RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

China’s One Child Policy reverberates today by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America by Barbara Demick is a stellar piece of journalistic reporting in book form, laying bare in well-researched details the far-reaching impacts of China’s One Child Policy. For more than 30 years, Chinese women who became pregnant were subjected to forced abortions, mandated sterilization, and fierce beatings.  Unwanted babies, especially girls, were often killed and buried.

Assigned to the Los Angeles Times Beijing Bureau, Demick chronicles the complications if the parents were determined to keep their “illegal” children. She follows the gut-wrenching separation of identical twin girls in a rural village of China, to be raised secretly by family members so mother (Zanhua) and father (Youdong) could leave their village to earn more money to support the family. Because their births violated the legal limit, the government imposed huge fines on the couple, another force driving the parents to seek work far from their village.

In that situation, it was typical for Chinese Planning Officials to strip parents of their home and belongings and to seize the babies from families. In this case, Demick reveals how one twin, baby Shuangjie, was abducted by those officials, who declared her simply to have been abandoned.

Typically, government agents would hustle the kidnapped babies off to a Social Welfare Institute orphanage, refusing to provide distraught parents any information about the babies’ whereabouts.  Anguished parents would search for their children to no avail. Some of the parents committed suicide. Many of these stolen children would later be trafficked for forced labor or to be sexual partners, domestic servants or brides. As Demick records, the U.S. State Department estimated in 2015 that some 20,000 children in China were kidnapped every year.

In the 1990’s, when international adoptions became more desirable, the Chinese government figured a way out of the costs of maintaining these children as wards of the state. Working with favored adoption agencies, officials would charge substantial fees for arranging adoptions, effectively selling babies to families, often American, who were provided false documents filled with lies about the children’s “abandonments.”  By the early 2000s, China was the largest source of children adopted internationally, 95 percent of whom were female. The fee-supported revenue stream for the Chinese government incentivized more kidnapping.

This book, published in 2025, was built on the foundation of articles Demick wrote in 2009 about stolen babies filling international adoption demand. According to her, adoptive parents thought they were saving these children from institutionalization or death, but they were, she asserts, “becoming end consumers in a repressive system that might have fueled kidnappings.”

Demick follows Zanhua’s and Youdong’s search to find their Shuangjie, using the investigative skills of her profession and network of contacts. It took years, but eventually she found the adopted twin in a modest home in Texas. Working with all the parties involved, she arranged a reunion in China. By now, the separated Shuangjie and Fang were in their early teens.

The story doesn’t end there however. Demick explores how separated Chinese children sometimes feel at home in neither culture.  Those who legitimately had been abandoned, rather than abducted, have their own particular burden of stigma to carry. The adoptees often feel they are being unduly scrutinized, which is especially true of separated twins, frequently studied for scientific research on the eternal nature-versus-nurture question.

Ironically, the One Child Policy has helped create a population shortfall for China today. Fewer girl babies surviving a generation ago means fewer women of child-bearing age today. Today’s headlines proclaimed China’s birth rate – the lowest since 1949 – a demographic crisis. There are implications for the Chinese economy yet to be felt over the next decades.

Demick’s coverage of China’s great historic convulsions (from Mao’s Great Leap Forward, to the Cultural Revolution, the One Child Policy to the anti-democracy crackdown in 1989, thorough as it is, doesn’t minimize in any way the human impact on those affected. The anguish of the families is no less than the struggles of some adoptees to adapt to their new homes and countries while, as the author puts it, they are “tethered by blood to another family and country they struggle to comprehend.”

As a (former) journalist, I was particularly interested in how Demick dealt with the reporter’s dilemma of stepping beyond the mere reporting of a story to becoming a player, involving oneself in the evolving outcome for the benefit of the people whose stories so moved her. We saw this in New York Times columnist Nick Kristof’s memoir “Chasing Hope,” reviewed in October. In both cases, the writer’s decision to engage personally says much about the humanity of the person telling the story, amplifying the importance of the story being professionally researched and revealed. This dimension greatly enriches readers’ understanding and compassion.

