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Home - News
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Up Front
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One Fremont — two communities
A Fremont resident declared, “The enemy is here,” and started counting off how many Latinos were in the room when members of the One Fremont-One Future campaign walked into the Fremont City Council meeting July 6, said group organizer Kristin Ostrum. It was the first council meeting since the special election June 21, when citizens voted for a city ordinance that would make it illegal to rent or lease property to undocumented immigrants. One Fremont-One Future is a citizens group that opposes the law.
Other ugly scenes at the meeting included a man telling a Latino woman that she wasn’t welcome, Ostrum said. The woman replied that she was a U.S. citizen, but the man ordered her to go back to Mexico.
During The Pledge of Allegiance that’s recited before all Fremont council meetings, some people revised it to say: “… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all white men.”
Ostrum, a white woman who is married to a Lutheran minister, said ordinance supporters “continually accused me of being ‘immoral,’ and disgracing and ruining the church because I personally spoke out on a political issue,” she said in an email. “They stated that I could be sued because I was interfering with the constitutional separation of church and state and that I was really controlled by my husband who was ‘hiding behind my skirts.’”
The council will approve the election results when it meets again July 13.
A spokesperson for ACLU Nebraska said the organization intends to stop the law from going into effect July 29. But the group has not set a firm date for filing an injunction.
Nebraska Appleseed also actively opposes the law. Executive Director Becky Gould said the group will use its resources to educate other Nebraska communities about how laws like Fremont’s are unconstitutional. She said the organization supports ACLU’s efforts to repeal the ordinance, but will not take part in a lawsuit.
Hazelton, Pa., and Farmers Branch, Texas, passed similar laws in 2006 that have never been enforced. The cities, close in size to Fremont, have spent more than $8 million collectively to defend their laws against ACLU challenges.
— Rob McLean
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