two feet in.

The Humanity in Each and Every One of Us

Cornel West on the "Santa Clausifacation of Martin Luther King":

West: I mean, I think it's very important because you see a lot of chit-chat about Martin every year and Martin has been so domesticated and tamed and defamed, you know, what we call the Santa Clausification of the brother.

Tavis: Wait a minute. Hold the phone, hold the phone. The Santa Clausification of Dr. King, which means what, Dr. West?

West: He just becomes a nice little old man with a smile with toys in his bag, not a threat to anybody, as if his fundamental commitment to unconditional love and unarmed truth does not bring to bear certain kinds of pressure to a status quo. So the status quo feels so comfortable as though it's a convenient thing to do rather than acknowledge him as to what he was, what the FBI said, "The most dangerous man in America." Why? Because of his fundamental commitment to love and to justice and trying to keep track of the humanity of each and every one of us.
(read entire transcript here)


And a video:

Bringing Life to Numbers

On December 31st I took my children to a daytime New Year’s Eve celebration at a local museum.  There were crafts, snacks, and a balloon drop from the roof of the building each hour.  At 1:00 in the afternoon all the kids gathered on the museum lawn and looked expectantly at the employees perched high above, ready to shower them with balloons.  A young man brought out a bullhorn and announced a list of places around the world where it was now 2007 -- various countries in time zones eleven hours ahead of our own:  Russia, Kenya, Madagascar, Kuwait.  As the crowd counted down, balloons were dropped, and kids stampeded, I found myself pondering the countries that were read aloud, and realized that there was, at least to me, one glaring omission:  It was midnight in Iraq, with a new year beginning. 

Later, I looked at the top Google listing for “World Time Zones” and found that when sorted by time zones, Baghdad was indeed on the list with the other countries that had been named.  While I don’t ascribe negative intentions in the failure to announce that it was New Year’s in Iraq, I did feel saddened by the missed opportunity for compassion, for empathy, for connection -- not only with our own American soldiers away from home, but also with ordinary Iraqis.  To me, the incident seemed to illuminate our tendency to shield ourselves from both the bad and the good of Iraq.  It is much easier to deny our own complicity in this illegal and immoral war when real Iraqi lives are reduced to numbers streaming by on the television set:  numbers displaced, numbers dead.  Numbers are easier than names and faces, families and traditions, celebrations and bereavement, change and growth. 

The following day, January 1st, I attended what was to be a walk across the Golden Gate bridge marking the death of the 3000th American soldier, and the hundreds of thousands civilians killed in Iraq.  On my trip to the bridge, about a half-hour before the vigil began, I witnessed what seemed to be a horrible accident, with a woman hit by a car and dead on the freeway.  I thought of her children, her loved ones, her friends, and hoped that they had not had seen the accident, that they might be spared these last images of her.  I thought of the driver of the car that hit her, the image of him with his head in his hands in sorrow and pain.  And I hoped that all would be solaced and ultimately healed by their communities. 

As I walked the bridge my mind moved between these events and images.  I saw faces and families in both celebration and mourning, and tried to imagine the joys and sorrows, the hopes and dreams, the quirky habits, the mundane and intimate details that breathe life into each and every one of the numbers that we see, and too often ignore, day after day.  Had the woman on the freeway toasted in the new year, made resolutions to be kept and broken?  Even amidst the chaos, were Iraqi families able to gather together, to sing and dance, to greet 2007 with the slightest bit of hope shimmering on the horizon?  How many of our soldiers counted down to a long-distance kiss and silent wish to come home?  And then, how many of each of these beings that celebrated (or not) the previous night, would make it through until tomorrow?  In 2007 how many children will watch their parents die needless deaths, how many parents will bury their children?

I soon discovered that the woman on the freeway survived with relatively minor injuries.  Rather than become a statistic, hers was a life returned, renewed.  Will we be able to say the same for the children, the women and men, both Iraqi and American, who daily must live the horrific reality that our imperialism has wrought? 

The Puritans Hated Sex! ...and other Thanksgiving Myths

Here's a sampling of "Thanksgiving" as portrayed in a variety of popular children's books...

“The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the Pilgrims’ very first harvest….[The cornucopia reminds] us of the first Thanksgiving when Pilgrims gave thanks for their first rich harvest in the New World.”Janice Kinnealy, Let’s Celebrate Thanksgiving,  A Book of Drawing Fun

“Thanksgiving reminds people of the Pilgrims many years ago.”
Gail Gibbons, Thanksgiving Day

“The Pilgrims had left England because King James did not want them to practice their own religion. They were in search of a new home.”
Garnet Jackson, The First Thanksgiving

"Squanto was the Pilgrims’ teacher and friend. He helped save their lives and made sure their little settlement survived in the rocky New England soil.  By saving the Pilgrims, Squanto became one of our first American heroes."
Deborah Fink, It's a Family Thanksgiving!

“Then in friendship/And goodwill,/The braves and Pilgrims parted./And that’s how/The tradition/Of Thanksgiving Day got started!”
Nan Roloff, The First American Thanksgiving

Yup, that pretty much sounds like the story that I learned.  In case we're having trouble shaking any of these myths out of our well-indoctrinated brains, I'm providing a few links for holiday de-conditioning:

Deconstructing the Myths of the First Thanksgiving (from Oyate, a "Native organization working to see   that our lives and histories are portrayed honestly.."  Their website is an excellent resource for children's literature that more accurately teaches about Native Americans and Thanksgiving.  Highly recommended.)

Top Ten Myths about Thanksgiving (from History News Network)

Thanksgiving:  The National Day of Mourning.  (text of 1970 speech by Wamsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag Elder)

I'll end today with the debunking of my favorite "Thanksgiving" myth:

MYTH # 9
Puritans Hated Sex
Actually, they welcomed sex as a God-given responsibility. When one member of the First Church of Boston refused to have conjugal relations with his wife two years running, he was expelled. Cotton Mather, the celebrated Puritan minister, condemned a married couple who had abstained from sex in order to achieve a higher spirituality. They were the victims, he wrote, of a "blind zeal."

That opens up whole new avenues of interpretation for the above image , and for quotes such as the following:

“12 tables groaning/beneath a harvest spread— ...a prayer of thanks for all they have/this first Thanksgiving Day."
Laura Krauss Melmed, This First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story

-- the imagination simply goes wild with possibility...

Lock Up The Clowns

Some of you may have already seen the story of the anti-nuclear activist clowns who will go to jail for pouring their own blood on missile silos:

Three men protesting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in North Dakota were sentenced Thursday to federal prison terms of over three years and ordered to pay $17,000 in restitution by a federal judge in Bismarck. The three dressed as clowns and went to the Echo-9 launch site of the intercontinental Minuteman III nuclear missile in rural North Dakota in June 2006. They broke the lock off the fence and put up peace banners and posters. One said: "Swords into plowshares - Spears into pruning hooks." They poured some of their own blood on the site, hammered on the nuclear launching facility and waited to be arrested.

The judge in the case chastised the men for their so-called "juvenile acts of vandalism":

The judge challenged Greg Boertje-Obed's decision to take actions that risked a year in prison instead of staying home with his family. "Why would one leave a wife and daughter at home to engage in juvenile acts of vandalism to protest nuclear weapons? I would think your commitment to your family should far outweigh your calling to such actions." Greg's wife, Michelle Naar Obed, was in the courtroom during this exchange. After the sentencing was over, Michelle shook her head and said, "If Greg had left us his for a year and risked his life to go to war to kill people, no one would question him - they would call him a hero! But, because he risked time in jail to act out his convictions for peace, people question his commitment to his family. That is a tragic."

Here is Michelle Naar Obed's subsequent letter to the judge:

Dear Judge Hovland,

First, I would like to thank you for making the arrangements for me to visit; The jail officials had been rather adamant in their unwillingness to make any exceptions, so your intervention made the visit possible.

At trial and again at sentencing, I noted your willingness to educate yourself even beyond requirement, about matters relating to the Weapons of Mass Destruction -- I found your openness rather exceptional and am confident that you will take these thoughts into mind and heart.

I was rather dismayed to hear you berate and chastise Greg for being an irresponsible father and spouse--  Our daughter Rachel and I love and admire Greg for the stand he has taken to make this world safer.  Yes, we are saddened by this lengthy separation, but we are strengthened by emotional and spiritual bonds that far transcend physical ones.  Those bonds are further deepened because we know the good and decent intentions with which Greg acted.  If you get an opportunity, take another look at the picture of the banner "Swords into Plowshares'' [used during the 20 June Plowshares Action.]  Rachel did the artwork.  The peace sign, flower, heart, and smiley face were the hopes that she entrusted her dad with to make present in the world through this disarmament action.

--  When soldiers leave their families to go off to war, they are referred to as heroes.  Many of them come back feeling disgraced for having left their families to kill other people's families.  This is a feeling I can assure you, that Greg will not have to live with nor die with.

Finally, I have to say I was quite disappointed in the defeatist attitude you seemed to take regarding the efficacy of this action.  You consistently referred to their action as a waste of time because it did not result in the elimination of nuclear weapons.  Again, you insult the lives of all who have ever worked for the abolition of sins and crimes such as slavery, military occupation of homelands, government sponsored oppression, etc.  I believe you are smart enough and well educated enough to know that it has sometimes taken centuries to abolish such crimes.

Thank God for all of those that never gave up hope, that withstood years of imprisonment, defamation of character, mockery, isolation and death in their struggle to enhance the dignity of all life.  Greg, Rachel, and I will not let those hopes die--

In peace, Michele Naar-Obed

This year I'm experiencing more than my usual anti-Thanksgiving feelings (just read even a bit of Bartolome de Las Casas  or the latest recount of daily life in Iraq, and you'll feel the same way).  However, if I do decide to actually participate in the annual stuff-yourself-silly ritual, it'll be with thankfulness and gratitude directed towards all whose struggle has really opened hearts, minds, and eyes -- those who have never given up hope for a just world.  Especially now we need their example and guidance.

Malachi Ritscher and Alyssa Peterson

Several days ago I learned about the death of Malachi Ritscher, an anti-war activist from Chicago:

In December 2002, the city of Chicago dedicated a statue called "The Flame of the Millennium"-- a seven-ton, stainless-steel, abstract rendering of a flame in high wind, standing over the Kennedy Expressway, just west of the downtown Loop. Last Friday, November 3, the statue appeared to be on fire. When authorities got there, they found a video camera, a canister of gasoline, a sign reading "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and a human body so badly charred that it was impossible to determine its sex. Someone had self-immolated, near a highway off-ramp, amid rush-hour traffic.
 
Over the next few days, members of Chicago's avant-garde music community would be shocked to learn that the person who'd done this was one of their own-- someone many of them had been running into, several nights a week, for more than a decade. Tougher still would be dealing with the reasons behind it. According to the statements left on his website, 52-year-old Malachi Ritscher had set himself on fire to protest the war in Iraq and the politics that allowed it to happen. And thus began the same debate, among his friends, among the public, on blogs, and in comment boxes across the internet-- an argument about which of two pigeonholes we'd slot this into: Was it an important act of political protest, or the tragic end of a mentally ill person?