Lowell Politics: January 25, 2026

The Lowell City Council had a busy meeting on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. Funding the Lowell High construction and renovation project was foremost among the items discussed. Last month, the council rejected a proposed loan order of $39 million to pay the increased costs of the project. Now, the city administration brought a revised loan order for $36 million to the council, which passed it this time by a vote of nine to one with one abstaining.

For a spending vote to pass requires the support of two-thirds of councilors. With eleven members, that means eight votes are required regardless of how many councilors are present and able to vote. On the night of the December vote, two councilors were absent and two, Erik Gitschier and John Descoteaux, voted against it, which left only seven in favor which caused the vote to fail.

This time, both Descoteaux and Gitschier voted for it, while Councilor Corey Robinson, who was absent for the December meeting, voted no.  While all eleven councilors were present, newly elected Councilor Sean McDonough is an employee of the Lowell School Department and therefore abstained from participating in this matter, leaving just ten councilors to vote. Still, nine voted in favor so the measure passed.

Which is not to say that councilors were happy with having to vote on this in the first place. A big issue looming over Tuesday’s vote was the possibility that even more money will be needed.

As recently reported by the Lowell Sun, as renovation work commenced last month in the 1892 building, contractors uncovered potential problems with the structural steel that may need remediation. Tuesday, councilors pressed representatives of the contractors for more details, but the engineers are still analyzing and investigating the situation and won’t have conclusions to share for at least another week. Any additional work may be covered by the existing contingency fund, or it may require more money, but that won’t be known for a while.

Councilors are loathe to take spending votes such as this one, so they were inclined to send this order back to the city manager until the cost of any additional work is determined and then bundle it with this $36 million so the council need only vote on one more loan authorization.

The problem with that, as explained by CFO Conor Baldwin, is cash flow. Given the time required to take up a loan order, a multi-week delay in new borrowing risks the project running out of money before the new loan proceeds become available. That would cause work to halt, further delay the schedule, and likely increase costs. Given that reality, councilors, after vowing to not vote for any further borrowing, passed this measure.

Anyone who has ever done a home renovation knows that more often than not unexpected costs arise after the project commences. The older the original structure is, the more likely this is to happen and the more costly the issues are to correct. Consequently, it should not come as a surprise that this project is costing more than was originally anticipated.

However, due to unique circumstances, the timing of the discovery of these anticipated costs is more important here than in a typical renovation project. That is because of the state reimbursement process.

When the Massachusetts School Building Authority authorized the city of Lowell to commence this project, it came with the expectation that the state would reimburse the city for 80 percent of the cost with city taxpayers covering the remaining 20 percent. As City Manager Tom Golden explained on Tuesday, the reimbursement rate is more like 60/40. Still, 60 percent of a $400 million project is a lot of money.

Under MSBA rules, once the initial project budget is established, so is the amount subject to reimbursement. If additional costs arise, they are not eligible for reimbursement, and the city must cover them entirely. There are rare exceptions to that rule and Lowell has already benefitted from one when the cost of the project escalated due to Covid-related inflation for building materials. Our late State Senator Ed Kennedy prevailed upon MSBA to recognize that increase as something entirely out of the city’s control and that increase was deemed reimbursable. With this second tranche of additional costs, the city is seeking a third bite of the reimbursement apple, but the prospects of success are slim.

Because of this MSBA reimbursement ecosystem, the importance of identifying any unexpected complications in advance and incorporating them into the initial project budget was far greater than it would have been had the city been responsible for the full cost of the project from the start.

Which is not to say that anyone did anything wrong or did anything negligently. Those are complicated legal questions that are not easily or productively resolved at this point. Obsessing on those issues now risks further delays so it would be best for all to stay focused on getting the project completed.

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A motion by Councilor Sean McDonough requesting the “City Manager have the appropriate department take any necessary steps to provide a report to the council on ICE operations in the City of Lowell over the last 18 months including: who has been arrested; where are they being detained; how many immigration related arrests have been made in Lowell; any cooperation, or requests for cooperation, between ICE and the Lowell Police Department” generated an interesting discussion.

