the cassandra pages

#MeToo, no disclaimer needed

Last night, a phenomenon unfolded on Facebook and Twitter, as one woman after another changed her status to "Me Too" or #MeToo, announcing publicly that she had at one time been sexually harassed or assaulted. I posted my own "Me Too" around 8:00 pm, and watched as friend after friend followed suit. Dave Bonta called it "a harrowing evening." Yes, but I was not as surprised as some of the few men to comment have been. Neither were the other women. Why? Because we've all known, or at least suspected, how endemic this is, and how difficult and futile it has been to speak out about it in our own lives. Even so, as I saw the status updates from women I've known and cared about, online or in person, my primary emotion was sorrow. I could handle the fact that it had happened to me, not once but several times. But seeing that it had also happened to so many dear female friends made me weep. "It's practically all of us," I wrote to a friend in Nova Scotia. "I am so sorry. Me too," I wrote to many others, and many wrote the same to me.

It has been painful, but freeing, to see this groundswell of courage and solidarity. If the revelations about Harvey Weinstein and the American Groper-in-Chief have contributed to women's solidarity on this issue, that is at least one good thing.

Then came the predictable push-backs: that we need to point out that most men are good, or that really the hash tag should be "all of us" because many men have been abused too, or that feminism has caused a lot of anger which has been directed at men and is a form of harassment.

One writer who thinks hard about these things said she was uncomfortable because "this puts the onus of speaking out / creating change on the women who've experienced harassment or assault instead of on the men who did the harassing or assaulting."

On the first points, yes, of course most men are not perpetrators. I've always had good men in my life who have loved and treated me gently. But we don't need to say that right now, and we don't need to apologize or add disclaimers: this is not about them. Why can't we hear people speaking out about a specific abuse or oppression and simply put ourselves aside for a moment and empathize with the victim and what she is saying, at significant cost to herself, and the effect it has had on her life?" Black Lives do Matter. Indigenous Lives Matter. Women's Lives Matter. Each of these should be a very simple concept. It is not about "Your Life Matters" or "All Lives Matter;" it is about acknowledging racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other abuses for what they are, and sitting with that, and with those who have suffered. Period. I don't expect black or indigenous people to offer me a disclaimer, nor should they. I will write a post about empathy in the future, it's something I've been wanting to do.

But for now, I want to address just the last point. As for being uncomfortable with placing women in the position of speaking out, I think we don't need to worry. Women have already shown how strong and resilient we are; we have survived millennia of being treated as property, used, harassed, and assaulted -- and then shamed and blamed. We have endured unequal opportunity, unequal pay, unequal education, glass ceilings -- and verbal abuse for being strong, smart, accomplished, and capable. We have borne children, kept food on the table and home life together while also working jobs; we've nursed the sick and dying, and cared for the elderly and the weak in the face of wars and famines and refugee crises. I think we can handle speaking out, and furthermore, we have to seize this moment and do so.

It is a delusion to expect the people, whether male or female, who hold, benefit from, and use sexual power to be the ones to correct the system: that has never worked in the history of the world. What works is when sufficient numbers of an oppressed or victimized group finally have enough courage to speak out about what has happened to them, and to stand up together for openness, transparency, and change.

In this moment of revelation, courage, and solidarity among ordinary women -- like me, and like your own sister, wife, mother, daughter, colleagues and friends --  there are just a few appropriate responses for men and women alike: "I am so sorry that happened to you. I applaud your courage. We need to do better as we raise our children." Down the road, we need to change a great deal about our society, but it starts with telling the truth about what has happened to us so that the magnitude of the problem can be revealed.

Sorrow, Solidarity, and Soul-Searching in Quebec

Vigil in Montreal last night. Photographs by Jonathan Sa'adah.

The news of Sunday's attack on the mosque in Quebec City, and the deaths of six people, hit us very hard. Coming on top of Trump's travel ban, last weekend, I had to wonder if the timing was coincidental, or if the young perpetrator had been pushed over some personal edge into action by the anti-Muslim rhetoric from a U.S. administration. His political identity, however, had been in place for some time; he was a sympathizer of Marine lePen, of the French far-right, and had expressed anti-Muslim, anti-women sentiments on the web.

