Thursday, September 22, 2011
Intro
Before Me
Since I started talking to my grandfather about his experiences in World War II, I’ve taken a great interest in history. History motivated me to start caring about school at the age of 16 and I’m glad it did. Fiction can be beautiful, but I find non-fiction fascinating and can rarely find time for fictional works. A good history teacher will connect their subject to the present and make it applicable. With that said, here’s the history I’ve been able to scrape up about the generations that preceded me.
My family (that is, with the surname “Averell”) came to North American continent in the mid 1600’s. From what I can tell we did fairly well in Massachusetts. My great great great great great great great great grandfather William died in 1691, a little over a year before his sister was executed for being a witch. My family did not stay around Massachusetts for long, choosing to move to the frontier (Maine). My family lived in Maine where Job, the grandson of William, apparently often fought with American Indians, killing at least one. An excerpt from a book on my family history:
During one of the Indian raids when Job and his brother-in-law were out after the cattle they were surprised by Indians. The brother-in-law was shot and killed; Job was wounded in the foot and captured before he reached the stockade. He was taken up on the mountain, called ever since “Job’s Mountain,” in full view of those inside the fort, and tortured but would not confess how many were in the fort. For three days he was held there and suffered at the hands of the Indians, but always persisted in saying that there were a great many in the fort, when in truth there were only the members of his family. The Indians then took him to Canada, but he was ransomed after six months. His hair which was dark when he went away, was snow white when he returned, and he had lost the great toe of his wounded foot.
Approximately five decades later my family relocated again, this time to Fremont, WI around the time Wisconsin became a state. For several generations it appears that my family logged the forests of central Wisconsin.
If I recall correctly, my research of the census records for Fremont did not turn up any non-white people for several decades. My great grandfather John logged Wisconsin forests and then went to Europe to fight in The Great War. He was a logger, soldier, and from what my family tells me, a drunk. I imagine he was insufferable since my great grandmother went to the lengths of divorcing him at a time (the 1950’s) when divorce wasn’t so common. I vaguely remember visiting her as a child. She was first generation from Sweden and by all accounts, a tough woman.
My grandfather John W. seemed to take a similar trajectory as his father. He grew up in rural Wisconsin, was drafted, and fought in Europe during World War II. This photo appears to confirm that he took the saying “You wash my back, and I’ll wash yours” literally. I never met him since he died in the 1970’s, but I found out that he was court martialled for whatever antics he got up to in Europe. Within six years of his return to the U.S. he had three children, including my father. He married a “good Irish woman,” someone I generally refer to as “my kick ass grandma.” My grandfather worked for American Motors in Milwaukee and my grandmother worked at Smith Brothers filleting fish. My father volunteered for the Army at 17 and regrettably found himself in Vietnam in 1969. His hat from Vietnam lies in a box in Milwaukee with a Snoopy pin that says “It’s been a long year.” He had three children and raised a fourth, my half-brother (a term I never grew up using or knowing). He campaigned for numerous Wisconsin Democrats in the 1980’s, worked for the City of Milwaukee, and was the President of his union for nearly two decades. I don’t have as deep a knowledge of my mother’s side since much of the family history had already been compiled. While my paternal grandmother lectured me on my Irishness (“Do you know what they did to the Irish, Brian?”) and occasionally threatened to sell me to the Gypsies, my mother’s side argued that I was in fact German. Part of my mother’s side came to the U.S. illegally from Germany in the mid-1800’s and has mainly lived in Ozaukee County since then. German was spoken at home into the 1960’s and my grandfather (at 93) has trouble pronouncing “th” words (three = tree, that = dat, etc.) My maternal grandfather also fought in World War II. His love for Germany died when real Germans nearly killed him on numerous occasions. He was drafted and reluctant to go to war. He came home, had six children, and worked in a tool and die shop for decades.
That’s a brief summary of some family history. I’ve included this section because it’s all a part of my identity and has profoundly affected the direction of my life. How it has affected me should become clearer in the following posts.
 |
| John Averill, 3rd from Left |
If I recall correctly, my research of the census records for Fremont did not turn up any non-white people for several decades. My great grandfather John logged Wisconsin forests and then went to Europe to fight in The Great War. He was a logger, soldier, and from what my family tells me, a drunk. I imagine he was insufferable since my great grandmother went to the lengths of divorcing him at a time (the 1950’s) when divorce wasn’t so common. I vaguely remember visiting her as a child. She was first generation from Sweden and by all accounts, a tough woman.
My grandfather John W. seemed to take a similar trajectory as his father. He grew up in rural Wisconsin, was drafted, and fought in Europe during World War II. This photo appears to confirm that he took the saying “You wash my back, and I’ll wash yours” literally. I never met him since he died in the 1970’s, but I found out that he was court martialled for whatever antics he got up to in Europe. Within six years of his return to the U.S. he had three children, including my father. He married a “good Irish woman,” someone I generally refer to as “my kick ass grandma.” My grandfather worked for American Motors in Milwaukee and my grandmother worked at Smith Brothers filleting fish. My father volunteered for the Army at 17 and regrettably found himself in Vietnam in 1969. His hat from Vietnam lies in a box in Milwaukee with a Snoopy pin that says “It’s been a long year.” He had three children and raised a fourth, my half-brother (a term I never grew up using or knowing). He campaigned for numerous Wisconsin Democrats in the 1980’s, worked for the City of Milwaukee, and was the President of his union for nearly two decades. I don’t have as deep a knowledge of my mother’s side since much of the family history had already been compiled. While my paternal grandmother lectured me on my Irishness (“Do you know what they did to the Irish, Brian?”) and occasionally threatened to sell me to the Gypsies, my mother’s side argued that I was in fact German. Part of my mother’s side came to the U.S. illegally from Germany in the mid-1800’s and has mainly lived in Ozaukee County since then. German was spoken at home into the 1960’s and my grandfather (at 93) has trouble pronouncing “th” words (three = tree, that = dat, etc.) My maternal grandfather also fought in World War II. His love for Germany died when real Germans nearly killed him on numerous occasions. He was drafted and reluctant to go to war. He came home, had six children, and worked in a tool and die shop for decades.
 |
| My maternal grandfather (seated) |
Growing Up _____
I
was born and raised on the west side of Milwaukee. Gilles Frozen Custard, the long torn down
Fruit Ranch, the Milwaukee Brewers, and movies were my young life. During my childhood I collected over 1,000
baseball players’ autographs, both famous and not so famous (anyone interested
in 60 Jeff D’Amico autographs?).
My dad insisted on “culturing” us.
I spent many late nights at the Starlight and 41 Twin, now defunct
outdoor theaters. The year before the 41
Twin shut down I wandered the parking lot cutting old speakers from their
stands. We watched silent films at the
Paradise Theater in West Allis, sometimes set to live piano. In one week I’d experience a Marx Brothers
film or Chaplin film and something like Home Alone or Aladdin. In retrospect, my parents seem somewhat
oblivious to the rating system since I saw Unforgiven
when it came out. I was 7.
I was captivated by Christopher Columbus, until a couple of films came
out that portrayed him and the people around him as violent. I kind of lost interest after that. I went to a Lutheran grade school. A quick snapshot of me/what I thought at the
time:
-
The world is 10,000 years old
-
“Evolution” is a dirty word and simply false
-
Jesus Christ died for our sins and God is always
watching
-
I’d better be good or I’m not getting one of
those finite spots in heaven
-
Christmas should be all of the time because
everyone should be nice all of the time
-
Ace of Base is awesome
My block in Milwaukee was almost completely white and it was meant to be
that way. As this cell phone picture shows, only people
of “the white race” were allowed to buy property in our area during the 1920’s.
From what I can remember there were about three African Americans in my school
of 350 kids in West Allis. I talked to
one of them since he was in my sister’s class, but the others were much older
or younger. I learned the harshest
racial slurs at school. Later, my
grandmother would bring up racial slurs mostly directed at ethnic whites. It’s unclear if she thought she was imbuing
me with wisdom when she would (and does) say things like “You can call someone
a “Pollack,” but never a “Dumb Pollack.”