Coincidentally, Tuesday’s council meeting coincided with the first anniversary of the start of Donald Trump’s current term as president which prompted hundreds of protests across the United States – including one in Lowell – in opposition to the aggressive nationwide immigration crackdown but especially in Minneapolis where US citizens have been detained and two have been shot dead by federal officers.

The Lowell protest took place at City Hall at the start of the council meeting. Several participants remained to speak on Councilor McDonough’s motion.

Although the motion passed unanimously, many councilors expressed misgivings about it, arguing that the Lowell Superintendent of Police previously came before the council and explained that the department’s policy is to not aid federal immigration enforcement activities in the city.

The Lowell Police Department’s policy regarding ICE was set out in a memo dated February 3, 2025. Here are the relevant portions:

The Lowell Police Department recognizes and values the diversity of the community it serves. The enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws is a primary responsibility of the federal government and not the Lowell Police Department. A person’s right to request assistance, file a police report, participate in police-community activities, or otherwise benefit from general police services is not contingent upon the individual providing proof of citizenship or documented immigration status. Officers do not routinely question any person about his or her specific citizenship or immigration status when responding to that person’s request for assistance.

The Lowell Police Department cooperates and assists with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) when formally requested, as we do with all our law enforcement partners such as local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, DEA, etc.). Our officers are also bound by law to make arrests when a judicially issued federal arrest warrant exists for an individual and where a potential threat to public safety or national security is perceived.

I found the argument that the policy has already been set to be disingenuous. Much has changed since that policy was announced. A year ago, the city of Lowell proudly proclaimed its commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), yet the moment that embrace jeopardized federal funding, the commitment to DEI was airbrushed out of all city documents. That behavior by the city invites questions about what else has changed over the past year. Given the fear that permeates our community – Councilor Vesna Nuon explained that his college-age nephew, a natural born US citizen, worries about walking or riding Ubers out of fear that he’ll be snatched off the street by ICE, a concern echoed by Council Sidney Liang who said it brought flashbacks to the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia – reassuring the community that the city is still committed to the policy set out a year ago seems not only reasonable, but important to do.

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This week in volume 3 of my Seen & Heard column, I review the 2024 movie Saturday Night; the 2025 book Bread of Angels by Patti Smith; a podcast about private equity; the Patriots v Texans telecast; and several other things. Please check out this installment and future ones which are posted each Wednesday.

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Immigration is a big issue in Lowell today as it has been since the city’s founding 200 years ago. In recognition of this bicentennial year, Maritza Grooms and Bob Forrant hosted me on the latest episode of “History in Lowell,” their Lowell History telecast produced at LTC. In this 30-minute episode, I covered the origins of Lowell, the city’s long decline, its rebirth, and the importance of immigrants to Lowell throughout this time. The program is freely available on YouTube, so please check it out and, while you are there, subscribe to the History In Lowell channel to receive notice of upcoming episodes.

Unfinished legislative business, pt. 2: teaching our kids to read again by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Massachusetts, for long the nation’s undisputed leader in education, is slipping. It has been slower than other states to rebound from the pandemic. Too many third grade children can’t read. Only 1/3 of MA 4th graders & MA 8th graders read at grade level on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. Yet researchers say that 98% of children absolutely can learn to read, and, clearly, they have a right to read. It’s essential to developing their potential and making their way in the world.

If their literacy foundation is crumbling by third grade, more academic trouble lies ahead. Children who can’t read in grade three are routinely bullied by classmates and develop low self-esteem with all the predictable social adjustment problems.  Over time, they are less apt to finish high school and go on to successful work lives. According to the Justice Department, 75 percent of prison inmates are illiterate.