There has been a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim element in Quebec for a long time. Here in the larger and very diverse city of Montreal, some tend to cast blame on Quebec City and the rural areas of the province, which tend to be more mono-chromatically French-Canadian, and where separatist sentiment maintains a stronger foothold. In Montreal, significant numbers of non-white people run for office and are elected from their districts; this is another way in which change is slowly happening. Another is that the fluently-bilingual younger generations seem to have less interest in division of any kind, and I find it heartening to know and talk to these progressive, globally-concerned young people, for whom travel -- even on a shoestring -- is a priority. But plenty of racism occurs here as well.

In spite of liberal immigration policies, nearly every one of my immigrant friends has faced discrimination and considerable difficulty when trying to settle in Montreal, too, particularly when trying to find employment, but also in more subtle and insidious ways. Racism against the indigenous population is not merely an historical national disgrace, but a severe ongoing problem. However, perhaps because violent crime and incidents of mass murder are much less common here than in the U.S., we have failed to extrapolate from racist attacks on women with headscarves, or vandalism at mosques, that sooner or later something like the Quebec City attack might happen.

Hate crime has risen in Canada and across the province of Quebec; an article in the Montreal Gazette from November 2016 titled "The Trump effect and the normalization of hate in Quebec" contains analysis and statistics, as well as this prediction, so uncomfortable to read in hindsight:

A study of the terrorism and extremism incident database... calculated that five people had been killed in 49 white supremacist incidents in Canada between 2001 and 2015, at least seven of them in Quebec.

“One officer told us ‘we know they’re here but until something happens we won’t do anything,’ ” Perry said. “They’re waiting for someone to be hurt or a mosque to be burned down.”

Daniel Gallant, a former white supremacist who spent ten years with Neo-Nazi groups in Alberta, is now getting his law degree and dedicating his life to anti-radicalization efforts. He says his job "just got a lot harder" with the election of Donald Trump.

Gallant...says another factor that may explain the increase in hate crimes is how “normal” the ideology has become. It was normal for him, growing up in Alberta. There is still Canadian legislation in force — like the Indian Act, for example — that is reflective of white supremacist ideology, he says.

The Soldiers of Odin, for example — founded in Finland with the express motive of creating fear in the Muslim community — have set up at least 12 new chapters in Western Canada in the last eight months, Gallant said. The Quebec chapter, les Soldats d’Odin, were among several anti-immigrant groups who marched in Quebec City last month.

“They are garnering huge public support by watering down the message and casting a wide net to allow as many people as possible into the organization.”

The study noted that white supremacist groups had been emboldened by an "enabling climate" such as the "divisive discourse of the Charter of Values in Quebec," proposed by the Parti Quebecois and defeated in the last election, and nationally with some of the policies of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The study's authors conclude:

“In a word, hate is increasingly 'mainstream,' and thus increasingly legitimate. In part, this has been accomplished by toning down the rhetoric, and doing away with the white robes and brown shirts. But it has also been accomplished by forging links with the ultimate authority: the state.”

I was sorry to see a blaming mindset at work on Sunday, when the news media released the names of two suspects, one of which was a Muslim name, and speculated -- against all common sense, but of course picked up by Fox News -- that there might be a link to Islamic terrorism. The second suspect was released after a night in jail and identified instead as a witness. Upon entering the mosque and discovering dead and wounded victims, he had run when he mistook an armed police officer for the shooter. Yesterday it became clear that the actual terrorist was neither Muslim nor Middle Eastern, but a home-grown white-supremacist armed with an assault rifle, completely illegal here. This, not Muslim fundamentalism, is the true face of terror in North America, and it's high time we admitted it.

Today, the great majority of the people in this province are appalled, grieving, and doing some necessary soul searching about racism and the rise of the far-right in Canadian society and in Quebec specifically. The photographs in this post are from a vigil in Montreal last night, attended by thousands of people who came out in the freezing cold to stand together in solidarity and love.

Personally, I am reeling from the pile-up of recent events. It's been difficult to sleep, and difficult to ignore the news and my own thoughts enough to work. However, I'm trying to take my own advice to heart; on Sunday I spent the day singing, and yesterday afternoon I managed to do some research and writing, and I've continued that today; soon I'll go off to the pool and swim my laps.

