A La Marcha

I wrote in my March newsletter about going to hear Javier Sicilia speak as a part of a march for an end to drug-related violence in Cuernavaca. This month, another march was organized, this time from Cuernavaca all the way to the city square of the nation's capital--the zocalo surrounded by government buildings and the national cathedral.

An effigy of President Calderón hangs beneath a sign that reads "imperialism's puppet,"
with protesters and the cathedral in the background.

While demonstrations in Mexico City on May 8 attacked a variety of issues (most of them anti-Calderón in one way or another), the largest faction was the "No Más Sangre" group led by Sicilia. The complaints against the government are complicated and controversial, but the crux of their argument boils down to this: in Calderón's attempt to legitimize his presidency, he has declared an unmanageable and un-winnable war against the drug cartels, but this war's toll has proven too great--we either need a dramatic change of policy, or a all-out change of leadership.
Many question whether Calderón's actions influence the rising death toll of the drug war at all, or if his political posturing just makes him an easy scapegoat. From The Esteyonage:

I went by [the march] for a bit, and just couldn't help but thinking what the hell cartel bosses around the country were thinking watching this all play out on TV. I kept thinking about a friend's cynical perspective that they would see this as a joke. That the government - who most appealed to - can't fix the real problems.
Despite all the positive energy, and thousands of people, I couldn't shake that somber thought.

And The Globe and Mail:

But when he in turn condemns the Calderon administration, declaring, “Your struggle for power has torn apart the fabric of the nation,” Mr. Sicilia steps outside of reason.
His son was not murdered by the state, but by criminal gangs. Contrary to what the poet says, the death can only “be blamed on our failing institutions” insofar as those institutions have been unable to vanquish the murderous cartels, not because they have had the courage to try.

There's an important question here: to what extent does any president have the full control of his country? What's more, this political climate has an eerie echo: a dubious election, a divisive president, an unpopular war against an invisible enemy. And in Calderón's responses, I see the same cocky cowboy tenuously defending the pursuit of justice, rooting for courage in the face of terrorism. Maybe I'm getting too caught up in the excitement of being on the ground in the midst of a populist movement, but I couldn't help but see the urgency in people's faces as they listened to Sicilia speak on that blistering Sunday. I, too, worry that these demonstrations are pointless, but I can't help but hope that where our passions failed to unify us in the States, Mexico might find a different outcome. I won't stop hoping that although there are no easy fixes in wars against Drugs or Terrorism, saying "We don't know the answer, but we do know this isn't it," might be enough for the moment.

Two marchers, whose signs put a twist on the popular slogan, "No More Blood."
These read "Yes, More Love."

Christ is Risen

Growing up a PK (pastor's kid), I felt keenly aware of what was going on in the life of the church. But I never paid much attention to the liturgical calendar, other than to know when the next big party was coming up. My interest in it diminished even further when I started practicing Quakerism, and trying to think of each day as equally holy. But here in Mexico, I've found the seasons of the church a helpful tool for keeping in contact with the people I left at home. I've discovered new ways of processing my experiences through the lens of each season.

That doesn’t mean that I’ve found it easy to live in the spirit of each one. Back in December, I wrote  about my relative success in realizing Advent, but Lent felt pretty strange. But it is the season of Easter that really has me scratching my head. For one thing, I had never even really thought about the fact that there is a season for Easter. My focus as a child was on how much candy I would get, and what color my pretty new dress would be. As an adolescent, I greatly enjoyed being a part of our youth group’s Eggstravaganza, an egg-hunt carnival we organized for younger kids in the congregation. But Easter really only boiled down to one day. One event. One moment.

Secondly, I missed out on all the prep work. I went to Chiapas for Holy Week. Every state and city in Mexico boasts that they have the “best” Holy Week traditions, and since we wanted to see Chiapas anyway, Anneli and I decided to see what they had to offer. Particularly spectacular, I was told, are the Good Friday services in San Cristóbal de las Casas, where they do a live reenactment of the crucifixion. Long story short, we missed that service, and only barely got a glimpse of the silent procession that happened that night, with people dressed up as something resembling both a priest and an executioner carrying the “corpse” (in this case, a life-size doll) of Jesus through town. It was an uncomfortable experience to be having without our host families to explain things to us. We lacked the confidence to go to Easter mass. We worried that we wouldn’t find the kind of trumpets-blaring, hallelujah-singing excitement we missed from back home. We worried we wouldn’t be able to follow the order of the service, and we’d had our fill of being tourists. So we skipped it. We spent Easter morning eating bagels on a bus through mountain passes, looking at hillsides green with banana leaves and corn stalks. Hallelujah, I thought.

