Radical Hospitality and Voices for Justice

One of the amazing things about spending time at William Penn House is the incredible range of people that stay with us that we get to meet.  We get people from all continents, coming for everything business and touring to learning, advocacy and memorializing commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Every once in a while, we get folks who have a very special purpose: survival. So it was a quiet Friday, the 1st of May. I got a call from one of our friends in fellowship from the Southeast White House, Ernest Clover, about Reath Tang, a "brother", as Ernest called him, who was here in DC to try and engage any DC-based support in peace and reconciliation in South Sudan while also reuniting his family. The call to us was simpley because he needs lodging for about a week. We have space for a few days, so we welcomed Reath in Friday afternoon. 

Zach Yoder, one of our interns, spent a few minutes with Reath to learn more about the situation.  Reath Tang was a member of Parliament in South Sudan before the civil war started. He made a reputation for opposing the president Salva Kiir Mayardit when the he tried to push the parliament around. Reath strongly believes in the separation of powers, which has been steadily eroded by President Kirr and says that the current parliament is just a “rubber stamp” assembly.

Once the civil war started, the President’s militia targeted Reath. This was because of his reputation of opposition. Furthermore Reath is from the Nuer tribe and Kirr is from the Dinka tribe-the two largest tribes in South Sudan. Militia men came to Reath’s house looking for him but he was not there having been warned to leave the house. Instead they killed his brother and shot his sister in law in the head—a wound which she survived. 

Reath Tang arriving at WPH

Shortly before the fighting broke out, Reath had obtained a visa to visit the US for the National Prayer Breakfast. After the attempt on his life, he used this visa to flee to safety. If he had not gotten the visa in such a fortunate time he said, “I would be hiding in the bush of South Sudan right now.” His wife and 3 and 5 year old children were able to flee to a refugee camp in Uganda where they are now. For 8-9 months after the fighting broke out, he was not able to talk to them and didn’t know if they were alive or dead. Now his ultimate goal is to bring them to stay with him in the US.  Reath is still in the process of applying for asylum but has been able to obtain a work permit. He wants to establish himself in DC and become an advocate for South Sudan. He wants 3 main things to be brought about for his country: 

1. He wants Ugandan forces currently fighting in the country on the side of the President to leave. The Ugandan government is currently participating in the civil war while also acting as one of the mediators for the peace process. Reath says that none of the countries that neighbor South Sudan can serve impartially in the negotiations. They all have vested interests in Sudan and it’s wealth of natural resources, including oil. 
2. Reath wants the content of a African Union investigation into Human Rights abuses to be made public. He says that until people are held accountable for what they have done, there can be no reconciliation. 
3. Reath wants the US to condemn President Kirr's government as illegitimate. The South Sudanese parliament recently extended Kirr’s term for another 3 years to avoid an election. This single act is clearly illegitimate and should concern the US who invested so much in South Sudanese independence. The US has not acted before when Kirr killed 20,000 people in a single week and continued to kill 30,000 more over time, but Reath recognizes that violations of basic democratic procedure is something that the US might be convinced it should pay attention to.

When stories of globalized terror and genocide show up at your front door in person, they take on new meaning. For us at William Penn House, hosting someone like Reath is both an honor and an opportunity to try and share his story, so here it is. If you feel led to help Reath get his story out there, please pass this on. If you feel led to help, we also welcome any contributions to cover his lodging fees ($200). At a minimum, holding Reath in the light as he works for reconciliation and justice is much appreciated.

"Never in Doubt; Seldom Right"

Living and working in Washington, DC, it is not possible to hide from politics.  This is a political post. 

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the government shut down for almost three weeks, and re-opened yesterday.  What has been fascinating and troubling to me is how some key players (Sen. Cruz most notably, but pretty much the Tea Party-elected representatives) have so much influence in all of this.  Their claim to act as they have is that they ran on and were elected a platform of shutting down Obamacare.

What is disturbing about this mindset is the lack of appreciation that we live in a pluralist society and, in this kind of society, "my" or "our way" is not always the way things can and should go.  It's offensive when people claim to speak for "real Americans" as Cruz, Bachmann and Palin so often do.

