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When strangers were welcome here: A hopeful mixtape (slight return)

Sadly, I can’t say that I was completely surprised by this:

Bomb threats on Friday forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings [in Springfield, Ohio] for a second consecutive day, as the city continues to deal with sudden national attention due to false claims involving its Haitian population.

Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield “were evacuated from their buildings to an alternate district location,” school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars said. […]

In addition to those school evacuations, several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves said. […]

Local police and FBI agents based in Dayton are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said.

The city just west of Columbus has been the focal point of a national political firestorm that has included false rumors that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating household pets. City officials and police have said there is no credible information to support those outlandish claims.

Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have pushed those false claims as part of a broader effort to use Springfield as an example for what they say are the harmful consequences of immigration.

Vance has also said there’s been a “massive rise in communicable diseases” in Springfield, but Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Chris Cook said Friday that’s not accurate.

And then there was this:

OK…I’ll tell him.

The strapping young man in the photo above is my grandfather Philip Kramer (in his late teens or early twenties, to my best estimation). He immigrated to America from Bialystok circa 1910. While the area is now part of the Republic of Poland, Bialystok “belonged” to the Russian Empire when he lived there (ergo, he was fluent in Russian, Polish, and Yiddish).

One of the reasons his family emigrated was to flee the state terror inflicted on Russia’s Jewish population by Czar Nicholas (the Bialystok pogram of 1906 was particularly nasty).

I suppose I have Czar Nicholas to thank for my existence. If my grandfather had never left Bialystok, he never would have met New York City born-and-raised Celia Mogerman (the daughter of Jewish German immigrants). Consequently, they never would have fallen in love, got married, and had their daughter Lillian, who never would have met and fallen in love with a young G.I. named Robert Hartley (a W.A.S.P. farm boy from Ohio) at a New York City U.S.O. Club. They, in turn, produced…me (otherwise, you’d just be staring at a blank page here).

In light of all the dehumanizing (and obviously incendiary) anti-immigrant rhetoric and disinformation currently spewing from Trump and his surrogates, I am re-posting the following piece, which I wrote in the wake of a 2021 mass shooting in Atlanta.

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 20, 2021)

https://cbs4local.com/resources/media/028fb76f-a5ae-4e0e-9e5d-ac1da581e4e7-large16x9_AP21078539841999.jpg?1616174551267

The story of America’s immigrants is all of our stories, all Americans. Outside of indigenous Americans, none of us are really “from” here; if you start tracing your family’s genealogy, I’ll bet you don’t have to go back too many generations to find ancestors born on foreign soil. Unfortunately, some Americans have conveniently forgotten about that

It’s been over five years since Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and launched a longshot bid for president with a xenophobic, immigrant-bashing speech that electrified white nationalists and set a dark tone for his campaign and presidency.

Throughout his tenure, Trump continued to sow division and hate with a steady stream of racist conspiracy theories and lies – all while installing extremists in positions of power and executing radical policies, such as banning Muslims from entering the country, separating immigrant children from their parents at the border and reversing basic protections for the LGBTQ community.

Trump’s words and actions had consequences.

Hate crimes and far-right terrorist attacks surged. Teachers across America reported a sudden spike in the use of racial slurs and incidents involving swastikas, Nazi salutes and Confederate flags. And in the first two years of Trump’s administration, the number of white nationalist hate groups rose by 55 percent, as white supremacists saw in him an avatar of their grievances and a champion of their cause.  

Now, Trump is gone from Washington. But the extremist movement he energized may be entering a perilous new phase […]

While this week’s mass shooting in Atlanta that left 8 people dead (6 of them women of Asian descent) is still under investigation and not yet been officially declared a hate crime, the incident has sparked a much-needed national dialog addressing recent spikes in racially motivated violence, particularly targeting members of the Asian-American community.

Yesterday, President Biden and Vice-President Harris addressed the issue head on:

President Biden and Vice President Harris called for unity after attacks against Asian Americans have surged since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“There are simply some core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans,” Biden said during a speech at Emory University in Atlanta on Friday. “One of them is standing together against hate, against racism, the ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation.”