What we're witnessing, however, is unprecedented in North American democracy. The feeling is that we've embarked on a voyage through unknown waters, where Sirens and Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis lie in wait, and only our collective wits, determination, and love can save us.

One Week Later: Report from Washington DC

This is a guest post by my friend Vivian Lewin, who went to the Women's March in Washington last weekend, traveling from Montreal to a friend's house in Pennsylvania by car and then to D.C. Vivian and I met more than ten years ago through Christ Church Cathedral, and quickly realized we had much in common - being American, being writers and readers, loving textiles and sewing for just a few. She is a veteran of many marches, and we both wanted to share her experience and perspective here.

At 5:30 a.m. on January 21, 2017, the parking lot of Harrisburg Area Community College was already filling up when we arrived: Five people—two living nearby, two from Poughkeepsie, one from Montreal. We had all slept in Camp Hill, gotten up at four, eaten breakfast, and brought our lunches and charged-up phones/cameras to board a chartered bus and go to DC. A local woman who uses a walker joined us; the six of us managed to keep together all day.

 Holly, Candice, Tom (wearing a hat made by Vivian), Bonnie, and Samantha

People kept arriving, forming a long line in the dark. It was chilly, but that’s not what gave me goosebumps. I’m a dual US Canadian citizen and a Florida voter. After having watched the US election by myself on November 20, and having listened to the Inauguration Day coverage in the car alone on my drive from Montreal the day before, it seemed like a miracle to be in the company of like-minded women and men. I thrilled to think how many other parking lots were filling, how many other groups of people were converging on Washington. How many buses rolling through the night—some from Canada. How many friends and relations had sent us off with pink pussyhats (thank you, cassandrabeth!) or prayers or sandwiches. “Take a few steps for me,” one friend wrote, and other emails arrived too. “Be safe.” “My thoughts are with you.” I was there for others, not just anonymous others but carrying the hopes of people I know.

I felt we all shared a resolve that this day be as deeply meaningful as we could make it. Knitting hats, making posters by hand, meditating, praying, reserving hotel rooms or arranging car shares takes forethought and a resolute determination.

We reached DC around 9:30. To get to the actual march we six walked through the enormous parking lot of RFK Stadium—full to capacity with tour buses— to the metro entrance with an elevator. People made way for Bonnie and her walker. The cars were filled with marchers—they applauded Bonnie—and our train took us near the Mall.

Bonnie and her walker: "“I bought this especially for today. It’s supposed to be good for rough terrain and only weighs 13 pounds.”  

A woman in our metro car...

We emerged to find the street already filled with people. You’ve seen the photos. We only got that overview from the giant screens along the way. Gloria Steinem was talking. We walked towards the unseen stage until the crowd was too thick, then planted ourselves where we could watch a screen, and stood in front of it for hours under a leaden sky. The crowd—each person in it—was as inspiring as the speeches. We photographed each other—friends and strangers alike. The memorable speeches began to blur together.

I was tired. My feet hurt. Cell service was limited and nobody knew whether we would march, or where. One network said the march was cancelled but a security guy said it would go towards the Washington Monument. Slowly, we threaded our way in that direction, single file through the crowd. Eventually, the actual march crawled in that direction, too. I was pretty numb; the day became an endurance exercise. When an officer in a police car said we were over a million, I told my friends and one of them started to cry. Yes indeed, it was all worth it! I told random strangers (not really strangers any more) as they passed, just to see the joy on their faces. We sat on the curb to rest as the crowd poured past on their way to the Ellipse. “What does democracy look like?” one fellow called and the crowd bellowed back “THIS is what democracy looks like.” Nobody wanted to stop that chant.

My decision, early on, to go to Washington felt personal, stubborn, even helpless. What I could write or do that would be more useful? Was it a kind of pilgrimage? I’d say, in retrospect, that I went to witness my resolve. There’s a prophetic tradition of doing acts that seem absurd—that put the lie to worldly power. Amazing to experience such an act manifested in the sea of people who had, together, come.