I didn't know Malachi Ritscher, but I've been thinking about him a lot this weekend.  I'll admit, my first reaction upon reading about what happened was to try and fit my understanding of it into the "pigeonholes" that, Nitsuh Abebe, the writer of the above quote references -- Could Ritscher really have been so serious in his feelings about the war that he set himself on fire?  Or, was he deeply mentally ill?
As I continued reading Abebe's piece, I much appreciated that he complicated these simplistic attempts at explanation and understanding that we all instinctively reach towards:

Was Malachi Ritscher a political martyr or a mentally troubled suicide? Let me tip my editorial hand and claim something: The argument is a distraction, and it's the wrong question to ask. It assumes too much. It assumes that the two things are mutually exclusive, or binaries, and that they can't be jumbled intractably in someone's thinking. It assumes that there's a clear, distinct line between rational politics and personal emotions. And it assumes that a troubled person can't legitimately mean what he says, even if his way of expressing it is tragic.

...there's no reason to believe that politics and mental health don't have anything to do with each other. A person's depression or hopelessness can be exacerbated by any number of events in his personal life: rejection, loneliness, failure. At the same time, that hopelessness can be exacerbated by his experience of politics: The feeling of being alienated, ignored, or powerless to stop injustice. Whether the source is the people around you or the news on the television, the result is the same: You wind up feeling thwarted, frustrated, and weak. And if enough people feel this way, it makes sense that one of them-- possibly one of them with plenty of other issues in his life-- might take the kind of action Ritscher did. It doesn't make him right, or a martyr. It just makes him a piece of very shocking evidence that some of the people around us feel very hurt and marginalized. Most of them, thankfully, have found-- and will find-- much better ways to deal with it.

In reading this, I found myself also thinking about Alyssa Peterson, the US solder who killed herself rather than participate in torture at Abu Ghraib.  Benjamin Greenberg, on the blog HungryBlues, wrote an interesting piece about Alyssa Peterson.  The whole thing is well worth reading, but the end seemed to capture some of the things I've been thinking about:

The environment is as devastating as the individual practices. The abuses and acts of torture are horrific in and of themselves—enough, I believe, to severely traumatize those who witness them. But the broader consequences of the individual abuses—mass, indefinite detention and abuse of people not charged with any particular crime—is also devastating...

Was it a particular incident in an interrogation room? Or was it the stench of humanity left to rot, which pervaded every corner of the air base, from which Alyssa Peterson concluded there was no escape?

Although their circumstances were vastly different, and perhaps not even comparable, I can imagine that similar questions have been asked about Alyssa Peterson's death as with Malachi Richter -- people want, and maybe even need to believe that an action such as there's must be indicative of mental illness.  That simplistic explanation helps to shield each of us from "the stench of humanity left to rot," because to enter into a deeper examination potentially opens up space for empathy and pain that can be overwhelming to contemplate.  Once you deeply feel the weight and pain of the world there is no turning back.  May we all find our own ways, both individually and collectively, to move forward.

Sunday Cat-Related Blogging

Time for a break from education-related uprisings, global justice, etc...  Lovely Evan shared this lovely story today, and because it made me smile, I am passing it along to lovely and faithful Two Feet In readers:

Today a Honda hybrid on our street began to meow. A neighbor heard it and told another neighbor. They went to listen. The car meowed again. They peered inside the car. No cat. They told another neighbor.

I gazed out my window around midday because I am a gazer. I saw a crowd of neighbors gathered around a shiny, blue Honda hybrid. I went down. They informed me a cat was trapped in the engine of the car, but nobody knew whose car it was. To prove his point, a neighbor got down under the bumper and meowed. The car meowed back.

Food was fetched and set beneath the car. Someone found paper and a note was produced: "Do not start your car. There is a cat in the engine." That wasn't enough. The neighbor who builds racecars came back with a jack. They lifted the car up a bit. Nothing.

The son of a neighbor who owned the car and was visiting from Modesto appeared. He wondered what the devil was going on with half the neighborhood crowded around his car and it jacked up off the ground. They told him. He opened up the car, yanked the lever, opened the hood. Out came a little, gray kitten. The son of a neighbor who was visiting from  Modesto gasped. His neighbor in Modesto had a gray cat. It had just had kittens.

This happened today in my neighborhood.

Note:  Lovely Evan lives in Oakland.  Modesto is 68 miles away.

Anthony Soltero

Anthony Soltero died three weeks ago.  Many probably have not heard the story, but all should know.  A fourteen year old middle school student, Soltero committed suicide after a school administrator threatened him with jail and other punishment for exercising his civil rights and organizing student walkouts supporting immigrant rights:

Soltero was pulled into an administrator's office March 30, two days after he participated in a walk out. The attorney said a school official identified Soltero as one of several protest organizers and told the teen that he could go to jail for three years because of his involvement.

The administrator also threatened to slap his mother with a $250 fine in addition to barring him from graduation activities, Paz said.

Paz said Soltero called his mother about the administrator's threat before she returned home from work March 30. By the time she got home, Soltero shot himself in the head. He died April 1. (link)

There is apparently some controversy over just what happened -- whether Anthony cut class to go to the store or to protest; if jail, or simply missing the school dance was the threatened punishment.  It seems that accounts from other students corroborate what he told his mother on the phone and wrote in a note. 

And, given historical treatment of children of color in schooling institutions, as well as what I know about current zero tolerance policies, none of this surprises me a bit. 

A few weeks ago I attended an educational research conference.  The most valuable moment, memorable comment, came from a long-time teacher.  She talked of being continually awed by "the infinite capacity of children's minds" and how she was still able to recognize that limitless potential in every child that came through her classroom door.  Every single one of them. 

In thinking about this, I can't help but wonder how much could be different if that school administrator had acted in ways that recognized and honored the infinite capacity of children's minds, hearts, values, and dreams.  What if our government did?  What if we all did?

Bush as Gentler, Wiser Soul. Just Imagine...

"Can you imagine a speech given by president Bush that would convince you that he has had a change of heart and could actually be the president of your dreams? It is all too easy to criticize our president and his administration. Life changing events (often of the extremely painful variety) force us to reevaluate our values and actions. What if something like this happened to our president. What if he were humbled in some way which caused a profound change in his outlook on life and his role as the leader of our country - turning the aggressive posturing of an all-attack-all-the-time leader into a gentler, wiser soul determined to demonstrate the power of honesty and vulnerability."

These are the questions that Oakland artist, Helena Keefe, posed in an open call for people to write speeches that might come from a potentially gentler and wiser president.  The winners were a group of 7-10 year old San Francisco schoolchildren.  Here's one of the speeches from their dream president:

You can see and listen to other speeches written by the students HERE  (link via Bitch Ph.D.).

Here's another imagining, not linked to any contest, of an oval office speech from this gentler, wiser president:

I am ordering our military command to withdraw all troops from Iraq within six months. This will include military contractors and will be done in an orderly manner. I request international peacekeepers from other nations with no major interests in Iraq to help the Iraqi people whom we have so damaged. I pray the families of those Iraqis killed -- and the number of such people likely far exceeds the 30,000 I claimed recently -- will forgive me for what I have done, and will now embrace what I am doing. We will pay compensation as a small token of our regret to the Iraqis killed in this war we have started. [Bush weeps, but continues with the address.]

I pray that the families of the soldiers who bravely went to fight a war they thought was just will please forgive me. I will attend as many funerals of U.S. service people as I possibly can and will do whatever I can to help put together shattered lives. I hope my actions will bring near the day when I can be accepted in Iraq so I can visit with Iraqis who have lost loved ones as a result of my actions and apologize in person. [Bush wipes his tears.]

My taking this course should not have rested on my spiritual journey; Congress should have stopped me from violating the Constitution and its War Powers clause; it did not. The United Nations should have stopped our nation from violating the UN Charter; it did not. The major media outlets should have exposed our lies; instead they amplified them. And you, the public at large, should have arisen in revulsion in a sustained manner. You did not. We must all change radically.

I believe that I have committed crimes; but I do now have sovereign immunity. I will now use that to redress wrongs I have done. I fully accept responsibility for what I have done and will accept the ruling of a legitimate legal authority when my term as president ends.

The best way to stop the insurgency now is to speak the truth and to listen, to change our policies when they are unjust, and they have been unjust long before 9-11, and to lovingly criticize others in legitimate ways. And that is what I am doing. Up until now, I have used fear to bully people into going along with war for illegitimate goals.

I am asking for the resignations of Vice President Cheney and of my entire cabinet; none of them expected to hear this speech tonight. I wish them the best, but I believe I need a new cabinet to do what we must do. Many people who are unwilling to grow, embrace and change will likely viciously attack what I am saying tonight; this does not mean I don't welcome criticism. But I know how it works, it's when a person or group stands for what is right that illegitimate power strikes against them; indeed I know all too well how it works.

To those of you who have been right, and have criticized me for reasons of principle: I ask for your forgiveness and hope you will now work with me to truly build a better world. To those of you who have been wrong as I have been wrong: I ask that you now change and grow with me. To those of you who have backed Bin Ladin and his crimes: I ask that you now also radically change as we together overcome our worst demons and embrace each others' -- and everyones' -- humanity.

Goodnight and may God bless all Humanity.
(read the whole speech here)

Sadly, our waiting around for Bush and our government to stop eating too many Twinkies and be born again (in a good way) comes at the expense of many lives each day.  As the second speech above suggests, maybe it is time for us all to change -- radically.

Two Images

Chris Floyd has set up a page that contains the Abu Ghraib photographs from Salon.com, along with some of their and his commentary, including this reminder to us all...

Of course, these Abu Ghraib photos themselves represent only a small fraction of the atrocities carried out -- in our name -- in secret hell-holes around the globe. The photos depict the raw and brutal dawn of a system that has become progressively more refined, more "professional," now largely removed from the hands of untrained grunts with digital cameras, and instead carried out in secret by CIA agents and other operatives of the America's mammoth "security organs" -- again, acting under presidential orders, and presidential protection.

What shall we say when history asks how such crimes came to be committed in the name of America? Will we say that we stood silently by, shrugging our shoulders, filling our bellies, closing our eyes? Or will we be able to say: We saw. We dissented. We resisted. We condemned.

Earlier today I by chance watched two online "slideshows" in short succession -- the photos on Salon.com...

...followed by the New York Times site that showed a set of relatively recently discovered William Blake watercolors...

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

--William Blake, The Divine Image

We saw, yes.  Will we dissent, resist, condemn?

By the way, the Blake image above is entitled, "The Grave Personified."

MLK: Revolutionize this Era

Here's good reading for your MLK Day.  But, if you can't read it now, then any day will do, as the pursuit of change is not confined to January 16.   

First, Robert Jenson -- MLK Day:  Dreams and Nightmares.

Juan Cole outlines 10 Things Martin Luther King Would have Done about Iraq.

A short, yet crucial, reminder by Sam Husseini of Martin Luther King and the Deeper Malady that pervades our culture.

And then, there's this.  Shame, shame.