Biden’s remarks came three days after a gunman opened fire at three massage businesses in the Atlanta area, killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.

While the suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long of Georgia, told investigators that the shootings were not racially motivated, physical violence and verbal harassment against members of the Asian American community have spiked over the past year.

“Whatever the motivation, we know this, too many Asian Americans walking up and down the streets are worried,” Biden said. “They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, harassed, they’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.”

The president said that these incidents are evidence that “words have consequences.” […]

Harris, who joined Biden during the trip to Atlanta, called Tuesday’s shooting rampage a “heinous act of violence” that has no place in Georgia or the United States.

She also said that the uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes is a reminder that racism, xenophobia and sexism is real in America and “always has been.”

Looking on the bright side of this week’s news…one of the most oft-quoted lines from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 is this one: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I’d like to think that we edged a little bit closer to that better day this past Thursday:

That would be Kamala Harris, a woman of South Asian and West Indian heritage, a daughter of immigrants and the first female Vice-President of the United States… conducting the swearing-in ceremony for Deb Halaand, a woman who now holds the distinction of serving as the first Native-American Interior Secretary of the United States.

That only took us 245 years. But you know…baby steps.

Granted, it doesn’t solve all our problems, but it gives one hope, which is in short supply.

That’s why I think it’s time for some music therapy. I’ve chosen 10 songs that speak to the immigrant experience and serve to remind us of America’s strong multicultural bedrock.

Alphabetically:

“Across the Borderline” – Freddy Fender

This song (co-written by John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, and Jim Dickinson) has been covered many times, but this heartfelt version by the late Freddy Fender is the best. Fender’s version was used as part of the soundtrack for Tony Richardson’s 1982 film The Border.

“America” – Neil Diamond

Diamond’s anthemic paean to America’s multicultural heritage first appeared in the soundtrack for Richard Fleischer and Sidney J. Furie’s 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer (thankfully, Diamond’s stirring song has had a longer shelf life than the film, which left audiences and critics underwhelmed). Weirdly, it was included on a list of songs deemed as “lyrically questionable” and/or “inappropriate” for airplay in an internal memo issued by the brass at Clear Channel Communications in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Go figure.

“America” (movie soundtrack version) – West Side Story

This classic number from the stage musical and film West Side Story (with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein) is both a celebration of Latin immigrant culture and a slyly subversive take down of nativist-fed ethnic stereotyping.

Ave Que Emigra” – Gaby Morena

Speaking of exploding stereotypes-here’s a straightforward song explaining why cultural assimilation and cultural identity are not mutually exclusive. From a 2012 NPR review:

As a song that speaks of being an immigrant, [Gaby Moreno’s “Ave Que Emigra”] strikes the perfect emotional chords. So many songs on that topic are gaudy, one-dimensional woe-is-me tales. Moreno’s story of coming to America is filled with simple one-liners like “tired of running, during hunting season” (evocative of the grotesque reality Central Americans face today at home and in their journeys north). Her cheerful ranchera melody, with its sad undertone, paints a perfect portrait of the complex emotional state most of us immigrants inhabit: a deep sadness for having to leave mixed with the excitement of the adventure that lies ahead, plus the joy and relief of having “made it.”

No habla espanol? No problema! You can see the English translation of the lyrics here.

“Buffalo Soldier” – Bob Marley & the Wailers

Sadly, not all migrants arrived on America’s shores of their own volition; and such is the unfortunate legacy of the transatlantic slave trade that flourished from the 16th to the 18th centuries. As Malcolm X once bluntly put it, “[African Americans] didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; the Rock was landed on us.” Bob Marley entitled this song as reference to the nickname for the black U.S. Calvary regiments that fought in the post-Civil War Indian conflicts. Marley’s lyrics seem to mirror Malcom X’s pointed observation above:

If you know your history,
Then you would know where you’re coming from
Then you wouldn’t have to ask me
Who the heck do I think I am

I’m just a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival
Fighting for survival

“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” – Arlo Guthrie

Woody Guthrie originally penned this “ripped from the headlines” protest piece as a poem in the wake of a 1948 California plane crash (the music was composed some years later by Martin Hoffman, and first popularized as a song by Pete Seegar). Among the 32 passengers who died were 28 migrant farm workers who were in the process of being deported back to Mexico. Guthrie noticed that most press and radio reports at the time identified the 4 crew members by name, while dehumanizing the workers by referring to them en masse as “deportees” (plus ca change…). His son Arlo’s version is very moving.