And so now it is Eastertide. The time when we celebrate victory over death. Did you catch that? Victory over death. Why, then, have images like these been so common?

I'm not in the States currently. I don't know how people are responding to this news outside of Cuernavaca. But news outlets of various political leanings make this look like the biggest celebration that's taken place in our country in a long time--the first I can remember that crosses party lines. But I, for one, cannot ignore that the headlines here read "Osama is dead," and not "Christ is risen." From a military standpoint, I understand that this is a victory. But it's a battle that was won, not a war. Bin Laden's death doesn't get us out of Afghanistan. To the contrary, the questionable method of disposing of his body will likely fan the flames of anger and distrust that started this whole mess in the first place. To me, that doesn't sound so much like victory. It doesn't sound like trumpets and hallelujahs.

Never mind how difficult it is to hope that we are freed from death in the face of the massive violence in Mexico--and I don't have the courage to link to some of the images of that war. If, however, I am to find comfort in the risen Christ, I cannot celebrate anyone's death, no matter how horrible their actions. I refuse to believe that this death comforts the souls of those who died as a result of Al Qaeda's attacks. Indeed, I am reminded of the German phrase for the season: Jesus bringt leben. Jesus brings life. This Easter is not the season of one man's resurrection, but the celebration of the life we have all been given, through grace, through the mere goodness of God. May we all remember that gift of goodness, and strive to live in a way that is worthy of it.

All photos found via google. Credits here, here, and here.

Sustainable Systems, pt. 3

"The way we eat determines, to a large extent, the way the world is used." -Wendell Berry-

Food in the States is cheap. That's partly due to those subsidies I talked about, but it's also because an estimated 80% of the agricultural workers are undocumented. They're underpaid and overworked at difficult and dangerous jobs. They're doing jobs that most of us don't want to do. If you balk at that claim, maybe you haven't heard about the United Farm Workers campaign to put good, hard-working Americans in those jobs instead of undocumented migrants. They have an easy sign-up form for you to become a farm worker on their website, TakeOurJobs.org, but very few people have taken the challenge.
I'm not saying that undocumented entry to the States is excusable. I am saying that if we want to change the systems that push people to cross the border without papers, we need to look deeper at our own national economic policies. We need to look at the people who do make the decision to cross, and see them as human beings whose lives extend beyond the five minutes it took them to climb the border fence or the two weeks they wandered in the desert. We need to look closer at our household purchases, too. Sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? I promise, it's not so bad. The first two of these issues warrant further conversation, but here are a few suggestions for what you can do at home:

• Cook fresh food instead of packaged. Processed food has a lot of preservatives, extra salt, and fillers that just aren't healthy. Prepare your own meals and make sure you like everything you're eating.
• Think of buying well, not cheap. One of the simplest ways we can vote on a daily basis is by changing our buying habits. We might not be able to vote Dole out of business, but we can certainly tell them that we'd rather have cleaner, safer food, and better working conditions for the people who grow it. Buying locally and organically is an investment in your health and global economic justice.
• Do you know where your food comes from? One of the non-migration effects of big-business agriculture is the breakdown of personal connections with our food. To me, it makes me wonder what I'm really eating. Local Harvest has a great tool for finding farmers markets and CSAs near you.
• Organic farms don't use chemicals. Even when you wash your produce, some of the chemicals used in food production are actually inside the cells of the food. Some of those chemicals are perfectly safe, some of them not, and some of them... well, we just don't know yet. I don't know about you, but I'd rather spend 20cents more on green beans that are just plain ole green beans. Even if you don't have access to a farmer's market, fresh, canned, and frozen produce are increasingly available at your everyday grocery store.
• Grow your own food! Not all of us have the space for a full garden, or the energy to manage one, but tomatoes can be grown on your front porch without much fuss. Herbs on your window sill. Lettuces need a little more space, but they're also really easy. 
• Sign the AgJobs Pledge, indicating your support of a bipartisan piece of legislation to improve working conditions for farm workers.

