McKibben speculates that this is due to the hyper-individualism of American society, which leads us to spend much more time either immersed in work, or alone at home.  Even in nuclear families, the tendency today is for each member of the family to be off in his or her corner, plugged into some kind of electronic media machine, instead of socializing with others. 

Somehow we seem to have convinced ourselves that “texting” on AOL, MySpace or Facebook, or emailing, or being on the receiving end of TV and other media entertainment is a reasonable equivalent of face-to-face time with friends and family. 

It isn’t. 

This is part of the same trend that put laptops in school classrooms in the vain hope that the machine would be a more powerful learning aid than a dynamic teacher and engaged peers. 

As a college teacher, I have been concentrating more and more on improving the collaborative learning skills of my students.  In my classroom, learning is less about my feeding students with my pre-digested knowledge, and more about helping students to feel the excitement that comes with sharing ideas, exploring unknown territory, and working together to come up with new insights. 

 At every level of education, teachers need to focus on enhancing the interactive, face-to-face excitement of learning, as a deliberate counter to an increasingly alienated social environment.   

I was not at all surprised to read in today’s New York Times about an ACT study showing that only one in four teens who have taken four years of college preparatory core courses in high school are actually prepared for college.  That’s because our whole public school education has been geared towards passing multiple-choice tests, rather than the dynamic, collaborative problem-solving across disciplines that characterizes quality college education.

What’s really a shame is when you see this same dumbed-down, rote-learning multiple-choice approach occurring in college as well—what a swindle for students who think that the struggle to get their BA is going to be worth a lot to them in the long run. 

Each of us gets only one shot, at least in this lifetime, at our 12 to 20 years of education.  A very few might get to do it over again, or do it later in life, but for most of us, these first 25 years are absolutely crucial to the unfolding of the rest of our lives.  We owe it to our children, and ourselves, to make these the most exciting, value-laden days of our lives. 

We have the know-how.  We just need the collective understanding and determination to make the necessary improvements in educational policy and teacher training.  Will the political and educational leaders who can make this happen please stand up?

 But meanwhile, there’s been more bad news from Baghdad: Riverbend and her family have finally decided to leave.  When I read this news in her blog the other day, it really sounded like the death knell for any possibility of a sane solution there.  If Riverbend and her family are giving up on peace, that to me says it ain’t gonna happen, anytime soon.

There was plenty of posturing this week in Washington—Hillary calling for a vote to revoke the original Congressional authorization of war, Gates saying a pullout now will just embolden the terrorists, Bush idiotically “staying the course” in his White House bunker—but behind all the politicians and their hot air runs the steady of stream of silent flag-draped coffins coming home day by day.  April was the bloodiest month of the war since 2003, and who knows what May will bring? 

The war itself is just a symptom of much deeper problems, of course.  Simply stopping the war isn’t enough.  We have to move ahead on replacing oil with renewable energy sources.  We have to stop burning so much money in weapons, and start pumping our cash into our greatest renewable resource, human beings: education, health, social welfare—and also the welfare of the planet that gives us life. 

I KNOW we can turn this disastrous mess around, if we can just get enough people to understand what we must do, and why.  Here is a crusade worth fighting for.   

 But right now it’s May in Massachusetts, and the only thing I really want to be doing is working in my garden, digging and planting until every muscle aches, and the vision I have in my mind’s eye begins to take shape in reality.   At least with these small battles of earth and stone, when I quit for the day I know for sure what I’ve accomplished!

]]> http://theglocal.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/spring-break/feed/ 0 jbrowdy http://theglocal.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/for-shame/ http://theglocal.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/for-shame/#comments Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:08:17 +0000 Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez http://theglocal.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/for-shame/ ]]> This week’s media spectacles have been unnerving, to say the least.  First the torrent of national weeping over the VTech tragedy, accompanied by hysterical finger-pointing at the university administration and law enforcement—with barely a whisper on anyone’s part about the two main culprits in that sad affair: mental health care, and gun control. 

Where is the politician who will step up and say what needs to be said about the inadequate mental health care in this country, which becomes even more dangerous with the easy availability of weapons? 

And while we were busy holding candlelight vigils for the 32 innocents who died unnecessarily in their dorms and classrooms, another 171 innocent civilians—that’s one hundred and seventy-one—died in a single bombing in Iraq, followed in quick staccato by another ten one day, fifteen the next, and on and on, interminably. 

Where are our tears for the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed in this unnecessary war?  For the tens of thousands who have been displaced and impoverished and grievously wounded?  Where are our tears and vigils for the thousands of Americans who have been needlessly tossed into the maw of war by the same politicians who are now silent on gun control at home? 

