Letter from Salem, MA

Two Americas; One Marxist

From time to time, for family reasons, Brian and I visit the charming Massachusetts town of Salem. Yes, that Salem — home of the famous witch trials in 1692-1693, during which a contagious frenzy led to accusations against 200 people of practicing witchcraft, to mass hysteria, and eventually to executions, mostly by hanging, of over twenty people. Women and men accused of witchcraft were denied speedy trials and left to languish in prison, or were tortured. One man was pressed to death by stones.

When the frenzy had passed, almost no one took responsibility for the hysteria that had swept up the community, involving its leading citizens. Almost no one admitted that it was likely that innocent people had died due to these leaders’ own inflamed and even crazed beliefs and actions. Just one judge, Samuel Sewall, five years later, publicly expressed remorse.

Salem today makes much of its storied past, for reasons mostly having to do with its modern tourism economy. This is mostly cute, and it gives Salem a sense of place, and an eccentricity, rarely found in modern American towns.

It bears reflecting, though, when you pass by the stores on Essex Street selling trinkets for tourists — tarot decks and pointy black witch hats, and crystal balls and “scrying” kits (scrying is the act of telling the future by gazing into a reflecting medium) — that the cuteness sanitizes a terrifying mass hallucination in the seaport town. It is easy to forget, as you pass the much-Selfie’d bronze statue of actress Elizabeth Montgomery in her role as Samantha Stephens, the “good witch” who married a mortal men, in the 1960s TV series “Bewitched” — or as you watch the throngs of young adults bar-hopping, dressed in Goth attire, black lipstick and white powder on both men and women, and the women in cobwebby black gowns — that all this festivity memorializes a madness that descended on a whole community, and that it was mostly the vulnerable members of the community who were called witches, and who were imprisoned or perished.

It is really important to know history, so that one is not destined to repeat it.

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I kind of love Salem. I have come to love the sense of community in the solid middle-class neighborhoods, many of them settled by French Canadian immigrants. When we visit, we stay in one such neighborhood; one of our favorite neighbors is a descendent of this French-Canadian wave of immigration.

Thousands of Franco-Canadian immigrants settled in the Salem area, starting in about 1860, and continuing into the beginning of the 20th century; they came to work on the fishing boats, or at Pequot Mills, or at the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Mill. These families built, around an area called The Point, a vibrant community: with churches and social clubs; schools and small businesses. The community was devastated in 1914 by a massive fire, but the families and the town simply rebuilt. You can see, in the shift from single-family wooden Victorian structures in the streets that had been spared by the fire, to the red brick neo-Colonial apartments, the changes from the “Before” and the “After” of the fire.

This story — of a group of immigrants who kept their own traditions, heritage and language alive, even as they merged into the larger life of America — is, has been, the story of America.

Photo by Parrish Freeman on Unsplash

When I talk to my French-Canadian neighbor now, we talk as Americans. The descendant of these immigrants is in no way set apart from the rest of the community by virtue of his French-Canadian ancestry. Our neighbor’s family did not get extra assistance or revenue for the fact of their having been French-Canadian immigrants, and these immigrants indeed faced discrimination — throughout America. But they did not leave their grandchildren burdened with a story of oppression.

This paragraph from the essay “Race, Privilege, and the Problem of the Subaltern Franco-American”, tells a familiar story — of a group that arrived in the US, was initially suspected or looked down upon, and yet that worked hard, formed resilient community structures and relationships, and went on to wield temendous political power. They did so, however, in the context of something that has been forgotten in our history: something called “the naturalization movement”. It is a movement that maintained that we should all learn to be — Americans.