Additional reading, in case you're interested:
Food Politics Blog
Civil Eats
ObamaFoodORama

Thanks to Susana at BorderLinks for these statistics and action steps, and for the work she does with the Sustainable Foods project there.

Sustainable Systems, pt. 2

Meanwhile, in Mexico, a significant portion of the population is still growing corn. Did you know that Mexico has the world's largest genetic diversity of corn? Yep--not all corn is white and yellow, and a good deal of it is native to Mexico. Farms here continue to be small, where people do their best to keep their families fed, and hope to sell or trade the little extra they can produce to cover the rest. In fact, in some parts of Mexico, tortilla--not even all corn products, but just tortillas--continue to make up 70% of people's daily nutritional intake in 2011.

Sustainable Systems, pt. 1

I want to talk a little bit about corn. Corn, as an example, illustrates pretty perfectly the economic relationship between the United States of America and Mexico. It's kind of a long story, though, so I'm going to breaking this up over the next few days. Here we go.

Yo soy maestra.

As my role of maestra (teacher) is further solidified here, more and more people have started talking to me about the educational system in Mexico. Everyone knows that their children need to go to school, that it's the most important thing they can do to help their kids have a better life. But they also know that their kids hate school, and they're not really learning anything.
I want to start off with a disclaimer and say that I'm working with some of the most under-privileged people of Cuernavaca. I don't know a thing about the schools in other places, or what it's like for wealthier children to attend school. I also know that there have to be good teachers somewhere, because their are highly educated people, but I spend most of my time tutoring kids, not observing teaching methods. That said, these are some of my reflections on what I've seen.
From what I've seen, the developmental milestones which were so helpful to me in my work in Las Cruces, that describe what most children are able to do and understand at different ages, aren't in place as guidelines here. Three-year-olds in the US  are encouraged to scribble on blank paper, hopefully in semi-vertical lines. Three-year-olds in Mexico are expected to color neatly within the lines. Most six-year-olds in the US are still learning to write their names. Four-year-olds in Mexico are asked to write theirs without help.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing to me, though, is that pre-school isn't mandatory in Mexico, but the level of knowledge first graders are expected to posses before entering is not only beyond their developmental reach in my opinion, but also impossible to obtain unless they attended pre-school for at least two years. In the US, I think it's hard to deny that children who attend pre-school are ahead of the game. But I also think we try hard not to teach anything essential until the point at which ALL children are attending--early childhood curriculum, while encouraging skills that will enable future learning of reading, science, and math, really tend to lean on motor skills and social development.
I'm thinking, especially, of reading; if, in Mexico, your child doesn't learn to read when they're four, in pre-school, very little is done within the standard school system to make sure they learn how. If your child can't read, your child can't do their homework in any subject, and this line is drawn from the word go. And if your child can't do their work, gets consistently bad grades, and you have little to no time or energy to help them (if you can even read), how will your child feel about school? They're not likely to like it. They're not likely to want to go. They're likely to feel frustration and embarrassment and shame.
I am fully aware that I went to public school in a state with notoriously bad public schools. But I am so grateful for the talented and patient teachers I had (although I also had my share of bad teachers, I think), and that I never had to doubt whether I would have the opportunity to go to school. I ask you to remember that, although I write about Mexico, there are also people in the US who don't have the same opportunities for education that you and I often take for granted. Please, please, support the DREAM Act, which would give undocumented minors who have been in the US for an extended amount of time a chance to go to college. It's not difficult to write a quick letter or email to your representatives, and it makes a huge difference in the outcome of legislation. I definitely don't think that the DREAM Act is perfect, but it's a step in what I consider to be the right direction; it's a step toward realizing the ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

A comment on special occasions

I've really only been in Mexico a short time, but already I'm feeling like I've been gone for years. Okay, maybe not years, but definitely a long time. Mainly, I'm sure, this is because I kind of missed an entire season already. Admittedly, summer is not at all my favorite season, and I happily spent all but two days of August out of the state of South Carolina--the time when, I'm pretty sure, the Devil himself goes on summer vacation to Richland County, and brings the oppressive, unbearbly-hot, overly-humid climate with him straight from hell. Ask any meteorologist. I'm sure they'll agree.

