Andy Ostroy, the husband of director Adrienne Shelly, whose life was tragically cut short in 2006, spoke out against the right-wing attempts to use his wife’s brutal murder to aid their anti-immigration campaign in an opinion piece for The New York Times
It was a decade ago (almost to the date), when Adrienne Shelly, an indie director and actress best known for her film Waitress was found dead in her West Village Office. Shelly was killed by an undocumented construction worker named Diego Pillco, who ended her life by staging a fake suicide after fearing she would have him deported. Though the tragedy would be a prime example to justify Trump’s anti-immigration position, Andy Ostroy artfully spurned the offer. In the article, Ostroy admits “Given the anger and grief I still feel, I could easily be seduced by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric that is the cornerstone of his presidential run.”
Yet Ostroy is committed to his pragmatic perspective, writing “Adrienne was not murdered by an illegal immigrant, per se. She fell victim to a depraved killer who simply happened to be an undocumented immigrant. It is an obvious distinction, almost too obvious, but it’s an important one to consider as the country goes further down the dangerous path of demonizing those not born here.”
In addition to being approached by Trump’s campaign, Ostroy has also been asked to speak out by Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly in order to give legitimacy to their anti-immigrant argument. However, refusing to let Shelly’s murder be used as “a political prop”, Ostroy writes “It’s politically expedient for xenophobic agitators like Mr. Trump to scapegoat the millions of foreigners who have come to the United States in search of a better life. But his malevolence toward immigrants runs counter to the principles on which our great nation was founded. It’s disheartening to see so many people being swept out to sea in a riptide of ignorance and hate.”
Ostroy also mocked the Republican’s the futile attempt to have him speak out by saying “Who better than a Democrat to attack an entire segment of our population, right?”
While Ostroy agrees, “We have an immigration problem that is in desperate need of reform.”, he is against the foreseeable damage that Trump has proposed “His “solution” includes a deportation force that would separate people from their families and “send them back to wherever they came from.”
The right-wing attempt of using Shelly as a poster girl for their arguments backfired, driving Andy Ostroy to use his position to serve as a model example of how to keep a moral standing despite having been through circumstances that could easily deviate our dispositions.
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