While my grandmother’s almost apathetic animosity toward anyone not
Irish holds, she also clearly loved her grandchildren equally. Two of my cousins are black by American standards. I can’t say with any certainty that my
cousins always felt equally treated, but my grandmother never said anything
about them in my or my siblings’ presence that exhibited racism. At face value one could see an old racist
lady, but she’s made a lot of progress.
Her family dog was named "Nigger."
She goes to Catholic Church every week, but recently said to my sister,
“I don’t get why people are so upset about gay people, they’re just like us.” If I could meet my grandmother of the 1930's or 40's I doubt I'd be very happy or hopeful that she would turn out as tolerant as she has.
I moved on from grade school angry about what I had been taught (“The
Jews deserved the Holocaust because they killed Jesus,” etc.) and slowly began
realizing that I hadn’t been taught a lot of important things. As far as I remember, the Civil Rights era
never factored into my education from Pre-K – 12. That’s a fucking problem. And what about those people that “kidnapped”
my ancestor Job in Maine? Where were they
in my history books/classes?
My parents
sent us to a private high school that ended up costing more than my college
tuition. I wasted a good chunk of that
time being an awkward teenager. On
September 11th, my sophomore year, I immediately thought of Osama
bin Laden as the prime suspect due to his connection to the U.S. embassy
bombings in Africa. I couldn’t help but
know a few things about current events because of my dad’s daily news ritual
included local “news,” national news, and then two viewings of the same episode
of The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. I was
shocked by the actions on that day, but I wasn’t too afraid. My family was never that into being
afraid. When people hyped “Y2K” and
asked if we were preparing, my dad would always joke that we had enough
baseball bats for each family member to loot.
We just aren’t the type of family to buy plastic wrap and duct tape to
completely seal our house from a biological terrorist attack. We'd rather laugh at that suggestion.
In summary, I think we could say that my siblings and I had a fairly
sterile white, middle class, suburban Christian upbringing. Our mom grilled us to see if we were
doing or were ever offered drugs, wouldn’t allow us to go to the mall because we’d be
raped (seriously), and generally looked to Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, and the
rest of the crew at 20/20 to tell her about all of the new destructive fads
that kids were getting into. We were
sheltered as children and that’s probably what ultimately led me to spend a
lot of time outside of Milwaukee in the past seven years.
Getting Active
 |
| (credit: Robert Capa) |
2002 – In my senior year of high school I was considering joining the military. Years of the standard American propaganda had pushed me in that direction. As I studied World War II I imagined taking part in another fight that had what appeared to be a very clear right and wrong side. I would be the 4th generation in a row to serve if I signed up. There was tradition, a sense of purpose, and for a 17 year old, explosions. Explosions are definitely cool. My on-going discussions with my grandfather launched him into fits in his sleep, literally kicking and screaming, fighting battles in his sleep until my grandma could wake him up. In World War II they called it “shell shock.” Today we know it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My grandfather came in on Normandy on June 7, 1944. We commonly know June 6th as D-Day and likely have images of the beginning of Saving Private Ryan in our mind when we think of it. My grandfather has the images of over 2,000 bodies chewed up by rifle, machine gun, artillery, and mortar fire in his mind. My father has never opened up about Vietnam much, but he made it clear that joining the military would be a mistake on my part. I would be lied to and used.
Interacting with my family regarding their experiences in wars made me wonder about their roles. How many people has my father killed? What about my grandfathers? Even if they haven’t killed anyone, what does the simple act of trying do to a person?
With the war in Afghanistan started and an administration gearing up for war in Iraq, I suggested that my high school hold our annual Fall fundraiser to benefit the local Veterans Affairs clinic on 76th and Silver Spring. They served mostly Vietnam veterans with psychological issues. Many of them were homeless. The center was at risk of losing a staff person when we stepped in. I made the argument to my classmates that some of them may need those services in the future since it was likely some of us would end up fighting in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Sadly, the war in Afghanistan has become the longest in American history. The toll on American troops can be seen through incredibly high suicide rates, divorce rates, and the average amount of tours each soldier has seen, often without adequate healthcare. One can look a lot of places to start to figure out the impact of these wars on people in Afghanistan and Iraq. I find the stories of Pat Tillman, Abu Ghraib, and Restrepo incredibly interesting.
2004 – (August, 2004 – May, 2005) I spent a year at UWM and was a bit bored so I got a second job (I’ve worked since I was 14) while going to school full time. At the second job I met an Englishman who inspired me to look at a Working Holiday Visa. In one day I decided I was going to travel to New Zealand. I was 19 and for whatever reason decided to get the hell out of not just Milwaukee, but the U.S. I had been to New Orleans for a few days with a friend, but had never travelled on my own.
I spent the better part of a year driving around the South Island doing odd jobs and learning a lot about life. My experience gave me a totally new perspective on the U.S. In the midst of the 2004 election, foreigners accusingly asked, “Who are you voting for!?” The correct answer (for them) also happened to be true. I did not encounter many Americans and I was somewhat thankful because it meant I was out of my element more often than not. I lived in small town in the deep south for a few months. I worked three jobs at one hotel set next to a beautiful national park I encountered a different kind of racism. The Maori and South Pacific Islanders were “black” in New Zealand, but they didn’t resemble anything I knew as “black.” I learned that many Kiwis hate Asians. I can’t remember which Asian countries have the highest immigration rates to NZ, but it didn’t really matter since racists tend not to discern these differences.
I left that job and WWOOFed for a while, lived in my tent on an apple orchard, and then got a job on a squid boat. That was probably the dumbest thing I have ever done. It’s the most dangerous industry in the world for a reason. I was out of place. I was in college, lacked a drug habit and jail story, and had all of my teeth. For 28 days at sea my name alternated between “Milwaukee” and “cunt.” Sometimes I was “a good cunt.” This is flattery in its most vulgar form. I was not thrilled to find out that a few of my colleagues had killed people. I’ve never worked or thrown up so hard in my life.
The jobs I did in New Zealand taught me a lot about class. Who does those jobs in America? Who picks our fruit? Mexicans, Haitians, and other immigrants, often undocumented, fill those positions. These are the jobs that some politicians accuse immigrants of stealing from Americans, yet I know no one begging to pick tomatoes in a field for very little pay. It’s labor that causes permanent damage to the body over years. When my boss at a vineyard kept my paycheck for over $300, I felt I had little recourse at the end of the day and I was in the country legally.
Besides seeing the type of people that took part in industrial fishing, I witnessed a devastating level of environmental destruction. We dredged up the ocean floor, uprooting fragile coral. The term “by-catch” is an insult to living beings. Our nets did not discriminate, sweeping up sharks, skates, monkfish, barracuda, and a host of other fish deemed not profitable enough to be cut and frozen. Against international law, they went overboard, dead, to float on the waves until one of the hundreds of albatrosses following us plucked them out. We apparently were the hand(s) of the free market, tossing all of the less profitable sea life back into the ocean. We tossed our garbage into the ocean as well. Thankfully bottom-trawling is no longer legal in New Zealand waters, but I shudder to think of the damage done over decades of overfishing.
A couple of months later I sat in Fiji reading a book that changed my life. Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power mentioned things I had never read about and I wanted to know more. I was angry, inspired, and thirsty for more. I couldn’t wait to get off of the beaches in Fiji and back to UWM to start something. My first act was to contact Greenpeace in New Zealand to try to get them to do something about the boat I served on. Greenpeace has a strong history in New Zealand. They were so effective for a time that French government conspired to stop them, murdering a Greenpeace photographer in the process. Guess how many years in prison that’s worth. Injustice seemed to lurk under ever book I overturned and I was starting to look abroad for somewhere to focus.
2005 – I was back on campus and started a student org as soon as I figured out that no one else around me/already active was interested in poverty alleviation. I had gone out on a limb and volunteered for The ONE Campaign that summer and enjoyed doing concert outreach. Who wouldn’t want to talk about AIDS and poverty for hours on end to strangers!? So I’m obviously in the minority on that one, but I found sharing information like that to be incredibly exciting. On campus I hooked up with the Student Labor Action Coalition to meet my anti-war needs, but they turned out to be more ideological than I was interested in. A bunch of nerdy teenage/early 20's anarchists and communists will certainly challenge your beliefs and I was better off for running into them. The ridiculousness of the politics of the left slowly emerged. You’re an anarchist, but you have a trust fund? You don’t believe in reform, only revolution? What does that mean in a practical sense?
