ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — Springfield’s Mayor Sarno has soiled his reputation across the state with his unwarranted attacks on South Congregational Church for offering sanctuary to a married, undocumented mother of two who was threatened with deportation to her native Peru. Gisella Collazo came to Springfield 17 years ago. After living here for four years, she married her husband, who is a U.S. citizen as are their two children. She has never been in trouble until she was ordered to report to federal officials with her ticket to Peru. The church embraced her while our mayor responded with a viciousness that might have made even Jesus flinch. Not only does our mayor seem to be suffering from an acute case of cockiness that often troubles those who can’t handle the responsibilities of power very well, but as Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham pointed out so well in an article, he is also a hypocrite. (Find her complete article at www.bostonglobe.com)  

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — In her article, Yvonne Abraham offered a little tidbit on Sarno’s ancestry that he uses like a hammer to hound a helpless Peruvian immigrant: “Ah, the old my-ancestor-followed-the rules eleven-years-ago-why-can’t-you gambit. Here’s the thing about Sarno’s forebears, courtesy of genealogist Justin Cascio, who has examined the mayor’s family tree. Sarno’s great grandfather appears to have been among the millions who arrived in the United States around the start of the last century, when the only rules Italian immigrants had to play by were: Get on a boat, don’t have tuberculosis, and swear you’re not an anarchist. His grandfather, Domenico, was born in Springfield, so was a US citizen, Cascio found. Which meant that, though he was born in Italy, Sarno’s father Alfonso was also a US national when he arrived in New York in 1948. The mayor would not comment on his ancestry, or anything else, on Friday….In short, the wide-open path to citizenship Sarno’s family enjoyed no longer exists.  So can we please stop using it as a cudgel.” (The Boston Globe, April 8, 2018)  

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — An editorial in Springfield’s Republican expands upon Mayor Sarno’s folly: “Targeting the South Congregational Church, however, was a mistake. It vastly overstated this case’s impact on the city, and it mistook a church’s independent decision as a shift in city policy….It also made the mayor look like a heavy-handed landlord, making a single family pay a fearsome price for a national controversy these people did not create….The mayor should concede defeat because victory would have been worse. This dispute was not worth winning because it was not worth fighting.” (The Republican, April 12, 2018)

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — Yvonne Abraham made another observation about Sarno: “His high-handed ways seem awfully familiar, don’t they. Though the Democrat has occasionally distanced himself from the most mean-spirited of President Trump’s proclamations, Sarno looks awfully like the rule-of-law-shattering guy in the White House here.” (The Boston Globe, April 8, 2018)

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — Springfield City Council: “The city’s mayor, Domenic Sarno, has said officials would “not stand for harboring and protecting” immigrants facing deportation and is seeking to strip the church of its tax-exempt status….Sarno is the only official in Massachusetts to challenge a church providing sanctuary, and city councilors sharply criticized his stance.” (The Boston Globe, April 11, 2018)

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — Religious leaders: “It was in the spirit of faithful love and compassion that our sisters and brothers at South Congregational Church, led by their pastor, Tom Gerstenlauer, provided sanctuary to Gisella Collazo and her family on March 26. We stand with South Congregational and applaud its pastor and members for obeying the faith mandate to love our neighbor…We call on our brothers and sisters of faith to stand with us, realizing that the attack on South Congregational is an attack on the entire faith community.” (Letter to The Editor signed by Rt. Rev. Douglas J. Fisher, Rt. Rev. Talbert W. Swan II and Rabbi Howard Kosovske, The Republican, April 5, 2018)

ACUTE CASE OF COCKINESS — Let him (Mayor Sarno) talk. That’s how we get to know who he is. Comments by Black comedian Roy Wood Jr. on the flying of the confederate flag are enlightening: “If we get rid of the confederate flag, how am I going to know who the dangerous white people are? I ain’t saying keep it around, but I grew up in the South. I can’t tell you how many times the confederate flag came in handy. You stopping for gas at a strange place at 2 in the morning, you see that flag hanging from the window, you know this is not the place to get gas.” (The Boston Globe, April 12, 2018) Let Mayor Sarno talk….That’s how we are beginning to know who he really is.

I AM AFRAID FOR HIS SOUL — “I am afraid of the message his (Mayor Sarno’s) words and actions delivers to the citizens of this city. I am afraid of the effect that his representation of elected government has on the honest members of the immigrant community in our midst. And I am afraid for the soul of our mayor as well. (Rev. Tom Gerstenlauer, pastor of South Congregational Church in comments to The Republican, March 29, 2018)

I AM AFRAID FOR HIS SOUL — And well we should be. The unmitigated gall of Springfield’s Mayor Domenic Sarno that led him to stand before a Black religious ceremony memorializing the death of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and defend his decision to attack a church by ordering punitive code inspections and attempting to remove its tax exemption status for performing its religious duty of caring for the needy is politically and morally indefensible.

BUT WHY? — The Boston Globe’s Yvonne Abraham summed it all up very well when she wrote: “You’d think that many among the 153,000 good people of Springfield would have a problem with all of this. But why should Sarno care? They sat out the last mayoral contest, when Sarno was reelected by just under 12,000 of the city’s 95,000 registered voters….perhaps now they’ll wake up.”  (The Boston Globe, April 8, 2018)

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO VLADIMIR PUTIN (AND TRUMP AND MANY OTHER PETTY POTENTATES) — “Putin stands for the idea that authority should be centralized, with one leader at the top and iron lines of authority flowing downward. He stands for the idea that liberal democracy descends into chaos when there is no social trust, that it is a fraud that allows the well-connected to plunder everyone else. “…liberal democracy is built on a faith, a faith in the capacities of individual citizens. Faith, as you know, is confidence in things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. We democrats put faith in the ideal that people know best how to run their own lives and that these individual choices can be woven into a common fabric. “Putinism, like Trumpism, is based on the idea that one should have no illusions, be wise to the ways of the world. People are as Machiavelli put it, ungrateful and deceitful, timid of danger and avid for profit. Rivalry is inevitable. Everything is partisan. Anybody or any institution that claims to be objective and above the fray is a liar.” (David Brooks, New York Times as reprinted in The Republican, April 5, 2018)

BLACK LIVES MATTER FACEBOOK FRAUD — How could it happen? The Black Lives Matter Facebook site that raised $100,000 is fake. All the money it raised went to some White guy in Australia who built and controlled it.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? — Our president is sending thousands of National Guard soldiers to guard our southern border in order to satisfy a campaign promise that ignored the fact that border crossings and arrests are at an all time low and the outflow of immigrants from the south exceeds the inflow. Can you imagine what that money could be used for?

BLACK LIVES MATTER — It was December 4, 1950 during the Korean War that White Navy Captain Thomas H. Hudner Jr. offered up his personal demonstration that Black lives matter. He and his wingman, Jesse L. Brown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi were flying a combat mission near the Chosin Reservoir when Brown’s plane was shot down trapping him in the aircraft in an area about to be overrun by enemy troops. Brown was the navy’s first Black aviator. He couldn’t escape from his burning plane because his leg was trapped. Ignoring his own safety, Hudner crash landed his own plane and tried to save Brown to no avail. Hudner was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his brave, unselfish effort which came just two years after the Navy had desegregated. (See article on page 18) ■