Rock Island’s refugees – a starting point

I have two days left of my ten-day shoot for my project documenting the newly emerging community of refugees in my hometown of Rock Island, Illinois. It’s been an amazing experience so far to see how people with very different backgrounds from my own are coming to make a home here. Rock Island’s public and section 8 housing is seeing a surge in refugee tenants- they now account for over 50% of residents in Century Woods apartments, Rock Island’s largest low income housing complex. English Language Learner (ELL) student enrollment in the Rock Island-Milan School District has increased 988% over the last ten years. Refugees make up 97% of ELL students at Rock Island High School, far outnumbering traditional immigrant students.

This small, midwestern city is now home to refugees from all over the world- especially from the African countries, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, as well as Burma and Bhutan in southeast Asia. They came here escaping persecution and violence in their home countries, via refugee camps where they faced food shortages and often hopeless futures. The people I’ve met are now full of hope, but still face the big challenges of learning English and adjusting to an entirely new way of life.

I’ll be working on writing and designing a 12-page magazine layout during the next month, after returning to Ohio on Sunday. I will share more as I have time and hope to continue working on this project whenever I come visit home. Thanks so much to everyone who has let me into their lives over the past week.

Best,

Pat

Back in Athens

Visited Frank and family the other day. Great to see them all after being back in Illinois for winter break.

Cheers,

Pat

Starbase Indy

This past weekend I traveled down to Indianapolis for the annual Starbase Indy Star Trek convention. Definitely met some interesting people and again photographed Five Year Mission, the Trek inspired band I met in Chicago this summer.

Cheers,

Pat

A walk through my neighborhood to the coffee shop

I’ve been home, spending time working on my masters project at a coffee shop about a mile from my house here in Rock Island, Illinois for my six or so weeks off of school for the winter. The other day I decided to walk to the “office” instead of driving.

Cheers,

Pat

Overcoming his past

His body is covered in tattoos. There is the dragon on his back and even Bevis and Butthead on his inner left arm. The ones Frank Taylor will tell you about first though, aren’t the ones you’d expect.
“It’s mostly dragons and wizards,” says Taylor about his tattooed arms. “But then there’s the swastikas, Klansmen- white supremacist stuff… childish stuff really. It means hardcore to some people, but it means nothing to me.”
Frank Taylor, 38, lives in New Marshfield, Ohio with his fiance Kristin and three sons- Gage, 2, Steven, 7, and Jake, 15 and twin baby girls Shayla and Isabella.
Frank is content here with his family and solitude, but it wasn’t always this way.

In 1996 Frank was in an auto accident that killed his best friend and left him with a traumatic brain injury and deeply wounded soul. The Valium doctors prescribed for the pain quickly became an addiction he couldn’t kick for sixteen years. At one point he was taking 20-25 pills a day. After the wreck, he tried to work on and off, but would have seizures due to physical exertion. But he pushed on, not wanting to file for disability.

“I more or less just closed up,” says Taylor. “I distanced myself from my family… everybody,” says Taylor.
Recovering in his hometown of Wilksville, Ohio, Taylor was tended to by a childhood friend who happened to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan, stoking his anger.
“Everybody gets a little angry, but not on fire like that- not to get 35 assault charges,” says Taylor. “I thought the Klan was my family more than anybody. A lot of it was that valium I was on.”
“Valium took the thoughts away, memory away… everything,” says Taylor.

In 2009, Taylor placed a call to Integrated Services of Appalachian Ohio, an Athens based non-profit specializing in behavioral, supportive and rehabilitation services.
“They put a wrench in all the works that were going downhill and made it go back uphill,” says Taylor.
Now graduated from the program, Taylor qualified twice for rent assistance grants through the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), a $1.5 billion program funded by the Obama Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Integrated Services of Appalachian Ohio is in charge of authorizing those grants in Athens County. Additionally, Taylor began to see one of their clinical councilors, Sonny Saunders, who got him to begin to open up.
“The question for HPRP is, if not for this assistance, would this person be homeless?” says Darlene Lustgarten, Supportive Housing Specialist with Integrated Services and Taylor’s case manager.

