Isak

The Births of a Nation

The moving conversations I had with midwives, doulas, doctors and parents still ring in my mind days after my article about home birth and midwifery went up and out. Which makes it quite a moment to watch "The Business of Being Born"--the film that actually incited the American Medical Association to cite it as a cause of its recent resolution to oppose home birth.

Personally, I think it should be required viewing for every American who has been, you know, born.

When I was in a 10th grade health class, we watched a hospital birth on a video. Feeling ill that day to begin with, I actually passed out at the sight of it. Went home and drank ginger ale and tried to recover.

When I saw the births on this film, each time, I felt a pull of emotion in my gut, a shiver on my skin, and tears in my eyes. My God. What else can you say about it? My God.

It's a remarkable movie.

Over in Scotland, my sister's having a baby any day now. She's taught me many things throughout her pregnancy, and one of them is how very differently birth is approached in another country. It as a point of comparison, for the good and the bad, cued me to realize that what I thought was "normal" isn't so much. She has both a midwife and a doctor, which is standard here. She wasn't planning on learning the gender of the baby, but actually in the national health system, they don't tell you the gender of the baby, ever, if it's your first child. She, who had two part-time jobs when she became pregnant and was on a visa, has 36-weeks paid leave. Her husband-to-be receives a paternity stipend.

My assumptions about birth--drawn largely from sitcoms and their ilk--are in all kinds of pieces, and I'm questioning how we in the U.S. approach families, from gestation on. Don't worry, I'm not feeling disillusioned; I feel real awe at the possibilities. Beginning with the wisdom of our bodies.

Tuesday's Headline News

My latest article over at RH Reality Check explores midwifery and home births--particularly in the light of the American Medical Association's and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' recent resolutions opposing home births.

It was a peculiarly fascinating article, one that gave me a chance to talk with many amazing folks and to learn an awful lot. I'd definitely like to follow up on this, not just with more articles, but by personally engaging with it. Forgive the vagueness, but I'll tell more once I see if what I'm thinking about is possible.

The piece begins:

While another profession might have the popular reputation of being the world's oldest, you can make a strong case that midwifery is a more realistic contender for that title. The tradition of caring for pregnant women and delivering babies in homes or community spaces is ancient the world over. And it's present today, in the providers who practice within an American medical culture in which 99% of births take place in hospitals, presided by OB/GYNs. ...

Today you need a license in the U.S. to practice psychotherapy and cosmetology, to drive trucks and to be a mortician -- but not to minister to laboring women in homes or in birthing centers. Or at least, not quite ...

The Russians Steal My Heart

Their names ring bells inside me: Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Anna Akhmatova, Vladmir Nabokov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Ivan Turgenev. With strange slippery stories and poems, visionary novels and novellas, they'll have me coming back to them my whole life long.

One Russian I haven't read yet is Maxim Gorky. I know nearly nothing about the guy, actually. Happily, a feature in The New Republic on Gorky, and particularly his "reminiscences" of Tolstoy," gives me a starting place. The occasion? A new translation of Gorky's memoir of Tolstoy by Donald Fanger that TNR calls "fascinating."

When Gorky met Tolstoy in 1900, the two men were the most famous writers in Russia. Tolstoy was long into his religious "conversion," having abandoned literature and positioned himself as the wise, troubled savior of Russia, preaching nonviolence and personal spirituality, dressing as a peasant, and receiving pilgrims and truth seekers from all corners of Russia and the world. Gorky was a young writer in search of a literary idol. ...

The memoir, which Fanger translates for the first time in its entirety, is torn-edged, surprisingly vicious, unpredictable, and empathic to the point of being almost an X-ray of a spirit. Composed of forty-four fragments recording anecdotes and quotations, as well as an unfinished letter written on the eve of Tolstoy's death, the memoir is held together by contradictions--the galactic attraction of Tolstoy's charm and self-regard against the willful slyness of his half-hearted preaching; Tolstoy's insistence on peasant simplicity against his silent, agonized consideration of complexity, human and divine; the tenderness for the man, so vast that Gorky almost falls into it like a sea, against Gorky's own defensive animosity.

(Gorky's) memoir is an alternative gospel relating the teachings and contradictions of a god-like man, who himself rewrote the Gospels in search of a god who could save him. It is clearly a hagiography, but one that goes out of its way to emphasize that its subject was not a saint. ...

On a Play, a Priest, Napalm, a Trial, and a Spiritual Base

Awhile back, I found and read a strange little play called The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. It was by Father Daniel Berrigan, the creative nonviolence activist, Jesuit priest, and poet. Among his many direct actions of civil disobedience, he's remembered for one that dubbed him a member of the title's Catonsville Nine: forty years ago, he, his brother, and six others walked into a draft board office in Catonsville, Maryland, took a set of draft files outside, and burned them with homemade napalm.

