Postville

A portrait of cultural conflict in action visits a small Iowa community where Lubavitcher Jews opened a successful slaughterhouse and found themselves in conflict with gentile neighbors.

An inside view of a rural Iowa town torn apart by greed, failed immigration policy and misguided view of diversity. Postville (population 2400) is an obscure meatpacking town in the northeast corner of Iowa. Here, in the most unlikely of places, in the middle of endless cornfields, unparalleled diversity drew the curiosity of international media and outside observers. In 2008, however, people who hoped Postville would succeed declared the town?s experiment in multiculturalism dead. It was not native Iowans, or the newly-arrived Orthodox Jews, or the immigrant workers and refugees from around the world who made Postville fail. Postville's momentum towards a sustainable multicultural community was stopped in its tracks when the town was crushed by a massive raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on May 12th 2008. 20% of the town's population was arrested, forcing the closure of the town?s largest employer, a kosher meatpacking plant. The raid exposed the disastrous enforcement of immigration policy, the exploitation of Postville by activists, and disturbing questions about the packing house's operators. Today, with managers sitting in jail, workers in federal prison on their way to deportation, and a huge influx of new immigrants to fill their spots, the town is attempting to survive a near terminal blow. Grey and Devlin--with more than 10 years experience in Postville, 20 years experience in meat-packing plants and a life time work with immigrant populations--join with Goldsmith--the only Jew ever to serve on the city council--describe the real events in Postville, which have been subject to misrepresentation in the media and by diversity professionals and detractors alike.

On January 22, 2005, Inuit from communities throughout northern and central Labrador gathered in a school gymnasium to witness the signing of the Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement and to celebrate the long-awaited creation of their own regional self-government of Nunatsiavut.This historic agreement defined the Labrador Inuit settlement area, beneficiary enrollment criteria, and Inuit governance and ownership rights. Settlement, Subsistence, and Change Among the Labrador Inuit explores how these boundaries – around land, around people, and around the right to self-govern – reflect the complex history of the region, of Labrador Inuit identity, and the role of migration and settlement patterns in regional politics. Comprised of twelve essays, the book examines the way of life and cultural survival of this unique indigenous population, including: household structure, social economy of wildfood production, forced relocations and land claims, subsistence and settlement patterns, and contemporary issues around climate change, urban planning, and self-government.

The Quiet Journey is one person's life story told in amusing and authentic memoirs from 1936 until 2000. The author, writing to his grandchildren, shares candid childhood stories about Saturday afternoon movies, reading contests, and threshing runs. The memoirs capture a glimpse of attending a one room rural school, growing up on a farm, and living without electricity. Older readers may recall their own memories of catching and killing a rooster for Sunday dinner, or playing fox and geese in the snow. Others may identify with the author as he tells of his first date and learning how to dance. A few may even remember the surprises that awaited them at college. Those who served in the navy during the 1950s may have experienced challenging shore patrol duty in places like Olongapo, Philippines, or visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. In addition, former sailors may remember some of their more amusing experiences when at sea. All of these experiences are captured in The Quiet Journey, along with humorous and challenging experiences of teaching in Urbana, Postville, Story City, and Dubuque, Iowa. However, everyone reading The Quiet Journey, will sense the importance of the second half of the twentieth century.

The language of exile, focused with theological and biblical narratives and coupled with depictions of real-life exilic communities, can equip church leaders as agents in the creation of new communities. Robert Hoch reads the larger North American tradition of Christian worship and mission through the prism of visibly marginalized communities. Through this lens, leaders may come to see diversity as an indication of mission vitality, and focus less on assimilating people and more on the future promises of God and the manifold textures of incarnation.

This book examines transborder Latin American sociocultural and spatial conditions across the globe and at different scales, from gendered and racialized individuals to national and transnational organizations. Gathering scholars from the "spatial sciences"—architecture, urban design, urban planning, and geography—as well as sociology, anthropology, history, and economics, the volume explores these transbordering practices of place making and community building across cultural and nation-state borders, examining different agents (individuals, ethnic and cultural groups, NGOs, government agencies) that are engaged in transnational/transborder living and city-making practices, reconceiving notions of state, identity, and citizenship and showing how subjected populations resist, adapt, or coproduce transnational/transborder projects and, in the process, help shape and are shaped as transborder subjects.