“The Immigrant”– Neil Sedaka

Reflecting  back on his 1975 song, Neil Sedaka shared this tidbit in a 2013 Facebook post:

I wrote [“The Immigrant”] for my friend John Lennon during his immigration battles in the 1970s. I’ll never forget when I called to tell him about it. Overwhelmed by the gesture, he said, “Normally people only call me when they want something. It’s very seldom people call you to give you something. It’s beautiful.”

I concur with John. It’s Sedaka’s most beautifully crafted tune, musically and lyrically.

“Immigration Blues” – Chris Rea

In 2005, prolific U.K. singer-songwriter Chris Rea released a massive 11-CD box set album with 137 tracks called Blue Guitars (I believe that sets some sort of record). The collection is literally a journey through blues history, with original songs “done in the style of…[insert your preferred blues sub-genre here]” from African origins to contemporary iterations. This track is from “Album 10: Latin Blues”. The title says it all.

“Immigration Man” – David Crosby & Graham Nash

After an unpleasant experience in the early 70s getting hassled by a U.S. Customs agent, U.K.-born Graham Nash (who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1978) didn’t get mad, he got even by immortalizing his tormentor in a song. The tune is one of the highlights of the 1972 studio album he recorded with David Crosby, simply titled Crosby and Nash. I love that line where he describes his immigration form as “big enough to keep me warm.”

“We Are the Children” – A Grain of Sand

A Grain of Sand were a pioneering Asian-American activist folk trio, who hit the ground running with their 1973 album A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America. Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, and William “Charlie” Chin use minimalist arrangements, lovely harmony singing and politically strident lyrics to get their message across. I find this cut to be particularly pertinent to reflecting on the events of this week and quite moving.

Bonus Track:

John Legend…not to sing us out, but to offer a few words of wisdom. Amen.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Old Oak

Blood at the Root: An MLK Day Mixtape

Bury My Heart at the Visitor Center

El Norte

Sin Nombre

The Tainted Veil

The Visitor

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Searchable archives at Den of Cinema

Dennis Hartley

The WSJ Scolds Trump

They don’t like his nasty “supporter” Laura Loomer

The Editorial Board notices that Trump is hanging around with a conspiracy nut:

We can’t believe we have to write this about a presidential candidate, but then Mr. Trump seems to like the company of Ms. Loomer, the 31-year-old online provocateur. […]Ms. Loomer is usually described in the press as “far right,” but that’s unfair to the fever swamps.

It runs down many of her grotesque statements (although, like all the media, ignores the most vile) and notes that people in the Trump campaign and even Marge Greene are saying she’s damaging the campaign, “to no avail.”

The press is naturally having fun with all this and asked Mr. Trump about it on Friday. “Laura’s a supporter,” he said. “I have a lot of supporters.” He added that “she’s a strong person; she’s got strong opinions,” and he wondered why people are asking about her.

They’re asking because they know Mr. Trump’s association with Ms. Loomer feeds the concern among voters that Mr. Trump listens to crazy courtiers who flatter him and play to his vanity. Is this who the next four years are going to feature?

The problem here is deeper than Mr. Trump’s electoral prospects. A growing segment of the American right is populated by, and susceptible to, cranks and conspiracists. A movement that used to admire William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas Sowell now elevates a pseudo-historian who blames Winston Churchill for World War II and media personalities who sell falsehoods as a triumph for free speech.

This isn’t an intellectual or political movement that is going to win converts, nor will it deserve them.

Oh snap.

These people have been enabling Trump for 8 long years. He’s no worse than he’s always been and Loomer is hardly any worse than Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller.

I imagine all this will succeed in keeping Loomer away from Trump at least for a while. It’s not like Trump really cares about her. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. But I’m sure they’ll stay in touch. He loves her style.