But, this is not just the purview of the Tea Party.  The far left has often acted just as smug, righteous and divisive.  When I lived in DuPage County, IL - a fairly conservative county - in 2006, Tammy Duckworth was first running for congress. She narrowly lost to Peter Roskam in the election for the seat vacated by retiring Henry Hyde.  Duckworth had not been the favorite of many of the DuPage Democrats because she was a military veteran and not "liberal enough."  This tepid support may have negatively influenced her chances.  Similarly, the Green Party of 2000 basically paved the way for Bush.  And in 2012, there was the incredibly wasteful "Recall Walker" effort in Wisconsin.  It seems to me that, as we become increasingly polarized as a society, we are also entering into a period of shut-downs (or taking things to the edge) and recall efforts (as seen in Wisconsin and Colorado).  This is also perhaps influenced by our increasing need for immediate gratification (as much of the left demonstrated with the rapid disappointment that Obama did not immediately shut down Guantanamo, end "don't ask/don't tell", etc.).  Certainly, Quakers are also susceptible to this, with our "War is not the Answer" and other righteous statements. 

A few years ago, I read a book titled "In Praise of Doubt: How to have convictions without becoming a fanatic."  My big takeaway from that book is that, in a pluralistic society, it is important to have deep convictions, but to hold them with just enough doubt that it doesn't serve to divide us further.  This means that, while I may always be the voice for gay rights, environmental responsibility, non-violent actions, I do so with the awareness that mine is one of many voices in the choir that needs to learn to sing together. Remembering the line from the Prayer of St. Francis - that I seek to understand, rather than to be understood - helps ground me here as well. 

For sure it is easy to point the finger Cruz and his cronies for the recent fiasco.  But just as easily, we could be pointing fingers at Nader and the Green Party, and all people who feel so certain of their stances that they live a "with me or against me" sense to them.  We need to do better.  I can say that this is one of the things we try to nurture in our programs at William Penn House - the practice of listening and noticing, not reacting and judging.  We have plenty of opportunities to do the latter; what we need is more of the former to raise civility in the world. 

Too busy to notice?

We were sitting in the office at William Penn House the other day, and Greg showed Susan (Byron's wife) a trailer clip of a documentary called "Race to Nowhere". The main message of this documentary is that we have become a society in which our children are not allowed to be children anymore. There is too much pressure coming from all segments of society (parents, colleges, media, government, performance tests) that children need to succeed in school to the point that they are overburdened. One of the quotes is "our children are pressured to perform, but are they really learning?"

This past Spring, a student at a NY state high school gave the valedictorian speech in which she called out the education system. In her speech, she talked about the goal of the education, from her experience, is to excel and to get out, but not to learn. She said "while others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it." She referred to herself as the "best slave" by doing what she was told "to the extreme".

At William Penn House, we run Quaker Workcamps. We work with many youth groups from schools all over the country. For many of these youth, the reality is that they are doing the service not because they care, or because their strength is in service, but because they have to meet the school requirements. When I fill out the forms for students, I don't think I have ever seen a question about whether the student seemed to have a passion or gift for service. Most of the questions are about whether the student participated and was cooperative - basically, was the student obedient. Questions are asked about whether hours were completed, but not whether a project was completed. Even the organizations we work with and advocacy groups I am connected to don't encourage thinking. Scripts are given, but thinking about solutions to problems is not encouraged.

Almost thirty years ago, when I was first starting my work career (working in a mental health center with children not able to make it in public schools) I read a book by Tufts sociologist David Elkind called "The Hurried Child". This book called attention to the dangers of exposing our children to overwhelming pressures that can lead to low self-esteem, pregnancy and suicide, and that in blurring the boundaries of what is age-appropriate, by expecting - or imposing - too much too soon, kids are forced to mimic adult sophistication while secretly yearning for innocence. The third edition of this book (published two decades later) found that the problem had only been compounded by media, schools, home, and new technology such as the internet and video games. The subsequent decade did not alter this at all.

In all the meetings and networks I have been involved in, including Peace/Justice committees and networks, not once has the concern for this pattern been raised as a serious issue. But to me, nothing is more important than education, and not the kind that tells people what to think, but actually nurtures the ability to think. Real deep learning, I think, is as much art, play (one of the reasons I enjoy the workcamps is it is an opportunity to bring play to service), creativity and research as it is performance, but we have come to put way too much emphasis on performance.

Recently, as I was stepping into the clerking position for BYM Peace and Social Concerns Committee, I requested that the committee take a day together to discern, as a committee, what is ours to do. I sent this suggestion out to the committee of about 12 people. Only three responses came back and were the same: "we are too busy". And yet, when I see what people are doing, I don't see a whole lot of collaboration which, in its purest sense, is about making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. I do see a lot of networks and activities that, because they lack creativity, play, and visioning of solutions, end up often producing less than the sum of its parts. As an aside, in my experience, when true collaboration happens, we can actually be less busy but more effective.