When Darlene first met Frank and his family, they were living in a trailer court in The Plains, surviving on just $355 a month from Kristen’s Ohio Works First welfare assistance and falling behind on rent.
Lustgarten was able to assist them with a security deposit and short-term rent assistance, quickly placing them in subsidized housing in The Plains.
After a year in the housing project there, Taylor found himself facing eviction yet again after an incident with another resident who allegedly tried to sell drugs to his fifteen-year-old son Jake.

“I’d have been back I jail if I hadn’t have gotten out here [to his New Marshfield home],” says Taylor.
Lustgarten was able to help find a rental property that fit the family’s budget, stay the eviction until they were able to move and set Taylor up with the disability benefits and back pay he had done without for so many years.
“We can be more of a family out here,” says Taylor. “I hope to be here for the rest of the time until the children are raised.”
“I’ve been off [Valium] ten months,” says Taylor. “After the holidays will be my one year anniversary. It was tough at first- I had to learn how to cope all over again.”

The birth of his son Gage two years ago was a wake up call for him to get his life back on track and the birth of his twin daughters should end up symbolizing the fulfillment of that goal. His daughters are now home from the hospital and between cooking dinner and changing dipers Frank dreams about planting a vegetable garden in the spring and quietly working with his hands. The scars and ink on his body are an open book, reminding him of everything he had to go through to get to this point and giving him the strength to move forward.

Just finished up a project about Frank Taylor and his family from New Marshfield, Ohio. Thanks so much to the Taylors and Integrated Services of Appalachian Ohio for letting me into your world and allowing me to make pictures and share your story.

Watch the multimedia piece here:

Best,

Pat

Upscaling Ramen

And now for something completely different…

I’m creating a food page layout about ramen noodles for my publication layout and design class this quarter and so I decided to try out a new ramen recipe this last weekend and document my results. I’ve been making fried ramen since high school when my cousin Chris introduced the concept to me some winter night long ago. I experiment with different iterations every now and then, but have a pretty standard way of doing it. This layout project gave me the opportunity and motivation to try something new.

I started by getting some different ramen noodles at New Market, the asian grocery here in Athens. I’ve since been given advice about superior ramen noodles to purchase, but these turned out pretty well I think. Also I used an awesome ginger scallion sauce recipe passed to me by my friend Stephen, from NYC noodle shop chef badass David Chang (see his book here). I like to start my stir-fried ramen, or rice, with caramelizing some carrot and shallot with peanut oil, soy sauce and a little black pepper in a big, deep non-stick pan. Then I mix in the ramen, after boiling and draining, along with the sauce. Once it’s almost done I add two eggs, scramble them and mix them in with the rest. Before devouring I added a little of this chilli garlic sauce that I also found at New Market for some added kick.

GINGER SCALLION SAUCE
Makes about 3 cups

2½ cups thinly sliced scallions- greens and whites; from 1 to 2 large bunches
½ cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger
¼ cup grapeseed or other neutral oil (I used peanut oil)
1½ tsp usukuchi- light soy sauce
¾ tsp sherry vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
¾ tsp kosher salt, or more to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and let sit for 15-20 minutes before using. It’ll keep in the fridge for about a week…if it lasts that long.

Cheers,

Pat

Season’s End

Narciso Santiago helps Sergio Mesa load his luggage into Tom Witten’s truck on Monday morning, October 17, 2011 at Witten’s Farm near Beverly, Ohio. Both men are seasonal workers helping hand pick sweet corn, tomatoes and various other vegetables on the third generation family farm along the Muskingum River. Mesa will return to his hometown of Panindicuaro, Michoacan, Mexico for the winter months, helping run a business there selling baskets to tourists, which he and his family weave.

It’s dinnertime. Sergio Mesa, 33, prepares his food- nothing fancy- hard-boiled eggs, tortillas, and some diced jalapeno to top it off. He sits in a bare kitchen and dines alone, but he’s happy. In less than two weeks, he’ll be at home in Michoacán, Mexico surrounded by family.

Mesa is one of six migrant workers left after the fall harvest on Witten’s Farm, located on state route 60, just east of Beverly, Ohio. Managed by Tom Witten, the third generation family owned farm sells its sweet corn, tomatoes, various other vegetables and flowers at roadside stands in 19 locations around southeast Ohio and western West Virginia.

“All of our products are hand harvested,” Witten proudly says of his vegetables and the men he hires to pick them. “Our consumers eat with their eyes first and these guys will polish the ding tomato and make it shine.”

