P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y
Interfaith Worker Justice is a national organization that engages faith communities to support and advance the rights of workers. The organization has just produced an accessible “wage theft” comic book, in both English and Spanish, that helps bring this issue to life.
You can download or order copies of the comic book by clicking here.
I.
Please, God, don’t let the stewardess see me lose it. I turn towards the window and switch off the overhead light. Fortunately the nice woman next to me is asleep, drooling into her lap. I’ve just finished reading Isherwood’s A Single Man and the novel has taken me back to 1965, the year it was published, four years before the Stonewall riots. I was a seven-year-old sissy boy then, just beginning to understand that something wasn’t right with me. In those days, I was forgiven my soft, pre-pubescent voice. But the way I walked, the way I sat, how I rested my head on my hands—these, I learned, would betray me in what was a man’s world through and through.
These tell-tale traits were dutifully corrected by my well-meaning mother who, I learned many years later, had always wished she had been born a boy. I remember how once she went so far as to criticize the way I slept. Even as a child I had to laugh out loud at this conceit. “How can I control the way I sleep?” I protested. But she mimicked the disposition of my arms and legs while I dozed and I had to agree that I looked damningly efeminado. Maybe I could carry this comic image of myself into my dreams and let it shame me while I lay prone, straightening my limbs and clenching my fists. Perhaps the next morning I could do my mother one better, stirring in a manly way and, to her great delight, roaring awake like a true hombre.
It had been a long day with many flight delays and I was weeping from exhaustion for George Falconer, the gay protagonist of Isherwood’s novel. His death didn’t disturb me: it was quite beautiful the way the author described it, how the “long day ends at last; yields to the nighttime of the flood.” George had a lovely passing. I was devastated instead by the misery of his life: his painful self-awareness, his continuous self-editing, his inability to share freely what he felt most deeply. His mother, or perhaps his father, had made the appropriate adjustments to him when he was a child. And I realized with a stab of pain that there were seven-year-old sissy boys alive today who were just beginning their journey of self-hatred; that there were seven-year-old black children being bidden by their parents to be strong so they could survive in what was a white man’s world; that all over the planet, the journey was beginning again and again, and that what power I had to keep these truths from flooding over me was already spent.
II.
I had been in Chicago with many thoughtful colleagues to discuss how we might fix philanthropy. Not generosity—that needed no repair—but so-called “organized philanthropy.” In the course of our deliberations the happy news arrived that DOMA had been struck down and we shared some moments of joy. There was a long road ahead, as well as behind us, but time, we felt, was on our side. To add to the feeling of celebration, here I was in a room strangely devoid of ego and self-promotion, in the middle of a conversation that had somehow taken a sharp turn towards the subject of humility in grantmaking. Humility! In the work of foundations! In a field where so many once level-headed people had had their souls sucked from their bodies, leaving shells of self-important goo to strut about opining and intoning.
I speak with authority about these creatures because I’m one of their tribe, seeing all the less flattering aspects of my own character reflected in theirs. We’re so unremarkable—we, the philanthropic undead; our great sin, the sin of pride, so petty in its expression. An unattractive lack of empathy; periodic bouts of arrogance; prophetic curses cast upon the more flamboyant evil-doers. We’re easy to spot because we often match the meanness of our wrongdoing with the meager good that we produce.
I’m reminded of this last point because there’s something in the air these days, a voice speaking to me from the past, lifted above the shouts of “Gay power!” and the choruses of We Shall Overcome still emanating from the streets in front of the Stonewall Inn. According to one account of that time:
A scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon several times. She escaped repeatedly and fought with four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. Described as “a typical New York butch” and “a dyke—stone butch,” she had been hit on the head by an officer with a billy club for, as one witness claimed, complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains unknown, sparked the crowd to fight when she looked at them and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?” After an officer picked her up and heaved her into the back of the wagon, the crowd became a mob and went “berserk.”
We, the philanthropic undead, have never gone berserk over anything. In this country, we are an informed tribe. We know about drone strikes, racism, elections bought and sold, environmental depravity. These barely quicken our pulse. Going berserk is the response of a person sorely in need of a logic model.
III.
