Kai Wright on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Kai Wright, author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay, and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, wrote a piece for the American Prospect online in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968. "Dr. King, Forgotten Radical," is a call to rescue King's legacy from a narrative that undervalues his role as a radical activist for change.

We've all got reason to avoid the uncomfortable truths King shoved in the nation's face. It's a lot easier for African Americans to pine for his leadership than it is to accept our own responsibility for creating the radicalized community he urged upon us. And it's more comfortable for white America to reduce King's goals to an idyllic meeting of little black boys and little white girls than it is to consider his analysis of how white supremacy keeps that from becoming reality.

Take, for instance, his point that segregation's purpose wasn't just to keep blacks out in the streets but to keep poor whites from taking to them and demanding economic justice. There's a concept that's not likely to come up in, say, the speech John McCain was rumored to be planning for today. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," King lectured from the Alabama Capitol steps, following the 1965 march on Selma. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man."

Wright's words aren't falling on deaf ears: the piece has already been cited in op-eds, at Utne Reader and, according to Technorati, on forty-three different blogs so far, including Alas, a Blog, War and Piece, and Crooked Timber.

You might also want to look back in our archives to read Kai Wright on helping teenagers who come out and the continued relevance of James Baldwin's understanding of race.

The Psychological Trauma of War

by Margot Adler

It's not something you read in a newspaper or hear on an ordinary news show; it's only on the comedy shows like Real Time with Bill Maher where you hear it whispered: the idea that John McCain has PTSD, and that it would be scary to have his finger on the button. Whether or not this is the same kind of slur we hear from those who say Barak Obama was schooled in a madrassa, it seems perfectly reasonable to wonder if anyone who spent five years in a tiger cage might have some remnants of PTSD - even decades later.

So when I heard it on Bill Maher the other night, it reminded me that we are living in a society where thousands of young men and women, our very future, are returning home every day scarred from battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those scars are painfully visible; many others are not. Few people are really looking deeply at what this means for families and relationships, even what it means for our daily lives as Americans. Only one person that I know of in the mainstream media has delved deeply and movingly into this issue. For more than a year, in a series of searing pieces, Daniel Zwerdling at NPR has chronicled the plight of military personnel to get the mental health care they need. In many cases, veterans with PTSD have been kicked out of the military for bad behavior and are unable to access mental health services.

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Heretic's Heart about my own life during the 1960's. Several chapters of that book were letters between me, as a twenty-year-old University of California - Berkeley student and activist, and Marc Anderson, a soldier fighting in Vietnam whom I met through the mail after he wrote a letter to the campus newspaper that could only be described as a cry from the abyss.

Link Roundup: Israeli Soldiers Speak, UUs in Kenya

Beacon author Philip Winslow, in his recent book Victory for Us is to See You Suffer, several times quotes and highlights the activities of the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, "an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah."

Breaking the Silence sponsors tours to Hebron, and has organized exhibits to illustrate the enormous strain the occupation places on the soldiers who are assigned to protect settlements, as well as the myriad injustices and indignities inflicted upon the Palestinians in the Territories. Currently on display in Philadelphia until February 24, and coming to Cambridge March 1, is their exhibit of photos taken by soldiers (including the one featured here), artifacts of the occupation, and video testimonies from former soldiers. Hours and locations are available on their website, as well as photos, video, testimonies, and more information about the group and their goals.

Via Philocrites, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee just returned from a trip to Kenya. The emergency delegation was dispatched to assess the political and human rights situation there in the wake of the election in December. UUSC President Charlie Clements, in addition to submitting testimony to Congress on the mission (pdf), sent blog dispatches describing the unrest:

Kenya feels like it is on the edge of a precipice. Anguish and anger are pushing people into a free fall toward communal violence, which neither the leaders nor the security forces may be able to easily stop once it begins. As Kisumu, and now perhaps Nakuru (if the reports we got this afternoon are true), slip toward economic meltdown, the volatility of the situation will only increase. I fear that both Kibaki and Raila may be too insulated by hardliners to sense that they are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

For more information on the crisis, visit the UUSC's Kenya Crisis page.

The People Speak: Performances from Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States

by Allison Trzop

Several weeks ago, a couple of folks from Beacon -- including Director Helene Atwan -- had the pleasure and the privilege of attending several readings and tapings for a miniseries being shot over at Emerson College’s Cutler Majestic Theatre here in Boston.

