A Tiny Poem

Kid President, I'll run your campaign in 2036.

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

I want a good heart.
I want it to be made of good stuff.
I want the stained glass window builder
to be my drinking buddy.
I want to drink only the punch
of a million genderqueer school kids
taking free martial arts lessons to survive recess.
I stopped calling myself a pacifist
when I heard Gandhi told women
they should not physically fight off their rapists.
I believe there is such a thing as a non-violent fist.
I believe the earth is a woman muzzled, beaten,
tied to the coal slinging tracks.
I believe the muzzled have every right to
rip off the bible belt
and take it to patriarchy's ass.
I know these words are gonna get me in trouble.
It is never polite to throw back the tear gas.
Just like it's never polite to bring enough life rafts...
they crowd the balconies
where the wealthy shine their jewels,
But sometimes love---sometimes REAL love... is fucking rude.
-Andrea Gibson

Pep Talk

Sometimes, we all just need a good pep talk. Kid President delivers the perfect one.

Alright folks, back to writing cover letters...

Purpose

Our job is to love people.  When it hurts.  When its awkward.  When its uncool and embarrassing.  Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another and to meet each other in our questions.
- TWLOHA

Flags and Helpers

"In the videos from the marathon bombings, you see all these flags lined up together, none higher than any other. Those 96 flags, representing the nations of the people running the Boston Marathon, are side by side because they stand for a larger "us," an "us" sharing a human endeavor that doesn't require a "them."

"I'm cool with living in a world with flags, but I am most proud to live in a world that can hold events where no flag flies above any other. There are people who don't want to live in that world, Hank, but I know that we are not going to give it up. And I know that we can always hope and look to the helpers and endeavor to be among them."

For Boston

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity." 

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. 

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stand against the darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil-doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago. 

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will." 

-Patton Oswalt

Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. 

Spirituality is for those who have already been there. 

 -Vine Deloria

We ourselves will be remembered as a collective, for what we did and failed to do together. 

-John Green

Fire & Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. 

-Robert Frost

Drew Dudley: Leading with Lollipops

What does it mean to be a leader?  Drew Dudley tells us in under six and a half minutes.

We've made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world.  There's only 6 billion understandings of it.  And if you change one person's understanding of it, one person's understanding of what they're capable of, one person's understanding of how much people care about them, one person's understanding of how powerful an agent for change they can be in this world, you've changed the whole thing.  Its a simple idea, but I don't think its a small one.

Telling Stories About the Stories We Tell

The following interview with Philip Gourveitch, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, originally appeared in the Boston Review.  In it, Gourevitch discusses "the challenges of writing about the history we are in the midst of making, the burdens of memory and the appeal of forgetting, the dangers of narrative simplification, the limits of humanitarianism, and the messiness of politics."

Cécile Alduy: In your writing, you always find a balance between bringing in the long history to understand the way things develop over time and the very detailed hour-to-hour reporting on how it happened. How is your job different from that of an historian?

Philip Gourevitch: Above all, I suppose, to be a good historian you don’t necessarily have to be a good storyteller. You can be a good historian by virtue of making a contribution to the field without making a direct contribution to literature or public understanding. What historians, or anthropologists, or political scientists are interested in can overlap considerably with my interests, but the methodology, discipline, and long-term purpose are really different. I mean, I’m first and last a writer. If I weren’t writing about Rwanda right now, I’d be writing about something else entirely; and if I weren’t writing reportage, I would be writing fiction or plays. That’s not true of most historians who are going to write about Rwanda. They’re going to be coming at it as Rwandanologists. They’re going to be Africanists. They’re going to be Genocide Studies people. They’re going to be legal scholars or professors of postcolonial studies. And their frame of reference will be largely prescribed by that academic discipline—which is, I guess, as it should be.

Another big difference is that as a writer-reporter I’m not so concerned with making explicit reference to the existing literature, the way academic writers are. I’m much more interested in what I see and what I hear directly; I work in a documentary vein. For instance in recent conversations about current affairs with senior government officials in Rwanda I started to notice that a number of them, completely unprompted, began making references to late-nineteenth century events in Rwanda. That’s the time when Rwanda, which had been a proudly isolated country, was colonized, and lost its self-determination as a state. So I started mentioning this to the people I was interviewing, “You know, it’s funny that you are all bringing up that same period.” And they all expressed complete surprise. “Really, who else?” Then I would maybe mention someone, and they’d all say, “Really? He was talking about this?” So, I thought, that’s interesting, there’s this common reference that each person thinks is his own, and which each uses to make different points. And then I thought, well, is this history they are talking about reliable? Are these stories they’re telling me correct?

Grown Strong with Love

In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants and hold the world in arms grown strong with love; and there may be many things we forget in the days to come, but this will not be one of them.

-Brian Andreas

"Dr. Mukwege Fights Back"

This article by Dr. Denis Mukwege, Medical Director of the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, originally appeared in On the Ground.

For the past 16 years at the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my staff and I have been treating women who have been victimized by sexual violence, which has been systematically used as a weapon of war in the armed conflict that has ravaged our country.  Rape is one of the most deadly weapons of war, destroying families and communities and future generations, as well as the women brutally targeted.  Last year I had some hope that the situation was improving, but since the beginning of this year the security situation has again deteriorated and victims of sexual violence have started coming to the hospital again in great numbers.

