"Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull
of what you really love."
--Rumi
"We try to do everything in life
to keep our hearts from being broken. But there is so much
beauty in having a broken heart --there's pain, but you discover
things in yourself that you never thought about before."
--Aqeela
Sherrills
“Peace is not a field of flowers. It’s
hard work.”
Despite personal tragedy, Aqeela Sherrills
seeks peace on the mean streets of Los Angeles.
By Tijn Touber
There are seals swimming in the bay in front of the hotel where
Aqeela Sherrills is staying. The sun is struggling to chase away
threads of mist hanging over the San Francisco hills in the distance.
The hotel lobby smells of fresh coffee and pancakes. The sense
of serenity that dominates this morning in Tiburon, an upscale
town across the bay from San Francisco, in no way resembles the
place where Sherrills comes from: a rough gang-dominated district
of Los Angeles. In that place, you’re asking for trouble
if you hit the street without packing some means of self-defence.
It’s estimated that over the past 20 years, at least 10,000
murders have been committed in these Los Angeles neighbourhoods.
That’s far more than all the victims of the conflict in Northern
Ireland.
But Sherrills has managed to accomplish what has eluded negotiators
in many international conflicts: getting two rival, violent groups
to the negotiating table and then making sure that the terms of
the ceasefire agreement stick. Ultimately, the Crips and the Bloods
signed an honest-to-God peace treaty. Sherrills then created an
entire structure involving 80 people dedicated to safeguarding
the terms of the treaty and teaching the gang members self-respect
and “life skills.” The treaty, signed in 1992, continues
for the most part to be upheld and has become an example to other
cities. But this is just the beginning for Sherrills. “I
expect that the next major peace movement will come from these
neighbourhoods,” he says.
The baggy sweater Sherrills wears this morning cannot hide his
muscles, important for self-protection as a young man. He doesn’t
need to fight today, but his eyes remain watchful. Sherrills is
no longer fighting with others, or with himself. He is fighting
deeply-ingrained patterns and prejudices: poverty, racism and
feelings of inferiority. They are so deeply-rooted that most people
don’t see them and even fewer dare to name them. “Black
folks hate themselves,” Sherrills says plainly. “And
they feel inferior. White folks have been conditioned to feel
superior. It’s so deeply rooted that it’s subtle; people
don’t even see it most of the time. But it’s there,
and it really needs to be addressed.” The problems of violence
aren’t limited to American ghettos, they’re everywhere.
And if there’s someone who can point out these problems and
has found a solution to them, it is Sherrills.
Watts was one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Los Angeles when
Aqeela Sherrills was born there 35 years ago. The area was split
in two by railroad tracks. One side was the territory of the Bloods
and the other belonged to the Crips. Conflicts over territory
and drugs were fought out on the street using state-of-the-art
weapons. Executions and drive-by shootings were daily occurrences.
In the early 1980s, Sherrills was just a kid at the time gang
violence in American ghettos started to escalate.
Sherrills grew up as the youngest of 10 children surrounded by
this horrific backdrop of violence. But in Watts, children never
stay young for long. Sherrills had his first son when he was 14.
That same year, his best friend, also 14, was shot to death. Sherrills
looks back, “I went completely crazy. We wanted revenge and
we hit the streets. Fighting. Shooting. Robbing.” By the
time he was 16, 13 of his friends had already died in gunfire
between the Bloods and the Crips.
The subculture of American gang life is dominated by violence
and drugs. But it’s more than that. It is also where fantastic
music, dance and clothing styles are created, which have a major
impact on global pop culture. Just watching MTV for a half-hour
makes it clear that gang culture has become hip. This makes Sherrills
laugh. “It’s cool now to say you come from a ghetto.
When I was young it wasn’t so cool; most of us wanted to
get out as quickly as possible.”
But Sherrills eventually pulled back from the gang life. Fantasy
is what saved him. “Together with my brothers and sisters
I fantasized a lot about a better world,” he remembers. “My
parents weren’t home much and we would tell each other never
ending stories. It usually started with a Chinese master who gave
us supernatural powers. We used those super powers to make the
world a better place. Those stories made me trust, at a young
age, that another world was possible and that I could do something
about it. I knew I was destined to do something big. I just didn’t
know what.”