Speaking about a characteristic French-Canadian family, the Payettes, the author, Patrick LaCroix, writes:

“When the Payette family moved to northern New York some time around 1850, the mass migration of French Canadians to the United States was in its infancy.^[1] This movement of people from the St. Lawrence River valley continued for the better part of a century, with brief interruptions in the 1870s and in the early part of the twentieth century. Whereas a high proportion of early migrants settled in the Midwest, the U.S. Northeast became the primary destination for those seeking to steady themselves financially. Faced with limited opportunities in agriculture and other sectors at home, they initially saw tiring work in the mills of New York and New England to be a short-term expedient. Families followed the economic cycle, relatives, and their own pocketbooks from one factory city to another and, very often, back to Quebec. Although the migrants were hardly rootless, early American observers nevertheless considered them as such. The proximity of the emigrants’ homeland raised questions about their commitment to American civic life that did not necessarily arise with other immigrant groups. The Payette family crossed the border at a time when such concerns still prevailed, but Canadians’ circumstances quickly changed. At the end of the nineteenth century, immigration from Quebec slowed, the naturalization movement gained traction, and the “Little Canadas” held firm. Though continuously pressed to anglicize by nativists, Franco-Americans were, after 1900, in a position to assert political influence and assume positions of public trust.”

Salem is still ten per cent French-Canadian, according to polls. But the out-group has become, simply, American.

That was our story, our method, till recently. It is a beautiful method and a beautiful story.

It’s notable that the phrase, “melting pot”, that was comfortingly popular in my childhood in the 1960s — a delicious notion, that we are all separate ingredients but we together become one new thing, one tasty culture — was replaced with the awkward “salad bowl” in the 1970s. This new phrase was explained as being less offensive a metaphor, as each element retained its individuality — “melting” into a new unity was not, it turned out, good, but bad.

This notion in turn by the 1980s was done away with; the salad bowl metaphor itself went out of the window; to be replaced by new hyphenizations — African-American, Asian-American, Italian-American; hyphenizations that obscured or erased or downgraded the formerly important fact that these people were all, in fact, Americans.

This change in language allowed for the taxing, endlessly stressful and reliably alienating prequel that started to appear on college campuses by the 1990s — “Speaking as a….” As in: “Speaking as an Asian-American.” “Speaking as a xxx…”. That usage expanded to “Speaking as a member of the working class…” “Speaking as a lesbian….” As important as it is to understand racial, gender and class histories of oppression (and it is important), the end goal of these discussions now was no longer that of furthering understanding of one another as individuals. One no longer spoke as oneself.

With each label, we fragmented further.

New coinages arose in the context of speaking about people who still were, in fact, Americans, but by now the “American” element had simply been edited out: coinages such as “BIPOC”, which stands for “Black, Indigenous and People of Color”. The first time I heard this neologism I was genuinely confused, as I did not even understand the categories linguistically — did “people of color” mean other people of color than black people? Also, because the histories of indigenous people in this country are radically different from the histories of black people, it seemed to me like a callous, even insensitive, grouping of people together on the basis of — skin tone and ethnicity.

Which, as I was raised to believe, we are not supposed to do.

The newest neologisms in this arsenal now include “Asian-American and Pacific Islanders,” shortened to AAPI. This again is a weird and ahistorical lumping-together of people of diverse cultures and origins, who have very little in common historically. Asian-Americans, according to a website that celebrates a new month of commemoration, of a new thing - “Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month” — explains that:

“May was designated as AAPI Heritage month for two reasons: first, to commemorate the earliest documented arrival of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. on May 7, 1843, and second, to honor the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, which upwards of 20,000 Chinese workers helped to construct.”

The website also has events celebrating Korean and Vietnamese cultures and communities. Which gives one that uneasy feeling: don’t we have the longstanding cultural knowledge, which extends all the way into pop culture and even jokes, that only barbarians treat - all Asian people as if they are alike? Don’t almost all of us by now know that this is the ultimate racist gaffe?

But no — Chinese and Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, are lumped together for “AAPI Month.”

But that’s not all! “Pacific Islander” has now been added to this ahistorical, seemingly purely ethnically-based potpourri.