Shocking as it may seem to those of us of a certain (ahem) age, many educators have not been using phonics (the relationship between letters and sounds) or teaching grammar, leaving young students behind, especially those with dyslexia or other learning difficulties. The trend for years has been to rely on encouraging students to guess from illustrations or story development what the accompanying words are. This workaround is not good enough. And a bill that was recently passed by the Massachusetts House would remedy this problem. On October 29, the legislation passed 155-0, despite opposition from the Mass. Teachers Association (MTA).

Waltham-based reading teacher and dyslexia expert Susan B. Kahn, herself a member of MTA, disagrees with the MA Teachers Association because it is clinging to a position taken four years ago. She points out that, in the intervening time, based on evidence, forty states and the District of Columbia have passed literacy laws requiring instruction with Science of Reading methods. Without awaiting state mandate, some MA school systems, like Newton and Wellesley, have already acted on the research and changed their reading methods to include an emphasis on phonics.

The House Bill and the Senate version (S. 338) are designed to promote high-quality comprehensive literacy instruction in all Massachusetts schools. The Joint Committee on Education voted the bill out of Committee, and now it sits with the Senate Ways & Means Committee. It calls for local school district curriculum frameworks to align elementary literacy education with evidence-based literacy instruction, especially if “more than 50 percent of students in kindergarten through third grade are below relevant benchmarks for age-typical development in specific literacy skills.”

The bill would provide training and resources to educate teachers in the most effective teaching tools and amplify their use in the classroom. The legislation specifies five essential components of reading instruction based on reliable, trustworthy, and valid evidence consistent with scientifically based reading research: phonetic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency and oral reading/communication skills. The legislation specifically excludes visual memorization of whole words, guessing from context, and picture cues.

The focus is on literacy teachers, paraprofessionals, and reading specialists in grades pre-kindergarten through third grade.

This should be a no-brainer. It was for the state of Mississippi that in 2013 ranked 49^th in children’s reading capabilities and has now moved into ninth place. How?  By dropping “whole language” reading instruction — again, that which teaches kids to recognize words by sight or context — and replacing it with more phonics-based “science of reading” methods (again, those that build on cognitive science and neuroscience on how brains process reading). Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama are following the same model.

The concept has traction well beyond education circles. Former Obama chief of staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed for such evidence-based learning as mayor and is talking about it again as he lays the groundwork for a campaign for President in 2028.

Literacy is the key to just about everything needed for our kids to develop their fullest potential.  The Massachusetts Senate should act immediately on the House-passed legislation, and Governor Maura Healey, who has made early literacy education a priority, should sign it into law without delay.

The Night That Sputnik Soared Over Lowell

The Night That Sputnik Soared Over Lowell

By Rocky Provencher

There was a time that Lowell was a well-known industrial center. It was built from farm land, a city planned with forethought, with mills, housing for the workers, roads, churches, and railroads. Each mill was a manufacturing marvel, a beacon of planning and industry. The canals, the mills, the railroad infrastructure, the housing, all built to spin, weave, and dye cotton and wool, as well as for housing the workers. World famous dignitaries and statesmen would visit and exclaim its wonders! The buildings, the machines, the workers, the good life and provenance of modern industry. They mentioned the good health and beauty of the industrious spinners and weavers, and examined their accommodations and their writings. What a glorious city! What a thorough plan!

The dignitaries and statesmen were not around when the dirt and the grime settled in and around the machines, nor when the cotton dust became thick, coating the ceilings and walls. Grease and oil stained the floorboards. They didn’t hear the coughing, nor see the missing fingers, the tired faces the slumped shoulders. But still the mills expanded and the town extended and the population increased. And the profits! Over time, less dignitaries and statesmen came to visit. My mother’s family migrated from the mills of Scotland, Ireland and England. My father’s family left the woods of Canada. All came looking for opportunity and a different life, which they found here.

This was Lowell. This is Lowell. This is the place of my birth, and in this city was my home.