Sherrills’ oldest sister was the first to get out of the
neighbourhood. She was accepted to college and moved on campus.
This sister had always been a major inspiration to Sherrills—albeit
because she was the one who always told the best stories. With
her help, Sherrills also got into college when he was 18, where
he studied electrical engineering. It appeared to be his ticket
out of the violence in his neighbourhood.
Initially, Sherrills didn’t want to return home, even on
weekends. Although he didn’t show too much interest in his
studies, he hung around campus. His first year was mostly spent
partying and dating lots of girls. But that summer, something
happened that changed Sherrills’ life. He read a book entitled
The Evidence of Things Not Seen by eminent African American writer
James Baldwin. The book describes what Baldwin saw as a plot against
black people, involving the shipment of drugs and guns into poor
neighbourhoods— with drugs and weapons. “The idea was,
Baldwin wrote: let the black people kill each other off. I was
furious and wanted to warn my brothers,” Sherrills recalls.
Sherrills joined the Nation of Islam, an American spiritual black
separatist movement. When he rejoined his fellow students after
the summer, some didn’t recognize him. He had lost 35 pounds
(15 kilos) and had given up alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and sex.
As befits a devout Muslim, he prayed five times a day. Meanwhile,
he began acting as a kind of Robin Hood, stealing money from drug
dealers and giving it to the neighbourhood’s poor.
The big task for which Sherrill was destined, started to take
shape. He continued to pay little attention to his studies; he
wanted instead to go back to the ‘hood” and help his
brothers break out of the vicious circle of drugs and violence.
Sherrills organized gatherings for fellow students around the
theme of defending black rights. He reminded his fellow black
students of their roots-–“People died so you could go
to college!”—but he didn’t get many to the point
of returning to the ghetto they came from. They simply didn’t
want to be associated with their old neighbourhood, Sherrills
discovered, and he slowly turned bitter.
Sherrills continued to have run-ins with the law and even landed
in jail once for physically resisting a police officer who was
beating on him. But what transformed Sherrill into a peace activist
was not being arrested, joining Islam, or reading Baldwin, but
by the love of a woman. “Before my celibacy stint,”
he explains, “I had a girlfriend: Lisa. I was crazy about
her, but very insecure about myself. I thought I was ugly and
couldn’t believe that she really wanted me. I couldn’t
handle her love and cheated on her—to break up the relationship
and to prove that I was right. But I regretted it so much that
for the first time in my life I did something noble: I confessed
everything.”
That confession had a miraculous effect. He suddenly saw the world
through different eyes. “Before that I didn’t trust
anyone,” Sherrills explains. “If things weren’t
going well for me there was always someone I could blame. Now
I was looking at myself for the first time in my life. It was
as if spirit came into me, as if I had become a new person.”
This rebirth gave Sherrills the wings and courage he needed to
go into his neighbourhood with a few friends with the aim of making
peace. He talked, discussed and listened on every street corner
to members of the Crips and the Bloods. That was in 1989. A short
time later, Sherrills got help from an American football legend,
Jim Brown, who made his house in the Hollywood hills available
as a neutral place where members of various gangs could meet.
Sherrills looks back on those early days: “We held six meetings
involving hundreds of cats from different neighbourhoods. We couldn’t
bring off a ceasefire, but relations got better and better.”
Brown was generous enough to donate a monthly sum so that Sherrills
and his buddies could rent a retail space and take their activities
to the next level. The cooperation with Brown led to the founding
of the Amer-I-Can project, which offers a program for “life
skills.” Sherrills explains, “Jim had been offering
this program to prisoners for awhile. It teaches you to develop
self-respect, solve conflicts, create a life vision, make decisions—that
kind of thing.” Sherrills followed the program himself and
started giving lessons, something he would do for the next 11
years.
Brown’s fame, combined with Sherrills’ street credibility,
turned out to be a golden formula for getting the unique peace
process off the ground. But it remained a tall order; after all,
how do you get young men who consistently confuse the concepts
of “forgiveness” and “revenge” to take a seat
around a negotiation table? Sherrills: “It’s not magic.
It’s a step-by-step process. It’s about communication.
I appeal to their deepest feelings. I try to touch their heart,
so that each of them can get back in touch with their humanity.