There is much work to do. I’ve marched in other “protests” that felt angry, or giddy, or triumphant. I didn’t feel that way on Saturday. This is one for the long haul. As James Louder wrote this morning, “The enormities of Trump’s first week are so enormous and so diverse, so wantonly and widely destructive that the mind boggles before any attempt of analysis…”. So it’s good to hold on to the memory of this day. I know that my experience will keep me keeping on. (See also “Activism 101, and Regular Life” in the Cassandra Pages)

Vivian Lewin is a Montreal writer who grew up in Pennsylvania. She attended Oberlin (AB honors English) and the University of Florida (MFA creative writing). She is a dual citizen of Canada and the US, and is a Florida voter. Vivian has made poems and quilts during the course of her life and has taught quilting; now she is a spiritual director and Lay Reader in the Anglican church and also works with a Healing Pathway group.

Women's March, Montreal: Nous Sommes Avec Vous

Photo by Jonathan Sa'adah

That's me, leaving for the demonstration at 10:30 this morning. I didn't sleep well at all last night, so I was tired, but woke up determined to go add my presence and voice to the rally at the Esplanade at Place des Arts in Montreal, in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington. If I'd been in the U.S. I probably would have gone to D.C. Eight years ago, Jonathan and I were there for Obama's inauguration. What a different feeling on that day - never in a million years would I have expected that a far-right candidate could be elected in the U.S. less than a decade later.

I am tired: I feel like I've been doing this all my life; I'm angry, sad, worn-out. But I wanted to be there, taking a physical stand for human rights and diversity, for peace and non-violence, against racism and hate, against the unleashing of police violence, and especially for the younger women I love who should never have to fight these battles that we thought were already won. So I got up, and got going, knowing a lot of you were doing the same thing in your cities.

When I entered the metro, the tv screens were showing footage of angry Montreal women burning and stomping on an effigy of Trump. But when I arrived at the Place des Arts, I saw nothing of the sort; there was a large crowd of women and men and children, it was peaceful, respectful, and attentive to the speakers who spoke in French and English. I even ran into several people I know, which made me feel like I really do belong here in my adoptive city. After a while I began moving around through the crowd, asking permission to take photos and having my own picture taken too. Here are some of those images.

"Solidarity Doesn't Have A Border" - this woman was so kind when I told her I was a dual citizen; her purpose in being there, she said, was to support American women.

This young American woman is a student at McGill.

 

The sign reads: "Yes to: the arts, diversity, compassion, public education, feminism, social justice, electoral reform, climate protection, human rights. No to: hate, fear, homophobia, trans-phobia, xenophobia, misogyny, isolationism, toxic masculinity, and the culture of violence."

 

 

 

How's that for a great slogan?

 "Justin" refers to the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.

I had a really good conversation with this Iranian woman who has lived in Montreal for the past 18 years, and was holding a banner for an association of Iranian women. She was concerned about the fate of the recent treaty with Iran, but mainly upset about intolerance in America, where she has friends and family.

Yes, and the rest of us are with you on that.

And a final word from the late great Montreal son, Leonard Cohen.

--

I'm glad I went. I feel considerably better than yesterday, which was one of the darker days in my life.

But to avoid the problems of protests like the Occupy movement, it's crucial that this is the the first day of an increasingly organized, disciplined resistance, with clear positions and demands, and a coherent leadership. Our next task is to organize. We have a great deal of work to do, and it's going to be a very difficult road, but there are a lot of us, we're strong and fierce, we've have justice on our side, and we're everywhere.

At a Safe Distance

Beneath a photograph of the refugee camp at Calais, France, known as "the Jungle", in yesterday's New York Times, this caption appeared:

"The squalid camp, growing and festering for over a year, has become a symbol of Europe’s faltering efforts to handle its migration crisis."