Along with Mesa, the last workers left at the end of the season are Narciso Santiago of Vera Cruz, Mexico and Jose Torres, Orlando Polanco, Rafael Regalado and Alfredo Mendoza, all of Santa Ana, El Salvador. Mesa and Santiago will return to Mexico for the winter, while the four men from El Salvador will stay on and help prepare the greenhouses for the winter and spring growing season.

“Originally we got into [hiring migrant laborers] in about 1993 due to basically the lack of local folks wanting to do the work,” says Witten. Witten uses the Federal H-2A nonimmigrant work visa program to bring in labor safely and dependably. Under this type of visa, foreign workers are generally authorized for one-year periods, with a three-year maximum stay. After three years, workers must spend at least three months outside the United States before reapplying for the visa.

According to Witten, his employees usually go back to their home countries about once a year and usually travel by airplane.
“We want our guys to see their families,” says Witten. “We don’t want them traveling with coyotes… because that stuff is so expensive and so dangerous.”

During peak production in the summer, the farm houses 16 men in a recently built duplex on the property and additional laborers in two other units. They pick during the night to avoid the heat of the day, cook out for lunch and play soccer in the adjacent fields. By mid-October, the hubbub of summer has long since gone. The guys have settled into a quieter routine cleaning the greenhouses and doing odd jobs before watching a novella (soap opera) or soccer match on Spanish language television.

In Spanish, Mesa says that he can’t wait to get home to see his family. He plans to rest for a week, spending time with his wife and two daughters before getting back to work. He and his family run a basket making business, selling to the tourists who frequently visit his hometown. This last season on the farm was his second and he would like to come back for a third because the money is so much better than what he can make at home in Mexico. For Torres, Polanco, Regalado and Mendoza, the prospect of earning more money for their families back in El Salvador is enough to keep them working in Ohio through the winter even if that means missing Christmas with their families.

“These guys do not want to miss work. They’re here to earn.” says Witten. “I hate to call it unskilled labor, because it’s not unskilled if you would see them work.”

Witten is aware that his employees aren’t readily accepted as a part of the community and is frustrated by misconceptions about migrant labor. He is glad, however, that his guys don’t have the fear of being deported at any minute, which so many undocumented laborers live with everyday.

“Any time there’s any kind of robbery or theft in our local town, the cops stop; question us,” says Witten. “We’ve never had a guy arrested, but that doesn’t keep the authorities from questioning everybody… There’s a vilification of them and myself.”
To Witten, the notion that foreign labor is taking American jobs seems to come out of thin air.

“I’m not getting a big pull of guys wanting to work,” says Witten of local labor. “It’s not happening that way.”
Back at the dinner table, Mesa takes a picture of his two daughters out of his wallet. Daniela is ten and Lupita is seven.

On Monday, October 17, he flew back to Mexico to see them and the rest of his family. They will soon weave baskets together and prepare for the holiday season’s festivals. If everything works out with his visa, he’ll be back again in the spring to earn more for his family and help hand pick some of Southeast Ohio’s quality local produce.

These are words and pictures from a story I’ve been following about a group of migrant farm workers on a family farm about an hour northeast of Athens near Beverly, Ohio. I hope to return to the farm again this winter and definitely in the spring to see the farm in full production with around 25 guys from Mexico and El Salvador living and working on the farm. Big thanks to Tom Witten, Rafael Regalado, Jose Torres, Narciso Santiago, Alfredo Mendoza, Sergio Mesa, Orlando Polanco for all their time and openness. …And for putting up with my broken Spanish.

Cheers,

Pat

Marching Tradition

I spent Friday night with the Athens High School Marching Band for a one-day-shoot, 100 picture assignment for class. It was a lot of fun to hang out with a great group of kids and definitely took me back to my days in high school marching band. Good times.

Cheers,

Pat

Back in Ohio

… and now I’m back in Ohio, ready for another year. Started off in typical fashion at the Morgan County Fair, hanging out in the dairy barn.

Best of luck to us all,

Pat

Alex and his amazing tree

Spent the night in Indy on the way back to Athens from Illinois. Before I headed out the next morning Alex showed me a great tree that recently lost a branch, from which he desires to make things.

-Pat