This process is based on relationships and cannot be motivated
by anything but love. We simply talk about the important things
in life: what makes people happy or sad, what are we afraid of,
what can we do better? That kind of thing. Again and again it
becomes clear that we ultimately believe in the same things.”
In 1992, Sherrills finally sees a breakthrough: the Crips and
the Bloods sign a historic treaty. Sherrills describes that amazing
day this way: “Everyone was happy, grandmothers were crying,
everyone was calling each other, for the first time fathers were
able to visit their children on the other side of the railroad
tracks… Everyone was so excited. It totally changed the quality
of our lives.”
After this success in Los Angeles, there was no stopping the
initiative. What started out locally, expanded into an international
organization active in 15 cities. At the highpoint of his peace
activities, Sherrills’ Community Self-Determination Institute
had 80 employees and its budget included $ 3 million U.S. (2.3
million euros) in government subsidies. For three and a half years,
he lived like an urban nomad travelling from ghetto to ghetto
to initiate peace negotiations and exact a ceasefire. The success
of Sherrills’ approach is partly due to the fact that he
does more than just treat the symptoms of gang violence. He wants
to tackle the problem at its roots. “Violence on the streets
is a symptom of a deeper problem,” he notes. “As long
as there is poverty, we will never have peace. Poverty destroys
families, neighbourhoods, countries.”
Sherrills doesn’t see the problems of violence and despair
as confined to gang areas. “In fact there is no difference
between what goes on in Watts or in Beverly Hills. The emotional
pain that people experience is expressed in Watts by murder and
in Beverly Hills by suicide.” Sherrills then reveals a staggering
statistic: “Last year there were more suicides than murders
in greater Los Angeles.”
Sherrills shifts effortlessly between street slang and clearly
formulated spiritual and political statements. His charismatic
energy is both tough and loving. You can just as easily imagine
him both on a street corner in the ghetto and in a meeting with
top level government officials.
Sherrills’ approach works, in part because he speaks the
language of the street. “I honestly love my neighbourhood
and my brothers,” he remarks. “There is so much beauty,
so much talent. Sometimes in the roughest places, you find the
most beauty. Aside from the violence, there are few other places
in California where you find so much sense of community. That
gang feeling is a part of it; it was always there, even before
the violence escalated. A gang is like a kind of surrogate family.
For young men, fighting is a way to be initiated. You can’t
give up a gang without replacing it with something else. You have
to keep them intact and help the members start living according
to new values.”
The problem Sherrills runs into time and time again is the marginalization
and criminalization of gang members. “The word ”gang
member” is a way of dehumanizing someone. When someone gets
killed people say: “Oh well, it was a gang member.”
But that gang member was someone’s son, friend or loved one.
The perception is that people in these neighbourhoods are hardened
against this type of grief. That’s not true. They are deeply
wounded and use this way to express it.”
Nearly everyone in South Central Los Angeles is suffering from
a kind of post-traumatic stress, Sherrills believes. “We
have got to address our own illnesses. How? You have to take a
step back and look at the issue from a more fundamental perspective.
In order to be able to do that, the heart has to be bust open.
We try to do everything in life to keep our hearts from being
broken. But there is so much beauty in having a broken heart –-there’s
pain, but you discover things in yourself that you never thought
about before.”
And then in 2004 came the horrible test of Sherrills’ beliefs.
His oldest son, 18-year-old Terrell Sherrills, is shot while on
vacation visiting his father in Watts. Terrell had gone out to
a party with a friend, and around midnight a few gang members
arrive. Terrell is shot in the back and dies a short time later
in the hospital.
“Terrell led a peaceful life,” says Sherrills. “He
didn’t have anything to do with gang violence. He was in
college and was very popular—and not only with the girls.
He came with me sometimes when I did my work. It was a huge blow.”
He falls silent for a moment, showing that none of us can ever
defend ourselves against this pain. No one gets used to murder.
Sherrills says he had no choice but to choose love over revenge.
“It’s not about who killed my son, but what killed him:
a culture with no respect for life. I am not surrendering his
life to death, but reclaiming it and giving it new meaning.”
The man who killed Terrell has not yet been caught. When that
happens, Sherrills wants to talk with him and his parents. “I
want to ask them what kind of pain drove the guy to commit this
act. When did he become disillusioned? Where did it go wrong?