The truth is that there is so much to cry over in this world, which is why Americans probably leap with such passion on any nationally sanctioned excuse to grieve—we need the catharsis, especially in our Prozac nation of false cheer. 

If we weren’t so busy crying this week, maybe we’d find our way to that other wonderful cathartic release: ANGER!  Where is our outrage?  How much do we have to endure of platitudes and inaction, before we stagger out of our media-induced stupor and remind ourselves that the politicians work for us? When will we remember that it’s time to our let our government (by the people, for the people) know, in no uncertain terms, what needs to be done!

Gun control

Universal, single-payer health coverage

Get out of Iraq, and stop the military build-up

Invest in renewable energy, bigtime and fast

Use the tax code to close the inequality gap

Invest in education at home and abroad

Ensure justice and democracy for all, not just for the privileged

There is nothing new or radical on this list, it’s plain common sense that has been on the agenda of every thinking person for many years.  What’s needed is a mass movement to make it happen.  Are you ready?  I am!

 ***

And just one more note: the sight and sound of Alberto Gonzalez sniveling and groveling before the Senate this week was truly sickening.  I feel sorry for the poor guy, obviously loyal to his masters, and willing to go through any humiliation to safeguard their lies and manipulations from public scrutiny.  Alberto, that was truly ignominious, and that’s a word I don’t think I’ve ever had call to use before.  Shame on you.  If we suspected before that you were a political lackey who had no business being Attorney General, well, after your performance on Capitol Hill this week, now we’re sure of it.

It’s still a mystery as to who this shooter was, and why he was angry enough to line up kids in a classroom and blow them away.  It’s not even sure that the one who killed himself was the same one who killed two students in their dorm room hours earlier.  But what is sure is that it was way too easy for this unstable and criminally inclined person to get himself a gun and ammunition, walk onto a college campus, and blow innocent people away.

I hear plenty of American voices calling for more gun control.  And others, just as loud, arguing for more guns, in self-defense.  The obvious truth is that we wouldn’t need gun to defend ourselves against gunmen, if it were a whole lot more difficult to get a hold of guns in the first place. 

The right to bear arms was one thing back in 1776, when the country was far less populated, and hunting for one’s dinner was common.  In the 21^st century, the only possible reason to keep gunshops open to all comers is the greed of the manufacturers.  Gun manufacturers want to sell guns.  Like pharmaceutical companies, who want us to feel sick so we buy drugs, gun manufacturers want us to feel unsafe so we buy guns.  They want criminals to be able to obtain guns easily, so we law-abiding citizens feel unsafe and buy guns. 

 Think I’m being cynical?  The pharmaceutical and weapons manufacturers are some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.  It’s no accident that we don’t have gun control in this country.  It’s no oversight.  It’s greed, pure and simple.

 It’s a tragedy that 32 people died needlessly yesterday in Virginia.  But you know what?  An average of 100 civilians have died needlessly in Iraq every day for the past four years, since the American occupation.  Every day.  In a war funded by trillions of our tax dollars, driven by our thirst for cheap oil.  We’re crying big tears for Virginia, while forking over our tax money to keep killing innocent civilians in Iraq.

 All over the world, armed men using American-made weapons are gunning down civilians (often raping the women and children before they kill them), wreaking havoc that creates refugees that require billions of dollars of aid in reconstruction and life support.  American gun manufacturers supply the hardware that destroys countries, and then American companies supply the materials and expertise to rebuild countries.  It’s a great business plan, isn’t it?  Never mind the “collateral damage” of the hapless civilians caught in the crossfire, whose lives are snatched or ruined.

 Am I being too cynical?

 I’m just sick of the hypocrisy and short-sightedness of Americans. 

 It’s perfectly clear what must be done to prevent tragedies like Virginia Tech from occurring.   Make guns and ammo a controlled substance available only to law enforcement.  Sure, there will be a black market, but the prices will go way up, and the net result will still be fewer loose cannons. 

And while we’re at it, we need to start reining in the weapons manufacturers who sell to dictators and guerilla leaders abroad.  America should not be the weapons supplier to the world!  America should lead the way to peace and prosperity in the world, not endless strife and destruction. 

I would like to be proud to call myself an American.  This April, it ain’t gonna happen.

Why was I feeling hopeful?  Because finally there are signs that the entire world community is paying attention to the global climate crisis, and beginning to actively take steps to reduce carbon emissions, preserve forests, and invent cleaner technology.  Finally, it looked like the key world players were united against a common enemy, global warming, which we would have to work together to overcome.