They promoted a lot of self examination. I was still trying to undo years of hatred and bigotry taught to me in grade school and make sense of the world I grew up in. There was always a subtle form of racism that was there in my life. I couldn’t have said this then, but I would argue that it’s in everyone’s life because we Americans grow up in a racist society. Not in a white hoods and burning crosses way, but in a way that white people are generally unaware of yet, practice on a daily basis. My views on human sexuality had been backwards as hell after grade school. I absorbed the bigoted views I was taught, but didn't fully believe embrace them. My disgust with my grade school made it easier to question the things I was taught at the time. That disgust is revived when every time I read about its effects. Looking back in 2005 I thought: “I contributed to an oppressive atmosphere in my younger years so what was I going to do about it now?”
2006 – I decided I was going to Ethiopia with the Africology Dept. in the summer of 2006. I’d try to hook up with some NGO and then raise funds for them. Our small group on campus already had some money. The trip was cancelled and I ended up going on the Dave Matthews Band tour and VANS Warped Tour all summer working for ONE and Oxfam doing outreach. I also booked a speaker that summer to show his film on Haiti. The coup in 2004 had slowly caught my attention and I was reading more and more about how the UN was killing a lot of Haitians in the slums.
By Fall, 2006, Ethiopia had disappeared from the map and I was planning a trip to Haiti with two friends and a local contact. I was catching a ton of documentaries, reading all kinds of books and really enjoying school. I started getting involved in campus politics, especially once we discovered a friend’s votes had been shredded in an election he likely won and the former Student Association President had embezzled over $10,000. We scheduled press conferences with local media, I made public records requests, and we talked to local law enforcement, handing over all of the evidence of theft we could find. The former SA President face a handful of felony and misdemeanor counts of theft and ultimately got off lightly.
That year the student government began an attack that lasted through the next couple of years. Resource centers that served minorities on campus had their funding slashed by the largely white male “representatives” of the student body. A commenter who (if I recall correctly) wasn’t yet involved in student government, but in following years held key roles openly stated on his blog, "If mainstream black anglo-hating racists can't find a way to function in normal society and use the intelligence that God gave them, perhaps they ask to be held down and discriminated against, and placed back into slavery.” With views like that one can imagine how easily it was for him to vote to defund minority resources centers.
In late 2006, I helped restart Students for a Democratic Society at UWM with a handful of other activists. I initially saw my role in that organization as minimal, but the more I attended meetings, the more I realized I needed to stick around and take it seriously. Beside my work in Haiti, other student orgs/work took a back seat to SDS.
--
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lilla Watson/Aboriginal activists groups, Queensland 1970’s
--
2007 – I love the quote above and started seeing truth in it around this time. I visited Haiti on Independence Day, January 1st, 2007. A week and a half earlier the UN had machine gunned the slums of Port-au-Prince from their helicopters. Kidnapping was getting a lot of press coverage since President Aristide had been overthrown in 2004, the former Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, and a Catholic priest who was an anti-dictatorship activist in the 1980’s were all imprisoned by the interim government. I was trying to see past the Haiti that is so often presented in Western media with a last name; “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” Gina Athena Ulysse, one of those rare people who balances life as an artist, academic, and activist among other things, often says “Yes, we are poor and have a history of political strife, but it’s not innate. And hell no, it’s not because we are mostly black. We are not reducible to our conditions.” I hadn’t met Gina yet in 2007, but I sought her type of perspective, hell, any Haitian perspective. So often there are white intermediaries (I am one for many people, aren’t I?) in these stories and not just for Haiti and Haitians. These are the people that rarely get a spot on television when an interview is needed. Their critiques are too strong, their presentation too bold, and their words are not indigestible to a media built on sound bites and a lack of depth. There are exceptions of course.
So what did I see in Haiti and why did I go? I went with no French skills (not too useful anyway), no Kreyol (most important language in the country), and a hell of a lot of privilege. I flew into PAP on 1/1/07 as I mentioned. I stayed at St. Joseph’s in Delmas near the spot where Jean Dominique was assassinated seven years prior. We stayed a night and flew to the north where we visited San Souci, La Citadelle Laferriere, and most importantly, toilets. I had been connected to Sasha Kramer and SOIL two years before they started getting some recognition for trying to tackle Haiti’s dismal access to toilets (here’s where we get comfortable talking about poop a lot). On par with sub-Saharan Africa, most places in Haiti lack sanitary facilities. In a country with serious funding problems, installing a Western style system would be incredibly costly. Maintaining it and supplying it with water and chemicals for treatment would also be incredibly costly. SOIL decided to do ecological sanitation work. Their toilets would separate urine from feces, eliminating much of the odor, and allowing the feces to compost and kill off harmful bacteria. Urine can be diluted and used on gardens to recycle nitrogen and create stronger yields. The feces would rehabilitate soil and help with reforestation efforts. That’s the idea at least.
We met with the Mayor of Okap, Haiti's second largest city. Michel St. Croix was shot four times during the coup in 2004. At the time he claimed to know who had shot him, yet claimed to seek not retribution. I also remember him stating that since the United States had just executed Saddam Hussein for his crimes, George W. Bush should face the same fate. The man was not shy about his views.
I visited southwest Haiti as well, meeting a community I hoped to work with in the future. We listened to their requests to see what they wanted from us, instead of arriving with a set agenda. We already knew they wanted toilets and came to discuss site locations and logistics of managing the toilets. Unfortunately, I have not returned to that community since then because I had a falling out of sorts with an American on that trip. We encountered an American woman connected to a man known by everyone in Haiti as a killer. Once I learned her last name I for the most part stopped speaking and we had a long discussion about how dangerous her family was. This wasn’t heeded by my colleague and she proceeded to endanger our lives, ultimately meeting the man in question. This paramilitary leader turned politician had murdered friends of friends of mine and actively hunted others less than three years before. I have a hard time forgiving such idiotic acts when the danger was not only clear, but had been discussed. 2007 was when I learned to disassociate myself from people who may be well intentioned, but can be an incredibly destructive force through their own ignorance and unexamined actions.
On campus I started branching out more academically and my activism continued to consume my free time. I pursued classes based on both my interest in the topics and strong recommendations of professors. The strategy of looking up teacher reviews based on ease of a course was never too attractive to me. I still lived at home and worked my part time job to save money. My round trip commute could be around two hours after 12 hour days on campus. It could be grueling, but I managed to gain access to an office in the Union where I could focus on my work.
My campus activism brought me to the home of someone Sarah Palin would say I “palled around with” and others of that generation. We looked to the past, to the New Left, now old, to see how they approached their problems and tried to examine how ours differed. These people blazed trails, some of which we never wanted to go down on principle alone, but their perspectives were important to use and exciting because once again, they were often untold. As I gained more confidence in my administrative skills I pushed my requests to the student government further. Why can’t I bring Winona LaDuke, two time former Vice Presidential candidate, to speak and pay her her requested honorarium over $2,000? I began testing the limitations of that funding source while openly criticizing the people making the decisions. I had to be on top of my deadlines and fight like hell in my presentation if I wanted any money. The acronym “ACLU” was thrown around once in a while and groups I was involved with seemed to have to appeal more often than others. Paperwork was submitted and somehow lost, but somehow we were responsible.
I continued reading, mostly about slavery, the Civil Rights movements in the U.S., and the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Nigger resonated deeply at the time. I followed up with Callous On My Soul and even got my mom to read both. Inspired by Dick Gregory, I decided to go on a fast, easing out of solids with juice, into water, and then back out with juice again. It was an interesting experience and I was able to meet Dick Gregory during the fast.
As a group we worked on a consensus model. That handed one person a veto among 40. Meetings could last 5 hours and we questioned the process, constantly refining it. Some were discouraged by it and left. Others strove for a democratic process and were intent on having that in every aspect of life. We tried to address the inefficiencies, but never dealt with them well. We say we live in a democracy, but how often do workers get a vote in the workplace? In what matters do students get a vote in their education? What would a democratic classroom look like? These were ideas were grappling with and exploring the potential for. We asked ourselves, “What would a democratic workplace even look like?” If we lived in a democratic society, wouldn’t we all be able to envision such a thing?