Of course, my son’s killer deserves to be punished, but mainly
I want to keep him alive. I want to invest in him towards a better
future for us all. My dream is still that children can grow up
in Watts safely and without fear.”
The main problem the United States is struggling with is that
it is a country built around violence, according to Sherrill.
“We can be angry with George Bush, but he’s doing just
what his predecessors did. We have to wake up to our culture.
We have killed millions of indigenous people. Our foreign policy
still means death for millions around the world. We can say Bush
is evil, but we are evil. We are trapped in a culture based on
revenge.”
Sherrills sees the same thing in his neighbourhood of Watts.
The treaty continues to be upheld, but not without problems and
obstacles. Sherrill says, “When two brothers have problems
with each other, everyone joins forces to take revenge. The treaty
is broken!, they shout. But I say: ”Wait a minute: a certain
person has a problem with someone else. That’s their problem,
not all of ours.” I believe that conflicts are healthy, but
you have to learn to deal with them in a constructive way.”
“Peace is a process, not a destination,” Sherrills
continues. “Peace is not a utopian field of flowers you parade
through together. It’s hard work. Sometimes the peacemakers
lose their lives. The point is that we continually return to the
peace talks and solve the problems. And we’re getting one
step closer all the time.”
Sherrills’ work in various U.S. cities has made him an authority.
Not only in the eyes of government officials and peace organizations,
but gang members as well. It’s becoming increasingly easy
to go into problem areas and start peace negotiations. Sherrills:
“We’ve been given a kind of carte blanche to go into
the neighbourhoods. Within a few days we have an idea of who is
playing what role in the community and what’s going on. Then
we make contact with the key figures to reach a ceasefire.”
When the peace treaty in Watts had been in place, and mostly
followed, for 10 years, Sherrills launched a 10-year plan entitled
The Passage to Peace to completely put an end to gang violence.
“We appointed key figures in neighbourhoods to keep the peace
in their community. We make people responsible for their own neighbourhood,
for their own problems. I say: ‘I don’t want to move
to a better neighbourhood. This is a better neighbourhood.’
Instead of seeing it as a ghetto, we have to see the beauty and
the potential. We have to get together; then we have a chance.”
Sherrills conveys that same message at conferences and seminars
where he is invited to speak. “Whether it’s environment
movements, peace movements or cultural creative movements, they
all want the same thing: respect for life. My suggestion would
be to get together and create one big movement I would call Reverence
Movement. After all, the violence we inflict on ourselves and
one another is the same violence we are using to destroy the planet.
If every movement continues to treat the symptoms, we won’t
get anywhere. We’re only wasting time and energy.”
“We have to create a culture where authentic emotions are
allowed to be expressed. That would create a real release. If
the head of the Los Angeles police department would apologize
for the injustice we have suffered under the guise of justice,
it would create a landslide. If George Bush would apologize for
the slavery in this country, it would give so much release. You
can only conquer hate with love.”
The hotel lobby has now filled up with people coming to attend
the conference in which Sherrills is participating. Every few
minutes someone gives him a hug. The conference is set to begin.
We’ve only spent one morning together, but it feels like
a couple of days. For Sherrills, this intense solidarity has become
a way of life. He has learned that every meeting can be the last
and that every strong connection between people can set something
major in motion. The meetings he has are seldom informal. There
is usually a lot at stake. The intensity of his presence can mean
the difference between forgiveness and revenge, between war and
peace.
Outside, the seals are still swimming happily. The wisps of fog
hanging over San Francisco in the distance have cleared. The impressive
Golden Gate bridge sparkles in the sun, a symbol of American accomplishment.
This is a country where newcomers founded a culture that became
an example to the world—a model of freedom, democracy and
limitless possibilities. Aqeela Sherrills stands squarely in that
American tradition. He, too, is working to establish a new culture—a
culture promoting reverence for life.
For more information about the Community Self-Determination
Institute: 9101 South Hooper Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90002, USA,
telephone +1 323 586 8791, www.wattsrecords.com,
e-mail: aqeelas@msn.com.
A talk with lawyers on Nigerian stoning case
(Amina Lawal)
Gbemi Olujobi, Special to The Chronicle
Sunday, June 6, 2004
The case of a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for
committing adultery made headlines around the world. Yet when
the two lawyers who got her acquitted visited the Bay Area recently,
it was hardly noticed outside of legal circles.