I'll end my list with a piece by Paul Street that came through my inbox -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Democratic Socialist.  I couldn't find a link to it, so I've included the whole thing here.

One of the many disturbing characteristics of dominant American ideology is the way it deletes radical-democratic beliefs from the official memory of certain acknowledged great historical personalities.

How many Americans know that the celebrated scientist Albert Einstein (voted the "Man of the 20th Century" by Time Magazine) was a self-proclaimed leftist who wrote an essay titled "Why Socialism" for the first issue of the venerable Marxist journal Monthly Review ?(1)

Probably about as many as who know that Helen Keller (typically recalled as an example of what people can attain through purely individual initiative or "self-help") was a radical fan of the Russian Revolution (2).

Or that Thomas Jefferson despised the developing state capitalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, warning that it was creating a new absolutism of concentrated power more dangerous than the one Americans rebelled against in 1776 (3).

We might also consider the all-too deleted radical egalitarianism of an itinerant Mediterranean-Jewish peasant named Jesus. Jesus rejected the dominant classist cultural norms of his time by advocating and practicing open commensality (the shared taking of food by people of all classes, races, ethnicities, and genders) and by sharing material and spiritual gifts across the interrelated hierarchies of social and geographical place? As biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan notes, he saw the "Kingdom of God" as "a community of radical equality*unmediated by established brokers or fixed locations" (4).

Along the way, Jesus is reputed to have said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter that kingdom. He condemned the personal accumulation of earthly treasures and made it clear that God was no respecter of rich persons.. He insisted that one must serve either God or Mammon and pronounced the poor blessed and inheritors of the earth (5).

Such radical sentiments are largely absent from the vapid, falsely comforting, reactionary, and institutionalized twaddle that has so long passed for "Christianity" in corporate America.

Another example of this radical historical whitewashing is provided by America's own Martin Luther King, Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech is routinely broadcast and praised across the land on the national holiday named for him...

In the official, domesticated version of King's life, the great civil rights leader sought little more than the overthrow of Jim Crow segregation and voting rights for blacks in the U.S. South. Beyond these victories, the "good Negro" that American ideological authorities wish for King to have been only wanted whites to be nicer to a select few African-Americans - giving some small number of trusted blacks highly visible public positions (Secretary of State?), places on the Ten O'Clock News Team....the right to manage a baseball team and/or an occasional Academy Award and/or their own television show.

How many Americans know that King was rather unimpressed by his movement's mid-1960s triumphs over southern racism (and his own 1964 Nobel Prize), viewing the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts as relatively partial and merely bourgeois accomplishments that dangerously encouraged mainstream white America to think that the nation's racial problems "were automatically solved"? How many know that King considered these early victories to have fallen far short of his deeper objective: advancing social, economic, political, and racial justice across the entire nation (including its northern, ghetto-scarred cities) and indeed around the world?

How many Americans know about the King who followed the defeat of open racism in the South by "turning North" in an effort to take the civil rights struggle to a radical new level?

It was one thing, this King told his colleagues, for blacks to win the right to sit at a lunch counter. It was another thing for black and other poor people to get the money to buy a lunch.

It was one thing, King argued, to open the doors of opportunity for some few and relatively privileged African-Americans. It was another thing to move millions of black and other disadvantaged people out of economic despair. It was another and related thing to dismantle slums and overcome the deep structural and societal barriers to equality that continued after public bigotry was discredited and after open discrimination was outlawed.

It was one thing, King felt, to defeat the overt racism of snarling southerners like Bull Connor; it was another thing to confront the deeper, more covert institutional racism that lived beneath the less openly bigoted, smiling face of northern and urban liberalism.

It was one thing. King noted, to defeat the anachronistic caste structure of the South. It was another thing to attain substantive social and economic equality for black and other economically disadvantaged people across the entire nation (6).

How many Americans know about the King who linked racial and social inequality at home to (American) imperialism and social disparity abroad, denouncing what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated": "racism, economic exploitation, and war"? "A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years," Kind told the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) in 1967, "will 'thingify' them --- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together" (7).

How many Americans have been encouraged to know the King who responded to America's massive assault on Southeast Asia during the 1960s by pronouncing the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" (8), adding (in words that George W. Bush ought to give George W. Bush pause) that America had no business "fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not put even our own [freedom] house in order?" (9)

In words that holding haunting relevance for George W. Bush's supposedly divinely mandated war on Iraq, King proclaimed that "God didn't call American to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war, [such] as the war in Vietnam."

"And we," King added,"are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any other nation in the world and we won't stop because of our piide, our arrogance as a nation" (10).

How many know that King said a nation (the U.S.) "approach[ed] spiritual death" when it spent billions of dollars feeding its costly, cancerous military industrial complex" while masses of its children lived in poverty in its outwardly prosperous cities (11)?

How many know the King who said that Americans should follow Jesus in being "maladjusted" and "divine[ly] dissatisifed...until the the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.... until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family is living in a decent home...[and] men will recognize that out of one blod God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth"? (12)

How many know the King who told the SCLC that "the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people," King elaborated for his colleagues. "And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you beging to ask that question, you are riasing questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy."

"We are called upon," King told his fellow civil rights activists, ''to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day," he argued, "we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that [radical] questions must be raised.....'Who owns the oil'...'Who owns the iron ore?'...'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' (13)

How many know that King was a democratic socialist who thought that only "drastic reforms" involving the "radical reconstruction of society itself" could "save us from social catastrophe" ? Consistent with Marx and contrary to bourgeois moralists like Charles Dickens, King argued that "the roots" of the economic injustice he sought to overcome "are in the [capitalist] system rather in men or faulty operations" (14)

Interestingly enough, the fourth officially de-radicalized historical character mentioned in this essay (King) saw through the conservative historical whitewashing of the third (Jesus). Here's how King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal....Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingy radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all" (15).

If I hadn't known better the first time I read that phrase, I might have attributed it to Eugene Debs.

      

"I hope they keep them long enough to know them like friends."

[NOTE: Maxine Nash, currently working with the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq, sent the following letter to her support community on New Year's Day.  Perhaps we can all gain much wisdom from her words.]

1 January 2006

Dearest friends-

First and foremost, Happy New Year to you all!  The celebrations have
started here today in Baghdad with lots of fireworks and joyous noises in
the street.  One such noise was a band that went walking by our building.  I
asked the landlord about that, and he said is a custom here that families or
groups of friends put together a band and go door to door, wishing people
well and asking for small tokens of money.

My friends are still not home today as we wait for the new year.  It's been
hard not to be discouraged.  But, as often happens, the words of a child
brought me new insight.  A friend who has been telling her young daughter
about the situation e-mailed me a letter in which she made an extraordinary
comment.  She said, "I hope they keep them long enough to know them like
friends."

Know them like friends?  Could that possibly happen?

Knowing my colleagues, I think it is.  I can well imagine Tom Fox having
incredible discussions about faith with his guards.  I can imagine Norman
telling about his visit to the Radiation Hospital in Baghdad, how he taught
radiation medicine in England, and how he feels badly that this hospital is
struggling to perform such necessary medical care.  I can imagine Jim
recounting his previous journeys to Iraq and his love of the Iraqi people,
especially his good friend Sa'ad who refused to fight in Sadaam's army
because he couldn't live with killing people.  I can imagine Harmeet talking
about this being his first trip to Iraq, and how much he's seen about [the
difficulty of the] situation even in a such short time.

Yes, I can imagine they've been there long enough now to be friends.

Although I can appreciate the kidnappers may want to keep their new-found
friends close at hand, I'm hoping they will see how precious they are and
return them to us who treasure them so much.

If I knew where they were, I'd get a band together today, walk down the
street, knock on the door and instead of asking for money I'd ask for my
friends back.

May you be blessed with surprises of peace and joy in this new year

Maxine

Comfortable Prisons Redux

Note: This is a rewrite and expansion of a previous posting, which I have sent out into the world beyond cozy little Two Feet In. 

The above image shows California Youth Authority students in their classroom.  The students are the ones inside the cages, and they are being taught to read.  A friend drew my attention to this photo after I shared a story about a similar kind of prison, about kids learning to read in cages, albeit ones where the bars, while not visible, are nonetheless solidly constructed.

Awhile back I was observing in a local urban elementary school classroom -- all kids of color, mostly free lunch, low test scores.  One of those schools that is mandated to use a scripted literacy curriculum for at least 90 minutes a day in order to meet federal testing requirements.  At times when I have criticized such curricula, I've been accused of having an "overly sentimental, humanistic" view of students (god forbid, humanistic) -- I have been accused of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" when I have said that "high expectations" are not necessarily being met by having kids and teachers follow a script.

This point was starkly illustrated as I was sitting in this classroom watching the teacher implement the Open Court literacy curriculum lesson-of-the-day.  Since teachers and students generally don't have much choice in how and when they do different activities, I could hear the same sentences coming out of both adult and student mouths from other classrooms up and down the school hallway.  The teacher I was watching was running a few minutes behind, so I'd hear instruction coming from other classrooms, and sure enough, several minutes later nearly the same words would be replayed in the room where I was sitting.

I thought I might be mishearing things when the kids down the hall started chanting, "It was a comfortable prison!  It was a comfortable prison!"  But no.  Moments later the students in my room were directed to chant the same sentence.  Nobody blinked an eye -- these beautiful, vibrant children who had not moved or been asked, pushed, prompted, or inspired to think an original thought for the entire hour that I'd been sitting there, were chanting "It was a comfortable prison."  Direct from the teacher's manual.

And yet, proponents of these so-called high expectation promoting programs, would claim that such instructional techniques will help prevent today’s chanting and figuratively-caged students from becoming tomorrow’s literally-caged prisoners.  After all, many states predict the number of future prison beds based upon the number of 4th graders who don’t read at grade level.  So, as this reasoning goes, if such practices help to achieve these ends, then chant they must, to the exclusion of much else that constitutes education.  I find this reasoning to be narrow and incomplete if we are to value children as more than labels, test scores, future prison beds, or dollar signs.

I pondered these cages, scripts, figurative and real prisons as I followed the execution last week of Stanley Tookie Williams.  As the debate swirled around issues of guilt or innocence, change and redemption. I couldn’t help but note the lack of attention towards the larger question -- what it means for our society that so many of us unquestioningly watch as state-sanctioned murder becomes the norm.  How much have we all bought into the script that prevents us from recognizing, much less achieving the bigger picture of a more just and moral humanity?  How do we support, through our silence and compliance, the scripts that are created and replayed to legitimate our government's imperialistic world endeavors?

What would it mean to truly have high expectations, not only for other people’s children, but also for ourselves as fellow humans, for our collective redemption and renewal?  Can this vision be scripted, packaged and sold... guaranteed?  Which are the prison walls that need to come down?

“It was a comfortable prison.”  We may never do away with the actual prisons we create for others.  However, those that we fail to acknowledge, those that we tacitly accept for ourselves, these are the scripts and prisons that can hopefully one day be read in the past tense. These cages may have indeed been comfortable, for some.  But at what price for others and for us all?