One of the things I really enjoy about traveling for extended periods of time is the opportunity to spend special occasions outside of my own culture. It's kind of refreshing, and definitely humbling, to realize how little the rest of the world cares about the things that are huge events for us. "Big deal," the world seems to say, "we've got holidays all the time!" Although, I have to confess that the two times I spent Independence Day in Germany were quite different than this year, when I was in Guatemala. In Germany, people are familiar enough with world history to recognize that the day had significance for me, but in Guatemala there was no mention of it whatsoever.

Perhaps more pointedly, I must confess that even I probably wouldn't have noticed the anniversary of 9/11 if it hadn't been from an email I got from ELCA-Global Missions about the proposed Q'uran burning in Florida. I don't mean to say that the day was unimportant. I just mean that I got up that morning and I went to work like everyone else. I'm living in a country, that although it has a love/hate relationship with the country of my birth, it is a primarily Catholic country, a country that's got bigger fish to fry than whether or not the "War on Terror" is justified, a country that honestly cares very little if a radical pastor in Florida decides to set flame to a bunch of books, or if a community center is built in Manhattan.

Unpacking My Job Title

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the... Church.

I had a couple interesting conversations at work last night, and I figure the topic warrants a blog post. I should probably say, for those that aren't aware, that although South Carolina law says there's no such thing as a bar in our state, I work in a bar. Lucky for me, it's a beer bar--which means, thanks to prohibitive cost & a limited availability of things that taste suspiciously like water, we don't get a lot of undergrads--but we're frequented by professors and undergrads, and not a lot of church goers.

I'd also like to preface this post by saying that these reflections are representative of my personal experiences and feelings, and they're not intended to offend in any way. I welcome your comments and feedback as long as they're presented respectfully. Please remember that we can have different and yet equally valid viewpoints.

I'm not unlike a lot of PKs (Pastor's Kids) in that I have tried my darnedest to run, not walk, away from the Church. Admittedly, not all of my dissatisfaction was because of my parents' careers, but that's a subject for another time. The point is, I don't think I've told anyone "I'm a Christian" since I was in high school. I'm someone who is comfortable talking about things I don't understand, as long as they're related to facts. I'm not comfortable with talking about things like faith, or prayer, or, especially, calling. I'm really not comfortable talking about salvation. Most of the relationships I've formed as a young adult are reflective of this aversion. I know a lot of scientists, a lot of activists, and very few tithers. So, when I signed up to be a missionary, I had to think about how to tell people that.

Back to the bar. We had a fundraiser last week, and it was incredibly well attended, but there's no telling if people wanted to support my year in Mexico or if they just wanted to drink some beer. Last night, a couple of our regulars who know me fairly well were asking whether I had any new news. Another guy (who I can call by name, but I know essentially nothing else about him) was standing near by, and asked, "Wait, what're you going to do in Mexico?"
Because I was in the middle of a sentence, I just said, "I'm going to be a Missionary."
He gave me a really surprised look. An anxious look. I said, "Not the converting-the-heathens kind. The providing-social-service kind."
Later, he asked me again, "You're sure you won't go running around proselytizing?" Only after many promises did he hand me a donation.

A lot of things happened at the YAGM discernment event to help me feel more comfortable with calling myself a "missionary" for a year. Not least of which was the discussion we had on accompaniment, the model for mission currently in use by the ELCA. In brief, I remember Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla using the parable of the lost sheep as an illustration. The traditional model for mission (think of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or The Mission starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons) essentially says, "God is on my side, and you are the lost sheep. You are the one crying for help, and God has sent me here to bring you back to the flock." Accompaniment, in contrast, says that it is only when we understand that God is in all of us and all of us are of God can our experience of the Holy be complete (this, by the way, is very similar to the Quaker principle of the Light Within). There are not two separate relationships we're seeking to maintain, but rather three balanced parts of one relationship: you, me, and God.

Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla reminded us that we are not shepherds. It is not our responsibility to seek out the lost lamb. We are the 99 sheep who are actively listening for the voice of the Shepherd and trying to follow him. We are less than whole when our brothers and sisters aren't walking in partnership with us and God.

On the one hand, I don't blame the guy from the bar. I wouldn't give someone money if I thought it was going to be used so they could stand on street corners and scream the truth of the Lord Almighty when their message flies in the face of people's real experience. But I also don't understand why we, who are believers of one sort or another, have such little patience with different expressions of belief. I mean, I really don't think throwing Bibles in people's faces or embarrassing them is the best way to share faith, but I don't believe the world would be better if we were all faithless. I am still struggling with being labeled "missionary." I still worry about what assumptions people will make if I call myself a "Christian." But for now, all I can do is walk in the hopes that someone will walk up beside me and hold my hand.

i'm a bit of a nail biter, i suppose.

i have to confess: i'm nervous about tonight. it's no surprise to any of you who know me or have even so much as glanced at this blog which candidate i'm supporting, so i won't bother beating around the bush about it. i never thought i would witness this moment.when i was in first grade, i remember voting for clinton (let's be honest. elementary school students vote for whomever their parents are talking about most favorably. we're not that well informed. however, if i'd been 18 at the time, i totally would've voted for him in a real election, too.) in a mock election at school. the concept fascinated me: everyone should have a say in how things are run. i remember thinking, however briefly, that i would like to be the first woman president. i never thought i would see the day. even so young, i had the feeling we would always have rich white men running the country (thanks for making me a dirty hippie so young, mom and dad!)

i remember the first time i actually got to vote, and how isolated and betrayed i felt when watching two presidential "elections" go so horribly wrong (which i intend to be more of a statement on the process, not the outcome. while i detest the 43rd president of the united states, i fully support the basic right of the nation to choose its leader).i was in germany when the democratic candidate was selected, and i was convinced there was no way a black man could win the presidency. i was certain all was lost--without hillary, how could we avoid another republican candidate?

and yet...i'm hopeful. i hope we have moved past the 1950s. i hope we have moved past selfishness. i hope we have moved past apathy. it terrifies me that at the end of this day the country of my birth will be sending a major message to the world, and i'm not confident yet of what that message will be. will we refuse to continue to be paralyzed by fear and hate? or will we say, no, thank you, but we won't take more of what we've seen in the last eight years, we'd like something new? i wish i could say all of this in non-partisan language. i wish i didn't constantly feel like i'm toeing the party line. my dad jokes that he raised us to think for ourselves, as long as those thoughts ended in us voting a straight party ticket. but the more i see of this world, the more i simply can't support the kinds of government the republican party now stands for. i can't support big business at the expense of the majority of the american public. if we really ignore all the campaign promises and the attack ads and get down to the root of it, that's what they stand for. that's how they behave. i believe in standing up for what's right, not what stands to make me the most profit.

i want my president to recognize those who are disenfranchized,

those who are in need,

to forge ahead into uncharted territory,

and to frankly address our shortcomings while remembering our strengths.

i got this email today from a member of the quaker community in columbia. mostly i started this post with the desire to share these words:

This message is from Peter Storey, former Methodist Bishop of Johannesburg. He was also the chaplain at Robben Island Prison during the time Nelson Mandela was a prisoner. A good friend of mine’s father did a pulpit exchange with Peter years ago and they have remained friends. I met him many years ago when he came to South Carolina for a conference on race relations. Thought you would enjoy. --Julia

Subject: Our Prayers are with you all for tomorrow

Dear Friends in the United States,

Warmest greetings to you on this momentous evening. You have been much
in our minds and on our hearts over these past few months as we have
avidly followed the progress of your Presidential election campaign. As
we've said before, what happens in your election profoundly affects us
all.

And what a campaign! I recall a dinner table conversation in Atlanta way
back in May, 2007, in the home of good friends Jim and Fentress Waits.
Those around the table were talking with a deep sense of interest and
hope about an exciting young Senator named Barack Obama. Back then, the
possibility of Obama's even gaining the nomination of his own party
appeared so remote that it seemed more the stuff of dreams than reality.