Today, I have to admit, I am feeling less hopeful. 

The unrelenting violence in Iraq, and the apparent inability of any of the political players to move on and start truly re-building that country, is getting to me.  A month into the “troop surge,” aka escalation, we are seeing more violence, and worse violence, not less.  George W. Bush is throwing more young American troops into the maw of the conflict, and forcing them to stay there longer, and instead of making things better, this strategy is clearly making things worse. 

American troops must get out of Iraq.  The power vacuum left by the death of Saddaam is something the Iraqis have to deal with on their own.  They hated Saddaam, and he was an evil man—made more powerfully evil by weapons supplied by the United States, paid for with petrodollars that also came from us and our insatiable thirst for oil.  We got rid of him, and unleashed a civil war, the end of which no one can see.  But clearly we’ve done enough damage there and should just get out of the crossfire now.  The ancient politics between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, Iraqis and Iranians, have to play out on their own terms.

It just seems like the masculine principles of domination and destruction have the upper hand everywhere on our planet.  Women are under siege.  Animals and plant life are under siege.  It’s getting worse, not better, despite the advances of feminist activism, despite scientific understanding of the interconnection of all living things on Earth. 

If human society, and all life on our beautiful bluegreen planet, goes up in flames in the next 30 years, as is looking all too likely today, well, men, it will be your doing.  You have brought us to this crisis.  And frankly, I don’t trust you to be able to pull us back safely from the brink.  Your history doesn’t bode well for the future.

Here’s the big question.  Is it possible that women, and the few good men of feminist principle, can seize the steering wheel and avert the impending disaster?  Are there enough of us?  Are we powerful enough, brave enough, determined enough?  Can we unite and really make a difference? 

 I am not feeling hopeful today. 

Cancer is an epidemic in the U.S. on practically the same scale as HIV/AIDS in Africa, except that it’s being “managed” here a bit more carefully, at least for those who have health insurance and can afford expensive supplemental treatments.

 Today’s New York Times op-ed page has a big spread on cancer—focusing mainly on treatment (the last piece is about “living with” breast cancer).  There’s also a wonderful comic by cancer survivor Marisa Acochella Marchetto that makes what I consider to be an essential, and under-recognized point: while the U.S. spends $11.5 billion a year on cancer treatment research, the tobacco industry spends $15.5 billion a year on advertising making cigarette smoking look glamorous, while Americans spend a shocking $68 billion a year buying themselves sugary, chemical-laden sodas!

 Here’s the thing, folks.  While of course more money for cancer treatment research would be good, what is really needed is a widespread, aggressive, deadly serious public campaign to rid our society, and the world, of the chemicals that cause cancer to begin with.

 It’s no coincidence that cancer rates in the U.S. began to skyrocket some 30 years after the “green revolution” of the 1960s.  What we’re seeing is the results of several decades of pumping a myriad of chemicals into our food, water, and air, most of which do not undergo sufficient testing before they are launched in the field.  

The American food and water supply is laced with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that are known to cause cancer.  But you don’t hear anyone in the government talking about that, do you?  Why not?

Why not?  Because the giant corporations that produce and distribute these chemicals are also the ones who contribute to political campaigns.  Thus we find loggers being put in charge of the forestry service, oilmen in charge of the energy department, and so on.   The insurance and pharmaceutical industries have a vested interest in treating cancer.  They could care less about preventing it. 

The government has grossly abandoned its responsibility to protect the people as regards the scourge of cancer.  It’s every man or woman for herself, and lord help those who lack health insurance. 

So what can you do, on a personal level, to ward off cancer?  Don’t smoke.  Don’t use pesticides or herbicides in your garden.  Make every effort to buy organic food, preferably locally produced.  Use natural cleaning products in your home.  If you suspect your well or municipal water supply may be contaminated, buy bottled drinking water.

Of course, it’s impossible to protect yourself entirely from all the chemicals out in the environment.  I was reminded just yesterday how difficult this is when my husband came home with a new plastic shower curtain liner to replace our moldy old one.  When it came out of its bag, the PVC reek made us gag, and this morning’s shower was, I know, totally toxic.  But what can you do?  A shower curtain liner is a must, right? 

There’s no way to insulate ourselves entirely from our toxic environment.  But one thing we can do is to insist that our elected representatives stop playing dumb when it comes to dealing with the cancer epidemic.  Funding for new treatments is all very well, but what we really need is prevention.  We desperately need to start thinking about how to undo the nightmare of the so-called “green revolution.”  We desperately need research on how to grow crops without massive inputs of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.  It can be done, just like solar energy can be done, if we put our collective minds to it. 