Here they are:

The play told the story of their trial for destruction of property, a trial that refused to allow the "why" for the action to enter the court testimony. As Berrigan tells it, in the one-act play that draws from the trial's transcript, the nine of them pointedly returned again and again to the why, and the powerful spiritual tradition that informed them. Their words of the nine come to reverberate like an ancient chant. He writes their language in verse, like a scripture, which contrasts with the unnamed court officials' prosaic speech.

The Nation profiles Fr. Berrigan, now 87, "forty years after Catonsville." And journalist Chris Hedges places Berrigan's story in its context of radical spirituality:

The trial of the Catonsville Nine altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards. It also signaled a seismic shift within the Catholic Church, propelling radical priests and nuns led by the Berrigans, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day to the center of a religiously inspired social movement that challenged not only church and state authority but the myths Americans used to define themselves.

"Dorothy Day taught me more than all the theologians," he says of the founder of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement. "She awakened me to connections I had not thought of or been instructed in, the equation of human misery and poverty and warmaking. She had a basic hope that God created the world with enough for everyone, but there was not enough for everyone and warmaking."

Berrigan's relationship with Day led to a close friendship with the writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Merton's "great contribution to the religious left," he says, "was to gather us for days of prayer and discussion of the sacramental life. He told us, 'Stay with these, stay with these, these are your tools and discipline and these are your strengths.'"

Hardly packaged up in history, Berrigan resonates in our modern moment: election year 2008, an era incessantly referred to as "post-9/11," a time when we wrangle over mediocre responses to global warming and get ourselves all in a fuss over a New Yorker cover.

The current election campaign does not preoccupy him, and he quotes his brother, Philip, who said that "if voting made any difference it would be illegal." He is critical of the Catholic Church, saying that Pope John Paul II, who marginalized and silenced radical priests and nuns like the Berrigans, "introduced Soviet methods into the Catholic Church" ... He despairs of universities, especially Boston College's decision last year to give an honorary degree to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and this year to invite the new Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, to address the law school. ...  And he has little time for secular radicals who stood with him forty years ago but who have now "disappeared into the matrix of money and regular jobs or gave up on their initial discipline."

"The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life," he says. "It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base."

What then is to be done? Is there nothing but mourning left for us ... or, in spiritual terms, are we experiencing our lamentation?

Berrigan argues that those who seek a just society, who seek to defy war and violence, who decry the assault of globalization and degradation of the environment, who care about the plight of the poor, should stop worrying about the practical, short-term effects of their resistance.

"The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere," he says. "I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goodness goes, what direction, what force. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go." ...

A resistance movement, Berrigan says, cannot survive without the spiritual core pounded into him by Merton. He is sustained, he said, by the Eucharist, his faith and his religious community.

"The reason we are celebrating forty years of Catonsville and we are still at it, those of us who are still living--the reason people went through all this and came out on their feet--was due to a spiritual discipline that went on for months before these actions took place," he says. "We went into situations in court and in prison and in the underground that could easily have destroyed us and that did destroy others who did not have our preparation."

This seems a good moment to raise a glass to Tom Lewis, another one of the Catonsville Nine, who continued his life committed to creative nonviolence. He passed away last April.

Jonah House, the Baltimore Catholic Worker that has been a home to the Berrigans, Lewis and countless other good souls, celebrates Catonsville's 40th anniversary with an interesting online library (for which all images in this little essay of mine are credited) that is still there for us who couldn't attend the films, conversations, potlucks, teach-ins, vigils and witnesses that Jonah House facilitated in May.

For your exploration, consider also "Fire and Faith: The Catonsville Nine File."

But once you're done exploring, for now, what are we going to do? There's so much that's possible ...

The Votes Are In

Check out who was voted the most shameful corporation of the year--and why--through the broad public vote hosted by estimable Corporate Accountability International.

It was one of the folks I voted for. I feel so validated.

Who's In, Who's Out?

Guest Post
By Elizabeth Bovair

(WASHINGTON D.C) One weekend ago, I had the privilege of volunteering for College Summit. It's an organization founded on the belief that all students can achieve in secondary and post-secondary education. It works with students, teachers, and volunteers to equip low-income students with the skills necessary to successfully navigate the college application process.

The program has existed for about ten years and its participants have an 80% acceptance rate into four-year colleges. College Summit's mission is taken from the basic statistic that students from the low-income quartile who gets A's on standardized tests go to college at the same rate as their higher income peers who get D's on the same tests. Looking at this basic statistic, College Summit believes that the wits, the smarts, and the character of underprivileged students is hardly represented by the usual rankings. They have it in them to not only get into college, but to succeed. 

