Billings Gazette, May 23, on speaking Spanish not being a crime:
For those of us who may not speak Spanish, reading that first sentence is jarring.
It may even make us feel a bit ridiculous - like there’s something wrong. A few may even be insulted.
We’ll let you in on it.
It says Spanish is not a crime. Of course, the sentence is in Spanish.
And in Montana, a state that feels far removed from the issues of border walls and illegal immigration, it was shocking that the state made national headlines as one of its border officers stopped two American women at a convenience store in Havre for apparently doing nothing more than speaking Spanish.
Ahem, American women.
For them, the experience was more than jarring and it made them feel like criminals.
When asked about the incident on Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that its agents, including this unnamed one, were given wide latitude to investigate suspected cases of illegal immigrants.
And, when pressed on camera by one of the women recording the incident, the agent admitted to the women that his primary reason for detaining them was nothing more than the language they used to buy milk and eggs at a store. Apparently, speaking Spanish in Havre counts as suspicious - if not criminal - activity.
Because, you know, someone in America illegally would never think to speak English.
This incident, captured on video and reported first by The Washington Post, would seem to be an obvious example of profiling, an act inherently unconstitutional.
We wonder if the agent would have made the same move if he would have heard Norwegian being spoken, or German? Would he have even known the difference between the languages? Would he have cared?
So why is two women of Hispanic descent speaking Spanish any different? Where’s the crime?
Freedom of speech doesn’t just apply to those who speak English. If you really love freedom of speech, it should mean the choice to speak freely in any language.
It’s pitiful in a world that seems to require most of its citizens to be multilingual that much of America regards English-only as a virtue. We should be encouraging our children, who will enter the most global economy in the world’s history, to speak many languages, not fewer.
The American Civil Liberties Union was contemplating action on the case on Monday. We believe the Border Patrol has not only explaining to do in the case of these two women, but also to Montana. Montana cannot be known as a place where you’re under suspicion for speaking a different language. In a state where tourism is the second largest industry, this kind of behavior can only be viewed as potentially harmful to our livelihood.
We call on our congressional delegation to pressure Homeland Security to hold the agency responsible. We call on them to uphold the law which says that a citizen cannot be profiled simply for a language.
It’s shameful, and it’s un-American.
Exactly 100 years ago, right here in Montana, lawmakers and leaders from the governor on down were so worried about immigrants that they prohibited German from being spoken, and made it illegal to speak it in public, including at churches and schools. German immigrants and those who spoke German were forced to register as aliens with the state.
A century ago, speaking a foreign language was more than enough to not only be detained, but to be arrested.
It took nearly a century for the state to acknowledge its mistake and pardon those who were jailed for speaking out in opposition to the war or who spoke a different language. The 1917-1918 sedition crimes tarnished the reputation of the Treasure State.
We must demonstrate that Montana - by most measures still a culturally homogeneous place - is more tolerant, diverse and accepting than that. We must be resolute and not let the mistakes of our great-grandparents repeat themselves today.
While we have the utmost respect for the Border Patrol agents who are in charge of keeping us safe, that cannot mean trading away our precious liberties just because we’re afraid of what we cannot understand.
On behalf of a chagrined state, Perdonanos.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2J5zx2Q
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Missoulian, May 20, on prescribed burns helping to protect against wildfires:
If only we could save all this extra flood water for a few more months and put it to use during the peak of the wildfire season.
Alas, the signs are already pointing to yet another hot, smoky summer, with the latest official outlooks predicting above-average potential for “significant” wildfires in the Northern Rockies region through August despite above-average rainfall this spring and below-average temperatures this past winter.
Budget-busting fires and smoke-choked air: unfortunately, it’s the new normal. What’s different this year is the way firefighting will be paid for at the federal level and the way Missoula plans to handle wildfires at the county level. And with these changes comes a good opportunity for those of us who live and breathe in the rural West to update our understanding of wildfires - how and where to prevent them, how and when to reduce the risk to property owners and firefighters, and when and where to let them burn.
Of course, the idea that any wildfire should be left unfought is anathema to some individuals, and for good reason. They are sick, often literally, of the smoke - and worried that an unchecked fire will become a runaway blaze that burns up both public and private property and winds up costing multiple millions of dollars.
Thus, the approach to firefighting has long been to put out every fire as quickly as possible. Last year, close to 98 percent of all wildfires were contained before they exceeded 10 acres. Yet the 2 percent or so that couldn’t be contained consumed the vast majority of resources, costing more than $2 billion and forcing the U.S. Forest Service to spend more than half of its budget on fighting fires. According to the incident commander assigned to last year’s Lolo Peak and Rice Ridge fires, each of those fires cost about $50 million to fight.
