Around the time I was in high school my mother kept a newspaper clipping from the New York Times in the glove compartment of her Subaru station wagon.
“I saved this for you. It was in the paper while you were in Saipan,” she told me.
“Tell your mother that there are no slaves on Saipan,” my father on Saipan would write. “Slaves don’t get salaries.”
“Your father has a very short memory,” Mom would respond. “It wasn’t too long ago that he was a poor man in a foreign land trying to make a better life. He’s forgotten what it feels like to be at the bottom of the totem pole.”
Depending on who you ask, today marked the end of a failed system rife with human rights abuses or the beginning of a new chapter in American imperialism.
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A quick reminder why this happened: Governor Fitial chose federalization over sovereignty.
“I saved this for you. It was in the paper while you were in Saipan,” she told me.
“Tell your mother that there are no slaves on Saipan,” my father on Saipan would write. “Slaves don’t get salaries.”
“Your father has a very short memory,” Mom would respond. “It wasn’t too long ago that he was a poor man in a foreign land trying to make a better life. He’s forgotten what it feels like to be at the bottom of the totem pole.”
Depending on who you ask, today marked the end of a failed system rife with human rights abuses or the beginning of a new chapter in American imperialism.
******
A quick reminder why this happened: Governor Fitial chose federalization over sovereignty.