There is a societal pattern here of keeping people busy without really thinking about what we are doing. It gets even worse when you consider that there are people working in various systems (including non-profits) who are doing studies and running programs as they always have not because it is the right thing. In some cases they know what they are doing is pointless, wasteful and even counter-productive, but they do it because they are being told to do it and it is the way it has always been done.

In the documentary "Race to Nowhere", one person says "This has to stop somewhere!" But where? Dr. Elkind warned of this almost 30 years ago, but few seemed to notice - in fact, things have gotten worse. The NY state valedictorian spoke up, so maybe that's a start. The fact that Norwood School in Bethesda MD is hosting a screening of "Race to Nowhere" and publicizing it on their website could also be a part of that start. But where are Friends schools on this? I was fortunate to go to Cambridge Friends School in a time when play, creativity, and self-directed learning seemed more weighted than they are now. I never even saw a letter-grade until high school (thanks, Mom and Dad, for that one - seriously!) Are we, as Friends, going to live our gospel truth that there is "that of God in all", and take the time to allow for the youth to develop their own soul and their own way, or are we too busy? As the Religious Society of Friends that includes Friends Schools, can we follow Norwood's lead, recognize that the performance-driven world is doing nothing to break the cycle of violence and unsustainability that we are currently on. Should not Friends schools, because of our gospel truth, be at the forefront of this? When I see so many such schools committed to their students going to the best schools, I have to say "no, not now". But when I get to know the kids, and some of the people working in these schools, I can see that the potential is there. It's just going to take some courage for us all to stand together, as the valedictorian courageously did, and say "This has got to stop".

Two Wolves

An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his Grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me… it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

“One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

“The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

This parable was part of the sermon yesterday morning at the National Cathedral, where I started my day. It has resonated with me for the past 24 hours. I think it speaks to many aspects of not only my own life, but also the times in which we live. For much of my work at William Penn House and with The Mosaic Initiative, what I hope we are doing is not just educating people about social justice issues, but feeding the latter wolf in this parable. It is a challenge these days in our media-driven partisan world. Media, almost by definition (at least the 24-hour news networks and many of the Olberman/Maddow/Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Beck/Palin world) succeed by feeding the first wolf in the parable. The “Tea Party” movement is definitely a product of this first wolf. I have a friend on facebook who claims to speak for the “vast middle” of America, and claims to look at things not optimistically, but realistically. What I suspect he doesn’t get is that we are both looking at things realistically – our differences are which wolf is being fed. I don’t know that he is conscious of his own internal mechanisms.

So I carried these thoughts with me through much of the day. I attended a kick-off celebration for an Arts and Cultural networking organization that is primarily a grassroots community group inspired by Kymone Freeman, a man of great passion and fire who clearly has both of these wolves fully energized within him. He sees the great injustices, has experienced them first hand, sees the waste and corruption of bureaucracy, but he pours the energy into the second wolf – dedicating his life to so much of what the second wolf represents. It is a life of service – he truly walks the walk.

As I was walking to the Metro to attend this event, I walked by a car parked on Nebraska Ave. near embassies and churches. On the back of this car were three bumper stickers. Two of the bumper stickers had the “O” symbol from the Obama campaign, but were the “O’s” in “Oshit”, and “Commie”. The third bumper sticker, playing on the campaign slogan “Got Hope”, said “Got Ammo” (calling for the assassination of Obama). Clearly, the owner of this car is feeding the wolf of anger, fear and lies, and wants to feed ours as well.

Herein lies the challenge: how do we respond? For me, I want to stand for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith in the face of these things. But I am also human – I get angry when I see these things. I know that to respond in-kind is not helpful in bringing us together to deal with all the challenges of the world. I also know that if I react angrily, I am feeding the first wolf as well. Perhaps the best I can do is just be aware that both wolves reside within me, and that awareness alone can help me tame one side while feeding the other.