The “green revolution” has now definitively been show to be a hollow, dangerous sham, good only for the Monsantos and Dows of the world.  If you’re not convinced by the damage that’s being done to people by these chemicals, listen to the bees, who have gone AWOL by the millions in the past year.  No one quite knows why, but scientists suspect it has to do with overexposure to the chemicals on the fields the bees are pollinating.   

Without the bees, human beings will starve.  Will things have to get that bad before we wake up and start paying attention?

The trumpeting and braying on Capitol Hill, partisan politics riding roughshod over the lives of too many good honest people, Americans and people from other countries as well (American treatment of immigrants in this country is appalling). 

The stupidity of pols like Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), who lick the boots of industry magnates rather than representing in good faith the ordinary folks who are dying, and will die in even greater numbers, in tragic payment for our inaction today on the environment and the climate crisis (see his interchange with Al Gore yesterday). 

The hideousness of signing a blank check for another $100 billion dollars for the occupation of Iraq, when so many of our own people here at home can’t afford health care, can’t afford a college education, can’t even manage to keep up with their mortgage payments.

You know the list; the list goes on. 

But there are some good people who are courageously standing up and refusing to be silenced.  Al Gore’s courageous testimony on Capitol Hill this week was a balm to my sick heart. Bill McKibben is an inspiration, with his Step it Up campaign to enlist college students and other Americans to join in the battle for responsible energy use.  The indomitable Cindy Sheehan, who isn’t afraid to call the Bush family the biggest crime family of our time, and to insist that the most responsible thing our lawmakers could do with their time would be to immediately begin the impeachment hearings of GW Bush.  Noam Chomsky, who I heard recently on Alternative Radio giving his razor-sharp analysis of American imperialism in Latin America; and Vandana Shiva, who has made it her lifework to resist the privatization of water and the takeover of agriculture by international corporations. 

I join my own hope to the fires that these activists keep alight.  Without hope we have nothing; with hope, we can find ways to turn our sick world around.  There is no more important task for us today. 

I close with some inspiring words from Cindy Sheehan, posted on the first day of spring, 2007:

“Some people accuse me of being “angry.” I just want to say, I am not “angry,” I am filled with a white-hot rage that my first born is dead. My courageous, sweet, honorable, honest, funny, irreplaceable Casey is dead so companies like Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Exxon, Raytheon, etc can rape the American taxpayers. But can it be rape when the partner is willing?

“I am outraged that Congress expediently buys into Bush’s evil rhetoric that voting to cut off the funding will not be supporting the troops! THE TROOPS AREN’T GETTING THE MONEY! Blackwater security agents make more in two days in Iraq than our troops do in a month. Blackwater security agents are better equipped and armored than our troops. Our troops are dying guarding pipelines and Halliburton convoys.

“I am angry for 3200 other wonderful lives cut short like Casey’s and I am angry that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, because L. Paul did his job of increasing the insurgency well and was rewarded handsomely for it.

“The people who say I am angry are correct. I am also angry that there is not sufficient fury in this country to get our citizens to demand that Congress pull back the money from the war profiteers and bring our troops home.

“I am especially enraged that BushCo are still in power: reigning free to commit any crimes impervious to all slings and arrows. I am sick of waiting for the time when BushCo’s “Get out of jail free” card expires.

“When will the nightmare end?

“I suspect never, as long as the Military Industrial Complex is running roughshod over every branch of our government with the silent complicity of the American public.”

But Cindy has hope, or she wouldn’t be working so tirelessly for change.  The American public will not be complicit forever!  We will make things better for our children!  We must!

Happy Spring.

Let’s hear it once more for Riverbend, the indefatigable Iraqi woman blogger, whose last two posts have offered translation and commentary on the extraordinary televised testimony of a 20-year-old Iraqi woman who says she was raped by Iraqi security forces in Baghdad.

As Riverbend notes, “No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.”

No Iraqi woman—perhaps no Muslim woman anywhere—would publicly, falsely, claim she was raped. Yet nevertheless, we find Prime Minister Maliki doing what men so frequently do when confronted with rape accusations: employing the classic feints of dodging, denying, and smearing the victim. After the woman testified on Al Jazeera television, Maliki’s office shot back a statement contending that “medical examinations” showed that “the woman had not been subjected to any sexual attack whatsoever.”

According to the New York Times write-up of this incident, “Mr. Maliki went beyond trying to prove that the woman had not been raped, implying that she was unmarried and having an affair.”