Yet here you are, on the eve of an even more 'impossible' breakthrough
tomorrow! Think of it: the nation whose original sin was to to buy and
sell Africans like chattels, that legislated them less than human, could
well elect an African-American tomorrow to be its First Citizen! I
wonder if the people of the USA have fully realized what a liberating
moment this could be? For African Americans, who hold their breath, not
yet quite believing what might be possible tomorrow, this may be a step
beyond even what Martin Luther King Jr saw from the mountain-top, but it
is also more than that: it will be a day of liberation for all
Americans: whether deeply conscious, as so many thoughtful people are,
of this great burden of historic guilt, or defiantly denialist as too
many on the shrill right wing remain. All - the good, the bad and the
ugly - will take a giant step toward liberation from one of US
history's most burdensome shackles.

I say this because that is the experience we discovered the day Nelson
Mandela took the oath of office as the first black President of South
Africa. Millions of his exploited compatriots danced with obvious joy at
their new freedom, but less expected and perhaps more amazing was the
sense of liberation that came upon their erstwhile oppressors. White
South Africans testified in large numbers to a new lightness of being,
as if some invisible, dragging weight, was gone, and something new could
be born.

Now I know that the USA is not South Africa, and your story is not
identical with ours, but there are enough echoes for me to assure you
that if the voters of America break this barrier tomorrow, you will
experience what I'm talking about!

Of course, like so many of you, we are anxious as well as excited.
Having seen how deep are the currents of fear and prejudice that still
run across the length and breadth of the United States, we too hold our
breath. Be assured that the hopes of the vast majority of the people of
the wider world go with Senator Barack Obama. There is no question about
this. I doubt that even 5 percent of South Africans of any race group
have any desire to see anyone of George W Bush's party near the White
House. However, we have seen how easily US elections can be stolen and
we are praying, as so many of you are, that tomorrow, the American
people will march to the polls in greater numbers than ever before,
determined to expunge eight of the most shameful years in US history.
President Bush has brought America's reputation so low, that from our
point of view, another such blow from the US electorate would be almost
impossible to understand. Eight years of arrogance and ignorance hav
been done deep harm in the rest of the world and to the image of a great
nation. Surely they will be declared as enough by the people of the US?

But let us be hopeful! Just as tomorrow offers the opportunity for a
great sense of historic liberation in the US, so it also offers a chance
to radically alter the world's current perception of America, and to
open the door to new possibilities of healing and transformation for US
foreign relations. If Obama is announced as your President-elect, there
will be great rejoicing all around the globe. We will see new hope of
the might of the United States being bent to works of justice and
compassion and cooperation. We will see new possibilities for the poor
of the earth: for the first time, Americans will have elected someone
who knows what it is like to be on the outside as well as in the circle,
who has actually worked among the poor, who has lived , however briefly,
outside the American bubble, and who has the blood of the world's most
oppressed continent in his veins. Everyone of these factors speak of
change.

You will recall that the day following September 11, 2001, France's most
famous newspaper ran the headline: 'Today, we are all Americans!' Well,
please know that around the world there are so many people whose hopes
ride on what you will do tomorrow, that I guess we wish we were all
Americans! What a privilege it will be to vote in this election!

Our prayers are with you.

Warm regards,
Peter Storey

...yep.

overcompensating.com

bleed, baby, bleed.

thanks, heart. i knew you hadn't abandoned me.

friday was our first community day. if i haven't explained this before, what that means is that i get a day off work to hang out with my five roommates and the ladies that live in el paso, either just to chill and be together, but more likely to learn about something relating to our positions, or just being on the border. this month we decided to go to the national border patrol museum in el paso.

although the museum itself isn't funded by or related to the gov't at all, they seem to have a good relationship to this branch of homeland security. two officers gave us a presentation on what the border patrol does, what their goals are, and how to become a border patrol member (turns out, this is pretty rigorous. widely considered the toughest law enforcement/paramilitary station).