The sentence was a quote from the article itself. This morning, the first thing I saw when I checked my Instagram feed, were the photograph and caption, posted by Teju Cole, with the following comment (quoted here with his permission:)

Sometimes it's not the photo, it's the caption. Sometimes it's not the caption, it's a single word. What work is the word "festering" doing here? The caption is an excerpt from the article, which you can find yourself. "Squalid" is permissible in context but imperfect, but there are at least two problems with the framing of Calais as a "symbol of Europe's faltering efforts to handle its migration crisis." The first is that this is a crisis for those who must leave home, not for those who receive or refuse them. Europe does not have a migration crisis. The second problem is that Europe is not a country. There's a reason there's no "Jungle" in Germany, and there's an opposite reason there isn't one in Switzerland. Whatever is happening in Calais is about French policy and British policy. Italy is another thing. Hungary is a different thing. But that's all about the framing.
-
What I keep coming back to is that word "festering." I've heard it before. What festers? What instinctual response do we have to that which festers? I think I know the kind of work the word is supposed to be doing. That work is all about mislocating the crisis. And when the crisis is mislocated, when it is about those who must witness the crisis rather than those who must undergo it, then other actions, otherwise unimaginable, become compulsory. After all, what is one to do with people or places that are "festering"?

[Later this morning, I note that the caption has been changed to read "The squalid camp has become a symbol of Europe’s faltering efforts to handle its migration crisis." The text remains the same in the article itself; the New York Times does follow TC (one of their own critics and authors) on Instagram.]

What, then, is actually "festering?" In my opinion, it is our hatred and fear of "the other" who will somehow take away or undermine what we feel is rightly "ours" -- our jobs, our health, our security, our resources, our prosperity...and, if we dig deeper, our very whiteness and privilege: god forbid, one of them might intermarry with one of our children.

Well, you know what? That's exactly what I did. 35 years ago I married the son of a Syrian immigrant and a refugee from the Armenian genocide. And that changed forever my ability to be indifferent to or distant from those who are not white, Anglo-Saxon, American, Protestant, English-speaking, Euro-centric...you can fill in the adjectives yourself. I was already a young person leaning in the direction of difference; I was curious and open. But I had not yet been broken open. And if we carefully defend ourselves forever, if we hide behind words and never take action, our hearts will never be broken and we will never truly understand or help the other out of that brokenness. We will simply sit at a safe distance, maybe spouting outrage and sadness at the world's ills, but our empathy will be temporary and we will not have to change, grow, or give anything that is an actual sacrifice of self. Outrage is, frankly, cheap. My question to you is, what are you willing to do?

--

Language does matter: I agree. We have seen it at work in this deplorable election season, both for good and for ill. We are not, in general, careful with it, but taking great care with words is supposed to be the job of journalists, as well as speechwriters.

I would like to recommend another article, "What Does it Mean to Help One Family?", about the Canadian response to the plight of the refugees, which shows the complexities of both immigrating and helping. We will be welcoming a refugee family through the cathedral sometime in the coming year; at the present time they are still mired in paperwork in Beirut. This will not be the first time I've tried to help people making a new life in a new country, nor will it be the last, and every single time I know that I am not doing enough. I feel compelled because of my parents in-law, who had been helped by others and who never forgot that. Their story changed me: for their sake, as well as my own conscience, I cannot turn away. And then I became an immigrant too -- an immigrant with money, relative security, and language skills, to be sure -- but I found out firsthand what it means to leave your past behind, with all its practical and emotional connections and knowledge, and have to begin again to build a new life in a new place.

We all need to be more careful with the language we use. We cheapen our empathy by spouting  platitudes, we speak when we ought to be listening, we use words for effect and shock value that linger and cause great harm, and in this word-intensive internet environment, we invest a stream of empty words with weight as if they represent acts of actual sacrifice or self-emptying.

Words matter; they descend from our heads to our hearts and continue to live there, as a sort of compost for our emotions and actions. In the heart, certain things fester, and others flower; which way it goes is ultimately up to us.

Will we see a return to blogging, and other content-rich internet forms?

Patricia Bralley, a friend who I met through blogging, recently tagged me on Facebook, asking what I thought of a recent article in the International Business Times by Hossein Derakhshan calling Mark Zuckerberg a hypocrite for claiming that Facebook encourages a global, interconnected society. Derakhshan was imprisoned for his own web activism in Iran between 2008 and 2014; the stakes of using the internet were considerably greater for him than for most of us. Let me first quote a few bits of his article; my own reply to Patricia is below.

