For Shame

I keep hearing from people a certain note of despair, unsolicited. I hear this refrain, "I keep thinking it can't get any worse than this, and it gets worse!" This country I live in has invaded countries, has decimated its own constitution, and has failed its own cities, yet there are still too many people who will not call the kettle black.

I just watched Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke. All Americans who have HBO should see this, and they should make sure their friends who don't have HBO get a chance to see it. I knew FEMA, Homeland Security, and Bush mishandled the devastation from Katrina, but I didn't know the degree. It's four hours long because Lee pulls out most of the threads that add up to this tragedy. There's the historical poverty and lack of support for New Orleans. The levees that weren't really levees were allowed to suffice when it was known they could not withstand a category 3 hurricane, something that was not common knowledge for the residents. There's the racism, the classism, the bodies left for weeks, homes marked as searched but not, the incredible delay of temporary trailers from FEMA. The only government agency that shined was the Coast Guard, who went above and beyond.

And four hours was still too short. There was not a mention of the prisoners simply left behind in locked cells. ACLU has photos of a few here. There was just a little mention that some in New Orleans hoped that certain element would not come back to New Orleans, that is, the poor black element. Just a little mention that developers are drooling over the properties of the 9th Ward, and hmmm, that sure is taking a long time to clean up. Not really a mention that hordes of volunteers have been doing the cleanup work that should have been done weeks and months before by FEMA.

Over and over the righteously angry citizens of New Orleans asked how this could happen in a country as wealthy as the USA. One man said he could not understand how there were people who still could not see George Bush for what he is. What Kanye West said was true, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," but it is also pretty clear he doesn't care about the people, period. He's one of those sociopaths that flutter around religion like a moth to a light. That sort of person knows the power they can wield with religion, and people ignore reality because he's "right with God".

I dread what the next two years bring. Democrats are working hard to take back Congress. I have little hope that they will make a difference if they do, but at least more of them will speak up against the atrocities. Even though we are already devastated economically with two major military actions still going on, and with the after-effects of Katrina still affecting whole regions due to gas prices, I fear some Wag the Dog occurrence will cause that war on Iran. And it will still get worse.

More people are asking, "What can I do?" and that is good. I hope they follow up and do what they can, but they shouldn't expect too much. After all, millions of people marching in the streets were dismissed as a "focus group" and we went to war based on lies anyway. If we can find our own small way to put a wrench in the works, perhaps the force of the people can take this country back. Whether it's volunteering for the GI Rights Hotline, or joining the ACLU, or living true to yourself in spite of the loss of our civil liberties, or speaking up when someone regurgitates untrue propaganda, there are many little ways in which we can change the course. Or at least live with ourselves.

I have been quite happy lately. I feel lucky that I have the life I have, the friends I have, the lovers I have. I enjoy the sweetness that I have, but I know it will not last. I don't cling to it, but I savor it, and if I have such good fortune and love, how can I not share it? I know if fate had placed me in New Orleans, I would not be so fortunate or happy right now. If I have something to give, how can I not give it? People thank me for the good work I do for peace, but I feel like I'm still just a dabbler. And really, I feel better and happier for doing it.

Responding to Katrina

I've been working on this piece, sorta solicited by the director of BPF. Her immediate response to the Katrina response can be found here.

When events as awesome as Hurricane Katrina happen, they are like a great karmic distress flare. Their effects are so huge that all aspects of this conscious life are lit up in stark relief. Meritorious deeds blind us with their shiny glare and melt our hearts, but our dark karmas that we so often shy away from, these too are revealed with startling clarity. As with a distress flare, the sufferings are sharply outlined, too brazen for us to ignore.
The understanding of karma can be simple, and it can be complicated. When revealed by the effects of a hurricane that was the size of four states, there is no denying any of it. Sifting through the wreckage can be tedious as well as devastating. Put simply, karma is cause and effect. Katrina is a karma, nobody’s fault (though global warming likely has something to do with it). Racism and classism are more complicated karmas. The gestalt of our karma, our interconnectedness, this interwoven webbed thread of connections, this is our reality according to Buddhism. If we pull one thread, we cannot help but find another, and another, and another. Hurricane Katrina reveals how we pull those threads, as individuals and as a society.

The notion that we are separate beings is an illusion, but it is one that many in these United States like to buy into. (And buy we do, too.) When I learned that a portion of New Orleans that was most likely to be underwater was the poorest, and that in a mandatory evacuation those poor and mostly black people were given no useful means to leave, I couldn’t help but look at this illusion of separateness. People take care of themselves first. As this great distress flare of a hurricane brought to light the heritage that is our city of New Orleans and its precarious vulnerability to flooding, I couldn’t help but think about who must have been at the table when plans to protect her were devised. Rich and middle class white people. Who was there to say, "When you declare a mandatory evacuation, how will the people without cars get out?" I mourned for those who died because this systemic classism had made no plans for them, and I mourned for those at the table, who surely must feel the pangs of regret.