[for the record, i spent much of friday saying, "i just don't understand how you can think that!?!" which is unfair. i will attempt not to say that here, or anywhere else in the future. your opinions are your own. i struggle to reconcile many conservative policies with my own morals, but it is my struggle and not yours.]

at the start of the presentation, the officer asked, "who's here to pick a fight?"

becca pointed at me.

at first i was mad, but i guess i can't blame her. that's kind of been my role thusfar in the bsc. to get outraged. to rant. to cry over the women who can't get vawa visas b/c they haven't actually married their abusive partners.

and, i did want to pick a fight w/ him. i want to pick a fight with the world. not b/c he was a bad guy. to the contrary, he seemed really nice. he seemed like he cared about his job in a human way. he claimed he was more concerned about keeping people safe than "keeping the mexicans out" and i wanted to believe him, even if i wasn't completely sold. maybe he just needed a good job, and that one offered $60G a year and health benefits (no, that's not a typo). maybe he really believes this is what it will take to keep america safe.

i do want a safe america. for all my revolutionary tendencies and che-fangirl giggles, safety is very important to me. i wish i could travel and not wonder if it would be better to pretend to be canadian in this airport. i wish i could put a flag on my lapel in good consciousness. but when a man stands in front of me with an american flag on his shoulder and a gun at his hip and says he's being proactive about the things that threaten this country, i wonder if he ever thought about what happened before 9/11. it pains me to be a part of a country so proud and so certain that it doesn't pause to wonder why people might want to blow up a piece of us. we are a country so holier-than-thou that it takes 3,000 dead civilians for even some of the most open-minded and considerate pieces of the population to consider the way people worldwide might consider us.

i am trying, perhaps too hard, to be calm in this post. i am angry. i am terrified. i am indignant. but i cannot fix the world. and that makes me the saddest of all.

EDIT: ps. wtf, economy?

buchenwald, die welle, and american schools.

I apologize in advance if I assume you know a lot less than you do. As you see, a lot of the emotion going into this post is frustration, specifically directed at the American educational system. Knowing that people reading this didn't learn German [which is really the only reason I know any German history], didn't study history, or grew up during DDR-times when little information was coming out of this place, I may end up over-informing.

Everyone knows about the famous "Work will make you free" inscription that was over the front gate to many concentration camps (most famously at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau). I was still shocked, however, to see this at the front gate of Buchenwald:A literal translation? "To each his own." Conversational meaning in German? "Everyone gets that which he deserves." This seems so much crueler, somehow, than that infamous promise of freedom. Remember that the prisoners at Buchenwald were not so literally marched to their deaths as was true at some of the more well-known camps. These were mostly political prisoners, sometimes given menial jobs, but mostly left to freeze, to starve, to rot in the middle of the woods near the single most important cultural capital of the German people. A simple google search of this phrase, and you'll also learn that this was the state motto of the Prussian empire. Although it was a part of the Holy Roman Empire*, Prussia was really the first attempt to unite the "German" people, and had (approximately) the current borders on the west side, but also included Denmark, and reached up along the Baltic Sea through most of current day Poland and. That is, that's how far it spread before Hitler started marching all over the place. So, then, what does this mean? Is it a political statement? Some kind of call to return to the past? Or is it really as backhanded as it seems - a command to shut the hell up? I'm not certain...

The whole time we were in Buchenwald, I kept thinking over and over: why didn't anyone stop this? I mean, even of people didn't want to see it themselves (and that I totally understand), doesn't there come a time when the desire to look away is overcome by the knowledge that another human being is suffering? Of course, there's a well-known poem (with many many variations) to this effect, from Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the Communists,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Communist.

When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Social Democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I didn't protest;
I wasn't a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

And when they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.

Regardless of what people then did or didn't do, the monument that finally knocked some sense into me (which I couldn't get a good photo of, but Zach might've?) reads: "So that the generation to come might know, the children, yet to be born, that they too may rise and declare to their children" (Psalm 78:6).** It hit me that I was somehow lucky to be able to see this. Too many Americans will never be able to go there and to look at those spaces where people suffered and died. Too many kids don't hear about the Holocaust (let alone all the things the Soviets did at Buchenwald) save for one week in the year during history class - that if they're lucky, too. My overwhelming sense is that we want too badly to be the heroes of history. The version of WWII that's most popular seems to be Oh, yeah, they were doing some fighting over there in Europe, but we marched in and put an end to all that crap. God Bless America, right?! God forbid we discuss the massive numbers of Russians that died during that giant mess, so that we might look like heroes. And then what of Mussolini and Stalin? Why is Hitler the only example we're given, when he is not the only face of fascism? Why were the events at Abu Ghraib laughed off and then so easily forgotten? What isn't my government telling me about what happens at Gitmo, and why, exactly, are they so opposed to me traveling to Cuba (don't give me that crap about economic embargo. I'm not buyin' it.)?

