{"id":14194,"date":"2016-09-19T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=14194"},"modified":"2016-09-21T07:23:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T13:23:45","slug":"al-jazeera-reports-from-missoula-on-refugee-resettlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/09\/al-jazeera-reports-from-missoula-on-refugee-resettlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Jazeera reports from Missoula on refugee resettlement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Interview\"<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Camera operator Brian Chacon and broadcast journalist Andy Gallacher of Al Jazeera English interview Mary Poole of Soft Landing Missoula about the city\u2019s refugee resettlement efforts.<\/p><\/div>\n

MISSOULA \u2014 The night after Missoula became an official \u201cwelcoming city,\u201d in refugee speak, a film crew with Al Jazeera English unloaded its gear and began shooting a short feature on the city\u2019s resettlement efforts.<\/p>\n

Mary Poole of Soft Landing Missoula was first to sit before the camera at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, while the organization\u2019s director, Betsy Mulligan-Dague, sat waiting her turn. The issue at hand may be familiar to many Missoula residents, but what\u2019s taking place in this rural Montana valley still holds fascination to those seeking good in a conflicted world.<\/p>\n

Broadcast journalist Andy Gallacher, whose reporting forays have taken him from Haiti to the war in Iraq, found Missoula interesting\u00a0enough to warrant flying with his crew from Miami to gain a better understanding of how the city emerged as a haven for refugees fleeing war and violence.<\/p>\n

The crew arrived last\u00a0week after Al Jazeera\u2019s editors signed off on the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole refugee thing has become a flash point in the (presidential) election,\u201d Gallacher said during his visit. \u201cWithout really knowing it, what (Poole) started here has attracted a lot of attention, because it has become an electoral issue. It hits at everything. It hits at what we are as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing on Higgins Avenue smoking a cigarette after the morning shoot, Gallacher and Al Jazeera producer Karim Haddad considered the story they were chasing and what brought them across the continent to the Northern Rockies.<\/p>\n

While Montana is viewed nationally as a red state\u2014and one that may be slow to accommodate foreign refugees\u2014Missoula has gained a different sort of reputation. As reporter Matthew Danzico said in August while shooting a feature<\/a> for the British Broadcasting Corporation, Missoula stands apart politically from most of its neighbors.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cPeople are concerned about what we as a country should do about refugees, and this offers the whole thing in a microcosm,\u201d Gallacher said. \u201cIt\u2019s a small town in a very white state in a crucial election year. It\u2019s nice to look at something in the micro sense and expand it out to the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the international news crew, the fears and offers of help found in Missoula stand as a reflection of what\u2019s taking place nationally. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has gained a following by taking a nationalistic tone, one that critics have said represents the worst of America.<\/p>\n

Political watchdogs have seen the rhetoric trickle down to Montana\u2019s gubernatorial race as well, with Republican candidate Greg Gianforte issuing campaign fliers tying Islamic terrorists to Muslim refugees.<\/p>\n

Gallacher believes Poole represents the opposite point of view.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere you have this woman moved tears, even as I was interviewing her, about a dead boy on the beach, and she\u2019s trying to do something about it,\u201d said Gallacher. \u201cShe\u2019s almost a little naive about it and didn\u2019t really know it was going to blow up like this. It has become much bigger than Soft Landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the interview, Gallacher questioned Poole on how Soft Landing got its start\u2014a story that\u2019s now familiar in Missoula. As Poole has noted before, the photo of Alan Kurdi\u2014a 3-year-old Syrian boy drowned on a Turkish beach\u2014pushed her and others to act. Poole was a new mother at the time and the image stirred in her something she hadn\u2019t felt before.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t expect what followed to be controversial.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t even on my radar that the refugee crisis was an issue,\u201d Poole said during the Al Jazeera interview. \u201cIt was a surprise to me. I feel like I put a lot of work into siting down one-on-one with people and trying to understand where they\u2019re coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poole\u2019s efforts to mend fences has helped in a handful of cases, though some still strongly oppose resettlement efforts in Montana.<\/p>\n

A few of those opponents have taken to questionable tactics by writing anonymous letters, forging signatures and, in one instance, forming a new group that has gained the attention<\/a> of the Montana Human Rights Network.<\/p>\n

Last month, Missoula received its first batch of refugees\u2014a family of six from the Democratic Republic of Congo. When asked if she\u2019d still like to see Syrian refugees resettled in Missoula, Poole said Soft Landing stands behind the effort.\u00a0Missoula, she said, is ready to greet any nationality with open arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe refugees we have now have received nothing but a warm welcome, and I hope we can continue to see that in our community,\u201d Poole said. \u201cFor every \u2018interesting\u2019 email I get, I get eight, 10 or 15 others every day from people looking to help. We have a volunteer list that\u2019s growing by the hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallacher, who is originally from England, and Haddad, from Lebanon, said the effort in Missoula has cut through the din of a noisy election season. Still, they said, it\u2019s not the only effort in a right-leaning state trying to make a positive difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a story in Kansas\u2014it was a really nice story there,\u201d Haddad said. \u201cThere\u2019s a program called Roots for Refugees, where a Catholic church runs an ag program that brings in people from Myanmar. They were teaching them to work the land, and then they were buying land and running their own farm. People seemed to love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Missoula Current<\/a>, an independent online newspaper, of which\u00a0Martin Kidston is the founding editor.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MISSOULA \u2014 The night after Missoula became an official \u201cwelcoming city,\u201d in refugee speak, a film crew with Al Jazeera English unloaded its gear and began shooting a short feature on the city\u2019s resettlement efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":14195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[4983,4982,4790,3917,4877],"class_list":["post-14194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-al-jazeera","tag-andy-gallacher","tag-mary-poole","tag-refugees","tag-soft-landing-missoula","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}