Some Serious Reading

I thought I would share some good stuff I read this morning with gift links. This article in the NY Times is well worth reading in full. In fact, it’s delicious:

Late in the summer of 2003, a team of television producers stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower eager to survey the set of their next reality show. After years filming “Survivor” in jungles around the world, training cameras on exotic spiders and deadly snakes to evoke danger, they came looking for a different set of sensory clues, the tiny details that would convey wealth and power.

Right away, they knew they had a problem.

The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud. Then they spotted scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas. The décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame.

The place did not exactly buzz with energy either. Fewer than 50 people worked at Trump Organization headquarters in midtown Manhattan. At the office’s spiritual center, Mr. Trump’s own desk bore no evidence of work, no computer screens or piles of contracts and blueprints, just a blanket of news articles focused on one subject: himself.

“When you go into the office and you’re hearing ‘billionaire,’ even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see chipped furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way,” recalled Bill Pruitt, one of the producers of the new NBC show.

Interesting, no? Here’s the NY Times gift link.

Here’s another one you should read, from Huffington Post:

Key allies and advisers aren’t mincing their words: In order to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda, the United States will need enormous prison camps for immigrant families, part of an effort to deport millions of people at a record pace.

The mass deportation operation will be a “bloody story,” Trump said last weekend. And key advisers have promised a historic infrastructure project to churn people out of the country.

The camps will be built “on open land in Texas near the border” and should have the capacity to house as many as 70,000 people, which would double the United States’ current immigrant detention capacity, Stephen Miller, the main point man on immigration in Trump’s White House, said last year. In multiple interviews, Miller has gleefully described daily flights out of the camps to all corners of the world, an undertaking he said would be “greater than any national infrastructure project” in American history.

“Trump comes back in January — I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Thomas Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, said in July at a conference for Trump-aligned conservatives.

“They ain’t seen shit yet,” Homan said. “Wait until 2025.”

Yeah, Read the whole thing.

Here’s one from Adam Serwer in the Atlantic on the real DEI candidates:

Conservatives have taken to referring to DEI as “didn’t earn it.” But to the extent that the candidates are running on unearned advantages related to personal biography, this better describes Trump and Vance than it does Harris, who worked her way up from local to state to federal office over the course of decades.

Trump was born a multimillionaire who drove one business after another into the ground, and his reputation as a brilliant businessman is largely due to him playing one on television. His term as president was mired by incompetence and corruption despite being relatively uneventful, and when faced with a real crisis—the coronavirus pandemic—he proceeded to bungle it in a catastrophic fashion that led to needless deaths and economic calamity. Vance has spent very little time in elected office, an office he won mostly on the success of his memoir and a Trump primary endorsement in a red state. He appears to have been selected as the vice-presidential nominee on the basis of his willingness to debase himself on Trump’s behalf. Neither of them has a compelling record of public service.

Trump is still unqualified even after serving as president for four years because he is incapable of learning anything. JD Vance is a 39 year old dilettante who has serve 1 year and 8 months as a Senator.

Plue they are both monsters.

He Went Down The Rabbit Hole

The husband had been a conspiracy theorist even before COVID came along. His wife described him as almost “cultlike” in his anti-vax beliefs. It’s clear he had untreated mental illness but the anti-Vax movement sent him into a spiral that resulted in this terrible tragedy. Via The Atavist:

Over the course of their marriage, Hu had watched as her now ex-husband, Stephen O’Loughlin, became obsessed with pseudoscience, self-help gurus, and conspiracy theories, spending long nights watching videos online, then sharing the details of fantastical plots with Hu, their friends, and people he barely knew. The COVID-19 pandemic had only made things worse. O’Loughlin huddled for hours at his computer streaming YouTube clips and poring over right-wing websites—what he called “doing research.”

One of O’Loughlin’s fixations was vaccines. He believed that Pierce had been damaged by the routine inoculations he received as a baby. O’Loughlin was adamant that the boy be given no more shots—not for COVID-19, when a vaccine was eventually authorized for kids, nor for any other disease.