"While Zuckerberg laments at walls and admires bridges, the fact is that his Facebook algorithms have created billions of these comfort bubbles that are more isolating than walls. Also, he has destroyed the most powerful bridges that perhaps ever existed in the human history, the hyperlinks...Facebook's desire to keep users inside of it all the time is why it can generate so much advertising money. But that means it provides less and less reasons for anyone to leave its environment, in order to read an article or watch a video.

"It is heart-breaking to see how Facebook has changed the internet into little more than a portal for entertainment."

"Blogs were the best thing that had ever happened on the internet. They democratised writing and publishing – at least in many parts of the world. They gave a voice to many silenced groups and minorities. They connected friends, families, communities, and nations around the world. They encouraged discussions and debates...The World Wide Web was founded on the links, and without links, there won't be a web. Without links the experience of being on the internet will become one of a centralised, linear, passive, inward-looking and homogeneous kind. This is happening already, and despite Zuckerberg's sermon, it is largely Facebook and Instagram who are to be blame for the demise of links, and thereby the death of the open web and all its potentials for a more peaceful world."

 

Patricia, I'm on Facebook, basically, under protest. I use it for letting people know what's going on with Phoenicia Publishing, and to keep in touch with family and friends who aren't anywhere else, or those who simply don't use email anymore, but it is no substitute for what our blogs used to be. Facebook, in my opinion, has impoverished content, and impoverished community, thoughtfulness, and connection. I keep my blog going, but often wonder if I'm just doing it for myself. I always post a link on FB to a new blogpost, but question whether many readers even leave FB to go to the blog and actually read it or look at the images before "liking" or commenting below the FB post.

Back in March, when The Cassandra Pages turned 13, there were 13 comments on my blog. On the FB link to the same post, there were 12 comments and 60 "likes." Three years earlier, almost all the comments -- 40 or so -- were on my blog itself. I appreciate those "likes" and comments very much, but these statistics represent a big shift in terms of where people are reading, and what they see as their place of communication.

One of my biggest objections is that FB encourages our natural laziness (my own included, unfortunately) - it's so much easier to just hit "like" than to actually engage when we are all inundated with internet information. It also plays into our anxiety about isolation through the falsity of quantitative reassurance. I think, frankly, it's time to start resisting this and to engage more seriously again with the people we care about - yourself included - even if that means fewer "friends," and dealing with the radical concept of less actually being more.

I'd like to add that while my FB interactions are fairly minimal, I have started posting longer-form content on Instagram in connection with certain images. Other people are doing this as well, and we seem to be forming a loose community that reminds me somewhat of blogging. I don't think social media is necessarily devoid of creativity or content, but it takes time and effort to use it differently.

Thanks for asking.

--

Readers, what do you think? Is it worth keeping a blog like this going? What about your own? If you've stopped blogging, why was that, and are you happy with social media as a substitute? Do you think there will be a swing back to longer-form content in other places on the web, and a reaction to social media - as some have predicted - or do you think the die is cast?

 

Black Like Not Me

Once again, the internet thrums with indignation, a great deal of it spewing from the keyboards of white people who will never, ever, be in the same position as a poor black man, or a poor black woman, or child... or any black person for that matter.

Whether or not you think you are racist; whether or not, as you examine your conscience, you come up with anything you've personally done to hurt a black person, or advance the injustice that is endemic in American society and has been that way forever; whether or not you can wipe your own mental slate clean -- I simply want to say that we are all involved in systemic racism: if not by what we have done directly, then by what we have not done  -- through our inattention, our turning away, and our refusal to use what we have been given, solely by virtue of our skin color, to create a society in which there is justice for all.

I grew up in a small town in the North where people were proud of not being racist. I went to a prestigious liberal university, and then lived in New England in a prestigious university town. Nobody would have ever said they were racist.  But they were. They were racist about blacks, about Jewish people, about Muslims, about working class ethnic groups and the poor, about everyone who wasn't just exactly like them: privileged, educated, white. Racism lurked there, just beneath the surface, just as it does everywhere in America. It lives on in jokes, in social norms, in housing prices and club rules, in who we marry and who we associate with, who we vote for, who we let into our clubs and schools and workplaces, who gets beaten and arrested, who goes to prison, who is on death row.

This is indeed a time to examine our own consciences. A time to show up at a protest or prayer vigil. A time to say with sincerity, I am sorry, and I am deeply ashamed.

