Gangs in Holland
I'm taking a break from politics today to write about my hometown of Holland, Michigan, and some of the changes that have taken place there since I left 32 years ago.
I was inspired by this article in the Holland Sentinel about the local police testifying in the state capital about Holland's gang problem. And we aren't talking about roving bands of Christian Reformed toughs rumbling with Reformed Church youth gangs over who are the more pious.
Yes, my hometown is a weird place. Settled in 1847 by Dutch religious dissidents--they were dissenting from the Dutch king's grant of religious freedom to Catholics and Jews--Holland for nearly a century was one of the more homogeneous outposts of old Europe you could find on the North American continent. The Holland telephone directory was nearly indistinguishable from that of Amsterdam, except for the ads in English.
Tall blonds and blondes are everywhere in Holland, bearing family names like VanEenanaam, Ver Hage, VanSlooten or VanderWoude. Not to mention, DeKok, DeLeeuw, DeHaan, and DenHerder. Holland for the past three-quarters of a century has celebrated an annual Tulip Festival in which the inhabitants put on 18th century Dutch costumes and parade down 8th Street like a VerMeer or Rembrandt painting come to life. Politicians marched, too. I've seen a picture of young Mitt Romney with his father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, in which both are in Dutch costumes. Some of the marchers even wore wooden shoes.
But in the early 1950s, names like Ramirez, Ramos, Rodriguez and Rios started appearing in the Holland telephone directory. Mexican migrant laborers, some brought in to pick cucumbers by the giant H.J. Heinz pickle factory on 16th Street, and others coming on their own to work in the many fruit farms that surround the city, began changing the complexion of Holland. Some of them liked what they found here, got jobs in the factories, and put down roots.
By the time I entered Montello Park Elementary School on 22nd Street it was common to have one or two Mexican kids in the class, but rarely more. They made up a small minority of Holland residents, adding a welcome dash of black-haired Latin Catholic spice to an overwhelmingly white, bland, Dutch Protestant culture. The Mexican kids taught us forbidden Spanish swear words, and even put on Dutch costumes to march in the Tulip Time parade with the rest of us. I maintain to this day that most of the Dutch and most of the Mexicans got along fine. I remember no incidents, but then I was just a kid. Even in high school, things seemed to be fine.
Beginning in the 1990s, according to Holland Police chief John Kruithof, things changed. He told state officials the city has had 35 gangs since then, although he believes only about half a dozen are active now. Some are Mexican, but I've also heard of Laotian gangs, an ethnic group that didn't exist in Holland when I lived there. They have names like the Latin Kings, Tiny Rascal Gangsters, and the Vice Lords. They aren't just social clubs, either. There have been shootings, and this past week someone threw a firebomb at a house on 22nd Street a few blocks down from my old school.
That area was always a tough, depressing area of tiny houses and unkempt yards. There was almost nothing attractive about it, so it drew people on the fringes of society as inhabitants. It would be a good area for a redevelopment project, something the city of Holland is normally pretty good at. Gangs can do that to a neighborhood, and only good police work--and economic opportunity--can root them out.