During their three-day stay, Catherine Mabille and Hauwa Ibrahim
brought new momentum to local plans for the opening of the first
American chapter of the French organization Avocats Sans Frontieres,
which translates roughly as "lawyers without borders'' --
a nonprofit group with sister organizations in nine other countries
that pays the travel expenses for lawyers who volunteer to take
on cases around the globe in an effort to protect human rights.
The lawyers inspired dozens of attorneys with their talks of
fighting for justice around the world -- even when it means risking
their own lives, said Elizabeth Grossman, a former public defender
in Alameda and Solano counties now with her own criminal defense
practice in Berkeley.
"I think (Ibrahim) is one of the most incredible human beings;
it was like meeting a female (Nelson) Mandela,'' said Grossman,
who organized the visit.
By now, many are familiar with the details of the case of Amina
Lawal, whom Ibrahim and Mabille represented in the 2002 case that
generated global interest and was featured everywhere from Oprah's
television show to European fashion magazines.
The stories all told of how Lawal, a divorced peasant woman,
had a daughter out of wedlock -- a crime under Shariah, a legal
system based on the Koran. Shariah is practiced in 12 northern
Nigeria states. Lawal's baby, Wassila, was taken as evidence of
her guilt.
Lawal was convicted and sentenced to death. She appealed to an
upper Shariah court, which upheld the sentence: Lawal would be
buried up to her neck and have stones thrown at her head until
she died.
Last September, the Shariah Court of Appeal in Katsina State
ruled that the conviction was invalid and Lawal was discharged
and acquitted.
Ibrahim's passionate, reasoned arguments not only spared Lawal's
life, they also reminded many that the fight for gender equality
still rages in many corners of the world.
Mabille, who lives in Paris and has a short, boyish haircut,
and her African counterpart, whose braids were wrapped tightly
in a traditional scarf crisscrossed atop her forehead, said their
goal was to raise money so more lawyers will volunteer. The two
also hoped to increase awareness and support for the International
Criminal Court, a worldwide legal system that has been ratified
by 96 countries, but not the United States.
They succeeded on both fronts. About $5,000 in donations poured
in during their three-day visit -- enough to fund a two-week trip
to Nigeria for two lawyers.
Often, as in Lawal's case, many lawyers refuse to represent clients
out of fear for their own safety.
"There were threats to my life,'' said Ibrahim, who is also
Muslim. "I received phone calls saying I should leave this
case, otherwise, I could consider myself living (dead). Some Muslim
sisters approached me and said what I was doing was wrong, that
I was trying to rubbish our culture and tradition, that I was
disrespecting Islam."
As the danger intensified, Mabille -- an ASF official who is
prosecuting a case against a Hutu official related to the Rwandan
genocide -- was sent to assist Ibrahim.
"(Ibrahim) seemed to be isolated, more or less working alone,
and we thought that was dangerous,'' Mabille said. "It is
easy to target one lawyer. When there are many lawyers working
on a case, the hazards are diffused."
Lawal's hard-won freedom was celebrated worldwide and she has
moved on with her life. She recently has remarried, but not to
the man who fathered her daughter, even though that man promised
to marry her, then denied under oath he ever did so.
He was never convicted. Under Shariah law, a man can be convicted
for adultery only if evidence is taken from four witnesses, each
of whom must be male, adult, sane, reputable and have seen the
couple engaged in the act at the same time.
But Ibrahim is not against Shariah itself. Rather, as a Muslim,
she said she believes Shariah can and should be a positive force.
"Shariah is all about justice, all about equity; it is for
protection, and that should be adhered to," said Ibrahim,
who spent the last year living in Washington, D.C., on a fellowship.
"We must have active involvement of all our leaders, traditional,
religious, opinion leaders, coming out to defend Shariah, rather
than allowing a small group of fundamentalists to define (it)."
She wants to see Shariah law codified and applied fairly.
"We cannot have laws that are uncertain," she said.
"They miscarry justice.
"The moment you stone the first woman, there may be no stopping.
I cannot live with that, so I fight it. It is someone's life,
so let me also put my own life on the line to save it."
Ibrahim, however, prefers to downplay the danger and focus instead
on her desire to give back some of what she has been given: a
good education and legal skills.