It was many years ago and I was sitting at a long table lined with academics. One of these described the research he had just conducted on the role of philanthropy in the civil rights movement. Turns out that foundations were circumspect and very slow on the draw. They came round eventually, as they did with many progressive movements, when all the difficult work had already been done. Even then they played a minor role.
I, the self-appointed spokesman for the philanthropic undead, was indignant. I knew personally of many instances in which foundations had taken great risks to advance the cause of social justice. Here I had in front of me yet another uninformed foundation-basher. But still his thesis gnawed at me for years, and the more I tried to negate it, the more clearly I saw how the exceptions proved the rule.
The Movement for Gender Equality, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring—we will let them spend their rage and bury their dead. After that, we will convene them and fund those who know how to speak to their betters. This is what’s called “being pragmatic,” taking care not to bite the hand that feeds you. This is photo opp philanthropy, the kind that smiles for the camera as it places one foot on a trophy that others had the courage to bag.
IV.
So, my love, I’m coming home to you exhausted. I’m coming home to celebrate with you the striking down of a law that should not have been passed in the first place, in a state that doesn’t recognize our union. And poor George—do you remember him? George is dead. I hold Isherwood’s account of his passing in my hands. Over him
and the others in sleep come the waters of that other ocean—that consciousness which is no one in particular but which contains everyone and everything, past, present and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars.
That consciousness that is Mother and Father Stonewall.
That consciousness that is the one struggle for justice—for the young girls murdered because they wanted to learn; for the bull dykes, the genderqueers, the sissy boys we failed.
The one consciousness that floats like a jet in the great black void of heaven.
P O S T E D B Y A L B E R T
I.
It was early in the afternoon on January 26th of this year when David Kato, a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, was brutally attacked in his home by a male assailant. The attacker hit him twice on the head with a hammer then fled. Kato died en route to the hospital.
Ugandan police claimed it was a botched robbery, but Kato’s colleagues strongly suspected other motives. Kato had reported increased death threats ever since a Ugandan tabloid named Rolling Stone had published an article with the names, addresses, and photographs of 100 people it claimed were gay or lesbian, accompanied by the headline, “Hang them.” Kato, perhaps Uganda’s most prominent LGBT activist, was pictured on the front page.
Kato and other LGBT people in Uganda lived—and continue to live—in a hostile social and political climate. A draconian bill that would increase the punishment for homosexual acts was introduced in the Ugandan parliament by MP David Bahati in October 2009. Under this bill, which has broad popular support, “repeat offenders” can face life imprisonment.
Two days after his brutal murder, friends, family members, and fellow activists gathered to bury Kato. The presiding minister, for reasons known only to him and God, decided it was a good time to launch into an anti-gay sermon complete with pointed references to Sodom and Gomorrah. After activists grabbed the microphone from the offending minister, Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo, who had been excommunicated by the Anglican Church of Uganda for his ministry to LGBT people, finished presiding over the funeral.
Those present at Kato’s funeral knew that Bishop Christopher had himself been cited in the infamous Rolling Stone article that called for Kato’s death. A heterosexual supporter of LGBT rights, he was pictured on its front page right next to the man he would later bury.
II.
It’s taken me a while to come to terms with the murder of David Kato. I didn’t know him, so here I’ll add my name to the long list of people who have appropriated his death without being directly impacted by his loss.
I’ve tried to imagine what went through the mind of the man who killed him. Perhaps after seeing his victim stare in incomprehension, after striking the first blow and watching Kato hold his head in agony, the man’s anger could have—should have—subsided, the trace of a doubt should have crept into his conscience and stopped him from striking another blow. Here, present to him, the heft of a man clearly suffering, placed in the scale against some contested ideas about the proprietyof same-sex love. Here, standing or crouching in front of him, a suffering it would be pointless to deny.
I wonder at those who do in fact deny this suffering; who from their pulpits whip their flocks into the white heat of hatred; who pour contempt on the child molesters, the corrupters of youth, the destroyers of marriage, and then, as if to put all things right again, exhort their followers to hate the sin but love the sinner.
I know what drives the hammer. What drives the hammer is a lethal combination of ignorance and bigotry. It’s self-loathing, a senseless fear of contagion, a criminal disregard for the basic facts of human sexuality. What drives the hammer is a boundless priestly arrogance, the arrogance of the contemporary Pharisee who quotes Leviticus over a plate of boiled shellfish.