2008 – I returned to Haiti for the second time in January, 2008. I had made a commitment to begin taking French and started an independent study program on Haiti, the U.S., and foreign aid. I bit off more than I could chew for those three credits, but it was a way back. UWM funded the trip with scholarships and I had to go through some sort of begging of lawyers to get down there. Things seemed to have stabilized a bit more and I spent more time in the north. I ran into a CIA informant and drank at his bar to try to pretend I wasn’t incredibly uncomfortable around him. I ran into the former Minister of the Interior, who had been released from prison by then. He recognized my friend from a time when she visited him in prison. She had smuggled a former mayor in to consult with his imprisoned allies. That got me an interview with him and a copy of his book in French, written about decentralization of the Haitian government; a task he recommends in his book, yet chose not to enact when he had the power to do so. My thinking on Haiti had evolved. The people whose writing introduced me to Haiti became less trustworthy as I listened to more perspectives. Those on the left in the U.S. that stood in solidarity with Haiti and Haitians seemed out of touch to some extent. They chose to take the approach of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” especially when that “friend” had rhetoric to match their ideology. I’m not going to get into the specifics here because it will likely bore you, but I chose not to take sides in a sense. I struggled to incorporate conflicting information and perspectives, building a more complex and nuanced view of Haiti, it’s history, and politics.
The following month I went to the Bahamas and again, UWM paid for it. It was and is public record. I got bolder with my requests to the student government. Did I go to the Bahamas and get drunk and party? Hardly. I went to a conference on the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade because that’s what nerds do in the Bahamas. We bypassed Anna Nicole Smith’s grave for the area where slaves were imported to the Bahamas. The conference didn’t have a huge impact on me, but allowed me to see a place commonly known as a tourist destination in a different light.
That same month I was accepted to a fellowship at the University of Michigan for the summer. I was starting to get serious about combining my activism and academic work into a fulfilling profession. That summer was difficult. A long term relationship fell apart, my parents began their divorce, and a friend committed suicide. I finally moved out of my parent’s house in my last year of college and got to know a few bars quite well. I had slowly lost touch with friends from high school and friends from college had replaced them. Many, but not all of these friends had stood by me in meetings, lectures, protests, and bars hashing out ideas. We strove for a better world. I never felt comfortable identifying as a communist, Marxist, anarchist, or any other ideology. I wasn’t too interested in being able to define them or their hyphenated brethren. If I could narrowly define myself with such a label, who would even understand it? The left is often good at defining what it’s against, but in SDS we strove to define ourselves by what we were for. I found that I am an anti-capitalist because capitalism stands against what I strive for. I strive for a world in which every person has suitable shelter, access to food, potable water, healthcare, and education in ways that respect and preserve the environment. A political and economic system (such as our own) that concentrates power in the hands of a few will not allow for those things to happen.
By the end of 2008 I had become so busy that I had double booked myself. I had pushed my requests to the limit with the student government, requesting a lot of money to bring Danny Glover to campus. I collaborated with others on campus to make it happen. Unfortunately, I had also planned on attending the Haitian Studies Association conference in Haiti that same day. I chose Haiti. The conference was not the stuffy atmosphere I had feared. I knew the hotel was on one of Haiti’s few clean beaches, but I never thought so many accomplished people could be so humble and welcoming. I went from session to session making new acquaintances, even meeting a woman who exclaimed “You’re the guy from Wisconsin!” I had been trying to contact someone with her organization for over a year via email. Since digitizing some of my family’s photo albums I had digitized a professor’s family’s photos and thought of the potential for a project in Haiti. Luckily the Digital Library of the Caribbean was already up and running in Haiti. We began planning together. I made other connections which have only grown since. On the last night of the conference, people party. The waves came crashing in on the beach and I walked out to watch. As I stepped on to the beach a shirtless professor who will go unnamed, sprinted drunkenly toward the Caribbean, screaming all the way. We all needed a bit of a release. Four days of packed sessions were stressful, but tragedies had continued piling up in Haiti, including that week. Four hurricanes had struck the country, flooding Gonaives and killing hundreds. Days before the conference a school near the capital collapsed, killing dozens of students and teachers. Haiti’s lack of regulation meant the construction crew could skimp on materials to keep costs down. The cost was high for those inside when it collapsed. Countless homes and buildings were constructed up ravines without engineers or standard codes. That story of collapse seems minor today.
2009 – I held my favorite event in February, 2009. I brought my friend Rosemond from Haiti to open for SaulWilliams to a packed room of approximately 1000 people. Student admission was free as it was for almost every event we held. I once again chose to extend my academic career at UWM for a scholarship. UWM helped pay for me to go to Haiti once again in the summer of 2009 to digitize historical documents with the National Archives, National Library, and the Library of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit in Port-au-Prince. This would be the most time I ever spent in Haiti and in Port-au-Prince, a city I wasn’t too comfortable with. I worked in the U.S. Embassy, which purchased a $50,000 scanner and housed it. Their cooperation with Haitian institutions was impressive, but everyone dreams of the day Haitian institutions can host their own scanner, secure it, power it, and connect it to the internet consistently. I digitized documents that dated back to the 1700’s. Time, humidity, and bugs had done a lot of damage and digitization seems to be a great way to preserve these documents quickly. I worked with Haitian staff from the National Archives to train them on how to use both a computer, Photoshop, and the scanner. I had three days of training in Florida, but only because I had the privilege of growing up with a computer, owning a small scanner, and using photoshop for years.
I made a few friends and caught a couple of shows. My friend Andy helped another friend when her father was kidnapped. I was cautious, especially since people associated me with the U.S. Embassy. Waiters at the hotel I lived at could tip kidnappers off to my presence if I seemed like a worthy target. This may sound like paranoia, but less than a year later two women with Doctors Without Borders were kidnapped from that same hotel. I know many people who either have been kidnapped, had family kidnapped, or had friends that were kidnapped. When they’re political kidnappings there are no calls for ransom.
Port-au-Prince is not all kidnappings all of the time, but it’s something to be aware of. My sense is that white Americans (or white foreigners for that matter) are still close to untouchable, although not completely. It’s Haitian Americans that seem to be the prime target, since they are perceived to be connected to larger sums of money in the U.S. The Haitian elite is targeted for the same reason.
In Haiti and other situations I try not to say “No” to new or different experiences. I made a commitment to preserve documents so at times I had to decline invitations, such as a three day Vodou ceremony. I did make it out to Saut d’Eau to visit the waterfalls during the main pilgrimage. I was almost thrown off of a ledge by a woman in trance as I wandered around trying not to be intrusive. I caught up with a former professor in a nearby town where I stayed overnight on a whim, meeting numerous Vodou priests and Vodouisants from the Americas. This is where I was introduced to Haitian art. I never thought of myself as a collector, and still don’t really, but I now have over 20 pieces including wood cuts, iron work, and paintings. Kids at my high school sold much crappier art at a much higher price. The diversity, talent, and accessibility of artwork in Haiti opened a new world to me.
Upon my return to the U.S. I filed my last reports, graduated, and took up a depressing job at a life insurance company. I figured I could save a little money while applying to grad school. I secured an internship for the early summer, 2010 in Haiti, and figured I’d be off to grad school in the Fall of 2010. I just needed to get through cubicle hell.
2010 – I finished my last applications during the first week of January. I wanted to start working on little side projects. I could always digitize more photo albums for my family, interview my grandparents, and possibly produce a Vodou podcast series I had been conducting interviews for. I even considered doing a story for This American Life. I thought about writing an article to get published in an academic journal. I’ve always got a lot of ideas, just not enough time to juggle them all.