Redemption

Today, November 30th, is the National Day of Action to save Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on December 13th in California:

Who is Stan Tookie Williams? 
Stan was the co-founder in 1971 of the Los Angeles Crips gang.  In 1981 he was convicted of murdering four people during two robberies and sentenced to death row at San Quentin State  Prison.  Stan deeply regrets his gang involvement but has always maintained his innocence of these crimes.   
His trial was based on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of several witnesses, all of whom were facing a range of felony charges, including fraud, rape, murder and mutilation.  Even the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stated in a September 10, 2002, ruling that the witnesses  in Stan’s case had “less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state in either  charging or sentencing.”  There was physical evidence, but none of it pointed to Stan.   

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee 
While on death row, Stan has written 9 highly-acclaimed children’s books that educate young people to avoid gangs,  crime and incarceration.  He has also worked to end gang violence through his peace protocol and Internet Project for  Street Peace, an international peer mentoring program.  Stan has saved the lives of over 150,000 youth, as reported by them, their parents, teachers and law enforcement officials in their emails to Stan (tookie@tookie.com).  He has  recently published his memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption, which has been nominated for a James Madison Book  Award.  His work has resulted in multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace and Literature prizes.  This summer Stan’s  work was even recognized by the President of the United States when he received a presidential award for his  volunteer work to help youth. 

Williams' clemency petition states:

This petition is about clemency.  It is about life, compassion, and grace.  It asks, in the name of so many who see this man as a symbol of hope and purpose in their own lives, what message is sent by his death?

Only one man is empowered to save Stanley Williams and, in the process, to send a message to the world...that all people count and can count, that finding purpose gives meaning to life, that through striving we can overcome, and that hope is not an illusion.

That one man, is Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has agreed to a clemency hearing for Tookie Williams, to take place on December 8th.  Please take a minute to send an email, to call (916-445-2841), to speak out against another state-sanctioned murder in the name of justice.

Dolores Huerta

My good friend Mary Barrett recently interviewed Dolores Huerta, and wrote the following piece, which is currently a Two Feet In exclusive!...

Dolores Huerta is an extraordinary woman, brilliant, wise and deeply dedicated to improving worker’s rights.  Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union, with Cesar Chavez, she is a life long organizer and lobbyist.  Huerta urges others to join her.  It is imperative for people to connect "their street politics with electoral politics.  If we don’t do that our representative government is not going to work."
    
When she went to the Peace March in Washington D.C. September 24, 2005, she wished that even a few of the people at the March would become full time activists.  "Of the 200,000 people there, if only five thousand or even one thousand would go up to the hill (Capital Hill) and start lobbying, we could have stopped maybe the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court."
    
Mother of eleven, her advice on setting priorities is to find something that is really important and do it before thinking of all the reasons you can’t.  "If cleaning the house is going to have an impact fifty years from now, than clean your house. If going out to that demonstration to change some policy is going to have a better impact, than definitely go to that demonstration."
    
Winner of the Puffin Foundation Award for Creative Citizenship in 2002, she poured her $100,000 grant from the award into creating the Dolores Huerta Foundation Organizing Institute.  Her youngest daughter, Camila Chavez, is the Executive Director of the Foundation located in Bakersfield.  They will be
setting up training for people interested in working full time as organizers.  But already there is a paid staff organizing against Proposition 73, the "notify parents before abortion" measure on this November Special Election Ballot.  Huerta agrees the prominence of issues like women’s rights and gay rights is used to obfuscate the fact that our corporations are taking over government.
    
Even at seventy-five, Dolores Huerta is so politically active it is hard to catch up with her.   However, she will be in Oakland on October 22 to receive the Pace e Bene award for Non-violent Activism.  Then on November 4th, she will be at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley in conversation with Father Louie Vitale speaking against the School of the Americas.  This military school, funded by tax dollars, and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, trains Latin American soldiers in torture techniques.
   
"Every issue is interrelated," she says.  "What happens in Latin America affects what happens here. Father Louie Vitale and Father Bill O’Donnell have gone to prison over this issue.  The United States should not be involved in training terrorists.  This is a very just issue that people need to find out
about." 
    
Her own non-violent training began early, in the Catholic teaching of "turn the other cheek" and in reading about St. Francis and Ghandi.  When her philosophy of non-violence met the reality of violence during the United Farm Worker’s strikes, Hurerta says it showed how effective the whole philosophy of non-violence was.  "When we were on the picket lines, the growers came at us with violence and you saw the strikers were not violent, you saw how that really made the picket line stronger, it made the workers stronger."  Even after being beaten by San Francisco police, she says her non-violent attitudes were reinforced. 
    
Huerta, who has negotiated several contracts for the U.F.W., offers advice to union negotiators.  "I had some really good guidance from some really great negotiators, people like Lou Goldblatt from the Longshoreman’s Union.  First, when you negotiate you’re always honest both with the workers and the companies you’re bargaining with.  Number two, the workers have to be involved in negotiations.  A lot of people think you have to be an attorney to negotiate, you don’t have to be.  Then, always be reasonable and try to come to a common agreement with the employer, (try) not to make it contentious."
    
Huerta avoids feeling discouraged by looking for the good that can come out of something bad.  "Katrina was a horrible disaster in terms of the people that got killed, but it is certainly showing the true face of our government in such a stark way even those who had some confidence in this government are now starting to question it."
    
After being very ill, just a few years ago, Huerta says she regained energy very, very slowly. Yet, as she speaks she fulfills what her grandfather said of her, that she must have seven tongues because she speaks so fast.  An unflagging organizer, she brings her audiences along with her, translating English to Spanish, urging agreement.  With one fist raised in solidarity, she calls out "si se puede" -–  "yes we can".  The whole audience echoes her.

Dolores Huerta is coming to St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St., Friday, November 4th 2005, at 7p.m. for a conversation with Father Louie Vitale regarding the School of the Americas.

But She's Got Good Boots!

Some of you may remember my piece awhile back about Jenna Bush and teaching.  Well, a reader has pointed me to a recent news blurb that had escaped my attention:

Everyone seems to know about Jenna Bush, the blond half of the partying first twins. But, like her sister, Barbara, who's caring for AIDS-afflicted children in Africa, the 23-year-old has shelved her dancing shoes and is following in the footsteps of her mom, Laura, the former Texas school librarian. Jenna has turned her attention to Washington's Hispanic Mount Pleasant neighborhood, coteaching second graders at the highly regarded Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School. And, we're hearing, the University of Texas English major is wowing folks at the school, which teaches English along with Spanish or French. One example: Just last month, her second-grade class dropped into the neighborhood public library, marching quietly up to the second floor where there's a sprawling children's reading room. "It was great, and very sweet," recalls a librarian. "She was just a good teacher, and the kids were hanging all over her." It was the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, and Jenna was helping the kids find books and showing them how to handle the check-out. She never raised her voice or showed frustration. Friends say she even speaks a little Spanish. "We were all really impressed. It was all very positive," says the librarian. "It made me feel hopeful that even though she's been around all that power, she's a real person. And I really liked her boots."

As I noted last January, Jenna was not actually "highly qualified" according to NCLB definitions, and a news item appeared then that indicated she wouldn't be able to be employed at the school.

But, now we hear she's a co-teacher.  So either she satisfied those NCLB requirements pretty darn quick, or...  her daddy is president!   We can take heart in the fact that she's got good boots!  And her students can march quietly up the stairs!  Two true signs of good teaching.

By the way, Jenna is apparently partial to Jimmy Choo boots (see above).  Those are the $630 model, quite affordable on a co-teacher's salary.

 

Civil Rights, Healthy Foods, and World Peace -- So Un-American

Here's a bit of local Berkeley news, which even though it is about Berkeley, is just so indicative of much, much more:

House Republicans rejected an effort Tuesday to name a post office in Berkeley after longtime Berkeley Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek after a conservative lawmaker questioned whether the 94-year-old activist represents American values.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has been trying for more than two years to name the city's main post office on Allston Way for Shirek, a civil rights leader and peace activist who served on the Berkeley City Council for 20 years.

That's right, a republican, from Iowa no less, has taken the unusual measure of calling a role call vote to defeat the measure.  Shirek, who until recently was one of the oldest and longest-serving elected officials in California, who is a civil-rights leader, and who has devoted her life to progressive causes, the elderly, "healthy foods", and world peace -- does not represent American values.  Yes they are afraid she is a Communist:

King, a second-term House member from western Iowa, surprised Democrats by objecting to the proposal and demanding a roll call vote, saying Shirek's past "sets her apart from, I will say, the most consistent of American values." King, however, specified only her support for freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

In an interview with the Associated Press, King said Shirek had an "affiliation with the Communist Party" because she was involved with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Berkeley.
...
Lee, in a statement after the vote, blasted King, saying his "campaign of innuendo and unsubstantiated 'concern' is better suited to the era of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover than today's House of Representatives."

To which King responded: "I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy, she would realize that he was a hero for America."

So, on a nearly party line vote (215 to 190, 2/3 support required for passage) Berkeley can not name its main post office after Maudelle Shirek.  Many thanks to the House Un-American Healthy Foods and World Peace Committee.  I feel so much safer now.

Note:  To give a sense of just how outrageous this is, decisions to name post offices and federal courthouses are typically approved by a voice vote -- unanimously.

Frances Newton Was Murdered Today...

...by the state of Texas.   

There is much that could be said about this case, but at the moment, the following says pretty much everything you need to know, and that you probably already knew:

The poison that the state [injected] into Frances might just have well be drawn from the flood waters that killed and tortured so many Black people in New Orleans. In Frances's case the levee didn't break because it was never there to begin with. Like so many others, Frances [was drowned] in the systemic flood of racism that permeates and defines the courts in the U.S. and overpopulates its prisons and death rows with poor Black people, people of color, and increasingly, more women.    

It's not enough to point out for the 10,000th time that Frances Newton did not have a fair trial. Of course she didn't. Race and class, just as in New Orleans, determines who gets rescued, and who gets lethal injections.  Executions, especially executions of people of color have absolutely nothing to do with the truth, facts, and justice; they are political acts. And so in the Texas death house [today], the master once again [held] his ceremony of terror, a ritual designed to send a signal to the have nots that state sanctioned murder remains a weapon in the hands of the powerful, wielded to keep the powerless and exploited in place.

She was convicted and killed for a crime for which any white person with even modest means to hire a competent lawyer would have been acquitted. 

Here is a description of her final moments on this earth:

Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying "no" and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak.

Newton briefly turned her head to make eye contact with her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to attempt to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took affect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed and her mouth remained slightly open. Eight minutes later at 6:17 p.m. CDT, she was pronounced dead.

One of her sisters stood flat against a wall at the rear of the death house, her arms raised against the wall and her head buried in her arms, refusing to watch. Her parents held hands and her mother brushed away a tear before they walked to the back of the chamber to console their other daughter.

I include this here because we each must be witness to this crime -- not the one for which she was unjustly convicted, but the one that we have allowed to be committed today.  May we turn our drops of tears to sparks of fire.

Tomato, Tomaato... Katrina, Corrina... What's the Difference?