"I see these threats to my life as mere challenges,"
she said. "They add value. I overcome them and they become
stepping stones to move forward, not backward.''
Her battle is far from over. Ibrahim is still working on 47 Shariah
cases, involving amputations, public flogging and stoning to death.
Safety concerns remain.
Ibrahim is also a trailblazer in the testy field of marriage;
her husband is Italian. She is the first woman in her village
or anywhere in its vicinity to bring home a white suitor. Her
mother thought she was crazy. No member of her family attended
their wedding, seen as taboo. Today they have two sons, but even
her husband wanted her to drop the Lawal case after she received
death threats.
"He thinks I am crazy," Ibrahim said, smiling. "He
says I can never change the world. I always tell him that I am
not trying to change the world. I am only trying to do my own
small part. If I can change one life positively, I will sleep
well. We all have a part to play.''
For more information about the new ASF Bay Area chapter, or to
donate to ASF France, contact Elizabeth Grossman at (510) 548-5106
or visit asf-france. org.
Gbemi Olujobi is an International Women's Media Foundation
fellow. E-mail her at golujobi@sfchronicle.com.
San Francisco -- His legs were cramped. Worse, Richard Ironcloud
said he couldn't see and was going nowhere.
Nearly an hour into his Alcatraz-to-San Francisco swim Monday
-- the wind picking up speed, the tide working against him --
Ironcloud came close, very close, to giving up.
"I thought about my family. I knew I couldn't just stop,"
said Ironcloud, minutes after he finished the frigid, 1.2-mile
swim in one hour and 35 minutes.
It was an impressive feat, swimming aficionados said -- the 47-year-old
Lakota Sioux from South Dakota had never swum at a beach, much
less in San Francisco Bay, until just a week ago.
Monday's swim was, in fact, the longest time Ironcloud had spent
in the water. Together with 22-year-old Armando Blackbear, a fellow
Sioux who finished the swim in one hour and 55 minutes, the thickly
built Ironcloud spent a week training -- dog-paddling and free-styling
at Aquatic Park -- with Dr. Nancy Iverson, a San Francisco pediatrician
and a native of South Dakota.
Iverson brought Ironcloud and Blackbear from South Dakota's impoverished
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where half the people over 40 years
old have diabetes. She planned the swim to promote healthy living
and alternative healing.
"It's more than just swimming -- it's about spirit, it's
about courage," said a teary-eyed Iverson, whose nonprofit
organization, PATHSTAR, made the men's trip and swim possible.
"There were times when I thought he wouldn't make it."
She paused and started to cry. "But he made it. They both
did."
Iverson swam alongside Ironcloud, guiding him toward the South
End Rowing Club at Aquatic Park, riding the swells that make the
Alcatraz swim difficult for everyone, even those who have swum
it before.
Fred Crisp, a San Francisco police officer and friend of Iverson,
paddled on a surfboard just a few feet from Blackbear, who spent
more time on his back kicking the water than actually stroking
and swimming.
Riding in one of two inflatable boats alongside the swimmers
was Bob Roper, chief pilot of the swim who is known to South End
club members as the "Master of the Bay." Roper, a pilot
for 35 years, was there to ensure that everything was safe before
and during the swim.
Ironcloud and Blackbear began their quest with a prayer, which
included several minutes of gazing at the bay. They shoved off
from the west side of Alcatraz at 9:16 a.m. Twenty-two minutes
later, they weren't far from where they had started, and Roper
was concerned. "You didn't tell me these guys can't swim!"
he called to Crisp.
"No one ever said they could," said Crisp, his eyes
fixed on Blackbear, who stopped more than once and looked around.
At one point, there was a freighter behind Blackbear; a seal,
which Crisp dubbed the "good luck seal," greeted him
in front. He looked nervous.
This was a test not just of physical fitness but of mental strength
-- one they could not fail, Ironcloud and Blackbear said later,
because it wasn't just for themselves but also for those back
home.
So, the two persevered. They kept on dog-paddling and doing back
strokes, sucking in water ("I must have swallowed a gallon,"
Ironcloud said) and kicking as hard as they could. It wasn't exactly
Olympic-style swimming, but it was, to those who witnessed it,
something.
