about THAT, if he's from Buffalo. And that's sad, because it means he knows about fear of Muslims, fear of the stranger living right in your town, and fear of terrorism. What he probably doesn't know to distinguish -- since for him, The Middle East is like a dirty word -- is that the Lackawanna Six were Yemenis, not Syrian, nor Jordanian, and -- there is still some uncertainty, last I read about it -- not even, necessarily, real terrorists.

I just felt so ashamed of the blatant Islamo-phobia displayed by this young guy. It wouldn't mean anything to him to teach him that Damascus is FULL of Christians. And it has even been home, for some centuries past, to a significant minority population of Jews. A lost cause, his mind closed.

This country can change Presidents. But it can't "change hearts and minds" among our own people...particularly the hearts and minds of those who are closed, and who are happily steeped in ignorance and prejudice.

Sad, sad, sad, all around.

Margaret: for some of us, it's been 300 years

Robert,

There's plenty of anger and disappointment to go around. It's been 6 months, no for some of us, it's been 300 years. Do you know that a lot of Black people expected Barack Obama to take office and immediately start giving African Americans our 20 acres and a mule - literally. Or at least reparations. I mean damn, the Jews got their real estate and art work back, we even paid reparations to the Japanese, Filipinos got citizenship, and every dam body else who arrives by boat, donkey or plane (except the poor Haitians) gets asylum. Aren't we entitled to anything?

This nation was built on the backs of African Americans. Our free labor made The United States of America. We were here before most of the white people who live here now. Our sweat and our blood watered the crops that fed the American agricultural revolution, the American industrial revolution, and every war America has ever fought - including when we fought each other. And what have we gotten in return? The OPPORTUNITY to start all over again, on our own, with nothing. THAT MY FRIEND IS BULLSHIT.

A lot of Black - people are saying they're sorry they voted for Barack - A LOT OF US. They are still poor, they are still broke, they eat garbage, live in 3rd world conditions and the crime in their communities is worse. Their children are still hauled off to jail for nothing and murdered in the streets by cops (Black and White) that take all the racist stereotypes to heart.

I, PERSONALLY, AM HURT, that the pace of change is still incremental. That the 52 African Americans (51 of them women) that the Congressional Research Service furloughed three years ago, have still not seen justice.

I am furious, that Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress has permitted a foreign contractor to run the Madison Building Cafeteria. And that contractor has in the past year done everything possible to destroy the union of those Black cafeteria workers; including firing, without cause, many who have worked there for 20 years, forcing some of the most elderly to perform onerous tasks, and making them wait outside in the cold because they no longer have IDs to enter the building before 8:30

.
I am livid about the United States Congress passing a Climate Change Bill, and right across the street the temperature in my office is so damn cold I need a winter coat. And knowing that it will probably take another act of Congress and new Librarian of Congress to get the change that could save millions of dollars in these three buildings alone. Turn up the GOD DAMN AIR CONDITIONING UP 5 DEGREES during the summer. AND WHEN THE COLD MONTHS ARRIVE, TURN DOWN THE DAMN HEAT 5 DEGREES.

I know you're angry, you are not alone Robert. I feel ya my Brother :-/