What is an “Asian American and Pacific Islander”? I actually had to look up the current definition: even this government document purporting to offer a definition, admits that there can be no definition:

“III. Asian Countries There is no official definition of the boundary between Asia and Europe (nor between continents for that matter) so the boundaries are merely traditional – and some of the countries listed as Asian might not seem obvious. For example, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia lie south of the Caucasus Mountains which have traditionally divided the two continents. Turkey and Russia straddle both Europe and Asia (sometimes referred to as Eurasia); 80% of the latter is in Asia, but Russians are generally considered Europeans; in the former, east of Istanbul is customarily considered in Asia. These examples illustrate why a single factor cannot be used to describe ethnic identity or origin. National Geographic lists the following countries in Asia: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia (parts in Europe and Asia), Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste (East Timor), Turkey (parts in Europe and Asia), Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. Quick facts: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/continents/asia/ IV. API Ethnicities and Regional Groupings Ethnic identities can be referenced in the aggregate e.g., Southeast Asians or disaggregated e.g., Cambodians. Asians and Pacific Islanders are generally grouped by regions although some of these can be politically controversial. There is tremendous diversity, with Asia having more than 40 countries, and there are more ethnicities than countries, e.g., the Hmong are an ethnic group from Laos. Also, Asian diasporas are extremely large and ethnic identity oversimplifications do not apply. For example, people of Japanese origin in Brazil culturally identify as Brazilians, those of Chinese origin in Guatemala identify as Guatemalans; whereas hyphenated identities are more common in the U.S. as evidenced by terms like Asian American, or Korean American. 2 | PageNotions of ethnic and national identity carry political, social and familial meanings too complex to analyze here. ■ Central Asians Afghani, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgians, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek. ■ East Asians Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, Taiwanese, Tibetan. ■ Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (in the U.S. Jurisdictions & Territories) Carolinian, Chamorro, Chuukese, Fijian, Guamanian, Hawaiian, Kosraean, Marshallesse, Native Hawaiian, Niuean, Palauan, Pohnpeian, Samoan, Tokelauan, Tongan, Yapese. ■ Southeast Asians Bruneian, Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Mien, Papua New Guinean, Singaporean, Timorese, Thai, Vietnamese. ■ South Asians Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian, Maldivians, Nepali, Pakistani, Sri Lankan. ■ […]”

This repulsive catch-all based on “Asian-ness” — which seems super racist to me, frankly — lumps together people who have nothing at all historically in common except perhaps, and only to a very benighted person who has lived under a rock in Kansas his or her whole life, “Asian” features or skin tones, whatever that may mean.

But isn’t categorizing people on the basis of their features and skin tones - the essence and definition of racism? Here are Japan and Korea, lumped together weirdly on this right-on “May is AAPI Heritage Month” website.

But — Japan twice occupied Korea, denied Korea’s people free speech or liberties, and systematically trafficked Korean women as “comfort women” to its own Japanese soldiers. Japan sought to incorporate Korea and to “obliterate” it as a separate nation:

“In 1931 the Japanese imposed military rule once again. After the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937) and of World War II in the Pacific (1941), Japan attempted to obliterate Korea as a nation: Koreans were forced to worship at Japanese Shintō shrines and even to adopt Japanese-style names, and academic societies devoted to Korean studies as well as newspapers and magazines published in Korean were banned. The Japanese desperately needed additional manpower to replenish the dwindling ranks of their military and labor forces. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied Koreans, regardless of gender, were drafted to fight for Japan and to work in mines, factories, and military bases. In addition, after the start of the Pacific war, the Japanese forced thousands of Korean women to provide sexual services (as “comfort women”) for the military.

When Shanghai fell to the Japanese, the Korean provisional government moved to Chongqing in southwestern China. It declared war against Japan in December 1941 and organized the Korean Restoration Army, composed of independence fighters in China. This army fought with the Allied forces in China until the Japanese surrender in August 1945, which ended 35 years of Japanese rule over Korea.”

Similarly, Japan and China have histories that reveal that these nations and cultures have often been hostile to one another. Here is just one day:

“Seventy years ago this December 13th, the Japanese Imperial Army began its seizure of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China. Japanese troops killed remnant Chinese soldiers in violation of the laws of war, murdered Chinese civilians, raped Chinese women, and destroyed or stole Chinese property on a scale that will never be known. The violence and destruction was extensive, despite the efforts of some Japanese to minimize the scale. “ This Pew Research Center essay, “Hostile Neighbors: China Vs. Japan”, points out that only ten per cent of Chinese citizens feel that Japan has apologized enough for its actions during the 1930s and 1940s.

Not only are many of the “Asians” lumped together under the woke coinage “AAPI” from regions with histories of mortal antagonism to one another, but there is just nothing beyond a broad and crude definition of ethnicity, that is experientially the same, in America, for many of these groups.