III.
Here is how one of his colleagues remembered David Kato (via GayUganda):
I am at work.
Fact is, my concentration is terrible. Bits and fits, that is when I can concentrate. Seems as if everywhere I turn, I see, think, hear, know only what has happened to David.
My partner was the first to hear the news. I was in the bathroom. And, his shout made me rush out to investigate. It was then I got an sms. From someone else.
No, it did not sink in last night.
My partner was crying. Me, too hardened. Have to express my emotions in different ways. But, I was unsettled.
My partner went, with a few others, to the police in Mukono, and from there to David’s home. Where he was killed. Speculation was rife about what had happened. Yes, David was much more open than I am. He used to say that he was the first ‘out’ gay Ugandan. Indeed, I saw one documentary in which he featured, filmed at his place, which he was still building.
Sad. He built the house. Has barely used it a year. He moved in, as is common here, before the house was ready. But, that is life.
Shit. It is hard. Life, it is hard.
…
Times when he lived in Masaka. Was actually a head teacher there, if I remember correctly. Then he moved to Nansana, where he seemed to always have problems with the locals. He was too open as a gay man. He would drink, and challenge them. And, he opened his house to the likes of other gay people when they felt threatened at their homes. The likes of George Oundo, if I remember well. And others.
Then he got a place in Mukono, and started building his house. The house where he was brutally murdered, just yesterday.
…
Sigh ... nostalgia ...
Maybe for the days when he was still alive to pester us with his demands, his beliefs in what he wanted to have done. He was a doer, and, in a difficult environment, he was an achiever. With scanty resources, he did what he could, and did it fairly well.
Of course he was a human being. Cantankerous, devious, quarrelsome.
But, he was a human being, a fighter, going to the police cells to look for those accused of being gay. Going to court to stand up for our rights.
…
Today is time to celebrate the life of a human rights activist, whose life, that basic human right of all, was brutally cut short. Just yesterday.
I talked to David the other day, on the phone, about his hacked email. We were worried about that seeming non entity now … !
Kato David Kisule. RIP. Wonder where his twin is.
RIP, David
So, this past Friday in Oslo, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was barred by Chinese authorities from attending the ceremony at which he would have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Here are three takes on the same non-event where concerned Westerners wrung their hands and lamented the state of human rights in China:
1. From the New York Times:
Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, [adds] that China [needs] to learn that with economic power [comes] social and political responsibility.
“We can to a certain degree say that China with its 1.3 billion people is carrying mankind’s fate on its shoulders,” Mr. Jagland said in a speech at the [Nobel Peace Prize] ceremony. “If the country proves capable of developing a social market economy with full civil rights, this will have a huge favorable impact on the world.”
Translation: I’m convinced we’re screwed unless we find a way to rationalize trade with the Chinese. But the human rights Liu Xiaobo is fighting for are a moral issue not an economic one. I will therefore split the baby by invoking the notion of a “social market economy,” the Middle Way between socialism and capitalism. That way we can have our almond cake and eat it too.
Getting a recalcitrant population to acquiesce to a market economy on the state’s terms is a gentleman’s game requiring a delicate touch not an iron fist. And China is being, well, gauche, n’est-ce pas?
2. From Congresswoman Pelosi’s speech on the House floor:
“Today, the House of Representatives is congratulating Liu Xiaobo on the Nobel Peace Prize and sending a clear message of support for human rights and democracy in China. We do this in recognition of the importance of the relationship between China and the United States, that we have many issues where we have common ground or where should seek common ground. But all of that is better served by candor in our friendship and not ignoring sore spots.
“We continue to call for Liu Xiaobo’s immediate and unconditional release, and for the Chinese government to listen to the many Chinese citizens who are calling for human rights and freedom in China.”
Translation: I can safely refer to the most egregious abuses of human rights—the denial of basic freedoms, the jailing of thousands of dissidents and their families, and the torture of Falun Gong members—as “sore spots” because the American public isn’t paying attention and half of them wouldn’t be able to locate China on a map anyway.
So, who’s mixing the martinis?