With such a watershed event, it is too easy to pick and choose what bits of the interconnected karma we focus on. Now more than ever there’s an instantaneous access to thousands of bits of information, and one way or another bits can be found to bolster any point of view. I find myself paralyzed as I try to sift through all the information. A president who remains on a glad-handing vacation tour. Here in Portland, our own hate radio icon Lars Larson believes the post-Katrina disaster was entirely due to criminals of the 'projects' and the "lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness" of the "welfare wards". Countless right-wing ditto-heads (including the President) who repeat, "Now’s not the time to play the blame game," while an anonymous senior White House official blames Democratic Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco for not declaring a state of emergency. I boggle at their amoral genius. They know their so-called opposition the Liberals make a practice of emotional feel-goods like avoiding 'the blame game'. They count on the cascading torrent of conflicting information to confuse people. They count on enough people clinging to it as truth even when revealed as a lie.

I read blogs, email lists, Indymedia, and filter through mainstream TV and press. Accounts reported as fact that are later shown to be untrue, such as 'lawless thugs' shooting at relief helicopters, or babies murdered in the convention center. One person’s 'looter' is another's 'forager'. Conscious and unconscious prejudices determine the weight a fact is given. Well-meaning folks gather supplies and support only to be turned away by inexplicable orders. I wonder if questions will ever be answered over the delayed relief. I wonder if it is paranoid to entertain thoughts that incompetence conveniently masks test cases for martial law. How does the media turn from scolding incompetence to praising the swagger of a general? I wonder at the ease in which martial law is welcomed. How does a failure to protect become a military operation?

Some Buddhists feel that rage and anger have no place in the Dharma. Buddhist Peace Fellowship director Maia Duerr hesitated to use strong words, "Genocide. Ethnic Cleansing. Economic Cleansing. What else to call it when thousands of poor, Black people are allowed to die in front of our eyes?" What else can we trust but such heartfelt cries? A long time ago I was given a glimpse of my own racism when a Native American woman accused me of giving her poor service because of the color of her skin. I was shocked and defensive and didn’t believe it, but her burst of anger woke me up. Never again in customer service did I allow a white man to slip in front of a black woman because he's in a hurry. (They do, you know.) Never again did I allow a person of color to yield her place in line to a white person. (They do, you know.) I needed that person's anger to awaken me to a more skillful way of being the good person I wish to be.

So let me vent my own angry response, that I agree with Maia, "The decimation of New Orleans is the great tragedy and shame of the American people, and particularly, the Bush administration. We don't need terrorists to take us down. The empire is crumbling from within." I would say the capitalists who have stolen our country from us have set up a plutocratic hegemony. What does that mean to us who pay our tribute of taxes? They put unqualified people in positions where they rake in money, but do not bother to do the job that their position supposedly asks of them. They are lords of the manor squandering the hard-earned money of the serfs. Their titles mean nothing but are ornamental, simply a reason to divvy up the loot. These are the real looters, and they exploit the dark thread of racism as well as calmly install a Supreme Court Chief Justice in the midst of the chaos.

Field Notes on Love and Compassion

More than a month ago I wrote a little bit about "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life" by Marc Ian Barasch. I finished the book, but ran out of time to write about it before I left for a trip to Wisconsin. I was hopeful I could put some new thoughts, new lessons on radical empathy into practice there. The author wrote this book of field notes because he wanted to find out how to be compassionate. It was full of questions, and he sought answers from the experts, either those who studied the science of the heart, or those who were acknowledged to be extraordinarily giving by folks around them. Marc asks, "It's a perennial question about the amplitude of compassion and the carrying capacity of the heart: Do we only have a fixed quota of loving to allocate between family and the world at large, so that if one receives more, the other gets less?" (p. 181) I had a similar question as I headed back for my family visit, I who talk much about it being all about love: Can I be a lover to my birth family?

I was anxious about visiting Wisconsin. When I got there, I felt like I was in a different country. I truly am a Wisconsin expatriate. I was reminded of one radically empathic person interviewed by Barasch, I think he was a rabbi. He gladly indiscriminately dispensed compassion to all, but confessed he did take St. John's Wort for depression. It isn't easy loving all. I did manage to have some connective conversations with my stepfather, and afterward my mom said it made her happy when we talked more. She clearly didn't know how uncomfortable those conversations made me, and I didn't want her to know. On the one hand I thought it was good he seemed to want to connect with me, on the other, the weird warped craziness around alcoholism that is viewed as normal was very difficult to be around. I needed daily conversations with my loved ones back home in Portland.