The record-breaking season prompted federal lawmakers to at last provide some relief to the U.S. Forest Service and put an end to the unsustainable practice of “borrowing” firefighting funds from the agency’s core budget. With rare bipartisan support, Congress approved the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act to provide $3.2 billion to the Forest Service for the purpose of fighting wildfires, and additional billions in future years.
In a guest column published in the Missoulian earlier this month, interim Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen noted that the funding infusion will allow the agency to complete more projects designed to prevent wildfires from starting in the first place. The Forest Service is in the process of drafting an explanation for senators on exactly how the money will be used. It’s clear those senators who voted in favor of the act expect at least some fire prevention to be accomplished through logging, as the legislation relaxes certain limitations on timber sales.
This expectation misses the forest for the trees, however; high-intensity wildfires burn through untreated, thinned and logged forests alike. And the reality is that some fires spark in places that are too difficult, dangerous or remote for firefighters to put out, and given limited resources, firefighting agencies must prioritize which wildfires to jump on and which to just watch. They must also take into account that putting out a fire may leave the forest even more at risk of an even more intense fire next season, while letting it burn virtually eliminates the likelihood of a catastrophic fire for decades.
Even more repugnant to some folks is the idea of intentionally setting fires via prescribed burns. Yet the available evidence points to this, along with complementary prevention methods, as a smart way to protect communities from wildfire. Instead of waiting for fires to start, and then burning up ever-increasing amounts of money trying to put them out, communities need to have a solid plan to protect against them.
Those plans must include prescribed burns. And because setting fires to prevent fires is such an unsettling idea, community education and input are essential to any community plan.
Missoula County has wisely taken pains to encourage public comment on the update to its Community Wildfire Protection Plan adopted in 2005. Unfortunately, it’s clear that a lot more education is needed.
The Missoula County Office of Emergency Management initiated the plan more than a decade ago in recognition of the growing risk of wildfire to property owners in the area known as the wildland-urban interface. It involves numerous stakeholders, from the federal managers of public lands to private homeowners who live in the forest, and spells out in detail where the wildfire risk is greatest, as well as how to mitigate that risk.
The update will identify new houses and roads in the wildand-urban interface, incorporate modern fuel reduction approaches and better mesh local projects with national strategies. It includes a map of the county’s wildland-urban interface and a map of the wildfire hazard assessment, as well as other useful information for any resident wondering what their local officials are doing about wildfires this year and for the foreseeable future, and how that fits with the prevention efforts on nearby national forests.
A final public hearing on the plan will take place at 2 p.m. Thursday. Missoula County’s commissioners should vote to approve it.
Prescribed burns in the mountains around Missoula over the past week caused a lot of grumbling among Missoulians who don’t want to lose a single clear day to wildfire smoke. But if this means keeping larger, hotter and more dangerous wildfires away from Missoula later this summer, it is well worth it. As irritating and inconvenient as it may seem, we simply have to start getting used to the reality of fighting fire with fire.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2GLycJ1
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Bozeman Daily Chronicle, May 17, on officials needing to learn from costly road dispute:
State and Gallatin County officials are urged to reach a settlement over a road dispute that has spanned more than a decade, entangled federal, state and local agencies and left the status of a very popular recreation route in limbo. And all parties involved should learn a lesson about how to execute land management policies in the future.
The dispute stems from a U.S. Forest Service and state Department of Natural Resources 2007 decision to destroy a portion of the Bear Creek Road southeast of Bozeman. The agencies built a trail out of the Bear Creek drainage as an alternative route, but the destruction of the road prompted protests and Gallatin County filed lawsuits against the state and federal governments. The old road crosses state and federal land, but its historic use by miners and loggers has prompted the county to regard it as a county road and has been pressing its case in court.
Those suits have been tied up in court for more than 10 years, but the county and state have been negotiating on and off to resolve the dispute. Officials say they are now closer than ever to reaching an agreement but have yet to seal the deal.
The nature of the potential settlement is unclear, but what is clear is that government agencies - federal, state and local - can have conflicting interests when it comes to public land management policy. And when land ownership is as complex and mixed up as it is in many areas around Montana, those conflicts can boil over into legal action that is time-consuming and expensive. And taxpayers are ultimately picking up the tab.
County officials must be more proactive in finding out what public lands agencies are planning in the region. And those agencies should be forthcoming with all of their plans and the justification for those plans before the deed is done. This is becoming increasingly important as the region’s population density increases and more demands are placed on public lands and the resources they offer.
The takeaway is that better communications - regular correspondents and even face-to-face meetings - can save the taxpayers and court system a lot of grief if differences are worked out in advance of planned actions.
Get this dispute settled. But also take steps to avoid a repeat in the future.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2KPnWC8
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