A week later nothing really mattered. I came home around 6:15pm from work that Tuesday, tired, opened my computer and went on Facebook. A lawyer I know that works in Haiti had a message that went something like “We reached some people in our office and it appears that the earthquake was really bad.” I can’t even write that line without getting shivers throughout my body. I started searching for all of the information I could find. Few journalists had been in Haiti over the past years. Slowly things emerged. A brief video of the Palais National. It had crumbled. Jesus. My mind shot back to the school collapse in November, 2008. So many poorly constructed buildings…I started thinking of names of people, some I had just met two months earlier. I made phone calls and spent the next six hours on and off the phone with Haitian friends. I couldn’t sleep and spent time reworking an editorial that the Journal Sentinel published a day later. I started calling people to help raise funds. Every day after that was a struggle. People at work knew I had worked in Haiti. It was hard not to cry, especially that first day. I gave an angry interview to someone at the Journal Sentinel on my lunch break. News slowly crept in. They couldn’t find Lynn…Delmas is in bad shape, the hotels where international visitors stayed received lots of coverage while Haitians dug other Haitians out of the rubble without tools, unbeknownst to Anderson Cooper. The largest collection of art in Haiti was now lying under the building that housed it. A school I had visited collapsed completely. There was a prison break. Victoria’s dead. Pat Robertson’s a dick. Where are people going to live? The bodies are rotting in the streets and people can’t breathe.
I considered getting to Haiti immediately, but decided I’d be more in the way that anything. My medical training would only be good had I been on the ground during the immediate aftermath and the following few days. I searched for groups to head down with earlier than my planned internship with a microfinance institution. I found one, applied, and committed to arriving March 1st. I was glad I got to know Haiti before the earthquake. I had drunkenly danced next to Ben Stiller the summer before and knew of a few other celebrities’ presence in Haiti, but a Hollywood flood was coming along with a lot of well intentioned people. The earthquake put Haiti on their maps, or at least they were able to locate the country after January 12th. Context didn’t matter to a lot of people. Trauma is the same everywhere, NGO psychologists said. Haitian community groups were cut off the Log Base (the UN Logistics Base) because they lacked identification. In layman’s terms, it was a cluster fuck.
Anyone with any intention was free(r than before) to come to Haiti and do what they wanted. Child trafficking increased. A group of Christians from Idaho were caught taking “orphans” to the Dominican Republic and jailed. Some people were appalled that Haiti would enforce their laws. I worked near the epicenter of the earthquake. The papers reported that 90% of buildings in Leogane were damaged or destroyed. I ran into a contact from the summer before. He was an assistant to the UN and Prime Minister. He was living in his car. I delivered money and tarps to a priest for a friend. My skin color had always made me a target for begging, but maybe I was someone’s key to access to food, a new job clearing rubble, etc. We smashed rubble in the hot sun and my Kreyol increased as kids followed us around. Children are great teachers. I was interested in telling stories instead of just counting the numbers of houses cleared. I produced a brief video with the help of two friends. One broke down crying and ran out of the room when I showed her the finished version. Some people treated their time in Haiti like a Spring Break party, which for some it was. Volunteers drunkenly puked off the edge of the building as Haitian families in the adjacent tent camp tried to sleep. I couldn’t handle the bravado at some of the work sites so I went to do triage in the hospital. Most of the post-earthquake injuries were gone at that point. I witnessed the violence of poverty and a long term lack of healthcare. I’m not going to go into those stories. I would go back to base and sleep some days because I was so exhausted from the stress and helplessness. My grad school decisions rolled in during these weeks and I couldn’t really care. My problems paled in comparison.
In late March I got out for a mental health break, which is required after four weeks. I didn’t even make it to the fourth week when I needed one. The group lacked accountability and safety was a concern. One man almost killed himself and a day or two later I witnessed him dangerously smashing rubble into children’s faces. Nothing was done. Other more insulting things happened. I planned my exit and got back to Port-au-Prince. I began my internship and spent three months travelling the country and living in Saut d’Eau. Times were tough, but I had an exit. When I was stressed out and sick, I booked a flight home. For Haitians, they already were home. There’s a cliché about Haitians being resilient and some don’t like it because it almost excuses the systemic violence happening because Haitians can handle it, but it’s true that Haitians are resilient.
My stress came from knowing that most of Haiti’s problems are preventable. We have the resources, technology, knowledge, etc. to prevent children from dying from diarrhea, from having their houses collapse on them, and to feed everyone in the world. We don’t allocate those resources to serve human needs, though. 6 weeks after Haiti was struck by an earthquake, a much stronger earthquake struck Chile. Instead of 200,000 deaths, Chile saw 500. These are human failures on a large scale. On a smaller scale, they occur when an NGO doesn’t take their workers’ concerns seriously and rules aren’t enforced. Many of my contacts refuse to work with a certain group after their experiences in Haiti due to a lack of accountability and safety. Unfortunately, a volunteer, an undergraduate at a top American university, died in July from a fall. His death was one of many preventable deaths I’ve seen or heard of in Haiti. Accidents happen, but far fewer accidents will happen if we hold ourselves and each other to higher standards.
After I returned to the U.S. I drove through the Southwest U.S. with my mother. That was a different kind of stress, which provided the motivation to apply for jobs. We visited forgotten American concentration camps and popular national parks. I got out on some trails alone on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon early in the morning or late at night in Natural Bridges. It was a much needed respite from a lot of things. My mom initially agreed to listen to Jon Lee Anderson’s Che on audio book. She regretted that when she realized it was around 30 cds long. I was looking for something interesting, but not a hagiography. I needed to catch up on music and with friends who once again had to deal with my depressing stories about Haiti.
In July, I received a response from one of over two dozen job applications. It was a job based in the U.S., but with an organization working in Haiti. After two interviews I was hired and moved to Washington DC in August. I was happy to not only have a job, but a job that I wanted to do and to some extent already did unpaid for a couple of years.
2011 – I continue to work in Haiti and have learned a lot in the past year. I’ve been able to see how a small NGO works from the inside and witness how Americans (or foreigners) can support community-driven development instead of leading the process. I’m going to use the rest of this space to summarize a little bit.
Some of what I wrote is a bit personal because I think change has to start with ourselves. We need to examine our roles in the world, in different communities, our impact, and the consequences of our actions if we care about others. If you want to change the world, start with yourself and then those around you. Make mistakes and acknowledge them. Find people who are willing to be open and honest to discuss issues with. Try to understand the perspective of “the opposition” or someone who you disagree with. Don’t be afraid to confront people either. For instance, it’s easy to sit around and say that you hate racism, but what do you do when your cousin/grandma/parent says something racist? Do you just feel awkward until the moment passes and never bring it up again? How do we expect things to improve if we don’t confront those views? You may lose friends in the process of confronting them, but do you want to surround yourself with people who judge others based on uncontrollable factors? I feel I’ve drifted away from a certain set of friends because I’ve confronted them over their homophobic views, but maybe that’s just for now. Maybe we’ll be closer in 10 years. I don’t know. What I do know is that they won’t change if they aren’t confronted in one way or another and the more information people have, the less they have to fear. I like to think of it as planting seeds; questioning “facts.”
In terms of racism and homophobia, I’m cautiously optimistic. Young Republicans find some social issues less and less important. I was happy to see a video online of Young Republicans debating, and ultimately causing a man with racist views to leave a convention in Washington D.C. That scene may be amplified by YouTube and not a common occurrence, but we need more of that questioning within ranks. This woman is a great example of someone not only questioning a standard way of thinking in a community, but confronting it through principled actions. This needs to happen in all parts of the political and religious spectrums in my opinion.
I no longer identify as a Christian and can’t say exactly where I stand (atheist/agnostic), but I can’t pretend I haven’t been heavily influenced by what I was taught about Jesus Christ. While the Old Testament terrified me...I always identified more with the New Testament.
So I’d like to end with what I strive for and expand on this earlier statement: I strive for a world in which every person has suitable shelter, access to food, potable water, healthcare, and education in ways that respect and preserve the environment. That means that we would have a participatory political system that allows each voice to be heard equally. That means that life becomes a priority. Not human life, but all life, because we recognize that our life depends on all of the life around us. We need to take a holistic approach to our lives and those of other beings if we expect our world to continue. Sound like a bunch of hippie bullshit? Well yeah, kind of, but things are pretty serious in a world where climate change threatens future generations and nuclear weapons/their aging control mechanisms threaten our daily existence. While a lot of things I’ve written about can be and are terrifying, I don’t live in fear. I only do what I can with what I have and try to do so conscientiously toward the goals I’ve stated above.
