Sunday, February 07, 2021

Migrating politics

I love living in this city. In addition to tech folks come to make their fortunes (for a season), there are always new immigrants. And pretty quickly, these hard working folks open stores to serve their communities and also share their culture with their neighbors.

Like this one. Want someone who knows the home town you left in India or, if another sort of customer, sells the spices you might need for your gourmet Indian cooking class? -- here's the place for you.

And right there in the window, the politics of India come to San Francisco. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the struggle between the government and Indian farmers. I'm instinctively prejudiced against an imposition of a modern market on farmers, as across the world, that usually has meant dispossession of small holders. But what do I know.? Here's a Vox explainer which might, or might not clarify, what's happening on the subcontinent.

This sort of thing turns up all over the city. Mainland and Taiwanese Chinese duke it out in graffiti in Chinatown. In the outer Portola neighborhood, there are opinionated signs about which Asian country owns islands in the South China Sea. People post opinions about Nagorno-Karabakh. There are Catalan independence supporters in many alleys and occasional advocates of democracy in Belarus.

It's a big world.

1 comment:

Celia said...

So true and my dear departed Irish Grandma sent $ to the IRA in her day.