Monument for women and girls: No one took their goodbye. No one erected a cross or a stone. But you shall live, as long as people keep your memory. [my translation]

And then, of course, German film... Oh, will you never tire of capturing all the scary, scary things that happen in America? [I hope not]

When I was in Köthen, Jan gave me a bunch of movies to watch. He said it was homework, that these were the things I needed to know about Germany. Admittedly, Jan had a very particular view of what was important about his culture, and a lot of his slant could be attributed to the fact that he worked/works for the German Army. So I watched a lot of movies about Nazis and Punks and being in prison and getting in knife fights. It was exciting. One, in particular, that struck me was Das Experiment. You might've seen it, actually, under the title The Experiment. It was subtitled and released on video, if not run through theaters. It was based on a Stanford U experiment about power, authority, and the sociology of prison interactions. 24 men were paid to take part in a mock-prison situation, randomly assigned as either prisoners or jail keepers, and given minimal supervision. Essentially, things got way out of hand, and the proposed 14-day experiment was called off after only 6 days. Hmm. Stanford University. That's a respectable place with intelligent people. And yet, they allowed men to humiliate and torture each other for six days. Had you heard of it? I hadn't. But every high schooler in Germany learns about the experiment, as well as many of the investigator's buddies' experiments, in their Social Studies classes. Even though it happened in AMERICA - not here.

Take two: Die Welle. Read about this one in the newspaper. It's a German movie with German actors that plays out in Germany, but it's baed on an American high school teacher (Ron Jones) in Palo Alto, California who put his history class to an experiment based on the premise that the Holocaust would never happen in America. People wouldn't go along with the Party, was the claim. And yet, the students created their own Party (the Third Wave), uniform, salute, icon, manner of behavior (including being drilled on entering the classroom quickly and silently), and followed their teacher like good little Hitlerjugend within three days. Heard of it? Nope, me either. There's a movie about it - made in America in 81 but apparently swept under the carpet - and a book, which most German high schoolers read, naturally. Fair enough, I'm sure German kids are sick and tired of hearing about all the awful things their grandparents allowed to happen more than 50 years ago. I get that. In fact, Die Welle did an excellent job of addressing that boredom; at the start of the conversation, which is prompted in the film by a project week on forms of government, one student says, "I'm sick of these damn Nazis. Autocracy. Fine. Can't we talk about the Bush Administration?" Hmm. The Bush Administration, you say. I dare you to find a cross-section of American high school students who would be able identify the ways in which the current government could be considered autocratic or fascist. Anyone think that has anything to do with the fact that we don't talk about autocracy or fascism, or even what real democracy might look like - psst. here's a hint: America's not one! I cannot believe our inability to be honest with ourselves. The first steps to recognizing and putting an end to unhealthy government policies is learning about past mistakes. Allowing a majority of citizens to be and remain disenfranchised, struggling, and hungry, on the other hand, sounds like a fast-track to fascism to me.

Well, this has gone on long enough. Sorry for the rant.

Hearing: Ben Harper.
Reading: Lessons for next week (practicing, really, more than reading...)
Making: Intrelac scarf from baby alpaca yarn.

*PC, remember when I said things in Weimar looked Prussian, and not German? What I couldn't figure out how to articulate then rests here. Prussia was essentially Roman, and not "purely German."
**Without being able to read the Hebrew version, the feeling of the German text on this monument had a different feel to me. Naturally, they used some translation of the bible that they felt was fitting and accurate to the original text, but it was the German that struck me. I would translate it like this: "So that the Generation to come, all the children yet to be born, they too will stand and tell this to their children."

PS. I know, Zach, I know... Just... save it.