Interacting with my family regarding their experiences in wars made me wonder about their roles. How many people has my father killed? What about my grandfathers? Even if they haven’t killed anyone, what does the simple act of trying do to a person?
With the war in Afghanistan started and an administration gearing up for war in Iraq, I suggested that my high school hold our annual Fall fundraiser to benefit the local Veterans Affairs clinic on 76th and Silver Spring. They served mostly Vietnam veterans with psychological issues. Many of them were homeless. The center was at risk of losing a staff person when we stepped in. I made the argument to my classmates that some of them may need those services in the future since it was likely some of us would end up fighting in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Sadly, the war in Afghanistan has become the longest in American history. The toll on American troops can be seen through incredibly high suicide rates, divorce rates, and the average amount of tours each soldier has seen, often without adequate healthcare. One can look a lot of places to start to figure out the impact of these wars on people in Afghanistan and Iraq. I find the stories of Pat Tillman, Abu Ghraib, and Restrepo incredibly interesting.
2004 – (August, 2004 – May, 2005) I spent a year at UWM and was a bit bored so I got a second job (I’ve worked since I was 14) while going to school full time. At the second job I met an Englishman who inspired me to look at a Working Holiday Visa. In one day I decided I was going to travel to New Zealand. I was 19 and for whatever reason decided to get the hell out of not just Milwaukee, but the U.S. I had been to New Orleans for a few days with a friend, but had never travelled on my own.
I spent the better part of a year driving around the South Island doing odd jobs and learning a lot about life. My experience gave me a totally new perspective on the U.S. In the midst of the 2004 election, foreigners accusingly asked, “Who are you voting for!?” The correct answer (for them) also happened to be true. I did not encounter many Americans and I was somewhat thankful because it meant I was out of my element more often than not. I lived in small town in the deep south for a few months. I worked three jobs at one hotel set next to a beautiful national park I encountered a different kind of racism. The Maori and South Pacific Islanders were “black” in New Zealand, but they didn’t resemble anything I knew as “black.” I learned that many Kiwis hate Asians. I can’t remember which Asian countries have the highest immigration rates to NZ, but it didn’t really matter since racists tend not to discern these differences. |
| Me and Stu |
The jobs I did in New Zealand taught me a lot about class. Who does those jobs in America? Who picks our fruit? Mexicans, Haitians, and other immigrants, often undocumented, fill those positions. These are the jobs that some politicians accuse immigrants of stealing from Americans, yet I know no one begging to pick tomatoes in a field for very little pay. It’s labor that causes permanent damage to the body over years. When my boss at a vineyard kept my paycheck for over $300, I felt I had little recourse at the end of the day and I was in the country legally.Besides seeing the type of people that took part in industrial fishing, I witnessed a devastating level of environmental destruction. We dredged up the ocean floor, uprooting fragile coral. The term “by-catch” is an insult to living beings. Our nets did not discriminate, sweeping up sharks, skates, monkfish, barracuda, and a host of other fish deemed not profitable enough to be cut and frozen. Against international law, they went overboard, dead, to float on the waves until one of the hundreds of albatrosses following us plucked them out. We apparently were the hand(s) of the free market, tossing all of the less profitable sea life back into the ocean. We tossed our garbage into the ocean as well. Thankfully bottom-trawling is no longer legal in New Zealand waters, but I shudder to think of the damage done over decades of overfishing.
A couple of months later I sat in Fiji reading a book that changed my life. Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power mentioned things I had never read about and I wanted to know more. I was angry, inspired, and thirsty for more. I couldn’t wait to get off of the beaches in Fiji and back to UWM to start something. My first act was to contact Greenpeace in New Zealand to try to get them to do something about the boat I served on. Greenpeace has a strong history in New Zealand. They were so effective for a time that French government conspired to stop them, murdering a Greenpeace photographer in the process. Guess how many years in prison that’s worth. Injustice seemed to lurk under ever book I overturned and I was starting to look abroad for somewhere to focus.
2005 – I was back on campus and started a student org as soon as I figured out that no one else around me/already active was interested in poverty alleviation. I had gone out on a limb and volunteered for The ONE Campaign that summer and enjoyed doing concert outreach. Who wouldn’t want to talk about AIDS and poverty for hours on end to strangers!? So I’m obviously in the minority on that one, but I found sharing information like that to be incredibly exciting. On campus I hooked up with the Student Labor Action Coalition to meet my anti-war needs, but they turned out to be more ideological than I was interested in. A bunch of nerdy teenage/early 20's anarchists and communists will certainly challenge your beliefs and I was better off for running into them. The ridiculousness of the politics of the left slowly emerged. You’re an anarchist, but you have a trust fund? You don’t believe in reform, only revolution? What does that mean in a practical sense?
They promoted a lot of self examination. I was still trying to undo years of hatred and bigotry taught to me in grade school and make sense of the world I grew up in. There was always a subtle form of racism that was there in my life. I couldn’t have said this then, but I would argue that it’s in everyone’s life because we Americans grow up in a racist society. Not in a white hoods and burning crosses way, but in a way that white people are generally unaware of yet, practice on a daily basis. My views on human sexuality had been backwards as hell after grade school. I absorbed the bigoted views I was taught, but didn't fully believe embrace them. My disgust with my grade school made it easier to question the things I was taught at the time. That disgust is revived when every time I read about its effects. Looking back in 2005 I thought: “I contributed to an oppressive atmosphere in my younger years so what was I going to do about it now?”
2006 – I decided I was going to Ethiopia with the Africology Dept. in the summer of 2006. I’d try to hook up with some NGO and then raise funds for them. Our small group on campus already had some money. The trip was cancelled and I ended up going on the Dave Matthews Band tour and VANS Warped Tour all summer working for ONE and Oxfam doing outreach. I also booked a speaker that summer to show his film on Haiti. The coup in 2004 had slowly caught my attention and I was reading more and more about how the UN was killing a lot of Haitians in the slums.
By Fall, 2006, Ethiopia had disappeared from the map and I was planning a trip to Haiti with two friends and a local contact. I was catching a ton of documentaries, reading all kinds of books and really enjoying school. I started getting involved in campus politics, especially once we discovered a friend’s votes had been shredded in an election he likely won and the former Student Association President had embezzled over $10,000. We scheduled press conferences with local media, I made public records requests, and we talked to local law enforcement, handing over all of the evidence of theft we could find. The former SA President face a handful of felony and misdemeanor counts of theft and ultimately got off lightly.
That year the student government began an attack that lasted through the next couple of years. Resource centers that served minorities on campus had their funding slashed by the largely white male “representatives” of the student body. A commenter who (if I recall correctly) wasn’t yet involved in student government, but in following years held key roles openly stated on his blog, "If mainstream black anglo-hating racists can't find a way to function in normal society and use the intelligence that God gave them, perhaps they ask to be held down and discriminated against, and placed back into slavery.” With views like that one can imagine how easily it was for him to vote to defund minority resources centers.
In late 2006, I helped restart Students for a Democratic Society at UWM with a handful of other activists. I initially saw my role in that organization as minimal, but the more I attended meetings, the more I realized I needed to stick around and take it seriously. Beside my work in Haiti, other student orgs/work took a back seat to SDS.
--
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lilla Watson/Aboriginal activists groups, Queensland 1970’s
--
 |
| From the (now collapsed) St. Joseph's Home for Boys |
 |
| Sasha, Michel St. Croix, and another Magistra |
We met with the Mayor of Okap, Haiti's second largest city. Michel St. Croix was shot four times during the coup in 2004. At the time he claimed to know who had shot him, yet claimed to seek not retribution. I also remember him stating that since the United States had just executed Saddam Hussein for his crimes, George W. Bush should face the same fate. The man was not shy about his views.