Editor’s note: Before we move on, I need to get this off my chest: It’s a mystery to me why our leaders bother with these effete upbraidings. After all, by many accounts, our policy of constructive engagement with China has been enormously successful. Over the past several decades we’ve learned some important lessons from the Chinese about denying due process and using state-sponsored torture to strengthen national security. And while the US government does not control the media, we’ve succeeded in concentrating ownership of it into the hands of an ever-smaller fraternity of elites. China, for its part, has embraced capitalism and is deeply grateful for an American public sated by its purchases of cheap Chinese goods. Not too long ago, China Security and Surveillance Technology, a company that installs surveillance systems for the Chinese security apparatus, was the first Chinese company to join the New York Stock Exchange. According to Terence Yap, then-vice chairman and chief financial officer:
his company’s software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.
Sounds like a growth industry to me, both in China and in the West, as an increasingly restive population begins to form crowds at unusual hours in unsanctioned places for allegedly nefarious purposes.
3. Stay away from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, urges China. Here’s its officially sanctioned rationalization:
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Dec. 25, 2009, after a Beijing court convicted him of violating Chinese law and engaging in activities aimed at overthrowing the government.
“We urge relevant U.S. lawmakers to stop their wrongdoing on this issue, change their arrogant and rude attitude and show due respect for the Chinese people and China’s judicial sovereignty,” said Jiang.
... Jiang said earlier that more than 100 countries and international organizations had expressed support for China's stance.
“Justice lies in the heart of the people,” said Jiang.
This man Liu is a convicted criminal for God’s sake!
China is betting that world leaders will be more concerned about their own hold on power than about the ultimate disposition of their immortal souls. The argument seems to have worked for at least 19 countries and sent a frisson of terror through many more, judging from the anemic statements coming out of Oslo.
Meanwhile, let's enjoy those everyday low, low prices while we still can.
P O S T E D B Y A L B E R T
I.
I’m at a philanthropy conference luncheon listening to some household names speak about social justice. They trade friendly barbs as they describe the horrors of Guantánamo and flog the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. At intervals they draw polite applause.
One of the speakers describes President Bush’s vetoing of a bill to outlaw waterboarding. ‘There should have been a public outcry,’ he chides us.
I gaze into my salad of mixed greens, my head heavy with guilt. Is there any vegetable more melancholy than kale?
II.
I had been attending these conferences for years and had never heard such strong language coming from the dais. The speakers’ calls to conscience felt like the blows of a blunt weapon, like acts of verbal insurrection.
At the same time, there was something inescapably ironic about a plenary luncheon on human rights in which everything from our underwear to the salt shakers on our tables was made in China. If I wanted to understand what sustained human rights abuses in China, my inner voice told me, I needed only to inspect the labels on my BVDs.
III.
This last point deserves some elaboration.
I’m attending this conference at an opulent hotel that rises like a crystal box from the banks of the Potomac. It’s large enough to have its own zip code. The inner space of the building is defined by a dramatic atrium soaring hundreds of feet above a fountain that periodically dances to recorded symphonic music. A picture window the size of two football fields looks across a sparkling river to Old Town, Alexandria.
As I sit here under the newly planted figs and paper birches, I struggle with the gauzy sense that the best I can do for human rights is vote the current pols out of office. I feel it’s me, not them, I most need to worry about. I’m fully implicated. The purchases I make, the time I devote to scanning ads, the television channels and websites I surf—all those things I do without a moment’s reflection—sustain a system of exchange that keeps some people in chains and allows others to walk free. My government does its part, I suppose, by hiding most of the bodies overseas. Sitting in this place, isolated as I am from the hurly-burly of the world, I forget that the wars we most recently waged in the name of human rights have been tied to the protection of American consumption—my consumption, and that of my family and friends.
The key to ending human rights abuses is written not only on the labels to my BVDs, but also on my paycheck—the income from investments in corporations not always friendly to their workers overseas. The key to the puzzle lies in this grand hotel that few of my poorer neighbors can afford to use.
IV.
