Immigration | Ride for Human Rights

Joey here.

We planned to pedal 95 miles to Dubuque, Iowa. Instead we pedaled 78 miles to Lancaster, Wisconsin, to take advantage of the wind shift from SE to SW.

***Cross-country cyclists tack like sailors do.***

We met Alice this morning.

Iowan Alice was deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army; lived in Germany, South Africa, Mozambique, and Minneapolis; has 3 accomplished daughters and a pastor husband; and designs and stages rooms for a construction company. She and Jeffrey talked about her devout Christianity and the moral principles (including love of neighbor and protection of strangers) it shares with Judaism and Islam. She asked to buy Jeffrey coffee and hugged him goodbye.

Catherine and Doug—“Cat and Dog” to their friends—admired our rig and our mission.

***Cat teaches art. Doug is a retired long-haul Shakespeare-quoting history-loving trucker. They travel America in their sleeper van. They believe in a humane America and in human rights.***

***We tried to capture Iowa’s agricultural landscape in two-dimensional photos. We can’t.***

Twenty miles down the road, we reached the destination of the first Ride.

Postville was in 2011, and still is, cosmopolitan.

The Islamic Society, Jewish Chabad House, and a Christian church are within a few feet of one another.

On this Passover Sabbath morning, Jeffrey called out greetings in Hebrew, Yiddish and English to two young men walking toward a storefront where people were praying.

The men stopped in happy surprise. One of them, born and raised in Postville, was too young in 2008 to understand much about the immigration raid that arrested a quarter of this little town. He’s studying for the rabbinate in Morristown, NJ. The other man, even younger, is learning at a Postville yeshiva.

They asked about the Ride and about our recumbent tricycle. They gave permission to Jeffrey to light his phone to show them his 2011 photo of Postville yeshiva boys.

***The men wanted to talk more but were late for services.***

Jeffrey sought provisions.

***Tracey graciously found what he needed.***

Tracey remembers how the 2008 Postville raid broke up families.

Tracey says Postville has big-city problems yet doesn’t get big-city support. Example: two Haitian women arrived in town, having been promised shelter and work. They found neither. Locals try to help. Resources are scant.

She mentioned another problem that resonated with us: Postville’s nursing home, in a valuable building, was bought by a conglomerate. The new owner promptly sold the building: “it’s just business.” The nursing home residents were uprooted and scattered. Within a few months, half of them died.