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Lyons: Forum a step backward
Published December 3, 2009
Albertville Mayor Lindsey Lyons said he felt Monday’s mayor’s forum was a “step backward” in building relationships with the Hispanic community and he was still looking for ways to bridge the gap between the two cultures.
“We tried to build trust with the legal Hispanic community last night and to bridge the divide we currently have,” Lyons said, a day after the meeting. “We provided translators and listened to all concerns but it was apparent that it wasn’t mutual.”
Lyons held a mayor’s forum Monday night and answered a number of questions, most of them pertaining to immigration and multicultural issues.
The turnout to the event was far less than the previous town hall meeting, which had the mayor and city council present.
The town hall meeting in August pulled in about 700 people. Most were Hispanic.
About 60 people turned out for the mayor’s forum on Monday.
After a question about the safety checkpoints being racially motivated and how the mayor planned to regain the trust of the Hispanic community, one person asked, in Spanish, “How do you sleep at night knowing a family has been separated?”
Lyons took a long pause after the translation.
“Well, let me go back to what I said previously,” Lyons said. “No. 1, you’re asking me how I sleep when someone has broken the law coming into the United States of America.
“It is my duty, my God-given oath, to uphold the laws of this country and I don’t understand how you could stand there and ask me to look away from those laws.”
After the intermission, Judit Gay, an interpreter for the event, addressed the crowd and expressed her “outrage” at Aylene Sepulveda for her questions and comments addressed to Lyons.
“I was outraged because I felt there was a person here (Sepulveda) who, instead of trying to help the community, was trying to separate them,” Gay said. “She keeps asking about things that happened in the past, like why did you do this?
“I mean this was a new day, a new meeting, and I don’t believe that when she says a lot of people didn’t come because they don’t have any trust in the mayor, I don’t believe that.
“I said very clearly that she is not representing a lot of people that I know.
“I work with the school system, and I’m daily contacting different families, and I can tell you every family that lives in Albertville, if they have children in school.
“And I know how they think, and they don’t think like her,” Gay said.
Stephen Connolly, an Albertville resident who had previously lived in South America, said the Hispanic population was not being singled out as much as they said they were.
Connolly spent many years in South America before coming to the U.S. and said he learned Spanish before he learned English, but the entire time he lived in Venezuela he had to carry around an identification card that showed he had a reason for being in the country.
“If you didn’t have that card, they took you to jail,” he said.
Connolly said he didn’t see any difference between the way he was treated in South America and the way the Hispanics were treated in America.
“If you come across the border, you know you’re illegal,” Connolly said. “So, if they stop you, why are you going to gripe? You know when you come across the border you are not legal.”
Connolly said he also worked as a bailiff in traffic court and said there was not a disproportionate number of Hispanics represented in court versus the number of everyone else.
Lyons said he has been meeting with members in the Hispanic community and the next step in building relationships was to start working through the churches and have “informative dialogue.”
“Until they trust us, nothing is going to happen,” Lyons said.
Lyons said he would like to see the Hispanic community “reach out and say what can we do, instead of what can you do for us.”
“When they plead their case for us not to enforce our laws, I certainly don’t take that as them reaching out to us,” Lyons said.
He said he would like to see the Hispanic community assist the city and assimilate by learning English, learning how to drive, getting car insurance, helping the police catch criminals and other things he referred to as “the basics.”
“I’m don’t mean Americanize them, but learn these other things” Lyons said.
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