"An Attack on One of My Heroes, Dr. Denis Mukwege"

This article by Nicholas D. Kristof originally appeared in his blog On the Ground.

One of my heroes is Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor who repairs fistulas and is a ferocious advocate for women and for his country.  I've suggested that he deserves the Nobel peace Prize - and I was horrified to learn that tonight four armed gunmen attacked him at his home, murdered his guard and shot at him.  He seems to have narrowly escaped death.

Dr. Mukwege presumably was targeted because of a strong speech he gave at the United Nations last month, denouncing mass rape in Congo and the impunity for it.  President Kabila has long been angry at Dr. Mukwege, and the UN speech can't have helped.  Meanwhile, Dr. Mukwege has also offended Rwanda with his denunciations of Rwanda's role in the slaughter and rape in eastern Congo.

Although he is a skilled surgeon who could easily have left for other countries, Dr. Mukwege has toiled in Congo at the hospital he started in Bukavu, Panzi Hospital.  Here's an article I wrote about his work repairing fistulas there.  But Dr. Mukwege doesn't just repair individuals: He concluded that "there is no medical solution," and so he has become an advocate for peace and for his country.

I hope the UN force in Bukavu will rpotect Dr. Mukwege and the Panzi Hosiptal for the time being.  I hope foreign ambassadors will visit his hospital to show solidarity.  Here's a statement by Physicians for Human Rights, which works with Dr. Mukwege at Panzi Hospital.  And I hope that Dr. Mukwege some day will get the Nobel Peace Prize for the humanitarian work he continuously risks his life to advance.

The Pulse of a Story

If you listen to the wind and don't hear at least a thousand years of music... then you're not listening hard enough.

The theory of six degrees of separation was never meant to see how many people we could find.  It was a set of directions for how to find the people we have lost.

Michael Lee writes of the pain of loss, of the beauty of the wind, and how we are never created or destroyed... we are simply energy, changing forms.

We are vessels, we are rooms, we are so much less important than the things inside of us.

Kindness

The regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.
-Jonathan Safran Foer

TEDxlaf Part Deux

Lafayette recently published an article in their Summer 2012 magazine highlighting the 2nd annual TEDxlaf conference, at which I was a guest speaker.

Niccole Rivero '12, an international affairs major, recalled her four life-changing months observing the aftermath of civil war in Africa.  She spent time in a Rwanda community where genocide widows raise children and crops with the wives of their husbands' killers.  "Peace is more important than power," said Rivero, president of the student chapter of Amnesty International.  "It shouldn't take a genocide to learn that love is the answer."
- "Turbo-Charging Global Citizenship: TEDxlaf Showcases Radical Ideas About Energy, Identity, and Empathy" by Geoff Gehman '80, Lafayette Magazine Summer 2012

You can read the full transcript of my talk, titled "Hate and Hope: How the Darkest Place on Earth Restored my Faith in Humanity," by clicking HERE.

Being part of TEDxlaf was such an amazing experience.  As described on TEDxlaf's facebook:

The goal of the foundation [TED] is to foster the spread of great ideas. It aims to provide a platform for the world's smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries and most-inspiring teachers, so that millions of people can gain a better understanding of the biggest issues faced by the world, and a desire to help create a better future. Core to this goal is a belief that there is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea.

So go watch a few TEDtalks or read mine.  Share in the spread of great ideas that might someday change the world.

Just ONE

Lesson out of Rwanda #485:

The genocide did not kill a million people in Rwanda.

It killed ONE.

One person with hopes, dreams, and plans for a brighter future than the one their parents imagined.

One person with a family, maybe a few kids or one on the way, with friends and neighbors and people who loved him.  Whom he loved just as much.

It stole one person's father... or brother... or daughter.

Just one person.



And then another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another... one million times over.


In our warring, chaotic world, we are constantly bombarded with death tolls and casualty statistics, and we no longer feel the loss.  We've somehow misplaced an essential part of ourselves, the true human regret that comes from understanding that people in our world, people just like us, are dying for no other crime than being born into an unfortunate circumstance... the universe's large-scale and terribly cruel wrong-place-wrong-time scenario.

Each human life is meant to be a celebration of everything this world has to offer.  But when the universe has other plans, when evil men devise wicked schemes to upset the balance of peace and justice, terrible tragedies are inflicted upon us.  But we no longer feel the loss.  Somehow we've lost our empathy, our ability to imagine ourselves into another man's life and feel his pain.

Genocides, wars, terrorism, uprisings... no matter how many statistics you read, how many sound bytes you hear chronicling the latest list of casualties, remember this:
That number accounts for a multitude of individuals.  Single drops in an immense ocean of gone-too-soons.

The genocide in Rwanda, the war in Iraq, the Holocaust, the Arab Spring... none of them stole an abstract and meaningless number.

Just one.  Over and over and over again until we somehow lost our humanity.

Everything is Beautiful

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent.  Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops.  The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us.

So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more.  And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.

Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings - the sea, the mountains, the open sky - Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects, everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

-"Lady with the Lapdog," Anton Chekhov

It takes a village...