My visit there sparked thoughts about the difference between urban and rural folk. As far back as the Silk Road, cities have been places where people had to get along if trade was to flourish. People had to get along if they were going to live so closely together. Folks in the country must rely upon themselves for defense, and will often resort to aggressive strategies. I could not go back to the xenophobic, insular society that is found in much of rural Wisconsin. That low buzz of paranoia and racism never lets up. I've heard about Madison, a small haven for progressives, but even there, a few years ago myairportt shuttle driver said, "Yeah, we have some freaks here." (meaning folks like me.) I am still pondering this city mouse/ country mouse difference.

This "carrying capacity of the heart" was significant to me. We polyamorists often encounter the prejudice that it must be unnatural to love more than one person. We commonly counter that with the parent/child analogy. When a parent has a second child, she doesn't worry about having less love available for the first. Really, and this is a very Buddhist construct, the most limiting notion of love is in our own minds. While outsiders glance at this growing subculture and dismiss it as hedonistic or as overrun with jealousy because we're 'wired' to be monogamous, we who experience it and take the time to work the knots out of our societal conditioning find love grows the more one gets practice at loving more than one. Jealousy is understood to be a knot of karmic conditioning that needs untangling. The untangling process reveals fears and insecurities than can be addressed and they dissipate naturally or with a little encouragement, a little changing of mind.

Much of spiritual tradition separates love of humanity from romantic love and sexual love. In my experience they do not need to be mutually exclusive. More thoughts on that soon....

Books and Movies

Immobilized by tendinitis in my foot, I've been sitting back a whole lot with my foot up, doing a lot of reading and movie watching. Some would say it's about time I got these things back to the library. Like many library workers, I keep renewing them until the system won't let me, then I rush through them, and return them late. (Yes, I still have to pay fines.)

Book: I'm going to have to return The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, mostly unread. Karen Armstrong has written histories of religions and biographies such as Buddha (which I hear is rather good for a Penguin book). Her experience as a postulant and novice Catholic nun struck me as so similar to the stories I have heard about our Buddhist monks going through. I have to wonder if our founding mother Jiyu Kennett wasn't influenced by Catholicism in England in all that. All the ways they are treated are designed to extinguish the ego. In Armstrong's case the purpose of those rules and rituals were to make her a vessel for God's purpose. Perhaps someday I can get back to this, but right now the hold list is a mile long.

Documentary: There are certain things that need to be seen, heard, or read by all European Americans occupying North America. Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story is one of them. I grew up where the prevailing (racist) opinion was that those Indians should accept that they live in America, and should live by the laws Americans have to live by, i.e. they shouldn't get special hunting and fishing rights. Naturally any news coverage of AIM back then portrayed them as violent extremists. Not only does this film reveal the racist circumstances of Leonard Peltier's trial (and that he didn't do it), it sheds some light on those dramatic AIM incidents in the mid 70s. Perhaps because it was not central to the theme, the documentary did not explore the federal government's complicity in native on native crime. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was a war zone between traditionalists helped by AIM and contemporary natives that dominated tribal government. Goon squads, quasi deputies, targetted the traditionalists and AIM, yet their murderous activities did not receive the federal attention that AIM's did. Sadly, such an incident as that at Oglala looks inevitable considering the tension and fear that existed on the reservation at that time. It occurs to me that Leonard Peltier symbolically holds the karma of his people, and does so rather gracefully. No matter what transpired that day, he is a political prisoner. This gets an A.

Movie: Did Christian Slater always look old? I thought he appeared a little old to play a teenager in Pump Up the Volume, but it turns out he was only around twenty at the time. This is a movie for every outcast (like me) who lived through some painful teen years. It also tells a compelling story about the way free speech is gnawed away by fear and denial. As teen movies go it gets an A, but otherwise, a B-.

Movie: Hollywood stars try to show how real they are in The Anniversary Party. They do that, but somehow something is missing. Maybe they are too close to it. But mmmm, Phoebe Cates was delicious (and real). I dunno, maybe it doesn't work for me because they're all just too skinny, or maybe because it was more like an acting exercise than a movie with a Hollywood plot. Still, I sorta liked it. C

Movie: Amy's O. I thought it was going to be about sex. Instead it was all about a Jewish girl dispensing love advice who is afraid of intimacy and who falls for a movie version of Howard Stern who (surprise surprise, how Hollywood) is not so sexist after all. Gets a C. Now Secretary, which I saw awhile back, was about sex, and gets an A!