The program invites students from mostly under-resourced urban settings to college campuses around the country for four days. There, students meet with college counselors, writing coaches, peers; they leave the workshop with skills they need to succeed in college applications and a draft of a personal statement. What’s more, once students complete the four-day workshop, they return to their high schools and assist teachers in College Summit courses, helping their peers to also earn new and necessary skills for college success (let’s hear it for grassroots movements!). 

I volunteered at a workshop at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, VA. My students were from downtown Washington, D.C. and Prince George’s County. They all had under a 3.0 GPA; the lowest was 1.9. None of my four students had yet taken any college entrance exams. 

Through a series of exercises and brainstorming sessions with other students, compelling life stories emerged that revealed the students’ passion, drive, and work ethic. One student compared herself to an “I-Pod on Viagra.” (Just think about that for a moment!  Incredible imagery!). I had another student liken himself to a graffiti-covered metro car—how many people see it as something ugly that’s been vandalized, while other people see it as art, creation, something to be cherished. And I had another student who, at age 11, had to take on the role of man of the house because his eldest brother had been beaten nearly to death and left paralyzed. This student wrote about his love for his brother and the difficulty in balancing responsibilities with his desire to have a normal teenager’s life. 

Slowly, together, we crafted essays that told these stories, and showed admissions counselors why these students have what it takes to succeed in college. Each one of my students left with a draft they could take home and re-work, and I am incredibly proud of each one of them. 

What I took home is an understanding of just how desperately we need to overhaul how we Americans view education. The sad fact is that some students I met will not get into college--and not because they aren’t talented. Instead, they’ve been forgotten.

In a world where the U.S. is facing competition from educated populations all over the world, now is not the time to abandon the students who do not have the opportunity to succeed. Rather, programs, like College Summit, work to give these students a chance (in some cases a mere fighting chance, but a chance nonetheless). It also encourages students to be leaders for their peers--in essence training an entire generation of leaders to be a positive influence within their communities.

All in all, I encourage anyone to volunteer for College Summit. Besides the program's website--which features volunteer opportunities and excerpts from student essays--learn more about the program via this feature from the New York Times and its profile on the PBS series, "Now."   

Finally, I would like to thank Anna for the opportunity to write a guest spot on her blog. ☺ (Ed. Note: You're welcome anytime, Beth!)

Image credits: The New York Times; College Summit

THANK YOU, 1980s: A Grateful Remembrance of Nelson Mandela & the Anti-Apartheid Movement

Nelson Mandela spent the 1980s in prison--the last decade of his 27-years behind bars at Robben Island. His crime? He'd been a South African anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress. Notably, his arrest in 1962 was made possible by a tip from the CIA. Mandela was convicted on charges of armed sabotage. And well, yes, he sabotaged. 

From Mandela's statement at a trial before the Supreme Court in 1964:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die

As an inmate, Mandela came to symbolize international anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s--the time when the decades-long movement that goes back even further than the Sharpeville massacre--came to a head in the U.S. The movement's primary tactic was to lobby businesses and investors to cut off its financial ties to South Africa until it dismantled apartheid.

The successful nonviolent international movement was one of the greatest we've ever seen. From Susan Collin Marks' remembrance at Common Ground News:

Few people who look back at those dark days recall that militant nonviolence was the key tool in the struggle against apartheid and, in the end, precipitated a negotiated revolution instead of the widely anticipated carnage. The scope and creativity of methods employed by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s amounted to what the theologian Walter Wink describes as “probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history.”

Hunger strikes ended the mass use of the detention without trial, and protests against beach apartheid showed up the injustice of segregation and the unacceptability of police action. Gandhi’s legacy loomed large as economic boycotts of white businesses, court actions that challenged apartheid laws, rent boycotts, demonstrations, and marches proliferated.

Particularly on college campuses, the anti-apartheid movement gained in momentum in the 1980s--students demanded that their universities and colleges cease investments, operations, and trades in South Africa. And the thing is: it worked. Hampshire College was the first to disinvest. Harvard began a (slow) process of ending its relationship with the apartheid government. The University of California withdrew its full three billion dollars, a move that, according to Wikipedia, Nelson Mandela credited as being a particularly strong action towards "abolishing white-minority rule in South Africa."

By 1988, 155 colleges were fully or partially divested, thanks to the anti-apartheid movement.

Cities got on board too, as activists turned their attentions to local legislators. According to researcher Richard Knight, "by the end of 1989 26 states, 22 counties and over 90 cities had taken some form of binding economic action against companies doing business in South Africa." Among them was San Francisco.

Local and college action led to federal action in the 1980s, including the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act and the Budget Reconciliation Act.