I visited southwest Haiti as well, meeting a community I hoped to work with in the future. We listened to their requests to see what they wanted from us, instead of arriving with a set agenda. We already knew they wanted toilets and came to discuss site locations and logistics of managing the toilets. Unfortunately, I have not returned to that community since then because I had a falling out of sorts with an American on that trip. We encountered an American woman connected to a man known by everyone in Haiti as a killer. Once I learned her last name I for the most part stopped speaking and we had a long discussion about how dangerous her family was. This wasn’t heeded by my colleague and she proceeded to endanger our lives, ultimately meeting the man in question. This paramilitary leader turned politician had murdered friends of friends of mine and actively hunted others less than three years before. I have a hard time forgiving such idiotic acts when the danger was not only clear, but had been discussed. 2007 was when I learned to disassociate myself from people who may be well intentioned, but can be an incredibly destructive force through their own ignorance and unexamined actions.
On campus I started branching out more academically and my activism continued to consume my free time. I pursued classes based on both my interest in the topics and strong recommendations of professors. The strategy of looking up teacher reviews based on ease of a course was never too attractive to me. I still lived at home and worked my part time job to save money. My round trip commute could be around two hours after 12 hour days on campus. It could be grueling, but I managed to gain access to an office in the Union where I could focus on my work.
 |
| Winona LaDuke |
I continued reading, mostly about slavery, the Civil Rights movements in the U.S., and the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Nigger resonated deeply at the time. I followed up with Callous On My Soul and even got my mom to read both. Inspired by Dick Gregory, I decided to go on a fast, easing out of solids with juice, into water, and then back out with juice again. It was an interesting experience and I was able to meet Dick Gregory during the fast. As a group we worked on a consensus model. That handed one person a veto among 40. Meetings could last 5 hours and we questioned the process, constantly refining it. Some were discouraged by it and left. Others strove for a democratic process and were intent on having that in every aspect of life. We tried to address the inefficiencies, but never dealt with them well. We say we live in a democracy, but how often do workers get a vote in the workplace? In what matters do students get a vote in their education? What would a democratic classroom look like? These were ideas were grappling with and exploring the potential for. We asked ourselves, “What would a democratic workplace even look like?” If we lived in a democratic society, wouldn’t we all be able to envision such a thing?
 |
| ISPAN - Government archive |
 |
| A tree grows through former slave quarters. Clifton National Heritage Park |
That same month I was accepted to a fellowship at the University of Michigan for the summer. I was starting to get serious about combining my activism and academic work into a fulfilling profession. That summer was difficult. A long term relationship fell apart, my parents began their divorce, and a friend committed suicide. I finally moved out of my parent’s house in my last year of college and got to know a few bars quite well. I had slowly lost touch with friends from high school and friends from college had replaced them. Many, but not all of these friends had stood by me in meetings, lectures, protests, and bars hashing out ideas. We strove for a better world. I never felt comfortable identifying as a communist, Marxist, anarchist, or any other ideology. I wasn’t too interested in being able to define them or their hyphenated brethren. If I could narrowly define myself with such a label, who would even understand it? The left is often good at defining what it’s against, but in SDS we strove to define ourselves by what we were for. I found that I am an anti-capitalist because capitalism stands against what I strive for. I strive for a world in which every person has suitable shelter, access to food, potable water, healthcare, and education in ways that respect and preserve the environment. A political and economic system (such as our own) that concentrates power in the hands of a few will not allow for those things to happen.
By the end of 2008 I had become so busy that I had double booked myself. I had pushed my requests to the limit with the student government, requesting a lot of money to bring Danny Glover to campus. I collaborated with others on campus to make it happen. Unfortunately, I had also planned on attending the Haitian Studies Association conference in Haiti that same day. I chose Haiti. The conference was not the stuffy atmosphere I had feared. I knew the hotel was on one of Haiti’s few clean beaches, but I never thought so many accomplished people could be so humble and welcoming. I went from session to session making new acquaintances, even meeting a woman who exclaimed “You’re the guy from Wisconsin!” I had been trying to contact someone with her organization for over a year via email. Since digitizing some of my family’s photo albums I had digitized a professor’s family’s photos and thought of the potential for a project in Haiti. Luckily the Digital Library of the Caribbean was already up and running in Haiti. We began planning together. I made other connections which have only grown since. On the last night of the conference, people party. The waves came crashing in on the beach and I walked out to watch. As I stepped on to the beach a shirtless professor who will go unnamed, sprinted drunkenly toward the Caribbean, screaming all the way. We all needed a bit of a release. Four days of packed sessions were stressful, but tragedies had continued piling up in Haiti, including that week. Four hurricanes had struck the country, flooding Gonaives and killing hundreds. Days before the conference a school near the capital collapsed, killing dozens of students and teachers. Haiti’s lack of regulation meant the construction crew could skimp on materials to keep costs down. The cost was high for those inside when it collapsed. Countless homes and buildings were constructed up ravines without engineers or standard codes. That story of collapse seems minor today.
2009 – I held my favorite event in February, 2009. I brought my friend Rosemond from Haiti to open for SaulWilliams to a packed room of approximately 1000 people. Student admission was free as it was for almost every event we held. I once again chose to extend my academic career at UWM for a scholarship. UWM helped pay for me to go to Haiti once again in the summer of 2009 to digitize historical documents with the National Archives, National Library, and the Library of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit in Port-au-Prince. This would be the most time I ever spent in Haiti and in Port-au-Prince, a city I wasn’t too comfortable with. I worked in the U.S. Embassy, which purchased a $50,000 scanner and housed it. Their cooperation with Haitian institutions was impressive, but everyone dreams of the day Haitian institutions can host their own scanner, secure it, power it, and connect it to the internet consistently. I digitized documents that dated back to the 1700’s. Time, humidity, and bugs had done a lot of damage and digitization seems to be a great way to preserve these documents quickly. I worked with Haitian staff from the National Archives to train them on how to use both a computer, Photoshop, and the scanner. I had three days of training in Florida, but only because I had the privilege of growing up with a computer, owning a small scanner, and using photoshop for years. 
I made a few friends and caught a couple of shows. My friend Andy helped another friend when her father was kidnapped. I was cautious, especially since people associated me with the U.S. Embassy. Waiters at the hotel I lived at could tip kidnappers off to my presence if I seemed like a worthy target. This may sound like paranoia, but less than a year later two women with Doctors Without Borders were kidnapped from that same hotel. I know many people who either have been kidnapped, had family kidnapped, or had friends that were kidnapped. When they’re political kidnappings there are no calls for ransom. |
| Saut d'Eau |
Port-au-Prince is not all kidnappings all of the time, but it’s something to be aware of. My sense is that white Americans (or white foreigners for that matter) are still close to untouchable, although not completely. It’s Haitian Americans that seem to be the prime target, since they are perceived to be connected to larger sums of money in the U.S. The Haitian elite is targeted for the same reason.
In Haiti and other situations I try not to say “No” to new or different experiences. I made a commitment to preserve documents so at times I had to decline invitations, such as a three day Vodou ceremony. I did make it out to Saut d’Eau to visit the waterfalls during the main pilgrimage. I was almost thrown off of a ledge by a woman in trance as I wandered around trying not to be intrusive. I caught up with a former professor in a nearby town where I stayed overnight on a whim, meeting numerous Vodou priests and Vodouisants from the Americas. This is where I was introduced to Haitian art. I never thought of myself as a collector, and still don’t really, but I now have over 20 pieces including wood cuts, iron work, and paintings. Kids at my high school sold much crappier art at a much higher price. The diversity, talent, and accessibility of artwork in Haiti opened a new world to me.
Upon my return to the U.S. I filed my last reports, graduated, and took up a depressing job at a life insurance company. I figured I could save a little money while applying to grad school. I secured an internship for the early summer, 2010 in Haiti, and figured I’d be off to grad school in the Fall of 2010. I just needed to get through cubicle hell.
2010 – I finished my last applications during the first week of January. I wanted to start working on little side projects. I could always digitize more photo albums for my family, interview my grandparents, and possibly produce a Vodou podcast series I had been conducting interviews for. I even considered doing a story for This American Life. I thought about writing an article to get published in an academic journal. I’ve always got a lot of ideas, just not enough time to juggle them all.
