President Elect Joe Livingston filled in for President Carol Sullivan.
President Elect Joe said there were no visiting Rotarians present and Dick Shafer’s daughter Attorney Susanna Shafer was our Guest Speaker.
A reminder to all Club members to keep selling raffle tickets. Each $10 raffle ticket gives the winner a chance to win a “brick” of 100 $10 scratch tickets. The funds raised will benefit our scholarship fund. We’re hoping to sell all of them in time to have a drawing around Christmas. They’ll be great stocking stuffers. If you need more raffle tickets to sell they are available at the Sgt. of Arms table. There are only 400 tickets to be sold.
President Elect Joe reminded everyone about “Rotary Night” at the Providence Bruins on November 5, 2016. The tickets are $15.00 and $5.00 of that amount will be donated to Rotary.
Member Announcements
Ed Fowler informed us that our Annual Christmas Lunch is to be held on Thursday at Noontime on December 8, 2016 at Taunton High School. The program will feature the Taunton High School Chorus who will fill the auditorium with the Joyful sounds of Christmas. Our own Louis “Armstrong” Ricciardi will sound the English “carriage horn” that was given to our Club by the Taunton England Club with the stipulation that we sound it once a year at Christmas. The English Carriage Horn is kept at the Old Colony History Museum and is brought out only once a year. Dan LeBrun will lead us in singing our Annual Rotary Christmas Song. Lots of fun, delicious food, heart warming entertainment, wonderful camaraderie, and a great Rotary Christmas tradition. Ed willneed a head count by November 17, 2016. All guests and spouses are most welcome. Thanks Ed!
Thanks to Mike Tabak for taking this week's notes for the Bulletin!
Scratch Ticket Raffle is on! The winner will receive One Hundred $10.00 scratch tickets. The raffle will be pulled on a date to be announced.
Rotary Night at the PBruins, November 5, 2016. $15 for tickets. Click here for registration details.
Rotary Foundation Centennial Dinner,Thursday, November 17 at Venus de Milo, 75 Grand Army Highway,Swansea, MA 02777. More information can be found here.
Did you know that your happy and sad bucks help the club make a donation to the Rotary Foundation?
Willits Mendonca donated $3 Happy Bucks, $1 for Dan LeBrun and his new job at TASC. Dan and Willits worked together at Bank Five and Dan will be missed. The other $1 was to note that Bennett Elementary School is organizing another Clean Water fundraiser to support Rotary’s efforts in that area. Bennett students are also organizing a “Letter to Our Troops” program. Kudos to Bennett Elementary School. Willits donated $1 to tell us he ran in the Mayor’s Road Race and finished in a record 26 minutes.
Past President Joe Mitchell donated some Happy Bucks to tell us about the wonderful TASC Annual Dinner he attended and to thank Dan LeBrun for all his efforts. Joe contributed more bucks in appreciation of our District Governor’s visit the week before and for all the District Governor’s hard work. Joe tossed in another Happy Buck for his beloved Boston Celtics and their success.
Dan LeBrun contributed some Happy Bucks to thank the many generous businesses and people who made the TASC Annual Dinner a huge success. Dan donated one more Happy/Sad Buck because his wife Linda was away and Grandpa Dan had the “enjoyable” task of baby sitting his Grandson all to himself.
Kit Tunney was Happy to contribute some Happy Dollars to thank everyone whose generosity made the TASC Annual Dinner a financial success. Kit also gave a shout out to everyone who attended.
President Elect Joe Livingston donated some Happy and Sad Bucks: First for the wonderful time he and his wife had celebrating their Anniversary at Disney World,but a sad Buck because they had to put down their family dog of 15 years.
At the October 27th meeting, Dick Shafer was the Program Chair. We welcomed his daughter, Attorney Susanna Shafer, an Immigration Attorney. Attorney Susanna Lee Shafer is a graduate of Taunton High School and Cornell University. She has been practicing Immigration Law for the past 15 years.
Attorney Shafer’s talk and power point presentation was titled: “Why Should We Care?” Susanna began by thanking the Rotary Club for having her back as a speaker. She stated that she loved the City of Taunton because of it’s diverse cultural and social nature.
Most of Attorney’s talk centered around the New Americans in Massachusetts and the top myths regarding Immigrants. Immigration is a world crisis, not just an American problem. Some of the myths Susanna discussed about immigrants were: “1) The immigrants who are here illegally chose to be illegal, and could become legal through the current system, if they wanted to do so; 2) Undocumented Immigrants are “illegal” so they must have committed crimes; 3) Deporting all the illegal immigrants and/or building a giant ‘Donald Trump’ style wall along the Mexican border would make our country safer; 4) Deporting illegal immigrants would help the economy, because illegal immigrant workers take the jobs and lower the wages of U.S. citizen workers; 5) Immigrants come here and go on welfare, and the nation spends millions of dollars in welfare on them; 6) Illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes; 7) Marrying a U.S. Citizen or having U.S. Citizen children automatically gives a person legal status in this country, and prevents that person from being deported: and 8) Illegal immigrants are un-American and don’t believe in the American dream”. Attorney Shafer methodically debunked all of these myths about immigrants.
Attorney Shafer also discussed the worldwide refugee crisis and it’s root causes. In the words of Pope Francis “To imitate the hatred and violence of dictators and murderers is thebest way to take their place.”
Further facts about America’s Immigrant population, especially in Massachusetts are: Immigrants and their children are growing shares of the Massachusetts population and electorate; roughly 1 in 6 Bay Staters are Latino or Asian voters; immigrant Latino and Asian entrepreneurs and consumers add tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to the Massachusetts economy; immigrants are integral to the Massachusetts’ economy as workers and tax payers; immigrants excel educationally and they are an integral part of Massachusetts booming educational enterprises and systems.”
Attorney Shafer ended with a Question and Answer session with Club members.
A very enlightening presentation to say the least. There’s so much more to the immigration and refugee issue than meets the eye. Thanks to Dick Shafer for bringing us such an informative program and to his daughter Attorney Shafer for sharing her knowledge and passion for “Immigration Law.”
For this week's meetingKit Tunney will be introducing Thomas Smith, General Manager of the Silver City Galleria. His talk should be very interesting, since there have been great additions and changes to the Galleria.