My father was the youngest of 7 and was taken out of school to work with his father as a peddler of fruits and vegetables. They had a horse and cart and went clopping down the streets selling their wares. My father liked to read, and was curious about many things. He had a sharp mind and was good with his hands. Science held his interest, and he read all he could about all aspects of science: Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Geology. He became a machinist. And as I grew, I saw him tinkering constantly with new projects and new ideas! I remember a time when I was 8 or 9, he worked on making small radios, at first with crystals and magnets, then batteries and later, tubes and transistors. Always finding ways to improve them. He would occasionally make me a small radio and give me an earplug, and show me how to change frequencies using a wire touching a crystal, or a magnet moving inside a coil of wire. I was fascinated at the far-away stations I could find. AM stations with music and news. Also short wave broadcasts of beeping signals.

We also listened to the Voice of America broadcasts, as well as the English language version of Russian propaganda from beyond the Iron Curtain. After all, this was the period of time in our nation known as the Cold War.

The Cold War. Just the sound of it was enough to send a chill down one’s spine. In

school, we would practice sliding under our desks at a command from our teacher. The possibility of a preemptive strike with atomic bombs by Communist Russia was a threat that hung over the heads of our nation. Every Friday evening at exactly 6 PM, all the air raid sirens in the city would blare a warning for a full 10 seconds. A test of our air raid systems in case of an attack. We were in competition with the Russians to build a bigger and better atomic bomb, a faster plane, a stronger defense system.

But then we moved to a new aspect of the Cold War. Thoughts were now focused on Outer Space! If only one could launch a satellite to circle the earth and peer down from space as it passes over each country. This satellite could carry cameras, and if it could be made big enough, it could carry weapons. Destruction which could rain down and raise havoc on the nations below! No need to dispatch airplanes which now take hours to reach their targets. The satellites could accomplish that task in minutes. A warship circling the earth! There would be no warning! The times were as dark and evil as the men who plotted and planned.

My father was worried, for he thought that whatever country could launch a satellite to circle the world could control space, and threaten an attack with a very short notice. But he was not part of the decision process. He was just another man, a citizen, an American, a resident of earth. He felt helpless. My mother could care less. She was more concerned about paying the bills and feeding our family. She felt that since there was nothing we could do, it was all a waste of time to worry about it. And I, an 11 year old boy, could only listen and wonder. After all, they were my parents. They knew about the world and it’s doings.

It was early in October of 1957 when we heard the news. the Russians had launched a satellite into orbit over the earth! The satellite was named “Sputnik I” and it continuously circled the earth in approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes! It’s orbit would allow it to pass over all the continents of the earth! Sputnik was broadcasting a signal that could be heard in the short wave spectrum. My father was able to listen to it using one of his radios! He called me over and handed me the earphones. I was in awe and a little afraid of what I would hear. That’s when I heard those beeps that I’ll never forget! I asked him what the beeps meant, but at that time, he didn’t know. We later found out that it was just sounds used to measure speed of the satellite in various frequencies.

He said that Sputnik would pass over the Lowell area in 2 nights, and if the sky is clear, we should be able to see it! It would be the only opportunity we would have to view this! I was excited and knew that he was too! When the day came, we were ready. There was a small porch off the side of the house that offered a clear view of the northeast sky. The night was clear and a little chilly. We were ready and went out to the porch as the time drew near to accustom our eyes to the night sky.

And then, right on time, we saw what looked like a bright star high overhead, moving towards us in the night sky! It moved steadily across the star-filled sky as we stood, looking up at it. Sputnik! We watched, fascinated, as it streaked towards us! Then it moved silently over our heads, and then off and away, out of sight! And as it disappeared, my father said: “This is not good, my son! Not good at all!”

I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew that I witnessed a momentous, yet ominous event! A foreign representative came to view Lowell, this time from high above!

And I’ll never forget that October night with the Russian Sputnik streaking overhead.

[Thanks to  the wonders of YouTube, here’s the sound of Sputnik beeping away]

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Rocky Provencher was born and raised in Lowell. He attended city schools from the Lowell Day Nursery through Lowell Technological Institute (now UMass Lowell). He spent his career working in Lowell’s mills and was a long time Lowell Folk Festival volunteer.