The system is complex. Where is my place in it, as a consumer, as a citizen who wants to do right but who over-values his creature comforts? To what degree do I permit the demands of conscience to interrupt the flow of cheap goods? Each time I successfully boycott some brand or some nation, don’t my fellow wage slaves lose their jobs? The entire edifice is built stone upon stone. Pull on one stone with enough force and it appears the whole thing threatens to come down on our heads.
At the same time, I was never one to buy the stories we tell ourselves about triple bottom lines and more efficient markets. These, in my view, are self-serving fairy tales that enable us to sleep with ourselves inside these beautiful jeweled boxes we build on the banks of the Potomac.
Postscript
The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, touted from the stage of the luncheon mentioned earlier, is an odd document. For starters, there’s no U.N. Declaration of Human Responsibilities to balance the publication. One has to read through to Article 29, the second-to-last article of the Declaration, to discover that we have duties to the community “in which alone the free and full development of [our personalities] is possible.” Twenty-eight articles detailing our rights. One article alluding to unspecified responsibilities.
This is a striking asymmetry. Twenty-eight articles before we reach what is for some the essence of good citizenship. And even here our duties to the commonweal are framed in terms of the free and full development of our personalities, a hint of Aristotle in a document that tries its hardest to appeal to every man and nation.
P O S T E D B Y J O H N
| V.P. | Dr. King, welcome. Please have a seat. Now, remind me again what your project is about. |
| KING | Several weeks ago a member of our community, Mrs. Rosa Parks, was arrested for refusing to vacate her bus seat for a white passenger. To protest this injustice, this past December 5th we urged all people of conscience to boycott Montgomery’s buses. Our organizing effort was very successful, and the following evening, at a meeting of ministers and other community leaders, we formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to continue the boycott. I was chosen to lead that effort. |
| V.P. | Ah, yes, here’s your proposal. You requested funds to organize carpools, hold weekly meetings with community members, and, together with the NAACP, legally challenge Montgomery’s bus segregation ordinance. |
| KING | That’s correct. |
| V.P. | Desegregating Montgomery’s buses is certainly a worthy goal, Dr. King, but I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: your proposal was denied funding. A report from our Research Department tells me that activists in other communities have attempted bus boycotts in recent years, to no effect. I also see from your resume that you have no track record of leading a social change movement … |
| KING | That’s true, but I firmly believe that the hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined noncomformists, like myself and others, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. |
| V.P. | Yes, well, permit me to share some of the reviewers’ comments. One of them worries about your business model and the scalability of your efforts. He’s especially concerned about sustainability issues. You write in your proposal that you plan to pass the plate at community meetings and solicit support from other civil rights organizations. Do you have any firm commitments? |
| KING | Not as yet, but— |
| V.P. | Dr. King, with all due respect, any social venture worthy of the name requires, at the very least, a plausible theory of change. You write in your proposal that you believe “unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” |
| KING | Those are my words. |
| V.P. | Well, that’s all rather speculative, don’t you think? |
P O S T E D B Y S T U A R T
This past November, the official website of the multinational force in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, told the story of Sargeant John Eldridge, 372nd Military Police Battalion, 89th MP Brigade, who had been deployed for a second time and would miss sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
This story about the Washington, DC native concealed a great irony. He had been sent overseas, according to official reports, to fight for the cause of democracy, but back home he and half a million fellow Washingtonians would be barred from full participation in the democratic process: residents of our nation’s capital have been denied a voting representative in Congress since 1801.
Perhaps, as one wag suggested, the U.S. Marines should have invaded the District of Columbia.
Those who live in the seat of American democracy pay their taxes, are called for jury duty, and serve in the armed forces, but are denied the most basic of democratic rights.
Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) was part of a congressional delegation that went to Hong Kong and pressed leaders there to allow democracy. Davis said a senior Hong Kong official told him, “Give your nation’s capital the right to vote and then come talk to us about democracy in Hong Kong.”
Big props to my peeps at DC Vote for their recent voting rights victory in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a first step toward righting a great historical wrong.
DC Vote is sponsoring a Voting Rights March on Emancipation Day, April 16, 2007, starting at 2:30 p.m. For more information visit the DC Vote website.
 John Anger |
 Countess Apraxina |
 Stuart Johnson |
 Dixie Moline |
 Albert Ruesga |
 Sally Wilde |
Recent Comments