We will not be silent

Until country artist Lee Greenwood started speaking out.

Between songs and just before his finale, he described a patriot as someone with “unconditional” love for his country.

Well, there is one thing that needs to be improved.

“The only thing we hope for is to be able to stop illegal immigration. Because the people who come here do it to kill you.”

Greenwood is not only a proud supporter of former President Donald Trump, the two are also business partners, selling a $60 Bible with the Constitution inside and the lyrics to “God Bless the USA,” Greenwood’s anthem.

So in a year when Trump has predicted a coming “bloodbath,” when he regularly vows vengeance and retribution against his enemies, when he uses dehumanizing terminology, such as calling the left “vermin” and immigrants “not people,” no one would have thought this could happen?

To be fair, Mayor Alex Johnson II has said he was concerned about the venue’s suitability, and city staff has combed through videos of past concerts. The decision to book Greenwood was made well before the political campaign. And staff did review the situation twice, though a third time may have been necessary.

To the credit of the good people of Albany, that comment elicited little cheering or shouting. Within seconds of those words, Mayor Johnson declared that his messages were exploding.

Yet, and especially after the events of last Saturday with the attempted assassination of former President Trump, we have thoughts.

It’s an election year. That should have been enough to disqualify such a supporter. And before you clear your throat and say, “Here they go again,” we’d have the same reservations if Bruce Springsteen took the stage at Monteith Riverpark to campaign for President Joe Biden (although we’re all for him coming in a non-presidential year, don’t get me wrong, Bruce). Call us!).

Albany is a self-proclaimed “purple” city, and it’s been getting bluer lately. We can ignore the idea of ​​buying Bibles online. At least they weren’t sold on-site.

The real damage done is looking at an audience that is likely made up of immigrants and declaring them murderers.

If you follow national politics, you know that this topic has been a hot topic for years on the MAGA right. President Donald Trump brought it up during a debate that focused most of the audience on President Joe Biden’s visible aging and misspokenness rather than Trump’s outright lies.

Here’s what Trump said about Biden during the debate:

He decided to open our borders, to open our country to people coming from prisons, from mental institutions, from insane asylums, to terrorists.

Professional fact-checkers had a field day, especially since moderators seemed unwilling to intervene.

Here’s what they had to say after the debate:

CNN (which hosted the debate): Research has generally found no link between immigration levels and crime — and has sometimes found that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than people born in the United States.

The Poynter Institute’s fact-checking service Politifact called the lie “pants on fire,” a designation for the most blatant distortion of the truth.

The Washington Post also used a phrase from the past: “It’s a hoax. Immigration experts are unaware of any efforts by other countries to empty their prisons and mental institutions.”

The problem, of course, goes beyond simply describing immigrants as bogeymen. And we know that “calling them dishonest” is too pretty a word. When we hear the constant refrain that undocumented immigrants are crazy, criminal, even murderous, we are witnessing a xenophobia that looks less like immigrant-forged democracy than Christian nationalism.

If you will, more “God Bless the USA” and less “(They’re Coming to) America,” Neil Diamond’s contribution to the Fourth of July, sung a week later by a cover band on the next episode of the series River Rhythms.

“History teaches us that silence is the oxygen of hate,” Nancy Greenman of the Linn Benton Hispanic Advisory Committee told the Albany City Council last week. We agree.

As an editorial board, we will not remain silent.

Looking at a crowd and stirring up fear that immigrants will come and kill them is unacceptable.

The city could have included a clause in its contracts stipulating that performers must adhere to the same code of conduct as employees. But Lee Greenwood only had to promise to refrain from any obscenity, to keep the show “family friendly.”

In our opinion, he didn’t even manage to achieve that.

Since the assassination attempt, there has been a universal call to lower the temperature and moderate the rhetoric.

We couldn’t agree more.