There is literally nothing the same in the Japanese arrival in the US in the mid-19th century to work in Hawaiian sugar cane fields, and the experiences of a completely different group of people, Chinese laborers, from a completely different geographical area, with a completely different language and culture, who arrived essentially as slaves in the 1860s, to build the US’ railroads, especially in the Western United States. Again, only racism declares that these groups are the “same” or that they belong in a crude ethnic meta-category.

The effect of all of this ethnic and racial revisionism, is to erase the histories of these various groups of people in America. And it is certainly to erase what is American in them, and to undo what unites us all as Americans.

Is that the true intention? It looks that way to me.

I bring this up because of what I experienced on my most recent visit to Salem. I saw the establishment of two Americas, in the making, and the destruction, via new institutions and policies, of American ideals and ways of life and thought.

There is a superstructure of new illegal immigrants’ housing being institutionalized, not far from us in Salem. These arrivals are mostly from Honduras, Venezuela and Panama. I reported earlier on how a beautiful set of dormitories on Salem State University’s campus has been appropriated to house these “newcomers” — all together, which is, as I mentioned earlier, anomalous in the history of US immigration. The state never did that before, for any immigrant group, legal or illegal.

Here is the State, providing housing — but nothing is truly free.

On each trip to Salem, we see more of this alternative, fragmenting, new Marxist America being built out, by what is a fairly Marxist municipal government.

There is a gleaming new supermarket, run in part by the FDA, on Lafayette street. It is called Daily Table, and it looks like a Whole Foods, probably because one of its founders was a Whole Foods executive.

It seems, on the surface, like an amazing idea. The prices are 20-30% lower than other supermarkets. The offerings are almost entirely healthful. Fruits and vegetables are abundant. To-go meals that are nutritious, cost as little as $2.99. There is almost no junk food. The entire shopping experience is bilingual, Spanish and English. SNAP and other benefits can be used there. This is the fifth such supermarket to open in the Salem/Boston area. It is a “nonprofit grocery model.”

Sounds fantastic, right?

But here’s the catch:

“[Rob] Twyman [CEO] said the store's nonprofit model is based on covering two-thirds of costs through sales and the other one-third through corporate partnerships, private donations and government funding.”

So you undercut your competition in the free market, and pretty soon, the for-profit supermarkets are forced to close. So then, more and more people will rely on Daily Table for their groceries. Meaning that — people will increasingly have to rely on the government and on other even more opaque stakeholders.

And then — almost anything can be asked of you.

And then — the state can decide who eats and who does not.

And then — the state can decide how much information you need to yield, in order to eat.

These models of Marxist food sources, in effect, are proliferating. There is a new outlet, called the Salem Pantry, closer to where we stay. This store also offers tempting shelves full of gorgeous produce; lovely fresh dairy; healthful grocery staples.

We stay, when in Salem, in a true food desert; working-class and middle-class elderly Americans in that neighborhood, struggle to stay well fed, especially if they cannot drive. But — they can’t shop at the Salem Pantry.

The Salem Pantry is — though it is rather hard to tell — in fact, a food pantry. The food is free. (The offerings include a service of Doordashing your grocery selection, for which you have “paid” with your benefits, to your apartment.)

The food is free, I say again. But is it? Some of the struggling American elders who are homebound, who live all around this location, may not be allowed to go in.

Why not?

Because the food is not free. Because you are asked how much you make, even when you try to buy something with money — and if you make more than a certain amount, you are literally barred from entry.

You need to say how many people are in your household, in order to enter.

You need to enlist online, and yield personal information, in order to be allowed to “shop” there.

(Sure enough, a voter registration table was situated — blue trappings — outside the Salem Pantry, harvesting voters.)

This situation — free, but not free; a shopping experience that pretends to be Utopian, but which in fact creates hierarchy and exclusion and shame — reminded me of a new model of grocery store that has been launched in Hudson, New York. You can opt to get a discount off of the prices if you are oppressed in various ways. But the same items will cost you more money if you confess to certain markers of privilege and opt into your privilege category — privileges such as having a higher degree, or being a “privileged” race. I am not kidding.

