Another 50 Years of Immigrants Including Gay Ones

                                                                                        Fifty Years

Every ten years or so you have an event that either seals the progress that we’ve made or it changes the direction in which the country is been headed.  On August 28, 1963, in front of the Lincoln memorial about 250,000 people watched Dr. Luther King make the “I have a Dream Speech” The speech alone did not in itself make any changes.  Words alone never do. The speech instead was the beginning of a determination by the country that a change needed to happen. That we are one country and no one people's regardless of when they migrated have an exclusive right to it. Every race that migrated here be for better opportunities or for war or just politics have had to fight not only the different customs and language but the previous migrants here. 


When I arrive from Puerto Rico I was shocked that I had just missed riots two blocks away from my neighborhood which was at the end of a few blocks of Puerto Ricans. They had their own bodega and the old slow L train for transportation. They stayed within their own. But two blocks away where my sister lived since they built this 4 or 5 twenty stories high towers of NYCHA projects. The people in the projects were brought in from other places, the neighborhood being old Italian. The Puerto Ricans living there were too little of a minority to be too much notice but the blacks that came in to take the apartments from NYCHA many with young kids and teenagers did not blend in well with the residents there which mainly lived in old town homes. This is the area of De Kalb Avenue not far from Pratt Institute. I was so shock to hear that there were riots between the younger Italians and the younger blacks right on the streets with casualties.

The first thing I learn from my family was security. What to do what not to do. How to walk, how to look at people. When I was visiting my sister on De Kalb Ave. (she lived on the 19th floor) I was told with what type of people I should take the elevator with. After that I was to learn my english and do well in school. 

What the government did (with well intentions) was to break up an old neighborhood with new people coming in different from every body else. If the opposite would have been done in the middle of Harlem then, you would have had the same results.

Today you have a different Harlem altogether no longer a Ghetto. Those times when I got to NYC at the very end of the 60’s for it was a nightmare. As much as I wanted to come to NY now I wanted to live I have now changed my mind and seriously considered going to live with my Dad in Puerto Rico which in itself was a desperate thing for me to even think. I did not get long with my father so for me to think of going back those not make sense to me even today. When we came to NYC my father stayed behind. He said he was not going to live like 'birds on top of trees’. He stayed in his house alone until he died at age 92. That was part of what I saw I as very young kid. I begged my mom to get us out of Brooklyn, I did not want to stay at my school. In six months we were living in downtown Manhattan by the water and everything change. There the problem was drug use but that never touch me. I guess being born out of that environment I saw it as something dangerous for me and no good reason to do any of it, not even pot.

My coming here a citizen and coming from part of the US, Puerto Rico which was won by  the US and given by Spain as trophy for winning the Spanish-American war. If it was hard for me I could  think other races that emigrated to the US. The Mexicans get the worse of the blame for unemployment to drugs and crime. But there are so many thousands that migrate  through airplanes and boats but they are invisible and no one ever mentions them. Those others you wont see at the unemployment office but you will see at the medicaid office. 

This is just a personal observance knowing by my experience that the Mexicans get a raw deal for what ever reasons. May be it goes back to the Alamo and the time we took the lower west coast from them like California, Texas , etc. We have gone to war with other nations and we don’t treat their emigrants the same way. Imagine how secure we would be if Mexico was just like our neighbor in the North, Canada. The problem for Mexico is like unlike Canada they have a southern border through which even mice gets to cross without a lot of problems. For what ever reasons we have never put on effort in having a strong Mexico. May be the thinkers in Washington believe that they might take Texas back if they were a strong country again.

We had an awful ending to the life of Martin Luther King but I am thankful that the message never got lost and we still as a nation or at least 51% of it believe in justice and equality for all. The latest minority to claim it’s right to the american dream is the gay community. We say we are different from others. We can have civil rights if we just denied who we are and marry whom they tell us to marry. Just think about that and you will see that denying that you are Italian and the rest of society says to marry german because they tell you that’s the way it was intended by tradition and god. Think about what is wrong with that. The LGTB minority which might not even be if everyone came out has to whom, we are. 

We cannot married what tradition said we should married. We need to marry our own. We call in the dream of Martin Luther King.  We call in the rights given by the constitution on this nation. 

St Marks Place

I am glad that my dear mother made the decision to leave her husband and house behind and bring us to the NYork she heard about. The New York that took one of her two brothers, still she was eager to come like this place was built for her. She only went back to visit but that was not too often.
She came here already at the end of midlife but here she blossom like never before. In the learning the language in her job and the people she met.  She went to work for the fist time in her life and she loved it. She had 12 kids and working and getting paid was better than to keep giving my dad kids.
The Dream worked for the one that wanted it in my family that migrated to NYC. We all became better for it.

As NYC proved again what kind of people live here, we got the right to marry in this state. As the first black President acknowledged us as americans that should have all the rights american have we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Plenty still to go.  As the gay friendlier states open up their doors to us the rest would have to be won in the courts. But others have done it, it’s our turn, it’s our century. Hopefully we will built bridges with other minorities that understand what it is to live in a land and be invisible. Those bridges will help us get to the other side. 
Adam Gonzalez