Conscious Choice: Hope in a River of Racism and Ruin

October 2005 | Editor’s Note

Hope in a River of Racism and Ruin

About 10 years ago I took six months off from my regular job to literally walk and run across our nation: vertically from South to North, and horizontally from West to East, at least part of the way.

I bring this up now because after that trip I didn’t need a Hurricane Katrina to see the deep racial divide in our country. You see, I was on the road as part of an international caravan that was organized by Native American activists to bring attention to social justice and environmental issues. The exact wheres and whys of that journey is a story for another day.

Let me say right here that during those cross-country odysseys we met some amazingly generous and wonderful people. We attracted a lot of attention, in part, because we literally had just about every race, religion and indeed every continent represented in our caravan. And just about everywhere we traveled, we encountered someone who had a problem with someone in our group because they didn’t like Japanese people or Buddhists or African Americans or Native Americans or Europeans or Mexicans or Jews or Christians or well, you get the idea. More to the point, many of these people didn’t seem to like that all of us were traveling together.

So I have no trouble believing that racial/social/economic/class factors played a part in the huge Hurricane Katrina rescue mess. But I think there may be something else at play here, something that is even scarier. I suspect that we, as a nation, simply aren’t prepared to deal with these kinds of these catastrophes or emergencies, period. This seems especially the case under the current administration. Is what’s happened such a surprise, given that we live in a country that fosters such a huge economic divide between the haves and have-nots?

But let’s also consider that it’s a whole a lot easier to play Monday morning quarterback than call the shots from the heat of the game, especially when you’re on the field facing an Act of God. Or another way to think of it is as karma. Remember the “for every action there’s an equal and opposite action” maxim? Or how about: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? This is just a preview of what’s going to happen on an ever larger scale if we keep filling in wetlands and ignore global warming and rising sea levels. So think of this as God’s wake-up call, pointing out what happens when we disregard others and the environment in which we live.

There are signs of hope including the outpouring of donations from individuals and companies to hurricane survivors. On a local government level, the Chicago City Council supports peace efforts and has called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Poet Robert Bly, who is coming to Chicago in October for a poetry reading, also has a lot to say about hope. Yes, Bly is known for his men’s empowerment movement work. But even more interesting is what he has been doing lately: working in an Islamic poetry form. Was this a political statement that encouraged tolerance by demonstrating the beauty and value of a culture that in these post 9-11 days has become our new national villain?

That seemed likely since Bly had taken such a strong stand against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Back then, Bly said he was upset with our nation’s propensity to destroy other cultures and turned over his National Book Award check to a draft resistor at the 1968 ceremony. Did the 78-year-old Bly see parallels between that time and this? I called him up to ask. And so we talked. And talked and talked. We talked so long that his phone battery went dead and my tape ran out at one point. OK, part of the reason was because he graciously indulged my question: “What the heck are some of these poems about anyway?”

But I digress. Let me just end by saying that while traversing the country on foot a decade ago, the place we encountered the most extremes on both ends of the spectrum of tolerance was Texas. Perhaps it’s yet another Act of God or karma, that so many seeking shelter from the storm should be gathered in that state which has some of the best and worst of everything, including tolerance. And also happens to be the home of George W. Bush. Let’s hope and pray he gets this lesson.

— Marla Donato

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