I read a dialogue between two Africans in some town in some country that most of us couldn’t find on a map. One of them asked the other how the world could ignore what was happening.

He said, “Why doesn’t someone help us?”

The other replied, “We don’t have oil.  They don’t care about us.”

 

I told this story to a Park Service worker at the MLK Memorial in DC last spring.  She was Somalian and looked at me with deep, knowing eyes.

 “We’re better off not having oil. Look at Iraq,” she said.

 

And I reflect on college years, the Vietnam War and the draft lottery. I remember massive marches in DC.  I once walked in a long silent procession.  We all carried lit candles. 

When I reached the White House lawn, I blew out my candle and yelled the name that I carried on a handmade sign.  I threw the placard onto the lawn. Cardboard replaced the life of someone, probably about my age, that had died in the war.

 

There was the smell of tear gas another time in the Capitol…we stood in a park, listened to speakers.  Suddenly hundreds of ghostlike, faceless soldiers marched towards us, eyes and humanity hidden by dark plastic masks.  They had bayonets.  Someone put a flower in one.  Helicopters hovered overhead.  Billie said, “If we don’t stand up to them now, when will we?”

 

I ran.  And there was a fancy circular hotel nearby.  I escaped the fumes by running inside.  People in suits and other dressy clothes watched the spectacle through large glass windows.  And no one kicked me out.  Beneath the bell-bottoms, red headband, and army jacket with peace signs they could see that I was really one of them.

 

Last night I saw Captain Phillips in a theatre. Africans who had no choice, the villains. They considered themselves farmers of the sea. Our greed, the crop floating by.  Their version of our mayors said, “Become pirates or starve.” 

Captain Phillips asked a captor, “Why not do something else?” 

“Maybe there are choices in America,” he replied.

 

I wrote a letter in the Western Front during the second Iraqi War. I was a little self righteous, saying, “Why aren’t you taking to the streets?” But if I’m really honest, I see the truth of the Vietnam protests.  A big part of our protest was the draft.  None of us wanted to go to Vietnam.  And the protests were fun parties.

 

The powers that be are smarter now. They know mass poverty delivers youth with so few options that signing up seems attractive, and it also increases profit.

​

And I ponder the founding of our country. How we were sea pirates. How we stole a land and a culture.  How the logic of the treaties that we forced on the tribes was the same as the step by step humiliation and then death that the Nazis wreaked on the Jews. Tonight is Kristallnacht.  And many of the dictatorships we’ve supported in South America and elsewhere, have done the same thing.

 

And we like to think that we’re bringing democracy to the downtrodden.  And we like to think that there is altruism in our actions.  And sometimes there is.  But how often are we in a country with nothing for us to gain? 

 

And I consider our war machines that spit out weapons, and plant them like crops around the planet, while chugging our economy along.  And I ponder what we can do.

 

Here we stand, a handful of us in a church on a November day in a distant corner of an expansive country.  I don’t have the answers but I know a good place to start. 

 

We can be honest with ourselves.