The Times also reports that the victim was “treated at an American-administered hospital in the Green Zone,” but General William B. Caldwell IV, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad, refused to confirm the woman’s testimony. Delicate politics at work here: the Americans offering the woman treatment (and in the Green Zone no less–obviously she’s well-connected), but refusing to take her side against the (male) powers that be.

Al Jazeera reported that the young woman, a Sunni Muslim whose name has been released as Sabrine Al-Janabi, was married but her husband was away when “police raided her house early on Sunday in the Amil district of western Baghdad.

“She said the commandos accused her of cooking for Sunni fighters and took her to a police camp where the attack occurred.

“One of them put his hand on my mouth so no one outside the room could hear me,” she said in an AP videotape.

Riverbend, translating the woman’s televised testimony, gives us a much fuller report of Al-Janabi’s testimony. “ I told him [the police offider], ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, ‘You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, ‘Are you finished? We also want our turn.’

Riverbend commends this young woman as possibly “the bravest Iraqi woman ever” because she came forward with public testimony of her rape.

Just how dangerous this is is indicated by the end of the Al-Jazeera online version of the story. The last words of the article are: “A woman who acknowledges being raped risks death at the hands of male relatives seeking to restore their family’s honour.”

Note that it is the rape victim, not the rapist, who must die to “restore the family’s honour”!

Since the National Police are largely Shia, and Al-Janabi is a Sunni Muslim, this incident has the potential to touch off yet more waves of sectarian violence. Riverbend predicts that the “dodge, deny and smear” response of the Maliki government will simply encourage the young woman’s relatives to seek “vigilante justice.

“Why leave it to the security forces and police?” she says with weary cynicism. “Simply hire a militia or gang to get revenge. If he doesn’t get some justice for her, her tribe will be forced to… And the Janabat (the Al Janabis) are a force to be reckoned with.”

Over and over again we see male-initiated conflicts being fought on the terrain of women’s bodies. Look into the anguished eyes of Sabrine Al-Janabi.

Will she ever be the same after this? Can she bear to live with the disgrace that has befallen her? Does she have much longer to live?

This sad story repeats over and over again in places where fundamentalist religions are used as an excuse to control women’s bodies (and often their minds, too). When will it be possible to liberate women from these patriarchal chains? How many more Sabrine’s need to suffer before lasting change is demanded and enforced?

When I first began to organize the annual International Women’s Day conference at Simon’s Rock six years ago, few local people even realized that such a commemorative day existed! Now it does seem to be gaining currency, as more and more women become educated, join the white-collar workforce, and are elected to high political office.

Still, for all the success women have had in breaking down traditional discriminatory barriers, the job is far from done. Women still earn on 74 cents on the male dollar for exactly the same work; in Massachusetts, the statistic is even worse: women earn 61 cents on the male dollar. In the US, the “double shift” is grinding away at the many women who work fulltime and are also expected to carry on with their traditional burdens of housework and parenting. Media continues to portray young women as sexual objects, valued far more for their bodies than their minds.

In so many other countries in the world, women are contending with deeply entrenched discrimination: in Saudi Arabia, women are still not allowed to drive cars; in Libya, women cannot travel abroad without an accompanying man; in Afghanistan, the Taliban is rising again, and the burqa has returned. All over the world, but especially in poverty-stricken regions, young women are sold into sexual slavery or trafficked for sweatshops and domestic labor. Women are sold into marriage, too; and once in marriage, they have few rights. In regions of war and conflict, women bear the brunt of civilian displacement, sexual abuse, hunger and fatality.

No, when you look out into the world, despite the brave face we put on International Women’s Day, there’s a hell of a lot of work to do for the world’s women.

I am not sure whether it’s good news or not that the United Nations seems to be leaning towards the creation of a billion-dollar super-agency for women, a consolidation of three smaller agencies, including UNIFEM. Certainly it’s a good sign that the leadership at the U.N. is recognizing the importance of including women at every step of the development process, and improving education, and political and financial access for women so they can be fully and fairly integrated into their societies. And certainly more funding will help. I just hope that a bigger agency doesn’t result in more bureaucracy and less efficiency on the ground, where the aid is so badly needed.

All in all, it does feel that as the March winds blow the first warm breath of Spring into the Berkshires, we are entering a productive and hopeful new era for women. There is much work to be done. But there are many hands bending to the task, and with renewed vigor we will dedicate ourselves to manifesting our vision of empowered, happy, productive and autonomous women worldwide. We must remember to enjoy the process even as we look ahead to the goal.