Laura Bush continues to council families displaced by Hurricane Katrina to get their children into school as soon as possible. 

Ah, wise "first lady" that she is, so full of comforting, good advice.  Somehow, though, I think we all might take her concern more seriously if she could, at the very least, get the name of the hurricane right: 

Go here to see what I mean (via Bob Harris).

My September 11th

On September 11, 2001, I went shopping. 

I didn't pull close to loved ones, I didn't strive to understand, to educate, to do anything other than watch the twin towers burn, then get in the car and drive out to the suburbs to buy baby clothes.   

I was hugely pregnant, full of expectancy.  That September morning my friend and I drove in silence, listening to endless radio descriptions of the devastation.  Arriving at the store we found that it was, unsurprisingly, closed.  People were burning in New York, the lives of hundreds of thousands more were already numbered as the war gears in Washington churned into action, and we two pregnant woman stared into the window and could not quite understand why the store was not open for us – after all, this horrible tragedy was happening so far away. 

I am not a shopper, never have been, and really, this tale is not about shopping.  It is about knowledge and responsibility, bearing witness and being engaged with the world beyond our own doorstep.  In this, it is a story about how I failed, and about how many of us fail day after day to recognize that we are part of a larger humanity.  And, too often when we do recognize the injustice in the world, regularly perpetrated by the hands of our own government, we remain mute.  We listen to the radio, shake our heads in disbelief and anger, and then go shopping. 

Truth is, I'd been tuning out, in slow progression, for many years, as I became increasingly cynical and wrapped up in my own life.  I wanted the best for my child, just like any parent.  However, I failed to recognize that I not only hold responsibility for my own, but for all.  I failed to see how the best for my own child has nothing to do with baby clothes, and everything to do with confronting our fears, fostering human connection, and building solidarity across fault lines of race, class, gender, nationality, religion.  It has everything to do with recognizing the continuity between one’s own family and our responsibility towards the creation of a loving human family.

I view my shopping trip on September 11th as a personal failure, but I also increasingly see how the failure was not just my own, but one that lives in each of us.  As long as we allow the existence of near and far, of nation-states, and borders – as long as we stay within our own zone of knowledge, comfort, and understanding, those fault lines will remain.  Fault lines that crack and splinter, rifts that eventually rupture to tear us apart.  What will it take for us to see humanity as a whole, rather than as subdivided entities, as “us” and “them,” as one or another person being wronged?

We are all wronged until we are able to collectively recognize and articulate the continuity of tragedy, which stretched long before September 11th, and lives on today in Iraq, in Niger, in the destroyed lives of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.  This continuity of tragedy is fueled by Martin Luther King’s interrelated triple evils of poverty, racism, and war, and by each of our blindness and indifference to our role in this poisonous relationship.  In his Beyond Vietnam address, King spoke of the need to send a message to the world, one of longing, of hope, of solidarity, and commitment:  “The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”  This is a choice that requires we do more than bring our bodies to the streets as we did on February 15, 2003, and then retreat back within our own lives, back to our own form of shopping trips for baby clothes.

Not long ago I had a dream in which I was searching for an orb, a smooth, unfractured sphere – for a wholeness that I, and we, have not yet achieved.  As I searched, I became increasingly fearful that I wouldn’t be able to find this orb, or perhaps that if I did, I would not have the strength or courage to carry it home.  For to find that orb, and hold it in our hands with awe and reverence, requires that we take action.  We must bring our bodies to the streets on September 24, 2005, and then keep them there as we each strive to understand, to educate, and to express not only our outrage but also our love.  The time to break silence is now.

"Shoot to Kill" Comes Home

Woke up today to this:

Iraq-tested US troops with shoot-to-kill orders were deployed in New Orleans to restore law and order after days of chaos and looting in the hurricane-devastated city.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said the 300 troopers from the Arkansas National Guard had been authorized to open fire on "hoodlums" who have been terrorizing the flooded city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Their deployment came amid intense criticism of the government for a tardy response to the disaster, which is feared to have killed thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands more stranded and homeless.

"These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets," Blanco said.

"They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded.

"These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will," said Blanco.

Shoot to kill, now paired with the "zero tolerance" policy for "looters" -- even when those so-called "hoodlums" are seeking food and water to save themselves and their families. 

"These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will..."   
Just like in London...  Just like in Falluja and Baghdad...

And as usual, the suspected hoodlums/looters/terrorists are not going to be the white people who happened to find some bread on their way home through the flood.

"The salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted."

How quickly one falls to the ground after lofty aspirations of daily blog writing.  With the first week of the semester here already, an incomplete syllabus, and students already knocking at my door... 

Until I get back up to speed, here is someone who is writing pieces that are well worth your time --  Benjamin at HungryBlues:

MLK, Communist Training Schools, Cindy Sheehan, and Rosa Parks (I)

and

MLK, Communist Training Schools, Cindy Sheehan, and Rosa Parks (II)

Go there and read.

Cindy Sheehan is Not the One Uttering Pifflely Bunk

I learned a new word today!  Piffle! 

I suppose it is not completely new, as I've probably come across it at various points in my life.  However, today I read it in Christopher Hitchens' rather nonsensical gabbling as he added to the right-wing attempt to slander Cindy Sheehan (he referred to her work as "sinister piffle"), and was actually driven to seek a definition.  Here's what I found:

Noun 1. piffle - trivial nonsense
balderdash, fiddle-faddlehokum, meaninglessness, nonsense, nonsensicality, bunk - a message that seems to convey no meaning

Verb 1. piffle - speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
blabber, palaver, prate, prattle, tattle, tittle-tattle, twaddle, gabble, gibber, blab, clack, maunder, chatter

mouth, speak, talk, verbalise, verbalize, utter - express in speech; "She talks a lot of nonsense"; "This depressed patient does not verbalize"

blather, blether, blither, smatter, babble - to talk foolishly; "The two women babbled and crooned at the baby"

My first reaction was that I don't think that I have ever before come across such truly excellent synonyms for a word. 

So, Hitchens is saying that Cindy Sheehan's effort and message is balderdash and hokem.  That holding Bush, our government, and ourselves accountable for the deaths of nearly 2000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis is prattle, blither, smatter and babble. 

This, I would say, is the fiddle-faddle of those among us who have somehow been brainwashed by the blathering and blethering of our so-called mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world.  Too bad that Hitchens is not able to recognize that piffle becomes sinister when people die horrible and needless deaths as a result of our imperialistic endeavors, not when Cindy Sheehan acts from a place of moral clarity.  Anything outside of that place, be it twaddling or action, is just bunk.  Extremely sinister bunk.

A Heart Full of Grace and a Soul Generated by Love

A friend reminded me today of Martin Luther King's Drum Major Instinct speech.  I had not read it in years, and so returned to it tonight:

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.          (Yes)

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)             

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes)   I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

Funny how easy it is to live one's life on auto-pilot and then wake up with a swift kick in the butt one day to just what matters during the short time that we inhabit this earth.  I'm working on some writing of my own along these lines, perhaps to be accompanied by a film.  Stay tuned...                                      

After Downing Street

Please read the following important information from the new organization, After Downing Street.  Then, follow the link to sign the letter and contact your Congressional representatives. 

I'll post updates on the effort as I get them.

1.  After Downing Street is a Coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May 26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.

2.  The name is a reference to the Downing Street Memo, a British memo recently made public in the London Times, which contained the minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.

3.  After Downing Street reports: In response to the release of the memo, John Bonifaz, a Boston attorney specializing in constitutional litigation, sent a memo to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, urging him to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the House Judiciary Committee to launch a formal investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House to impeach President Bush. Bonifaz's memo, made available today at www.AfterDowningStreet.org, begins: ‘The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.

4.  Congressman Conyers is now seeking 100,000 signatures to sign a letter on the Downing Street Inquiry. Information available at Raw Story and dKos.

5.  Sign the letter here. Write to your Congresspeople here.

Don't procrastinate.  Do it now.

The Triple Evils

Lately I've been reading Kathy Kelly's new book, Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison.  If you are not familiar with the work of Voices of the Wilderness, and Kathy Kelly, then you should check out the VITW website.  I've read Kelly's essays online for some time now, but somehow having them all collected together, forming a cohesive narrative, has been particularly informative and inspiring.   

As I read, my mind has frequently gone to Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam speech, where he speaks of "the triple evils that are interrelated" -- the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation/poverty, and the problem of war.  As Kelly documents the horrors of US-led sanctions against Iraq in the 90's, the 2003 war and occupation, and her time in Pekin prison as a result of an SOA protest at Ft. Benning, she magnifies the interrelationship of these evils in a way that has been particularly powerful for me. 

Here is but one example, where Kelly writes of several Palestinian students imprisoned, by our country, in Iraq (because they were "guilty of being Palestinian"):

The people we left behind in the Bucca compound were not criminals.  Every time I left Iraq, during sanctions, war, and occupation, I felt as if I were leaving one big prison.  How ironic that Voices in the Wilderness members were accused of being criminals, while we felt, every time, like we were leaving the scene of a vast crime.  But whenever I have been released from U.S. prisons, into comfort and security, I have also felt like I was walking away from a vast crime.  These crimes are connected.  I see a war that is also going on here at home.  When I last entered the U.S. prison system, Jayyad's words easily echoed:  "There are many here, Help us all."

In my own life, and work in the area of education, it has become crucial for me to more deeply understand the interrelationship of these evils:  empire, racism, and  poverty.  I'd like to say that I've always had this focus, but the reality is that I've most often directed my energy on one, or another -- or, more often than I am comfortable admitting, ignoring them all.

As King said in the Vietnam speech: "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."  Reading Other Lands Have Dreams has been yet another reminder of extent to which I have remained on the side of flinging coins, but has also helped me "catch courage" as I move forwards.  It is highly recommended reading.

Yet More Thoughts on Marla Ruzicka and Rachel Corrie

I’ve had a few interesting conversations about my Marla/Rachel writing over the past several days, often touching upon perceived ways in which my piece drew parallels between the two of them. 

If you have read what I wrote, you will recall that it all come out of a conversation with my daughter, Rosie.  It touched upon my on-going thoughts about parenting, activism, and my hopes for myself and others as both models/examples for my children.  It was also just kind of a wondering aloud about what drives people to develop and act upon moral commitments to the world.

As I wrote, both Rachel and Marla seemed to embody the qualities that I would like my children to take out into the world with them:  courage, empathy, love, spirit, determination.  In that sense, I think it is very fair to equate them.

I was writing more from the place of a mother than from a place of political analysis of their work.  But, their work can’t be ignored, and many people have justly been raising questions about important differences between the two.  Here is one example from Alexander Cockburn’s CounterPunch Diary:

Marla Ruzicka decided to work within the system, as they say. Maybe, given the aims of her organization, CIVIC, that was an appropriate choice. I'm not inclined to pass judgment on that. The "system" duly mourned and honored her. Rachel Corrie saw that the "system", with all its innumerable and fraudulent roadmaps, negotiated solutions, Oslo frameworks, processes of peace and so forth had not stopped, nay, was encouraging the daily outrages of demolitions of Palestinian homes and kindred barbarities. Corrie stood in the path of that system and died, and her murder was covered up by Israel and by the government of her own country.