Facing that set of conditions, when I had been in Hudson, had led me immediately into Marxist math, as it was no doubt intended to do: I am a…woman. So shouldn’t I opt to get a discount? But I also have a…higher degree. So I should opt to join the more expensive tier? But — I was a broke single mom when I got my higher degree! Discount? No - doesn’t matter. My hard work should be economically punished rather than rewarded.

Again, all of this personal information is sought by Rolling Grocer.

“Factors, including income and family size, help to determine which level of the three tiers of pricing a shopper pays based on the honor system. At the lowest level, people pay the wholesale price meaning the store doesn’t make money off the sale, but instead, provides a vital service.”

This seems really lovely. Supporting farmers. Making produce affordable. What is not to love?

What is not to love, is that this is literally not the American social contract.

As with the hyphenization I explored above — the current trend of lumping-together disparate groups with unique histories, under a superficial banner of “race” — this methodology remaking our grocery supply (and it is interesting to me that these new efforts at grocery store re-envisioning, are incredibly attractive, as if they are pilot programs) is also a remaking of our system, our core beliefs about what America is.

Both approaches remake us from being a union, a unity, in which different races and classes are all American, into being a splintered, demoralized regime in which labels and tribes define us.

These “Marxized” (we need a new verb) food shopping experiences, all tethered ultimately to the intrusive and potentially withholding hand of the State, remake our relationships to one another.

We are not Americans, albeit differently situated and with different struggles and advantages. Rather we are now being remade into Marxist relationships that consist of pure class war, in which we are being redefined only as the oppressed versus the oppressors; in which even our relationships to the market are redefined.

Your money is no good here.

This crude, neo-Marxist itemization of one’s personal status — the struggle session you are encouraged to have within yourself before you reach for the arugula at Rolling Grocer; the privileging of immigrants who have broken the laws to get here, with gorgeous housing and luscious produce and solid benefits, while American elders and veterans languish, and fill their grocery baskets with — I’ve seen this; Saltines — is designed to splinter us apart as Americans; and remake us as Marxist subjects of a Marxist regime.

Even as Marxist Salem is being built, American Salem remains. These two cultures and worldviews still live side by side. It just depends on where you are.

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Brian and I visited our new favorite haunt, the VFW. We tried the delicious omelets and the stinging Bloody Marys on a Sunday morning, and in that time and place, we were in — the Before culture.

It was not about a demographic. It was about a vibe.

I had been there first by myself one night when Brian had to work, and when I came home I had tried to describe how good it had felt to hang out there. Though I was a stranger, I was calmly welcomed. There was easy camaraderie around me. People shot pool. They talked about how to get rid of squirrels. I even danced, at one point, because the oldies were just too tempting not to, and no one made fun of me.

The old individuality, the old unity, the old hopefulness —- America — was in that cozy hall.

I tried to describe to him that relaxing feeling of being not the same as the group, but still accepted. (That, I realized later, was the essence of the “America” I am seeking to describe).

“That’s my military,” Brian said with a smile.

“I feel… like they believe in something larger than themselves,” I said further, not very eloquently.

“Soldiers are not necessarily more patriotic than other people,” explained Brian. “They believe in each other.”

I wanted that America back — not just in pockets, not just in byways, but everywhere.

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Back in the area where we stay, I heard from one of the American elders who live nearby, that the City was redoing the lovely local park that faced the blue harbor.

She said that the city wanted to “bring the Point” — once the home of French Canadian immigrants, and now the location where thousands of illegal immigrants from Latin America and, weirdly, Afghanistan, were being housed — closer into the park, via this renovation.

She added that the city managers planned to build, within the park, a series of statues of women — with no faces.

As she spoke, I felt this elderly lady’s frustration and rage.

“Why can’t we have faces?” she asked.

I had no answer for her.

The city was not listening any longer to people like her.

The thoroughly Marxist message of a Marxist work of public art, would reimagine what was now a beautiful, open, green, American public space.

It would impose something ugly and dehumanizing upon us all, on purpose, and further obliterate our culture and values.

It was going to roll out no matter what she said, or how she felt.

“Why can’t we have faces?”

Why, indeed.