January 26, 2007

Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field. Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park. “There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,” Lee Swaney, a retired owner of a heating and air-conditioning business, told the local paper. “Those fields weren’t made for soccer.”

"In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game. "But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. It’s not football. It’s not baseball. The fields weren’t made for it. Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people. "Caught in the middle is a boys soccer program called the Fugees — short for refugees, though most opponents guess the name refers to the hip-hop band. "The Fugees are indeed all refugees, from the most troubled corners — Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burundi, Congo, Gambia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan. Some have endured unimaginable hardship to get here: squalor in refugee camps, separation from siblings and parents. One saw his father killed in their home."

posted by HawthorneWingo 17 years ago
  • Let them play. For Gob's sake, just let them play.
  • Sweet Mothra, what a heart-wrenching article. I was coming up with a whole rant in my head as I was reading this, but now I don't know where to begin. This is just shameful. Simply shameful.
  • 2007?
  • Somebody punch the mayor.
  • Jesus, seriously. How freaking mean and little do you have to be to view a bunch of KIDS playing SOCCER as a threat to anything?
  • Ironically enough, alienation and the refusal to make fairly simple concessions to an immigrant population leads to the creation of breeding grounds for that home-grown terrist thing, as I understand.
  • Somebody punch the mayor. Read the article before you go all knee-jerk. There are 390 persons who need punching. It's not clear that the mayor is one of them.
  • Yeah, mayor ain't the villain, despite the lede.
  • > The fields weren’t made for it. As a matter of interest, is American football likely to be any less harsh on a playing field than soccer?
  • No. Might be more harsh, in that each play starts at or relatively near the midpoint between the sidelines, and the concentration of players on and around the line of scrimmage on each play focuses wear and tear down the middle of the field.
  • The rights to the Fugee's story were just sold to Universal Pictures for $2 million dollars. Universal has agreed to build a $500,000 soccer field for the team, on top of paying for the rights.
  • Oh, geeeze you guys. That was supposed to be a funny. Just, just, just...NEVER MIND! besides, you spealed lead rong, so THERE! *flounces off in a snit.
  • That was supposed to be a funny. Oh, don't worry, there was laughter!
  • Newspaper nerds write "lede" and "graf," BlueHorse. I don't know why, but it's been that way since the days of whisky flasks in desk drawers.
  • But bonus points for the flouncing. There's not enough flouncing in the world these days.
  • Flouncing requires petticoats, which are hard to come by these days.
  • Flouncing requires petticoats. Petticoats require flounces. It takes a crane to build a crane. Peace, yo.
  • The days of whisky flasks in desk drawers are past? Damn! Nobody told me!
  • A display of international flags at Gainesville High School will be moved from its location because school district leaders worry it will become an anti-immigration meeting spot . . . The donated flags represent countries doing business in the Gainesville area or nations to which the students have connections, according to the PTA newsletter that appears on the high school's Web site. Highsmith said an American flag stands taller than the other flags. Many high school students said they liked the display, Highsmith said. "I've also heard from just as many people who don't like it," Highsmith said. "I've heard from the other side, such as veterans who only want the American flag flown." /Fark
  • Why don't they just go all out and show those imgrints they mean bidness? They could just burn those other, lesser flags in a grand ceremony in the middle of the field.
  • lede
  • lede
  • grrrrrrr
  • Newspaper nerds write "lede" and "graf... *smacks self on forehead W'all Ia'll be! I better check next time. Since I've learned sumptin', guess I better git home and go to bed.
  • MonkeyFilter: Bonus points for the flouncing.
  • I prefer "graf" to "par". "Para", sure, but "par"? Is that like Gary Player or something?