Hosted by Executive Producer Howard Zinn -- not only a wildly influential historian and one of the most inspirational activists of modern times, but also one of the most imminently likable people alive --"The People Speak" featured an all-star line-up performing excerpts primarily taken from Zinn’s book Voices of A People’s History of the United States. The four performances, broken into segments titled "Class," "Women," "Race," and "War," were the culmination of tremendous work by Zinn, Anthony Arnove, and Chris Moore of "Project Greenlight," as well as actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

While every last one of the actors who participated should be loudly applauded (yet again!), standout performances included John Legend pouring his heart and soul into Nina Simone’s "Mississippi Goddamn"; Marisa Tomei reading the words of Cindy Sheehan; David Strathairn standing in for a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which for those of us who loved Good Night, and Good Luck was hilarious; Josh Brolin doing more for Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun than any high school lit class ever could; and every last time Staceyann Chin walked onstage.

Did you ever expect to hear Viggo Mortensen sing Bob Dylan?

For those who couldn’t make it into the filled-to-capacity Cutler Majestic, you can read more about it over at Alternet,  watch some more clips on YouTube, and, with any luck, the producers will find a home for the miniseries.

Allison Trzop is an assistant editor at Beacon Press.

Monday Link Roundup: Tuesday Edition, featuring Tom DeWolf, Kai Wright, and Eboo Patel

Beacon Author Tom DeWolf (Inheriting the Trade)—who blogged here on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the U.S.—is at the Sundance Film Festival this week with his cousin Katrina Browne, director of Traces of the Trade. The book and the film deal with their shared family history as descendants of the most successful slave-trading family in our country's history, and they present an opportunity for greater discussion slavery's legacy in the U.S.

One of the many salient points DeWolf makes in his book is that slavery was not a "Southern problem," but an integral part of the economic lives of those north of the Mason-Dixon Line as well. This interview from NECN highlights DeWolf's Rhode Island roots and New England's "hidden history" of slavery. When asked by host Chet Curtis why the subject of Northern culpability in the trade isn't explored in the history books, DeWolfe offered this insight:

The North won the Civil War, and the winners get to write the history books. A professor we met with called it "constructed amnesia," that we create this mythical story of the great abolitionists from the North marching south to straighten out those Southerners. When in fact, there were portions of New York that contemplated seceding with the South prior to the Civil War.

(We embed the NECN story here—if it doesn't appear in your reader click here to watch).

While DeWolfe ducks the paparazzi at Sundance, Kai Wright is reading tonight at the Hue-Man Bookstore in New York. Time Out New York interviewed Kai about his new book, Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York. Kai talked about his own feelings of alienation as young, black, gay man living in Dupont Circle, a gay neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

“It started to dawn on me that yes, it was a gay neighborhood, but it was a white gay neighborhood, and I was a young black man. I didn’t belong. And I didn’t feel any better.” He recalls that there was a “layering of race over sexuality, and the feeling that there had to be a choice.” (Link)

On Colorlines, Wright discusses the Obama-Clinton campaigns, in the wake of "their racially loaded fight over the comparative historical import of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson." He warns both Democrats of avoiding "the diversity debate," citing the 2004 race of an example of a "weak-kneed dodge" that served neither the Democrats nor the country well:

The Democratic establishment cried foul when Republicans loaded state ballots with divisive initiatives on gay rights. Eleven states asked voters to weigh in on same-sex marriage, pumping up the conservative vote and, some argue, costing John Kerry a win—he lost nine of the states, most infamously Ohio.

The problem, however, wasn’t the existence of a debate about gay rights—that’s inevitable as long as gays refuse to cower in the closet—it was national Democrats’ refusal to participate meaningfully in it. At the state level, 94 percent of legislators who voted against the 22 proposed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage won re-election, according to the gay rights group Equality Federation. (Link)

Finally, be sure to Tivo Good Morning America tomorrow and Thursday. Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, will be featured in a two-part segment highlighting the Interfaith Youth Core. We'll post a link to the segments when they hit the ABC website.

Monday Link Roundup: Interfaith Heroes, Praise for Our World, Womb Outsourcing, and Vet Suicides

Read the Spirit, an ambitious and thoughtful site devoted to issues of spirituality and religion, is devoting a portion of their impressive energies to a month of Interfaith Heroes. Featured so far, brief, illuminating essays on the lives of such disparate voices for tolerance as Moses Maimonides, Jaluddin Muhammed Akbar, and Roger Williams.