But it is also a time when less said might very well be more. Perhaps we white people could actually shut up for once and listen hard to the lived experience of the black people in our communities, and then use our considerable power to demand changes that address the inequalities, the injustice, the profiling, and the violence that are the reality every single day in the lives of so many of our fellow human beings.

Black

The Slave Coast, watercolor, 7" x 10"

 

Roadworks slowed us. The iron-rich earth was a brilliant red.
The red was apt. On these lands people had warred and sold people to people.

 

On the long narrow track to the beach we passed a field of
decapitated palms, the stumps in serried ranks. A sadness fell.

 

To travel is to look and fail to understand what one is looking at.
We went to the Door of No Return.

--Teju Cole

 

I'm deeply moved by Teju Cole's unfolding series of tweets and photographs, in real time, of the journey he is taking today from Lagos to Ouidah along the Slave Coast.

More than anything I have read in this sad week, these restrained, short sentences, each word carefully chosen, speak powerfully to me about the origins of racism in America. Can we -- so many of us white and privileged -- stop and try to put ourselves in the place of our African brothers and sisters, sold into slavery, held in chains in coastal slave forts, and eventually packed into ships bound for the western hemisphere? Can we allow ourselves to consider our parallel but enormously different subsequent histories, as well as the many ways in which we continue to deny and turn away from the truths of persistent, endemic injustice and inequality?

 

Election, Rewritten

Barack Obama's inauguration, Washington, D.C., January 2009

On this election day I'd like to suggest a re-read of the guest post, "The Rewrite," by Teju Cole, written and published here the night of Obama's election four years ago.

What a different day that was, quivering with hope and anticipation! I was thrilled about the election of our first black president, but less dewy-eyed about his prospects for changing things than many of my friends. Still, my husband and I saw it as a momentous, historical occasion, so much so that we drove from Montreal to Washington that January to attend the inauguration. ("Inauguration Journal," The Cassandra Pages, Jan 2009)

As it turned out, I was unfortunately right about Obama vs. Congress, Obama vs. the status quo, Obama vs. the conservative media machine, Obama vs. the military complex, Obama vs. Public Fear, Obama vs. the Israeli lobby...on it goes. I wonder what he really thinks, when he sits down and talks to Michelle after a long day. Has he moved in his deepest convictions, or simply woken up to the divisive, mean-spirited, nearly-gridlocked reality that is U.S. politics today? I still think he is a good man, brilliantly quick to grasp the nuances of any subject -- and therefore I'd much rather have him at the helm than any Republican alternative. But, regardless, if he wins it's still going to be politics as usual.

When I visit the United States these days, I'm struck with the general level of frustration, bitterness and anger among not only the disenfranchised, but the solidly middle-class: people who've had good educations, worked hard, saved money. They see their children growing up in uncertainty, with fewer opportunities than we had, at a time when corporate greed runs rampant, aided and abeted by the government. These are people with common sense and a sense of fairness who see neither in the way their government operates.

I'm a writer, and have long valued the power of the spoken and written word. Obama came to office largely on the strength of his ability to speak. I think we all felt he spoke from his heart, and I don't doubt that still. But as we've seen, rhetoric may be golden, but it can turn out to be flimsy gilt foil rather than 24K; loftly rhetoric doesn't change the minds or hearts of people who are determined to work for their own self-interest and that of those who pay them with gifts, favors, trips, and contributions. Neither words nor good intentions can turn around the ship of insider-government: the way things are done and have always been done in an entrenched power structure. And even more tragic than that is the fact that how ordinary citizens feel, or what their live are like, is less and less a factor in what actually happens. The idea of representative government itself, in the United States, has become an illusion, but one we stubbornly cling to.

As a Vermonter, I was always proud to cast my vote for the independent Bernie Sanders, first for the House of Representatives and then as a Senator. I was proud to vote for him again this year. He's that very rare bird in Washington: honest and straightforward, outspoken, truly representing not only his constituency but the neediest within it, morally uncompromising, and beholden to few. He was a fixture in Vermont politics as long as I lived there. When we first sent him to Washington the naysayers insisted he'd always be on the fringes, unable to accomplish anything, unable to get his voice heard, but he's proved them wrong.