A week later nothing really mattered. I came home around 6:15pm from work that Tuesday, tired, opened my computer and went on Facebook. A lawyer I know that works in Haiti had a message that went something like “We reached some people in our office and it appears that the earthquake was really bad.” I can’t even write that line without getting shivers throughout my body. I started searching for all of the information I could find. Few journalists had been in Haiti over the past years. Slowly things emerged. A brief video of the Palais National. It had crumbled. Jesus. My mind shot back to the school collapse in November, 2008. So many poorly constructed buildings…I started thinking of names of people, some I had just met two months earlier. I made phone calls and spent the next six hours on and off the phone with Haitian friends. I couldn’t sleep and spent time reworking an editorial that the Journal Sentinel published a day later. I started calling people to help raise funds. Every day after that was a struggle. People at work knew I had worked in Haiti. It was hard not to cry, especially that first day. I gave an angry interview to someone at the Journal Sentinel on my lunch break. News slowly crept in. They couldn’t find Lynn…Delmas is in bad shape, the hotels where international visitors stayed received lots of coverage while Haitians dug other Haitians out of the rubble without tools, unbeknownst to Anderson Cooper. The largest collection of art in Haiti was now lying under the building that housed it. A school I had visited collapsed completely. There was a prison break. Victoria’s dead. Pat Robertson’s a dick. Where are people going to live? The bodies are rotting in the streets and people can’t breathe.
I considered getting to Haiti immediately, but decided I’d be more in the way that anything. My medical training would only be good had I been on the ground during the immediate aftermath and the following few days. I searched for groups to head down with earlier than my planned internship with a microfinance institution. I found one, applied, and committed to arriving March 1st. I was glad I got to know Haiti before the earthquake. I had drunkenly danced next to Ben Stiller the summer before and knew of a few other celebrities’ presence in Haiti, but a Hollywood flood was coming along with a lot of well intentioned people. The earthquake put Haiti on their maps, or at least they were able to locate the country after January 12th. Context didn’t matter to a lot of people. Trauma is the same everywhere, NGO psychologists said. Haitian community groups were cut off the Log Base (the UN Logistics Base) because they lacked identification. In layman’s terms, it was a cluster fuck.
Anyone with any intention was free(r than before) to come to Haiti and do what they wanted. Child trafficking increased. A group of Christians from Idaho were caught taking “orphans” to the Dominican Republic and jailed. Some people were appalled that Haiti would enforce their laws. I worked near the epicenter of the earthquake. The papers reported that 90% of buildings in Leogane were damaged or destroyed. I ran into a contact from the summer before. He was an assistant to the UN and Prime Minister. He was living in his car. I delivered money and tarps to a priest for a friend. My skin color had always made me a target for begging, but maybe I was someone’s key to access to food, a new job clearing rubble, etc. We smashed rubble in the hot sun and my Kreyol increased as kids followed us around. Children are great teachers. I was interested in telling stories instead of just counting the numbers of houses cleared. I produced a brief video with the help of two friends. One broke down crying and ran out of the room when I showed her the finished version. Some people treated their time in Haiti like a Spring Break party, which for some it was. Volunteers drunkenly puked off the edge of the building as Haitian families in the adjacent tent camp tried to sleep. I couldn’t handle the bravado at some of the work sites so I went to do triage in the hospital. Most of the post-earthquake injuries were gone at that point. I witnessed the violence of poverty and a long term lack of healthcare. I’m not going to go into those stories. I would go back to base and sleep some days because I was so exhausted from the stress and helplessness. My grad school decisions rolled in during these weeks and I couldn’t really care. My problems paled in comparison.
In late March I got out for a mental health break, which is required after four weeks. I didn’t even make it to the fourth week when I needed one. The group lacked accountability and safety was a concern. One man almost killed himself and a day or two later I witnessed him dangerously smashing rubble into children’s faces. Nothing was done. Other more insulting things happened. I planned my exit and got back to Port-au-Prince. I began my internship and spent three months travelling the country and living in Saut d’Eau. Times were tough, but I had an exit. When I was stressed out and sick, I booked a flight home. For Haitians, they already were home. There’s a cliché about Haitians being resilient and some don’t like it because it almost excuses the systemic violence happening because Haitians can handle it, but it’s true that Haitians are resilient.
My stress came from knowing that most of Haiti’s problems are preventable. We have the resources, technology, knowledge, etc. to prevent children from dying from diarrhea, from having their houses collapse on them, and to feed everyone in the world. We don’t allocate those resources to serve human needs, though. 6 weeks after Haiti was struck by an earthquake, a much stronger earthquake struck Chile. Instead of 200,000 deaths, Chile saw 500. These are human failures on a large scale. On a smaller scale, they occur when an NGO doesn’t take their workers’ concerns seriously and rules aren’t enforced. Many of my contacts refuse to work with a certain group after their experiences in Haiti due to a lack of accountability and safety. Unfortunately, a volunteer, an undergraduate at a top American university, died in July from a fall. His death was one of many preventable deaths I’ve seen or heard of in Haiti. Accidents happen, but far fewer accidents will happen if we hold ourselves and each other to higher standards. |
| Jacmel |
After I returned to the U.S. I drove through the Southwest U.S. with my mother. That was a different kind of stress, which provided the motivation to apply for jobs. We visited forgotten American concentration camps and popular national parks. I got out on some trails alone on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon early in the morning or late at night in Natural Bridges. It was a much needed respite from a lot of things. My mom initially agreed to listen to Jon Lee Anderson’s Che on audio book. She regretted that when she realized it was around 30 cds long. I was looking for something interesting, but not a hagiography. I needed to catch up on music and with friends who once again had to deal with my depressing stories about Haiti.
In July, I received a response from one of over two dozen job applications. It was a job based in the U.S., but with an organization working in Haiti. After two interviews I was hired and moved to Washington DC in August. I was happy to not only have a job, but a job that I wanted to do and to some extent already did unpaid for a couple of years.
Some of what I wrote is a bit personal because I think change has to start with ourselves. We need to examine our roles in the world, in different communities, our impact, and the consequences of our actions if we care about others. If you want to change the world, start with yourself and then those around you. Make mistakes and acknowledge them. Find people who are willing to be open and honest to discuss issues with. Try to understand the perspective of “the opposition” or someone who you disagree with. Don’t be afraid to confront people either. For instance, it’s easy to sit around and say that you hate racism, but what do you do when your cousin/grandma/parent says something racist? Do you just feel awkward until the moment passes and never bring it up again? How do we expect things to improve if we don’t confront those views? You may lose friends in the process of confronting them, but do you want to surround yourself with people who judge others based on uncontrollable factors? I feel I’ve drifted away from a certain set of friends because I’ve confronted them over their homophobic views, but maybe that’s just for now. Maybe we’ll be closer in 10 years. I don’t know. What I do know is that they won’t change if they aren’t confronted in one way or another and the more information people have, the less they have to fear. I like to think of it as planting seeds; questioning “facts.”
In terms of racism and homophobia, I’m cautiously optimistic. Young Republicans find some social issues less and less important. I was happy to see a video online of Young Republicans debating, and ultimately causing a man with racist views to leave a convention in Washington D.C. That scene may be amplified by YouTube and not a common occurrence, but we need more of that questioning within ranks. This woman is a great example of someone not only questioning a standard way of thinking in a community, but confronting it through principled actions. This needs to happen in all parts of the political and religious spectrums in my opinion.
I no longer identify as a Christian and can’t say exactly where I stand (atheist/agnostic), but I can’t pretend I haven’t been heavily influenced by what I was taught about Jesus Christ. While the Old Testament terrified me...I always identified more with the New Testament.
So I’d like to end with what I strive for and expand on this earlier statement: I strive for a world in which every person has suitable shelter, access to food, potable water, healthcare, and education in ways that respect and preserve the environment. That means that we would have a participatory political system that allows each voice to be heard equally. That means that life becomes a priority. Not human life, but all life, because we recognize that our life depends on all of the life around us. We need to take a holistic approach to our lives and those of other beings if we expect our world to continue. Sound like a bunch of hippie bullshit? Well yeah, kind of, but things are pretty serious in a world where climate change threatens future generations and nuclear weapons/their aging control mechanisms threaten our daily existence. While a lot of things I’ve written about can be and are terrifying, I don’t live in fear. I only do what I can with what I have and try to do so conscientiously toward the goals I’ve stated above.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)