In choosing to work within the system, Marla apparently also made a conscious decision not to take a stand on the war, but simply to help the victims.  In this sense, I do question the ultimate effectiveness of her work in creating change.  This is not to say that the work she did was not important, and needed, and did not touch the lives of many individual people.  But, war and occupation cannot come to an end if we are not willing to take a moral stand against injustice.   

I think that perhaps a parallel can be drawn with teachers, who work within the system because of their desire to help children.  In my work I have heard teachers say again and again that they just want to be able to close their classroom doors and do the best that they can for their students.  Again, this is important, and needed -- but not enough if we hope to truly educate and honor all children. 

Within any system there are cracks, fissures, spaces that with the right kind of action can be opened, bringing to light inadequacies, creating possibilities for change.  So, like Cockburn, I am not inclined to pass judgment on working within the system -- especially since I, in many senses, work within the system and struggle daily with that reality.  But, I do believe that it is crucial to consider what you do with that work -- that you must take a stand, and that you cannot remain neutral -- if you hope to bust open some of those cracks make a difference from within. 

Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie, and Revolution of Heart

Several different currents that have been flowing through my brain came together today with the tragic news of the death of activist Marla Ruzicka.  Thus, this posting may seem more like a bunch of random thoughts rather than anything coherent.  I'll do my best to make sense, but if I don't succeed, then so be it.

I only knew a little about Marla and the important work that she did in her life before yesterday, but her death -- much like that of Rachel Corrie in 2003 -- touched me deeply.  Don't get me wrong, my sadness does not only get called out by the deaths of young, white, female activists, but there is a certain sense of identification that I feel with these women.  And, in their faces, I also see my daughter -- or maybe I see the kind of spirit, determination, courage, empathy, and love that I hope she carries with her out into the world.  I hope this for both my children, for all our children.  But, in Marla and Rachel's faces, I especially see Rosie.

Perhaps I sometimes stress too much about whether or not I've got what it takes to be a good parent.  Those worries are decreasing as I gain more experience in the job.  But, in my thinking about parenting, I have become quite fascinated by the paths that people's lives take, especially the influences and experiences that drive people to take action towards a more just and humane world -- to make this pursuit their life's work as did Marla and Rachel.

A few months ago, I read a piece by Rebecca Solnit, and one quote touched upon this fascination.  She wrote: "Some activists are born into their disposition and vocation, but many of the most passionate lead ordinary lives until some injustice or atrocity strikes them like lightning and they are reborn dedicated."

What might it mean to be "born into" the disposition of activism?  What role do parents, family, and community play in building this disposition?  How can I help to nurture, as Dorothy Day said, a "revolution of the heart" in my own children?  This is a challenge that each of us must take on if we hope to achieve Marla Ruzicka's and Rachel Corrie's vision, if we hope to honor the lives of all victims of war, oppression, injustice.

One thing I know for sure -- there is no sure-fire recipe for doing this.  It is unlikely that there will be parenting books written on the topic.

Another thing I know, however, is that I do have the power of my own voice and  my own actions, working collectively with others, to serve as both example and guide for my children.  Awhile back, Robert Jensen, in his indispensable book, Citizens of the Empire, provided me with another beacon:

I have heard many parents say that their contribution to a better world is to raise their children with progressive values.  That's all well and good; better to have children with progressive rather than reactionary role models.  But I think these folks misunderstand not just their moral obligation, but the nature of progress, individual and collective.  We don't fix ourselves in isolation.  We don't build decent lives by cutting ourselves off from problems just because they are complex... Part of the solution is always to be found in the bigger struggle, in which we all have a part.

So, much of this was on my mind as Rosie and I looked at the above photo of Marla Ruzicka with a young Iraqi girl.  As is typical, Rosie wanted to know all about each of the people in the picture, and so I used my best make-it-comprehensible-to-a-three-year-old language to try and explain.  I told her that Marla was somebody who tried to make the world a better place, and that she had helped the little girl in the picture, whose family had died in the war.

I then told her that Marla herself had died in the war, and Rosie grew still as she carefully studied the picture.  She asked me if helping the girl is how Marla did good things for the world.  Yes, I said, but also because Marla helped many other people as well.  Silence again.

"But now, who will help the little girl?" she asked.   

I replied that hopefully we will all work together to help that little girl, and many others like her.  I wanted to add that we will do so by speaking truth and taking action against war, occupation, economic injustice, and our country's self-serving role in driving these horrors.  That part might have to wait a few years, though -- at least until Rosie turns six. 

My Dream

I had a disturbing dream a few weeks ago in which I was watching a film of a friend’s house exploding.  The house was in the distance, and the only sounds I heard were the voice-over of the film’s narrators.  While watching, I remember feeling like I wanted to turn and run, but instead I stood still, observing the debris flying with little of the emotion that one might expect upon witnessing such a violent event. 

Then, I woke up, shaking.  The rest of that night was spent awake, thinking about the different images in the dream and considering the significance of the ending.    What I didn't’t lie awake thinking about, however, was my lack of emotion at watching that movie of destruction.  Yes, I woke up horrified, but in the dream I calmly watched a dear friend’s house explode.  Somehow I seemed to know that my friend and his partner were not in the house, which might have contributed to, but not excused, my own dispassionate viewing stance. 

Last night, my supposed-to-be-sleeping hours were spent thinking about what this lack of emotion might indicate about me, and moreover, about all of us -- about how we all, each and every day, distance ourselves from that which is horrifying.  As my friend said when I told him about my reaction in the dream, “It’s just another Arab’s house being blown up.”  He might have been joking, but in humor there is always truth, and that's what kept me awake.  We watch TV, read the paper, listen to the radio, and each day we are witness to just another bombing, just another attack, just another bunch of people dead somewhere else in the world.  We turn it off, shake our heads with pity or sadness, and go about our lives.

I’d like to think that I don’t do that, that I am somehow more aware, more engaged.  Occasionally, this is true.  Too often, it is not. 

Earlier this week I wrote about the incident in Queens where a school administrator punished Haitian students by making them sit on the floor and eat their lunch with their hands, while calling them animals.  At the time I wrote that hearing about this event saddened, but did not shock me.  Thinking now, I am both angry with myself about my reaction -- about letting myself see this as just another (admittedly extreme) example of the bad things that happen to kids in schools.  I felt it in my head, but not sufficiently in my heart.

Have I, have we, become so inured to not only physical violence, but also to violence of spirit, that we are no longer shocked by such reprehensible acts?  If we are not shocked, is it really possible for us to feel deeply enough about injustice to get ourselves off our sofas to work to make a difference?  When all that we're capable of is a dispassionate sadness, when our feelings stay stuck up in our heads and not in our hearts, we basically reinforce the status quo.  As long as we can turn off our emotions --  turn the channel -- a better world will never be possible.

Too much analysis for one dream?  I don't think so.

It's always the Right Moment with Bob.

I know that I have been very concerned about the effects those racy erectile dysfunction ads might have on the impressionable youngins' of America.  Luckily, someone else is too!--

What if “a tender moment turns into the right moment,” but you’re not “ready”? What to do then?

Rep. Jim Moran doesn’t want people finding out — at least not until after 10 p.m. The Northern Virginia Democrat introduced a bill earlier this month that would ban advertisements for erectile-dysfunction (ED) drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra until the late-night hours.

The bill was appropriately introduced on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament, the broadcasts of which have been blanketed with ED ads. “You can hardly watch primetime television or a major sporting event with your family without ads warning of the danger of a ‘four-hour experience’ airing every 10 minutes,” Moran said.
...

For Moran, the answer may be a return to former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole (Kan.) as ED pitchman. Dole, fresh off his unsuccessful 1996 presidential race, became the first spokesman for the first ED drug, Pfizer’s Viagra.

“When Bob Dole was doing the ads, it didn’t really bother me, but now there’ s just too much sexual innuendo,” Moran told the Associated Press.  (via Undernews)

You should speak for yourself, Rep. Moran...  Bob might not seem that titillating to you, but  the rest of us are  easily overwhelmed by the sheer power of his sexual innuendo -- just a peek at the imagery in the above photo should tell you that Bob's an after 10pm kind of guy too.  But government knows best about such things, now, doesn't it?

If Only I'd had David Frum Write My Wedding Vows!

Every now and then I pay a visit to The National Review online -- and come across insights like this from David Frum (the ex-speechwriter who coined the "axis of evil" phrase):

In the province of Ontario, the words "wife," "husband," "widow," and "widower" are now all to be stricken from the law. The words "mother" and "father" cannot be far behind.

Ontario's action is a reminder that same-sex marriage is not just the extension of an existing legal status to previously excluded persons. Same-sex marriage is a revolution in the definition of marriage for everyone - a revolution not just in law, but in consciousness.

And one effect of this revolution - and for many proponents, one of the revolution's aims - is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband's duties to his wife - while equally binding and equally supreme - are not the same as a wife's duties to his {sic} husband.

Once we lose that knowledge, we lose the basic grammar of marriage. It is one more reminder that in the same-sex marriage debate, we are debating not marriage's change - but marriage's overthrow.

So, husbands and wives have special duties to one another, but they are not the same special duties.  Of course Frum has no need to outline what those unique heterosexual, gender-based, spousal special duties are -- because that's just something we're all supposed to know (at least if we read the National Review).
 
Now, I happen to be part of one of those man-woman marriage deals, and as far as I can remember, the special duties thing was never mentioned.  That must mean the basic grammar of marriage does not apply to my relationship, and I am consequently not really married!  If I have to go by Frum's grammar, that's okay by me, but I may have to break the news gently to the rest of the family.

As a proud card-carrying member of the revolution of consciousness, I say onward with the overthrow.

Saturday viewing pleasure

Here's a cartoon shamelessly pilfered from elsewhere on the internet...

We've got so much to look forward to with the new Bush cabinet!

The best within us all.

I first remember seeing Ossie Davis in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, back in 1989.  Maybe I saw him at some point before that time, but with that film he entered my consciousness and never left. 

At that time I knew little about him, but my sometimes sixth sense kicked in and told me that I was looking at a good person -- Good with a capital G, like good-to-the-core, a person with a deep soul.  I continued to admire and be inspired by both his artistic work and his activism for peace and equality over the years (in his case, these various roles cannot be separated).  Since last Friday, when I heard the news that Ossie Davis had died, I have felt a heavy sadness that this beautiful person is gone from our earth.  It is pretty rare that I'll cry for the passing of a public figure, but I did so for him.

Democracy Now did a tribute to Ossie Davis today, and it is well worth an hour of your day to listen. 

March 27, 2003:  Ossie Davis speaking one week after the invasion of Iraq began:

I have never looked upon myself as a magician. I was not sent by the almighty to solve all of the problems of the world at one fell swoop. I am not morally arrogant. I accept the fact that maybe this generation was not the one designed by fate to bring peace to the world. But I also believe that it is necessary to stay on the march, to be on the journey, to work for peace wherever we are at all times, because the liberty we cherish, which we would share with the world, demands eternal vigilance. And democracy is no easy path, but those of us who believe in it must be prepared to sacrifice in its cause more willingly than those who are prepared to die in the wars of aggression. We, too, must be dedicated to the cause of freedom.