In 2020, Hu had filed for the sole legal right to make decisions about her son’s medical care, which would empower her to vaccinate Pierce regardless of what her ex wanted. She felt good about her chances in court. On January 11, as a condition for a continuance he had requested in the medical custody case, O’Loughlin suddenly agreed to let Pierce receive two vaccinations. In retrospect, according to Hu’s attorney, Lorie Nachlis, “it all seemed too easy.”

He killed his boy and himself.

And I’m quite sure he came across Bobby Kennedy Jr’s “research” along the way.

From The You Can’t Make This Stuff Up File

Last night, Bill Maher made a joke about Trump and Laura Loomer having an affair. (It was cruder than that but basically that was it.) That theme was all over social media yesterday, starting with the big kahuna. above.

Loomer was very, very upset about it:

She should know about defamation and character assassination. It’s her entire brand:

Uh huh:

How To Explain This?

Ok. It’s Donald Trump who believes he can change reality simply by saying something over and over again. And for about 46% of voters, it appears that he can.

Not even a 3 point lead.

Yes, I still think Harris will pull out a narrow win. But what do we do about the 46% of our fellow Americans who think that bigoted conman should run the country? Their willingness to believe his lies (or rationalize them) makes them monsters too, doesn’t it? (Or dangerous fools, if we want to be generous about it.)

I knew we had been a racist, violent people. But I thought we had progressed further than this, I really did.



Is It Something In The Dust Storms?

Another family feud over a GOP candidate in AZ

Most of us have them, family members who for reasons unfathomable have gone full red-hat. For other unknown reasons a lot of them run for office in Arizona.

Six members of Rep. Paul Gosar’s (Ariz.-R) family made a point of asking people not to vote for him. Several appeared in attack ads against him and after Jan. 6 called for his ouster from Congress:

“I consider him a traitor to this country. I consider him a traitor to his family,” Gosar’s brother, Dave, a Wyoming attorney, said. “He doesn’t see it. He’s disgraced and dishonored himself.”

Now it’s Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter’s turn, reports Mother Jones. Her sister, Pamela, “an activist prayer warrior,” is running for a state house district in suburban Maricopa County. Lynda’s distancing herself:

In their quest to hold onto the legislature, Republicans have turned to a member of a famous Arizona family—Pamela Carter, older sister of the original Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter. On the campaign trail, the candidate Carter has talked up her work as a successful entrepreneur and a record of academic accomplishment, and boasts of having “my family’s full support” for her state house run. But a review of her record and past statements tells a much different story: In contrast to the fourth district’s moderate profile, Carter is a fervently anti-abortion minister who has been “blessed with end-time revelation” and who has made confusing claims about her past. And one notable member of her family is not on board—her famous sister, an advocate for reproductive rights.

“On her website, Pam claims to have her ‘family’s full support,’” Lynda Carter said in a statement to Mother Jones. “I have known Pam my entire life, which is why I sadly cannot endorse her for this or any public office.” 

Pamela Carter’s resume is a mite muddy, the Mother Jones story explains in detail. She’s also from the Seven Mountains wing of evangelical Christianity when she’s not multi-level marketing and prophesying.

She talked frequently about building influence on the “Media mountain” and said in 2011 that she was part of “God’s media army…to be raised up for such a time as this, to take possession of the arts, the entertainment media, the internet.”

The term is often used by proponents of a Christian nationalist movement sometimes called the New Apostolic Reformation and a belief its adherents subscribe to known as Seven Mountains Dominionism, which aims to take gain influence over the seven spheres (or “mountains”) of government, education, media, family, entertainment, religion, and business.

Sister Lynda, like Gosar’s siblings, is having none of it.

In her statement opposing Pamela Carter’s candidacy, Lynda Carter praised the late Republican Sen. John McCain for his “decency, justice, and freedom,” while explicitly endorsing both of the Democrats running against her sister:

“As a native Arizonan, I am proud to endorse Kelli Butler and Karen Gresham to represent LD4 in Arizona’s State House. Kelli and Karen are both strong, experienced candidates, born and raised in Arizona,” she said. “They are working mothers fighting for the rights that matter most to Arizonans, especially every child’s right to a quality education.”

Who knows what truths the Lasso of Hestia would tease out of Pamela?