(Incidentally, we also owe a word of thanks to Read the Spirit for their link to us and a very flattering mention for Beacon Press generally and the blog specifically.)

In other good reviews of work from Beacon, the L.A. Times ran a thoughtful and moving piece by Susan Salter Reynolds about Our World, a book that collects Molly Malone Cook's photographs with accompanying text by her life partner, the poet Mary Oliver.

The photographs Oliver has chosen reflect Cook's intuitive relationship with her subjects (even inanimate objects). The little girl on the stoop in New York City looks directly at the photographer, as does a kindly Robert Motherwell and a fierce, almost intimidating Walker Evans. Even though most of the photographs are dominated by a central person or object, there is a lot to look at in the margins, all part of the story. The stance of her subjects -- reading a book, looking through a telescope -- is always distinctive, creating the mood of the entire composition. The two photos of Oliver could have been taken only by someone who knew the subject well.

Marketplace ran a story over the holiday break that many, including Judith Warner on the New York Times opinion blogs, found troubling. The story highlighted the practice of "womb outsourcing," an increasingly popular surrogacy option involving hopeful parents from wealthy countries paying what amounts to "bargain rates" (when compared with the high cost of surrogacy in the U.S.) for surrogates in India. Amy Tiemann at MojoMom condemned the practice – "Is this what colonialism looks like in the 21st century?" – and invited Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption, to comment as well:

We women of the wealthy world profit from the exploitation of poor women, men and children with almost every shirt we put on our backs, almost every bite of food we take. We exploit people in poverty and never have to think about it. And now we can profit in our motherhood -- but unlike the shirt and the food, this time the product is going to grow up and demand an explanation. (Read more here)

And, to return to a topic  we discussed during Veterans Day Week last November, Penny Coleman, author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War, has been writing about the issue of veteran suicides regularly at Alternet. Her latest post is an account of her experience testifying before Congress alongside Mike and Kim Bowman, who lost their son to suicide after he returned from Iraq. In the piece she quotes Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, who displayed a stunning lack of tact and understanding of the issue when he passed the buck to the Bowman family for their son's death:

"The building up of the self-esteem is the key," he said, "and the parents somehow have to convince him or her that everything is going to be all right, we're going to work through it. And in this case it didn't happen, and so, tragic and sad."

It is precisely because of this tendency to blame the victims that the work that Coleman and the Bowmans do is so important. The hearing ultimately resulted in a dressing down of the head of mental health at the VA by the chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Bob Filner, along with the appeal that the VA start listening to the stories of families who have lost loved ones to suicide. Excuses and passing the buck are not going to save any lives.

Indigenous Peoples Day

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“I'm convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of humanity.” Evo Morales, Aymara, President of Bolivia, Democracy Now! September 26, 2007.

Every year as October 12 approaches, there is a certain sense of dread that can be felt in indigenous communities in the Americas. That it is a federal holiday in the United States is regarded as hideous, a celebration of genocide and colonization. However, beginning thirty years ago, indigenous peoples formed an international movement, demanding, for one thing, that October 12 be commemorated as an international day of mourning for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Informally, the day has been appropriated as Indigenous Peoples Day.

Fasting for Peace

Religious leaders of all faiths are joining together this coming Monday, October 8th, for an Interfaith Fast to End the War in Iraq. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, co-author of The Tent of Abraham, forwarded this call to participate, which you can read in full at his Shalom Center blog:

In grief we see that our culture, our society, our public policies, are honeycombed with violence. Daily murders in the streets of our cities, recurrent mass murders in our schools, violence in our families, on our television programs, our films, our computer games—and in Iraq.

On October 8 we will gather to focus on the last and bloodiest of these. We must end the shattering of Iraqi and American lives by offering American generosity and support—but not control—for international and nongovernmental efforts to assist Iraqis in making peace and rebuilding their country, while swiftly and safely bringing home all American troops.

Today we call for Americans to join in a fast from sunrise to sunset on Monday, October 8, to bring the spiritual renewal and empowerment of fasting to bear on healing ourselves.

Of course, Monday is also a civic holiday—one with highly problematic provenance. Next week we'll get an explanation of the alternative to Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. We're also honoring National Coming Out Day next Thursday with thoughts from Kai Wright and Massachusetts State Representative Carl Sciortino. Remember to check that RSS feed!