Mumia Abu Jamal read a tribute to Ossie Davis today, which ended as follows:

This very role [Do the Right Thing] reflects the essence of what Davis and Ruby Dee have done for generations now, taken rather ordinary roles and imbued them with grace and dignity.  A reflection of how they touched the lives of millions of ordinary people by reflecting the best that is within them... [with] the essential elements of dignity and a love for one's people.  He was a lion, and though he has passed, may his brilliant  life inspire the lions and giants to come.

May there be more people like Ossie Davis -- people who reflect the best within us all.  We need them now, maybe more than ever.

wonder

The following arrived in my In-Box last week via Henrietta, good friend of Rudolf.  I've never met Henrietta, but this was a gift that has kept me thinking all week long:

Wonder is my second favorite condition to be in, after love, and I sometimes wonder whether there’s a difference; maybe love is just wonder aimed at a beloved.

Wonder is like grace, in that it’s not a condition we grasp; it grasps us.

Philosophically speaking, wonder is crucial to the discovery of knowledge, yet has everything to do with ignorance. By this I mean that only an admission of our ignorance can open us to fresh knowings. Wonder is the experience of that admission: wonder is unknowing, experienced as pleasure.

Wonder is anything taken for granted—the old neighborhood, old job, old life, old spouse—suddenly filling with mystery.

Wonder is not curiosity. Wonder is to curiosity what ecstasy is to mere pleasure. Wonder is not astonishment, either. Astonishment is too brief. The only limit to the duration of wonder is the limit of our ability to remain open.

From “Six Henry Stories” by David James Duncan, an essay about Montana philosopher Henry Bugbee.
It is found in his book:  My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, from Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark.

The bird's nest is something wonder-ful I encountered on a walk awhile back.

true, part three

read part one here, and part two here

During my junior year in college there was an anti-apartheid political action on campus.  The Students Against Apartheid organization had constructed a shanty in the middle of the Cut, our college’s version of the university quad, and protestors camped out there day and night for several months in an effort to force university divestment from companies doing business with South Africa. While I knew of the anti-apartheid movement, I had not been particularly politically aware or involved before that time.  One night, however, a friend asked me to go to the shanty.  A former South African political prisoner, poet, and university professor, Dennis Brutus, would be speaking. 

My memories of that evening are somewhat like remembering a dream:  certain images clear and vivid, and others murkier, denser, unsure.  I don’t remember which of my friends I went with, but nonetheless can vividly recall sights and sounds, as well as how I was changed by the experience.

It was dark, and about thirty of us gathered around the simple wooden shanty in the middle of the green lawn, candles flickering, students walking past on the nearby paths on their way to their dorms, the library, or computer labs.  The night was clear and brisk.  Dennis Brutus sat in the middle of the circle of students and talked about South Africa, about the divestment movement, and read his poetry:

O let me soar on steadfast wing
that those who know me for a pitiable thing
may see me inerasably clear:

grant that their faith that I might hood
some potent thrust to freedom, humanhood
under drab fluff may still be justified.

Protect me from the slightest deviant swoop
to pretty bush or hedgerow lest I droop
ruffled or trifled, snared or power misspent.

Uphold – frustrate me if need be
so that I mould my energy
for that one swift inenarrable soar

hurling myself swordbeaked to lunge
for lodgement in my life’s sun-targe –
a land and people just and free.

It was in that space around the shanty, with the soft-spoken poet-activist-professor, that God finally became something tangible for me:  something that I could feel all around, guiding our small group of students to reach out to other human beings, to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world, to work towards justice, and to build our own capacities of empathy and love. 

It wasn’t as I expected it would be – there was no great voice booming down from above saying, “Here I am!”  Rather, the experience was like revisiting that feeling that I’d had in my heart since childhood, but with a sense of assuredness, understanding, and peace that I had not yet been able to feel.  God is here, I thought to myself, of course God is here.  In that circle of people I was finally able to release myself from the rational pull of my brain, and trust what I had sensed all along.

Now, nearly twenty years later, those God-faker feelings from my childhood still haunt me sometimes.  When R. asked me to tell her about God, my first reaction was that I was not qualified to reply – after all, I still don’t belong to any organized religion and would be hard-pressed to cite more than a few lines of scripture.  No one has ever actually taught me about God, so how can I have any kind of legitimacy to explain God to her? 

While I considered what to say to Rosie, I thought back to the night with Dennis Brutus and about how I’ve tried to live my life since then – in a manner that, while not always consciously evoking God’s name, has been guided by the same spirit that was present that evening.  If some people consider me a God-faker due to the fact that my only understanding of God comes through my ever-stumbling and sometimes-succeeding attempts to build love, empathy, and justice in the world, then so be it. 

So, as R. and I left the labyrinth and began to walk back home through the foggy afternoon, I quieted my doubts and explained to her what I know to be true.

true, part two

part one is here.

My clearest memory of committing a God-faux-pas happened when I was about eight years old, during a visit to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  I had never seen anyplace so beautiful, and felt like I could hardly breathe from excitement when my parents, sister, and I walked through the front entrance.  Here, I thought, is the place where God lives, and I was eagerly awaiting some kind of sign or signal that he/she/it was in there waiting for me.

Rows of wooden pews dominated the center of the building, and around the perimeter were shrines for various American saints.  We began to walk, stopping to look in each shrine.  The banks of candles in front of each saint’s statue fascinated me, and the people who lit them seemed like they must know God well.  I quickly decided that I could not leave the cathedral without lighting one of those candles myself.  I felt sure that by doing so I would understand God, and the anticipation was almost too much for me to bear. 

The procedure seemed simple enough.  Take an already lit candle and use it to light another candle, and then say your prayers.  I waited until my parents had moved several saints ahead and made my move.  Slowly, so that I would be sure remember each moment, I picked up the front candle and moved to light one of the others.  As the hushed sounds of the cathedral flowed around me, I closed my eyes and held my breath, waiting for what I imagined would be some kind of signal from above.  

“WHAT are you doing?!”  My mother’s annoyed whisper pierced my reverie. 

Apparently, I was not aware that you were supposed to give a donation if you wanted to light a candle, and my parents were not happy.  They quickly pulled me outside to the front steps of the cathedral and tried to explain what I had done wrong.  I don’t remember their words, just my own shame.  As I watched the traffic and pedestrians flowing past on Fifth Avenue I felt sure that all those anonymous people knew that I was a God-faker.  I remember my body shaking and my tears flowing, not so much because I got in trouble, but because I felt like I had been so close to understanding when I was inside that church, and God now seemed very, very, far away.

When I was thirteen years old, I took communion.  Nobody called me on it this time, but it was later reported to me that this was another big God-related error, since I’d never been baptized nor had confession, or a first communion.  It was Christmas Eve, midnight mass, in The Netherlands, where I was visiting family friends.  When it came time for communion, I got up and followed everyone else into the line, and my presence was neither noticed nor questioned.  As we moved slowly closer to the priest, I carefully watched each person’s actions as they received their own communion.  Like at Saint Patrick’s, it seemed like a simple enough process:  close your eyes, open your mouth to get that small white thing, then move your hands in a cross-wise fashion on your chest.  Making the hand motions looked like it would be the hardest part, and I tried to memorize exactly what everyone else did. 

As the priest placed the tasteless wafer on my tongue, I didn’t get a chance to feel filled up with God because I panicked about crossing myself correctly.  Up-down-over-left-right- what was the order again?  Did I do it wrong?  Was the priest glaring at me?  Had I been found out?  My face burning, I hurried back to my seat in the pew and slouched down, upset with myself for messing up and sad that I had again missed what I thought was my big chance to understand God.

At that point, I started to really question whether this thing called God existed at all – after all, if he/she/it were real, then why couldn’t I experience what others seemed to be able to feel?  And why did my own life seem so lonely and lousy?  However, I was not ready to give up hope yet, even after repeated disappointment when it came to trying to understand God.  So, I continued my search by sticking with the route of organized religion, as this seemed to be the most likely place to find what I was looking for.

As a teenager, I left the Unitarians behind, and decided to try out the Methodists.  I began going to church with my friend Jenny and her mother each week.  My parents were a bit taken aback by this move, but they decided to humor me in my religious quest.  The Methodists, however, didn’t last long, as I was never able to feel at home in the stiff, emotion-less services that characterized Jenny’s particular congregation.  I ditched them after about four months and decided that I was Jewish.

After all, as far as I knew, I was Jewish.  True, we hardly ever celebrated Hanukkah, or the High Holy days, but we did have a Passover seder, at least during the time that my grandfather was still alive.  I loved the ritual and tradition that went into the seder, even our family’s get-through-it-as-quickly-as-possible-so-we-can-eat version.  I felt confident calling myself Jewish, and hoped that claiming my religion would help me figure out God a bit more easily.

What I didn’t know is that Judaism is a matrilineal religion, and my Jewish side of the family is my father’s.  It didn’t matter that I was Jewish enough to have been murdered in the Holocaust.  I was not Jewish enough to be married by most rabbis, and not Jewish enough for my Jewish grandmother to really consider me a Jew.  When, as a teenager, I found this all out, I felt saddened and cheated out of an identity, a religion that I felt was mine, and out of finally having some kind of legitimacy to figure out God.

So, in the first few years of college I gave up on organized religion, and put God on the back burner of my life.  I wore black, sometimes claimed to be an atheist (though not with much conviction), and read Nietzsche.  But, alone in bed at night, I still did something akin to praying – though I didn’t admit to myself that I was praying.  I had conversations with the God that I hadn’t yet figured out, but hoped was around somewhere, listening to what I had to say.

part three soon

true, part one

There is a labyrinth in a church courtyard around the corner from our house – a maze set in bricks on the ground.  My daughter, R., and I go there sometimes.  I slowly wind my way though the maze, trying to get her to follow behind me, but she usually wants to cross over all the boundaries and go straight to the middle.  She is simply not that interested in my adult explanation that the journey is why people walk the labyrinth—that following the path gives one a chance to be quiet with their own thoughts and dreams.

Lately, however, R. has been obsessed with What, Who, Why, Where, and How questions.  The last time that we visited the labyrinth I was in the middle of my usual monologue about staying within the lines when she suddenly interjected, “Mama, what do the people think about in the lab-rint?”

I paused for a second, “Well, maybe about their lives, or about the people that they love, or maybe about God.”

She was quiet, a puzzled look appearing on her face, before asking, “Mama…What’s God?”

Suddenly I felt so much like a parent — I was about to impart upon my daughter her first impression of God, at least since she has become a creature who can remember things.  True, as a just-barely three-year old, her memory is still in formation and not always reliable, but it still felt important.  I experienced a stab of fear.  Can I really answer this question?  Am I ready for this responsibility?