Movie: So it's an evil corporation, but I like the movies! Disney's Summer of the Monkeys has all the requisites of a good kid's movie: cute animals, siblings watching out for each other and growing up, a grandpa that helps the kid get through it all, and parents that recognize the adult emerging in the child. Oh yeah, and an irascible hermit. But did they have to go with Wilford Brimley for the grandpa? B.

Still reading: Published in 1998, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World by Eduardo Galeano is packed with facts about U.S. and corporate pirating of the world's labor and resources. This takes awhile, but is another required US citizen read. Most of us americanos del norte enjoy a standard of living that can only exist because somewhere else, and even somewhere here, someone suffers. I think we need to face that, and be humble. Still, it's rather depressing, and I am inclined to read it a little at a time and put it down.

The friend who recommended Galeano tells me he has mixed feelings about enjoying something distinctly American, considering the racist and classist history of domination that brought this country its riches. At times like this I have to remember the Buddhist meal verse, and apply it to all the things of this rich life I enjoy:

This meal is the labor of countless beings,
let us remember their toil.
Defilements are many and exertions weak,
do we deserve this off’ring?
Gluttony stems from greed,
let us be moderate.
Our lives are sustained by this offering,
let us be grateful.
We take this food to attain the Buddha Way.

Whether the offering was given freely, or it was forced from the world's poor through violence and exploitation, I have received this offering. Circumstances put me in this position. The least I can do is remember the countless beings that have suffered for my sake, be moderate in my consumption, and do what good I can because I am able. This is only the beginning of a thought...I'm sure I'll return to this theme.

Driving While Black

Hey, here I am, in the front right, holding up the sign with the Buddha icon.

An unarmed black man was killed by a police officer. The man was still strapped in his seat belt. The police officer claims he 'resisted arrest' and that he thought he had a weapon. I still can't shake the feeling this was a deliberate hit, but why would they want this young man dead? The coroner's office says he had cocaine in his body that would have killed an ordinary person. (Black man as beast.) I have to wonder, why did the shooting officer's partner taser the victim for THREE MINUTES after he was shot. After he was dead. I wonder, is there any way to know whether this would keep the blood pumping, send drugs into the system? You see where I'm going here: like the victim's family, I have to wonder if the cops planted those drugs.


As you can see from the photo there were quite a mix of people there. This photo might lead you to believe a lot of Caucasions were there. Not really. About ten percent. I didn't think that was enough. While all the media settled on "hundreds", I would say there were at least a 1000 people there. At least.

Both James Perez' aunt, and another woman whose child had a run-in with the Portland police spoke of their comfort zone, how they'd been in their 'comfort zone' and these instances shocked them out of it. This issue should be one of the top issues of the mayoral campaign, yet I'm afraid it won't be, because we are in our comfort zone.

Portland has a larger majority of white people than most other urban centers. Perhaps that is why this issue has not been addressed the way it should have been, before now, before another unarmed black person was killed by the police. Our "liberal" mayor believes racial profiling indeed exists in Portland. Perhaps she felt she addressed the issue. Clearly she didn't.

I have to say this really brings home for me how, even though I have an active imagination, I cannot imagine what it must be like for a person of color to live and work and raise a family in the midst of racism. It has never crossed my mind that I could be beaten if I was approached by a police officer. I have never feared for my life when pulled over for a traffic infraction. I haven't even been afraid they might search my car. I have never been pulled over for failing to signal correctly, nor did it even occur to me I could be. It's become pretty clear all of these things occur to a person of color in Portland.

Sadly, whether black or white, or whatever race, as long as we are in our "comfort zone", we do little to change society for the better. In some ways, we as peace activists are stretched too thin. We try to bring in all the issues, show how they are interconnected, then cannot address each one as deeply as they need to be.

Also, as James Perez' aunt said, this is not just a black issue, this is a white issue too, a human issue. The Portland Police are trained a mere ten weeks. As one speaker pointed out, cosmetologists get more training. I happened to be standing next to one who told me it took a minimum of six months to get her license. The national standard of police training is 22 weeks (still too low). When police are trained to shoot, that's what they do. They don't have training in diffusing conflict. Don't have training in dealing with the mentally ill. Don't have training in communication. Don't have training on dealing with stress. If they do, it's not enough.

Often people will excuse the police. They have a tough job. They put their life on the line. And they do. All the more reason that this should change. For their own sake they should have better training. For our sake, they should be held to the highest standard, because they have our lives in their hands. As my sign said, NO ONE should be afraid of a TRAFFIC STOP. And NO ONE should be targetted as suspicious because of the color of their skin. NO ONE should be guilty for Driving While Black.

One of the speakers had us point to the Justice Center. Engraved on that building is a quote by MLK Jr. She started reciting it, and we all joined in: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." This injustice hurts us all, and we all really need to do something about it, need to make the change happen.