Explainers

Compiled for sharing

If you’re in the mood for a breathless summary of superconmisogynisticextrabragadocious Trumpy lowlights, Seth Meyers has you covered. Bookmark it for Thanksgiving.

This Zak Kimball guy has a set of explainers on his TikTok page, but this one answers The Donald’s debate challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris about why she hasn’t accomplished the things she proposes in 3-1/2 years in that office. For the civics-challenged.

Tom Bonier explains why the polls are so screwed up and why they now overestimate Repunblicans’ support.

And for those of you paying attention, voter registration has been way up since Biden handed Harris the baton.

Voter registration has been spiked insanely since Harris trounced Trump in the debate and Taylor Swift’s endorsement.

Enjoy.

Update: Knew Rosenberg had these but could not find them earlier

https://x.com/SimonWDC/status/1835017466868908190

Friday Night Soother

The Wolves of Yellowstone

Gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995, resulting in a trophic cascade through the entire ecosystem. After the wolves were driven extinct in the region nearly 100 years ago, scientists began to fully understand their role in the food web as a keystone species.

TRANSCRIPT: In 1995, something really exciting happened in the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone. 41 wild wolves are reintroduced here by scientists. After 100 years of being hunted, wolves could once again call this place home.

The wolves thrived, but something else very surprising happened. Their return had a spectacular effect on the landscape, an effect that spread wider than anyone thought possible. So how did this all happen?

In the past, wolves were seen as a risk to people and livestock, and they were exterminated from the Yellowstone area in the 1920s. The elk’s main predator was gone, and their population more than doubled. Elk are both grazers and browsers, so they eat grass, shrubs, and trees. They overgraze the entire park, upsetting the natural balance of the ecosystem.

Mammals like mice and rabbits could not use the plants to hide from predators, and their populations fell dramatically. Grizzly bears suffered as the elk munch away their berry supply, which they badly need to build up fat before hibernating. Pollinators like bees and hummingbirds had fewer flowers to feed on, songbirds less trees to nest in.

Perhaps the elk’s most devastating impact was how they affected the park’s riverbanks. When the wolf was around, elk were vulnerable when they moved down towards rivers to drink. They would never spend too long by the water, where they could be ambushed. But with the apex predators gone, they gorged themselves faster than the shrubs could grow and gathered in great herds on the lush river banks. The massive elk’s hooves eroded the riverbanks, so the rivers and streams clouded with soil.

The fish inherited murky homes, and without trees and clean water, beavers couldn’t build their dams to live in. Without the protection of the dams, fish, amphibians and otters suffered even more, and all because of the missing wolf.

Now, with as many as 100 gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park, their reintroduction is having an effect that even surprised scientists. Wolves have contributed to bringing elk numbers down from 17,000 in 1995 to just 4,000 today. Since only the healthiest of elk survived, the population is much more robust.

All of these elk kills mean more carcasses for scavengers like coyotes, eagles, and ravens. Grizzly bear numbers have increased, too. The grizzlies benefit from the wolves’ elk kills, and less elk also means more berries, and just the elk’s fear of wolves gives the riverbank trees, like aspen and willow, a chance to regenerate. They can grow to five times their original size in just six years.

The songbirds are returning, too, and the bigger trees along the rivers means greater root structures, which means stronger riverbanks and less erosion. Clean water and big trees, beaver paradise. The return of the beaver dams creates new habitats for fish, amphibians, reptiles, and even otters.

This shows just some of the trickle-down effects of the wolves’ reintroduction, known to scientists as a trophic cascade. The trophic cascade doesn’t stop there, though. The wolves are even helping us. In 2005, over 100,000 visitors went to Yellowstone National Park just to see the wolves, pumping $30 million into the local economy, money for jobs and livelihoods.

Factor in that wolves contribute to the health and diversity of all Yellowstone’s wildlife, and its impact is staggering. The wolf’s benefits also cascade down to the 106,000 residents of Billings, Montana. Their drinking water, Yellowstone River, is now cleaner. Who would’ve thought that just bringing back some wolves could produce such far-reaching benefits for nature and for people? From the tips of taller trees down to its cleaner rivers, these wild wolves have rebalanced and restored our nation’s very first national park.

Wow, just wow.