Hell, the movement grew so strong in the U.S., it even showed up on television. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that it was no coincidence that in "The Cosby Show," Sandra and Alvin's twins are named Nelson and Winnie. Theo, meanwhile, had an anti-apartheid sign in his room. And several episodes of "A Different World" cheered on the movement; in one episode Kim chooses to reject a substantial scholarship from a company that hasn't divested from South Africa. She takes a second job--working nights at a funeral parlor--to earn the money to pay for her pre-med classes.

In 1990, the African National Congress was unbanned in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. It was the first step towards years of truth-in-reconciliation and negotiations that transformed the country--and, I daresay, the world. In 1994, in a peaceful democratic election, Mandela was chosen by the people to be president.

 Again, from Susan Collin Marks' article:

This spiritual dimension is perhaps the X factor in the South African equation. “Any social scientist would expect 98% of blacks to hate whites and wish retribution, and yet the reality is the reverse,” said University of Cape Town political scientist Robert Schrire after the peaceful 1994 election. “And since we cannot explain it rationally, we will have to regard it as one of the great miracles of the South African dilemma.”

That's true. But still, though apartheid's officially ended in South Africa, and Mandela's a free man, we can't say that everything's 'fixed.' Consider the repulsive comments to the above video on YouTube, left within the last two weeks: 

ahh the things you see when you havent got a sniper rifle :(

lol at that black prick behind bars.....where he belongs!!

mandela is a pedo scum england and st george.

Nelson Mandela will celebrate his 90th birthday this Friday, July 18. Happy birthday to him, and thank you to all the anti-apartheid activists for the better world we have today. 

Image Credits: Northland Poster; St. George's Park;  much more music; Stanford News Service; the UCSC Library

Dzanc Prize, GO!

What's that, you like to write? You like to engage in creative community work? You're my kind of person. You also may be a Dzanc Prize kind of person. If you haven't already, check out the great opportunity, now accepting applications for it's second award.

The Dzanc Prize provides monetary aid in the sum of $5,000, to a writer of literary fiction. All writers applying for the Dzanc Prize must have a work-in-progress they can submit for review, and present the judges with a Community Service Program they can facilitate. Such programs may include anything deemed "educational" in relation to writing. Examples would include: working with HIV patients to help them write their stories; doing a series of workshops at a drop-in youth homeless center; running writing programs in inner-city schools; or working with older citizens looking to write their memoirs. All community programs under the Dzanc Prize must run for a full year

Things Learned: Part 1

As predicted, I have a lot of thoughts about the Allied Media Conference, which I participated in this last weekend. From feeling struck at the sight (not to mention the wisdom) of my longtime hero, Grace Lee Boggs, to the independent media tour of Detroit that took me into amazing spaces, I'm sitting with a real sense of possibility and joy. I can know that there are fabulous people doing fabulous work that makes a news kind of world, I can even read about it and hear about it. But it is another thing entirely to see it--and to be welcomed into it.

These abstractions will take a real-life shape later this week, as I think more on it all, and sift through all the fliers and periodicals I picked up,  and begin sharing it (and it's not all flowery praise; I have my frustrations).

But on the shortlist of things learned is the pieces of Boggs' talk that stick in my mind:

"The successes, and the limitations, of the movement in the Sixties is what got us to where we are today," she said.She compared the Sixties model of activism (according to her, a charismatic male leader speaking to a room of people with intent of charging up the crowd for action by stoking anger and frustrations) to today's model, as manifested by the AMC, of small, participatory working groups, interaction, attention to the variety of voices that are at the table, and reflection.

She said that we owe a lot to the movements that came before us--and she should know--but that it's model is old-fashioned in many ways; we might celebrate our new ways of not mimicking hierarchical power structures that we want to change in our activism, but rather, allowing the public influence of transforming ourselves to take root. Being the change we want to see.

Boggs, it must be noted, celebrated her 93rd birthday a week or so ago. She spoke to the AMC on what would've been Jimmy Lee Boggs' birthday. There was definitely some creative renditions of "Happy Birthday" coming from the whole auditorrium and offered to Grace.

And seeing Boggs cheer so heartily for the two teenage age girls from Detroit Summer that framed her talk with song moved me.

I've Been All Edge-of-my-Seat...

... for this weekend to come so I could get myself here, finally, and discover what all the buzz is about this being an uncommonly interactive, communal and cutting-edge gathering. While I'm missing some of Saturday's line-up to attend a friend's wedding (another huge highlight of the weekend), I'm making up for it be volunteering to be a driver on one of thorough three-hour tours of the city on Sunday. The Detroit tours focus on independent media in the city, labor history, environmental justice, music, and more. I get to be part of the urban agriculture tour, and I can't wait.

Watch me emerge Monday full of new media skills and new passion. You know it's going to happen.