The difference, I think, is that Vermont is one of the smallest states, where a man of Bernie's integrity can cut across party lines and capture people's hearts not only through rhetoric but by actually doing what he says he'll do, day in, day out, year after year. I doubt if he could have been elected in, say, New York, the much larger state where I grew up. By virtue of its small size and tradition of local debate and control, Vermont has also been able to pass controversial, ground-breaking measures, from environmental protection laws to the early adoption of same-sex partnerships. Lately, the state has been pushing toward adopting its own single-payer, European-style health care system; today's election will probably decide whether that initiative continues to go forward or not.

I doubt if the Founding Fathers anticipated the sheer size to which the United States would grow, or the enormous difficulty of governing such an entity either at home, or in its capacity as a world power. If I have any hope for the future, it lies in greater local control, greater citizen involvement, and more insistence on representatives following the will of the people. Here in Quebec during 2012, public opinion expressed on the streets, during a summer of protest and unrest, forced the Liberal provincial government to call elections, which they then lost. Revelations from a province-wide, ongoing inquest into political corruption forced the mayor of Montreal to resign last night, and will have many other far-reaching consequences.

The demos in democracy is, after all, us -- and yet, over time, we've slowly handed over our own rights to others who have twisted them into something almost unrecognizable. It's an illusion to think they mean what they say, and an even greater illusion to think they're going to give those rights back without a struggle, a collapse, or a defeat. The Book of Kings told it like it was, in the dawn of written history, and that story has been written and rewritten over thousands of years: the basest qualities of human nature don't change, nor does the basic human struggle for equality, justice, and freedom. Voting is crucial, but it takes a lot more than that.

 

Chris Hedges Gets it Right Again

What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?

“America,” Langston Hughes wrote, “never was America to me.

I sometimes feel that Chris Hedges, a writer and thinker I greatly admire, allows his frustration to carry him a little too far with his rhetoric, but not this time, in this essay about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the only mass protest against the bankrupt corporate economic system that has a chance of succeeding.  The protesters are not, however, traditional liberals who have sold out over the past few decades, in droves.

"Liberal reform", in its current incarnation, has meant an ineffecive Obama presidency, where most of his basic election promises, such as closing Guantanamo and ending the war, have failed to occur; and the passage, for instance, of a gutted universal health care bill - better than nothing, to be sure, but a very very far cry from what any moral social system in the developed world should be providing for its citizens. The environment, one of the most urgent issues facing the world, is so far back in the priority list there's no point even talking about it. Instead, the corporate-military collusion continues unchecked, and Americans are required to pay to support it while losing their own jobs, homes, and future. Impoverishing the people and draining the treasuries to support wars and the greed of the powerful is nothing new in human history -- read the Book of Kings, read about 5th century Athens, the list continues throughout the centuries -- but the scale of the global effect today certainly is. So is the scale of the immorality. The Toronto Star points out that more Americans (46 million) are now living in poverty than at any time since records were first taken more than 50 years ago. What has happened to democracy and its promises, which are supposedly based on equal opportunity? The first paragraph quoted above asks the real questions we should all be asking ourselves.

Since coming to Canada I've realized that the dismantling of American liberalism is not well understood or even acknowledged abroad, let alone at home.  Part of the blame lies with the so-called left itself, while the discrediting and destruction of trade unions, for instance, has been a systematic and deliberate process by corporations and government working hand in hand. Here in Quebec, unions remain important, and strikes and protests are common; the government, which has many flaws, is still considered accountable to the people. Where in America today are the checks and balances against unfettered greed and power?  Certainly not in the institutions that have traditionally provided them, as Hedges so rightly points out:

Liberal institutions, including the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions, set the parameters for limited self-criticism in a functioning democracy as well as small, incremental reforms. The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess. Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation. They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good.

But the liberal class, by having refused to question the utopian promises of unfettered capitalism and globalization and by condemning those who did, severed itself from the roots of creative and bold thought, the only forces that could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite. The liberal class, which at once was betrayed and betrayed itself, has no role left to play in the battle between us and corporate dominance. All hope lies now with those in the street.