contributed photo
I loved Joe Standart’s WE ARE: A Nation of Immigrants public art installation on the New Haven Green this past summer. Since moving downtown, I run or walk on the Green virtually every morning, and I was so excited when the exhibit of marvelous New Haven immigrant faces went up. I became very accustomed to seeing them there and I missed them terribly when the exhibit was taken down.
I am so proud that New Haven is a sanctuary city, and wish the exhibit would remain! The faces felt like my friends. When the exhibit came down it took me by surprise, felt like those wonderful people had disappeared. It made me think of the 6,000 Disappeared – the desaparecidos – of Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, with its state-sponsored terrorism, plus other countries where dissidents or ‘unwanted’ citizens were mercilessly eliminated. And of course, that’s what Trump and ICE are doing, in a somewhat less secretive way.
And I think of Nelson Piños, having to seek sanctuary in First and Summerfield United Methodist Church so he won’t be deported, separated from his family now for almost a full year. It’s heartbreaking.
These thoughts and feels led me to writing this poem:
Faces on the Green
New Haven, Connecticut, Summer 2018 [Installation by Joe Standart]They were there by the paths
those faces so enlarged
they towered, many times their actual size,
commanding, demanding attention
emblazoned on metal, in full color –the young Asian woman with delicate pink lips
the mustachioed Latino with serious expression
the dark skinned mother swaddling her child
the African American man and womanon banners on the side of Center Church
the luminous woman in hijab
on the side of a city hall building.They were saying: I am here, see me,
their glances following passers by,
proclaiming: we are
a nation of immigrants,
immigrants all.Now they are gone
those faces on the Green,
removed, taken away.
Disappeared.
-Laura Altshul [1941–2024]