Once again I am confused. Today, 200 people were arrested in New York during a protest. The protesters were demonstrating against the April 25 acquittal of three New York City police officers who fired their guns a total of 50 times at 3 unarmed men in the early morning hours of Novemeber 25, 2006. One of the unarmed men was Sean Bell, who died from the gunshot wounds. Bell was to have been married to his girlfriend and the mother of his young daughter later that same day.
This hits a bit close to home for me, as November 25, 2006 was the day of my sixth wedding anniversary.
Here’s what confuses me: Why do 200 people get arrested protesting the unjust shooting death of an unarmed black man by New York police officers 18 months ago and the proceeding lack of accountability, but zero people get arrested for protesting the unjust shootings and bombings of unarmed Iraqi civilians by American military personnel each and every week for the last 5 years, and the ongoing lack of accountability?
Maybe Sean Bell is somehow intrinsically more important or more valuable than the 11 civilians, including a child with their parents, killed by U.S. airstrikes in Baghdad on Monday.
(and by the way–what exactly comprises a “U.S. airstrike”? One assumes it means that a military plane designed by a bunch of relatively normal people and built by a bunch more relatively normal people in a factory in Kansas or Seattle or California, armed with air to ground missiles designed and built by some other relatively normal people in a factory which was, perhaps, in Colorado, was flown by some fellow who grew up in a relatively normal family in, perhaps, New England, who … pushed a button which caused a relatively normal little kid and her relatively normal parents to die on Monday in Baghdad. Am I getting that about right? It all sounds almost innocuous, doesn’t it–almost … banal? Certainly highly ignorable by all the formerly mentioned relatively normal people.)
So it is a very very dark time in Myanmar–with tens of thousands dead from Cyclone Nargis, which made landfall on May 2nd.
Along with all the dark truth about how this is going to very negatively affect rather a lot of people in Burma, which is #132 out of 177 on the Human Development Index, especially in light of the current developing world food crisis, as well as some truth about the extent to which such a storm is a result of climate change, I think there’s a lot of puzzle pieces which point to hope:
See for instance, this list in the International Herald Tribune, with pledges of US$12 million and lots of logistical aid from 15 different nations. Here’s the really crazy thing. The population of Burma in 1900 was 10 million. Now it’s 55 million. If the disaster had taken place in 1900:
How long would it have been before the rest of the world even *knew* about the disaster?
How long would it have taken to mobilize help?
How long would the people of Burma have been pretty much on their own in trying to cope with the aftermath of such a huge disaster?
How many nations would have taken part in helping?
I don’t have the beginnings of an answer to any of these questions (ask someone with an appropriate Ph.D.). But I have a strong suspicion that the changes between the answers for “In 1900″ and “In 2008″ are solid grounds for a little joy and hope in the midst of heart-wrenching disaster.
By Pam Hogeweide
“I think religion is a bad idea,” announced Off The Map’s Jim Henderson at last year’s Seattle conference.
“I think the worst idea of all is that we (Christians) are supposed to be a world religion,” he further explained.
The heartbeat of Off The Map is open minded communication: “We want to create dialog in [...]
The wikipedia article on grief starts out:
Grief is a single-faceted response to loss. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social and philosophical dimensions. Common to human experience is the death of a loved one, whether it be a friend, family, or other close companion. While the [...]
“I’d put my money on solar energy… I hope we don’t have to wait ’til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
- Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931
Warning: this post contains Doom and Gloom.
Friends, over the last few months you may have noticed I’ve not been around. I have mostly been educating myself about climate change. I have noticed that there is a dramatic split in the environmental movement.
On the one hand we have scientists stating that the situation is [...]
Jeremiah Wright has been much in the news lately because he is Barack Obama’s pastor and some sound bites of him which a lot of people found offensive have been played endlessly in the mainstream media and on youtube. Last Friday PBS broadcast a 50 minute long interview with Dr. Wright and Bill Moyers. [...]
