On Anniversary of Reopening Statue of Liberty

 Today Also in History, July 5, 1986-- Statue of Liberty Reopens to the Public after Four Year Refurbishment. A Statue which Trump would love to demolish

According to the National Park Service Website--

"In 1982, four years before the Statue's centennial anniversary, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lee Iacocca, the Chairman of Chrysler Corporation, to head the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation. The Foundation was created to lead the private sector effort and raise the funds for the renovation and preservation of the Statue for its centennial in 1986. The Foundation worked with the National Park Service to plan, oversee, and implement this restoration.

A team of French and American architects, engineers, and conservators came together to determine what was needed to ensure the Statue's preservation into the next century. In 1984, scaffolding was erected around the exterior of the Statue and construction began on the interior.

Workers repaired holes in the copper skin and removed layers of paint from the interior of the copper skin and internal iron structure. They replaced the rusting iron armature bars (which joined the copper skin to the Statue's internal skeleton) with stainless steel bars. The flame and upper portion of the torch had been severely damaged by water and was replaced with an exact replica of Bartholdi's original torch. The torch was gilded according to Bartholdi's original plans.

The restoration was completed in 1986 and the Statue's centennial was celebrated on July 4 with fireworks and fanfare. On July 5th, a new Statue of Liberty exhibit opened in the base of the pedestal."

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I would like to add to this a recognition of Lee Iacocca and his special role here. First generation Son of Italian immigrants, he organized a National Fundraising effort under the "Save the Lady" Foundation which was an amazing success involving men, women and children, as well as Corporate donations. Children throughout the country held bake sales and did car washes to raise money, which they sent by check to "The Statue of Liberty", care of Iacocca. They raised overall  300 million dollars. They accomplished the renovation in time for the Centennial of the Statue, which remember, was a gift from the people of France.

France and many of its first Republicans such as Marquis de LaFayette, were instrumental in the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin spent most of the War in Paris, organizing support and money from the French, including from Beaumarche, the librettist for some of Mozarts Operas. If it were not for money from France, our Army and War effort would have collapsed. If someone said, " I can't give you money but you have my moral support, Franklin would counter, "moral support, my good Sir, is measured in Shillings". So, never forget our friendship with France, it is our oldest.

Secondly, a few words about President Ronald Reagan, and First Lady Nancy. They were both "all in" on Iacocca's mission, and in fact Nancy, 34 years ago today, cut the Ribbon in the ceremony to open the Statue again to the public. 

I was never a Reaganite, but I and my associates worked with him on a number of Scientific and Intelligence related projects. On Economic policy, he was a captive of the radical Free Market economists of the "Chicago School", therefore was on the wrong side of almost every area of Economic, Banking, Tax, Labor, and Regulatory policy. However, he was never qualified in that area, and his shortfalls were expected and unsurprising. His role in the Hollywood Blacklist during McCarthyism does not reflect well on his legacy. But, he was a World War II Generation American, only one generation removed from America's highpoint of the Immigration experience, himself a descendent of Irish immigrants. He, like most Americans recoiled in horror at the racial genocide and war crimes unleashed by Hitler and his Nazis, who were ultimately defeated by America's melting pot of "Citizen Soldiers". He backed Iacocca in saving the Statue of Liberty AND Ellis Island, not just the Statue. He backed it up, because he was fundamentally an American, and his relationship to immigration was as well.

My family came through there, chased from Russia by the Pogroms of the Russian Czar and the Okhrana. Alexander I, the Emancipator Czar, was an ally of Abraham Lincoln, supported the Union Navy with the Russian Navy, Emancipated the Russian Serfs, and legalized publishing by Jews. Alexander I was assassinated by an "anarchist" bomb in 1881, ( yes, another "lone assassin") His Son and successor, a manipulated Alexander II, blamed Jewish Socialists for his father's murder. At that point, out of revenge, he turned loose the Ohkrana and his Cossacks in a campaign of destruction, murder and Rape against Russias Jews, and they began their forced flight, like my Great-Grandmother, and Martha's grandmother. 

They all came through Ellis Island. Being there, seeing it again in documentaries still makes me cry. When I think of what they suffered through, on their trips, in their crowded tenements, in their Garment factories doing Child labor and piece work to give us what we have, I cannot help being welled up with emotion. 

I also cannot help my barely controlled cold fury at the Donald Trumps and Stephen Millers of this world, and the narrow minded uninformed people who support them. Those are the ones who say, "oh, I'm not against immigrants, I'm against illegals, my family came legally". Or, we can't afford them, not enough room, not enough jobs, etc. Of course, they never look at the fact that these people were categorized as illegal because of immigration restriction legislation passed by racists to keep them out to begin with. Most illegals are actually refugees, fleeing murder, deprivation and oppression in their home countries, just like my ancestors, people who would rather not emigrate but are forced to by circumstances beyond their control. America always welcomed such people, because immigrants helped build the United States, as did the never adequately recognized (or compensated) Slave Labor of African Americans. They contributed to the beauty and diversity of our Culture, and made us the most powerful and advanced Country in the World in most respects.

Today, liars, corrupt power brokers, racist provocateurs, outright Neo Nazis and KKK defenders, cloaking themselves in the garb of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, through their actions and policies, tear down and defile the Statue of Liberty every day. They should convict and sentence themselves to 10 years in jail under the Executive Order signed by Trump himself last week. People like Stephen Miller, who puts children in cages like the Nazis did to Jewish children, a self hating Jew who cavorts with Neo Nazis like Richard Spencer and others among the White Nationalist movement who support his anti-immigrant agenda,  the same Miller who has publicly attacked the beautiful poem by Emma Lazarus at the base of that Statue, should be deported back to the location of whatever Russian or Ukrainian Shtetle his ancestors emigrated from, to live an idyll life of misery under Putin's Dictatorship.

Trump himself should be sentenced to watching an endless loop of documentary newsreel footage of Ellis Island, forced to look at the teeming mass of happy optimistic humanity coming into America, our "tired, poor, yearning to breathe free". That would be one punishment. 

So, thank you to Lee Iaccoca, Ronald Reagan, and every person who funded this renovation. You did good. We know what needs to be renovated next. Let's get on it.