A model of non-violence is detained

Over this past weekend, I heard through the facebook network that Phil Rizk, someone I had known when he was at Wheaton College, had been abducted by the Egyptian police. The circumstances surrounding Phil’s detention are still not clear, and are unfolding as I write this. Phil’s parents have gone to Cairo to be with his sister and to do what they can to get Phil released (Phil is half-Egyptian and half-German). Amnesty International has sent lawyers in to protect the family from unwarranted harassment by the police (who were apparently trying to force Phil’s father to go with them to the police station as well, and were doing illegal searches of home and office without warrants). Technology (in this case facebook) has allowed hundreds of us who know Phil to follow things minute by minute. It has been as eye-opening as it is troubling to get e-mails and updates of what is happening in the moment, as opposed to an event that is in the recent past, for example, seeing posting from Phil’s sister asking people to make calls for an immediate intervention.
I first met Phil in late 2002. He was a junior at Wheaton College, and had become actively involved in Student Global AIDS Campaign fresh on the heels of Bono’s Midwest AIDS/Poverty caravan. Phil and a fellow student, Brian Davis, were the two early leaders of SGAC on this Christian campus, and were also two of the handful of students who fairly quickly looked beyond AIDS in Africa, building relationships with local people with HIV (such as myself) and local services (such as the one I was working for). The passion, compassion, and thoughtfulness of Phil and Brian (I also need to mention John Campen here as well) opened my eyes to something I had not expected: openness, respectfulness, and a profound dedication to service and making the world a better place. All three of them continue to be models for doing what Quaker author Parker Palmer wrote about – letting one’s life speak. John remains dedicated to his love of music and his dedication to family – sharing the joys and the struggles with friends and family while addressing some of the social and corporate inequities of our world. Brian has spent much of his post-college career with his now-wife Susan in Kenya and Uganda committed to serving others, most recently opening up a cyber-café in Uganda that is both a social and a training center for youth. He and Susan have also included me in family events both in Illinois and in Kenya, further crumbling the misperceptions I had about Christians and not just tolerance but real acceptance of sexual diversity.
But it is Phil I really want to write about. While I have kept in some contact with Brian and John over the years, I lost touch with Phil. After helping open the door for Wheaton College to get involved in HIV/AIDS work, I remember Phil spending his last winter college break in Iraq – this was after the US invasion. Phil went on a mission trip to try and bring healing and reconciliation through community-building. After that, we maybe saw each other once more before he graduated. Then, earlier this year, came across a blog written by Phil. Apparently he had been spending much of his time in the West Bank, mainly, from what I could tell, writing about the impact that the Israeli/Hamas battles were having on Palestinians. He has also done some films that are meant to simply bear witness to the day-do-day lives of people caught in the crossfire (To see more, go to http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=18931) It seems that it is because of some of these writings and films, and his subsequent involvement in calls for action that focused on human rights over nationalism, that he has been apprehended (he was part of a demonstration in Cairo over the weekend; all the other demonstrators were released).
For those of us who consider ourselves pacifists, I think all three of these young men are models for us, and in very different ways. John demonstrates the importance of caring for family and friends (it was John who first drew my attention to Phil’s plight), and Brian completely dedicates and immerses himself in what he does. Unlike so many people who stay in the comfort of their own homes and try to solve problems elsewhere, Brian and Susan have completely dedicated their lives to what they are doing.

Phil takes this to an entirely different level. He has gone into the heart of conflict – first Iraq, then the West Bank – not to engage in military conflict, but to intervene on behalf of human rights. A quote from the article linked above says it best about Phil’s latest movie: The other unspoken message that Rizk captures through his lens is a creed of nonviolent resistance that each of the individuals portrayed in the film have made part of their daily lives. In continuing to cultivate fields, rebuild destroyed homes and simply refusing to yield their places on the land to others, these Palestinians embody a relentless steadfastness, shunning the weapons of their adversaries that would’ve automatically allowed the world to question their moral authority had they been employed. For Rizk, showing the rootedness of nonviolent resistance in the lives of his characters was a central aim of the film. “We wanted to address the fact that violent forms of resistance, widely reported by international media outlets, overshadow more common non-violent forms of Palestinian resistance like sumoud, longsuffering and perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation,” he explained.

Military soldiers are often noted for what they are willing to die for. Each one of these men are models of what it is to commit your life to something, at great personal sacrifice and commitment. When I think about the Quaker youth that we work with, and all youth who refuse military service, I think about people like Brian, John and Phil who also do not pick up guns as service. But they also do not pick up protest signs from the comfort of a safe place. They put themselves out there. And, as we have seen over the weekend with Phil, at great peril. It is a reminder to me of what true pacifism is all about – not just standing on the sidelines in judgment, but a full-on life-and-death commitment to create a better world through non-violence no matter what the personal costs. At times over the past 7 years, they have been my inspirations to step out my comfort zone, and to really see what my commitment is to a more just world. Especially these days, perhaps we can all look to Phil as the ultimate model, and pray that he can continue to be that model.