Java of the immigrant dream

Za "Time" from New York

There is no longer a southern bypass around Baltimore on the route from New York to Washington. The Google map on a mobile phone, which almost everyone follows while driving a car on the highway network through Wilmington and Philadelphia, shows only a broken line at that place, while the remains of the metal structure of the collapsed bridge that bears the name of the author of the American national anthem, Francis Scott Key, protrude from the depths of Potapska. On the bank of the river where the accident happened, during a recent visit, President Joseph Biden could only promise the local population federal aid in reconstruction, although even before he left Maryland, he was met with blackmail from Republican conservatives gathered in the "Freedom" congressional group. They say that one must first seek compensation from the company owner of the ship that hit the support pole, and then provide the rest of the money by cutting expenses from other parts of the budget.

State aid to the families of the six injured workers, immigrants from Latin America, who were repairing the road on the bridge that fell into the river in the middle of the night, so far no one has mentioned it. If for any consolation, in a transparent society, where the content of the conversation of the special prosecutor Robert Hur with the president of the country is publicly available - so that everyone can judge how well-founded his assessment of Biden's "bad memory" is - a recording of the conversation of members of the Administration was also published of the Maryland Transportation Police that preceded the tragedy, and the pieces of the drama that led to the loss of workers' lives and damage that is measured in the billions of dollars due to the loss of a bridge and the closure of a port that supports the lives of tens of thousands of people are slowly coming together.

photo: satellite image c2024, maxar technologies via ap

CALL FOR HELP

After the crew of the ship "Dali", named after the eccentric painter, set sail from the port of Baltimore for Sri Lanka, lost power and lost control of the vessel, an urgent call for help was made. While a ship the length of the Eiffel Tower, loaded with more than 4.700 containers, floated down the river, the police officer on duty ordered the immediate closure of traffic on the bridge. Two police vehicles arrived at the north and south entrances and blocked the road, from where they could see the rotating lights of a pair of Browner Builders pickup trucks in the middle of the bridge where they were doing work.

At the supervisor's suggestion that the workers move away from the bridge, the policeman replied that he was waiting for another car to come to replace him, so he could go pick them up. Security camera footage shows long seconds of waiting, the ship hitting the center pylon and the bridge falling into the river along with vehicles still flashing their rotating lights. One can only guess whether someone tried to warn them about what was happening - work on state infrastructure is not carried out as anyone thinks. But one can also only imagine how all this would look during the daily rush hour when thousands of vehicles cross that bridge.

On Brauner's website, a message appeared from owner Jack Murphy expressing his deep regret for the tragedy, praying for the recovery of one of the survivors and those who were injured, with a link to which financial aid can be paid. The list does not include Murphy's donation or the name of his company. So far, 136.370 dollars have been collected out of the planned 300.000, which would be 50 thousand for each family. That was the annual salary of those who are no longer there, in jobs that in America are mostly done by immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, where the injured workers came from.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the total number of employees in the US, 17,6 percent are people of Latin American origin, but at the same time they make up as much as a third of the workers in the construction industry, which includes the reconstruction and construction of road infrastructure. Statistical data indicate a constant increase in the number of accidents in this industry, and among them, those from South America suffer in a huge number.

JOBS THAT NO ONE WILL DO

These jobs are extremely important because without them the whole country would stop, but they are easy to get because everyone avoids them, they are done at night, in the snow, rain, wind, with flimsy plastic barriers that separate them from the cars and trucks rumbling in the immediate vicinity. Many of the immigrants work legally, with proper permits, but their children can often be seen on the George Washington Bridge that connects New York and New Jersey, walking past long lines of cars stuck in traffic on the exits toward Harlem, offering fruit, snacks, and water. .

In the New York subway, you can occasionally find seven-year-olds selling M&Ms, Kit Kats, and Trident chewing gum, helping their families survive in one of the most expensive American cities where they found themselves, confused, scared, lost, and helpless. There, after illegally crossing the border, they were brought by buses from Texas and left to fight for survival, waiting for the immigration service to resolve their status and get the right to spend time together with their peers, instead of on train platforms, in school desks. Some of them will one day have well-paid jobs, but a number will surely be forced to do hard, low-paying construction work like those whose American dream ended in the frozen Potapsk, in large part because of insufficient safety on the job and because many bridges do not meets basic safety standards.

A recent investigation by the "New York Times" reveals that on more than 300 bridges located on major highways across America, there is no adequate protection in the form of concrete, stone or metal barriers around the supporting pillars in the water, so they are extremely vulnerable to any impact of heavy goods. ships, although this can be seen even without the reports of specialized commissions.

As strange as it may sound to many that all of New York is on islands connected by similar bridges, it is so unusual that the largest cargo port on the East Coast is not located in industrial Baltimore, but in that very city. Manhattan, along with Soho and Harlem, is an island; Staten Island is, as its name suggests, an island. Brooklyn and Queens are in the continuation of Long Island, so only the Bronx is connected to the mainland by a narrow channel, but it can be reached by car from the city itself, it's easy to guess, only via the Whitestone or Trogs Neck bridges. Fortunately, only giant cruise ships stop by Manhattan itself, but that's why the largest cargo ships such as "Marco Polo" or "Theodore Roosevelt", which is as long as the nearby Empire State Building, which is why two billion dollars were spent to raise the Bayonne Bridge by twenty meters.

NO FOAMY JETS

Honestly, those bridges on the East Coast of America are not even like those foamy jets that the shores throw towards each other to stay floating over the abyss, but even here the eyes can't easily get used to their existence. Not because of the strangeness of those buildings torn apart in the wastelands, but because of the style of construction and the disharmony of the supporting structure, because their columns are often scattered along marshes and muddy banks without any order, symmetry and harmony. Of course, it doesn't even look like those bows will continue their flight at the first opportunity, because they are more than well tied with twisted bundles of steel cables, but their rough beauty lies precisely in that brutalist architecture, with the exception of the Brooklyn Bridge, which is significantly different from its fellows, although there are some exceptions among them.

The unjustly infamous Bronx is reached from the mainland via the graceful Mario Cuomo Bridge, which abuts the idyllic suburbs of New York with its rows of tucked-away houses on clearings overlooking the Hudson, perhaps one day home to some of those who sell chocolate bars these days. on the subways and go to Washington on weekends to visit the Smithsonian Museum, which is now mostly accessible from New York by way of a congested tunnel that cuts through Baltimore, because from its on the left side, there is no more "Francis Scott Key" to avoid the city crowd.

However, that will be resolved in a couple of years, as long as the reconstruction will take. The workers who came from Latin America will certainly play a key role in its construction, making their lives and the entire country better. When they get into their big cars after work, they will not look any different to those selling pineapples and coconuts in plastic cups at the exits than those whose ancestors came long before them, because they are all foreigners in this country.