Thinking back to my childhood, I am not able to remember my parents ever talking to me about God.  They must have done so at some point in my upbringing, but religion was such a non-issue in our family that it didn’t happen often enough to sink-in in any meaningful way.  My father is Jewish, my mother, I believe, grew up Episcopalian, but neither one has any ties to their religious background. 

However, when my sister and I were young my parents decided that it was time for us to have a religious education, and they began to send us to the local Unitarian church each Sunday morning.  While we “went to church” my father shopped for hardware at Hechingers.  He almost always waited in the car for us at the end of the church driveway, and we would stop to get Big Macs on the way home.  Sometimes he would actually attend the “grown up” service, but whatever happened in that part of the building was a complete mystery to me.

At the Unitarian Church I remember holding hands in a circle each week as we sang, “Here we are, all together as we sing our song, joyfully…” and not much else.  We had a few youth group sleepovers, and may have even staged a play for the adults.  I basically liked my time there, but felt unsatisfied, as the thing that I really wanted to learn about – God – was not particularly high on the agenda.

For as long as I can remember, the concept of God has been something that has felt clear and true in my heart, but not always in my mind.  Like my daughter now, as a child I was searching for the details:  what, how, and why?  It became evident early on that my family wasn’t going to provide much enlightenment on the God issue, or about religion in general, so I realized that I was going to have to figure it out on my own.  And in my search, I made a few mistakes. 

part two soon

 

Sex with a man? No suggestions or assistance allowed.

By now it is old news that Congress has allocated $130 million for abstinence-only sex education programs, which of course bar any discussion of contraceptive use for either birth control or to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases.  Okay, well I don't think that we even need to read the studies that show abstinence-only education doesn't work, because we've got common sense and we know teenagers, and we know that if they want to have sex they are probably going to have sex. 

But, what may be new to you are the details of just what will be taught to your teenager when they are learning to just say NO until they are married (to a member of the opposite sex, of course).  Here is a little snippet from one such approved curriculum package, "Choosing the Best Soulmate":

"Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

Was this written in 1950?  No!  2004!  Is this G.W. and Laura's protocol?  Is this the relationship advice that Jenna and Barbara receive?

As a mother of both a daughter and a son, I do truly hope that they will wait until they are mature enough to explore their sexuality in a confident way.  When that does happen, I hope that they will enter into sexual relationships with full knowledge of how to do so both safely and respectfully.  Respect for themselves as well as for their partners.

In this age of "Friends with Benefits", hooking-up, and various other forms of teenage "dating" this type of mutual respect does not seem to happen often, and it is no surprise that girls are not the ones receiving the pleasure:

While many girls insist they receive sexual attention during hookups, just as many boys say hookups are mostly about pleasing the guy. Michael Milburn, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and co-author of the book ''Sexual Intelligence,'' an examination of sexual beliefs and behaviors in America, says that the boys' take is more accurate. ''Most of the time, it's the younger girl performing fellatio on the older boy, with the boy doing very little to pleasure the girl,'' Milburn says. Some girls told me that guys think it's ''nasty'' to perform oral sex on a girl. So a lot of girls will just perform oral sex on the guy ''and not expect anything in return, because she'll know that he probably thinks it's gross,'' Irene told me. But her friend Andi pointed out that many girls are themselves insecure about receiving oral sex; they'd rather just have intercourse.

There's a firm belief among many experts on teenage sex that girls, however much they protest to the contrary, are not getting as much pleasure out of hookups as they claim. I was invited to a high school in Boston, where I met with a group of seniors who were debating this very issue. I relayed a conversation I'd had with Marline Pearson, a sociologist who has developed a school curriculum for teenagers called Love U2: Getting Smarter About Relationships, Sex, Babies and Marriage. ''In some ways,'' Pearson said, ''I think girls had more power in the 1960's, when they said: 'O.K., you want to get to first base? This is what you have to do.' Today it's: 'O.K., you want to get to third base? Come over.' I'm a feminist, but I think we've put girls back in the dark ages, with very little power.''

I guess that it is a radical notion these days to want anyone -- regardless of their gender, their marital status, or their preference of partner -- to be able to experience the full range of their sexuality in a way that is informed, healthy, confident, and powerful.  This is what teenagers, and probably many of the adults that teach them, need to learn.  Somehow, I don't think that this kind of curriculum will be on the approved list.

search

A dear friend of two feet in has sent along this important message which deserves your immediate attention:

To readers, writers, and friends...

Potato vines climb towards the heavens, sunflowers watch every sunset, and the acorn springs roots which search for underground pools and rivers, just as the baby oak shoot pushes up out of the dirt.

In Issue Ten of Rudolf's Diner, Search, you have
before you a group of fellow humans and their personal
searches. They search for the perfect words. They
search for clear consonants. They search for the
meaning of a name, of love, war, history, hope, life,
tapas and God. They search for a good cup and some
chocolate covered hazelnuts. They search their hearts
for a way to love Republicans. They search the soil
for fat, juicy worms.

It is time for you to take some time. Again, I remind
you, unless you have bio-digitally adapted to the new
age, pick a few pieces at a time. Print them out. Read
them on your couch. Enjoy. We made this issue just
for you.

Your Loving Uncle,
Rudolf

Go visit Rudolf's Diner here.

What's in a name, anyway?

On November 2nd voters in Orange County, California, elected a mystery man, a recluse, someone no one has seen and no one knows to the local school board.  Here are the basic details:

Steve Rocco didn't file a candidate statement or mount a campaign for the school board. He's unknown to teachers and the district and only barely known to his neighbors. Nonetheless, the man being called a "mystery candidate" easily beat an opponent who is active, and relatively well known, in the Orange Unified School District. Now all that's left is to find him. "Absolutely nobody, but nobody has seen this guy," said Paul Pruss, a middle school teacher and the president of the union. "The whole thing is just bizarre." Rocco provided little information about himself in his candidate filings. He ignored mail from district officials and the teachers' union during the campaign. When the PTA sent him an invitation to a candidate forum, the letter came back unopened.

So, you might wonder, how did this guy get elected? 

Those interviewed in the Chronicle article say it’s because Rocco listed his occupation as a “writer/educator” on the ballot  -- “although he offered no proof of those occupations.”  It seems that the party line down there in Orange county is that, not really knowing much about either candidate, voters basically went ahead and chose the “writer/educator” over the “park ranger”. 

Well, let’s look at this.  His opponent, the park ranger, was endorsed by the teacher’s union, has three children in the district, is president of the PTA at his kids' school and is active with the Boy Scouts.  He raised contributions and sent out a political mailing to homes of voters.  Even with all of this, Rocco, who did nothing, got 54% of the vote.

His opponent’s name?  Phil Martinez. 

Here’s how the piece in the Chronicle ended: “Hanna, who has followed local politics for 30 years, dismissed one scenario that has been suggested, that voters chose the non-Hispanic name over Martinez.”  One sentence.  There was only one sentence that even touched on the idea that discrimination might have been a factor in the election.

NPR did a piece on Rocco’s victory as well, but they didn’t even bother to mention that one possible scenario suggested so briefly in the Chronicle article. 

I don’t know, maybe I should give the good people of Orange County the benefit of the doubt – mostly white, mostly Republican, Orange County.  True, some of these voters may have chosen the mystery writer/educator going on stated profession alone – it is certainly a plausible argument.  But, in my eyes that is not the real story here.  I am much more troubled by the fact that the discrimination argument was dismissed out of hand, or not brought up at all.

During my recent jury duty tenure a similar issue – passing judgment based on name and color alone – arose here in decidedly non-Republican, “majority-minority” Alameda County, California (home of Berkeley and “most integrated” city in the country, Oakland).  During the questioning of a group of potential jurors there was an exchange that went more or less like this:

Defense Attorney:  Ladies and gentlemen, I feel like I shouldn’t have to ask this question here in Alameda County in 2004, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.  Does anyone feel that the fact that the defendant has an “Arab name” might cause them to pass judgment on the defendant before hearing all the evidence presented in the case?  Might you have a harder time maintaining the presumption of innocence based on his name or his appearance alone?

Potential jurors (a multi-ethnic group) shift uncomfortably in their seats, some look at the floor.  Potential juror #8, a white woman, raises her hand:

#8:  Well, I know that some of the counts against the defendant involve the use of a knife.  And, well, he’s got an Arab name, and that’s what Arabs do.  You know, they use knives.

I actually can’t decide which is worse:  the blatant racism expressed by this woman; or the essentially color-blind (name blind?) attitude promoted by the various mainstream media sources that have reported on the Orange County school board situation.  Really, there is no worse, as it is all part of the same problem.

In previous posts I've written about labels, about categorizing people, about blaming, about how it is part of the air we breathe.  If we are to overcome any of this, if we are to honor all of us, then we need to at least begin by making explicit how racism is built into the structures of our society – at individual and institutional levels --  to work together towards making an "America that is America again – The land that has never been yet--".  (Langston Hughes.  See here for the whole poem.)

Saleh

For three days in the beginning of September, the SF Chronicle told the story of Saleh, a young Iraqi boy who after being injured in the war was flown to Children’s Hospital in Oakland in order to save him. The piece tells of his life before the injury, and of the extraordinary efforts of many people, both Iraqi and American, to not only keep Saleh alive, but also to help him and his father, Raheem, build a life in the United States when they were unable to return to Iraq. The newspaper stories were poignant, beautifully written, and illustrated with photos that did not shy away from the ugly realities of wartime injuries. I read each day's excerpt during lunch break from jury duty, and each day I sat on the courthouse steps and cried.

Yes, the power of strength and courage shown by this young war victim touched me deeply, but my tears were the result of much more complex, and conflicted, feelings that his story starkly illustrated. The simple fact, with which no one would argue, is that Saleh should have never been here in the first place. The fact that he is here, that he’s alive and quickly assimilating to American culture is both a miracle and a tragedy. The articles focus extensively on the miracle part, but I cried because of the tragedy.

Tragedy at so many levels: the fact that we are in this war in the first place, that there is no accurate count of the number of Iraqis injured or killed as a result of our actions (or that most Americans don’t really seem to care about the number). The fact that children are killed, or gravely injured on a daily basis and as far as I know Saleh is nearly alone in receiving the full force of US money, knowledge, and power to save him. The fact that a continued occupation prevents him and his father from returning home, and has caused his mother and siblings to go into hiding (from "militants" that suspect Raheem and his family are US spies). And, finally, the way that Saleh’s injuries and his brother’s death happened: they were on their way home from school, happy, playing, preparing for a family celebration, when Saleh picked up a cluster bomblet.

…I wrote this piece back at the beginning of September, and as with much of my spur-of-the-moment writing, never finished it. I put it here now, pretty much as I left it then, very incomplete.

Nearly every time I hear something about this war it breaks my heart. I wish that more Americans would let their hearts get broken about our country's actions, because at least for me, anger often goes hand-in-hand with heartbreak. John Kerry may be elected next week, and I hope that he is, but I have no illusions that anything is going to change unless the rest of us speak out and take action: Iraq will still be occupied with no end in sight, there will still be death on a daily basis, and cluster bomblets will continue to injure and kill children around the world as they walk home from school.

When I read these articles in September, I wasn't just crying for Saleh, but for all of us.