To longtime members of the South End club, the swim was the stuff
of heroism, of the impossible being possible, fueled by nothing
more than pure guts.
And this was Alcatraz, its history well known even back in South
Dakota. Over the years when it was a federal prison, five inmates
escaped who were never accounted for. More tried. No one made
it.
Swimming from Alcatraz takes a special effort, said Pedro Ordenes,
who says he has done it 182 times, most recently Sunday.
"This is not an easy swim," said Ordenes, 56, a civil
engineer who piloted one of two boats that accompanied the swimmers.
"Not just anyone can do it. And for these guys to do it,
with only a week's worth of training, is just, well, incredible."
To Ironcloud's wife of 23 years, it was mainly nerve-racking.
"I asked him all the time, 'Why are you doing this?' "
Arlene Ironcloud, 46, an assistant to a health educator in Pine
Ridge, said in a phone interview from the reservation. "I'm
just glad it's all over.
"I still can't believe he did it," she said. "But
people have always looked up to him. Even though he's overweight
the way he is, he can still do a lot of things." She paused.
"Like swim the Alcatraz!"
On an Oakland street corner dotted with boarded-up buildings and
barbed-wire fences, the faces of six women peer out from an office
window.
They are black, Asian, Latina, Middle Eastern. Immigrant and
Oakland-born. Women with little education, and those with advanced
degrees.
They are the faces of the women of Oakland -- one of the country's
most diverse cities -- ordinary women with extraordinary stories
that rarely get told, says Oakland painter Susannah Eloyse, who
created the portrait exhibit in a youth job training center with
the help of three teenagers.
It is an unlikely place for an art exhibit, this corner in Oakland's
working-class San Antonio district east of Lake Merritt. And that
is exactly the point.
"I wanted people to be able to walk by and say, 'That's
someone who looks like me, and they have a story that has value,
and they're part of Oakland, and that's what makes this a great
city,' " said Eloyse, 28. "It gives people a little
slice of hope in the day, a little bit of beauty. Even if it's
only for a second, it enriches the neighborhood."
Eloyse hatched the idea for her project a few summers ago when
she met an 80-year-old woman born and raised in Oakland who told
fascinating stories about a life most would consider unremarkable.
"A lot of women, their stories are taken for granted. People,
even their children, never ask them what their lives are like,"
said Eloyse, recalling one woman who told her: " 'I don't
have a great story to tell. I don't have a job right now. I'm
nothing special.' "
But "everyone has a story. That's the point," Eloyse
said.
Eloyse won a $30,000 grant last year from the city to tell the
stories of 20 Oakland women, through paintings and their own words.
The grant required the artist to collaborate with others on the
project, and Eloyse chose three high school students in a graphic-design
program at Harbor House, a nonprofit in the San Antonio district
where she volunteered.
The students interviewed and photographed women Eloyse met through
Harbor House, through word of mouth and via flyers. While she
painted the portraits, weaving in bits of the women's tales, the
teens produced biographies and interview excerpts that accompany
the paintings.
After a year of work, the exhibit opened Aug. 22, attended by
the women in the paintings, many of whom had never before been
to an art opening. After this Friday, the exhibit will travel
to other nontraditional venues in parts of the city without access
to art galleries.
The women portrayed on 3-foot-square canvases are vastly different,
ranging in age from 9 to 91 years old and making their homes from
the city's poorer, inner-city flatlands to the richer, woodsy
Oakland hills. They were born in places as distinct as West Oakland,
Liberia, Kosovo, Ukraine, Cambodia and Guatemala.
But what they share is a willingness to frankly tell stories
of their sometimes challenging pasts -- from homelessness to drug
abuse to fleeing war- torn countries -- and their hopes for the
future, particularly for their daughters.
Because so many immigrants are depicted, much of the exhibit
addresses the challenges of cultural assimilation.
Seng Ling Saephan, a 46-year-old Mien immigrant from Laos, says
in her piece that she hopes her American-born children will still
embrace their Mien culture, wearing traditional clothes and attending
ceremonies. Her portrait is framed with depictions of traditional
Mien embroidery, which she practices.
But her daughter, Nai Guen "Amanda" Saephan, 19, admits
in her own story that she has little interest in such things.
"It's hard, because I was born and raised in America, to
connect with my own culture and traditions."
Amanda is more concerned with meeting the ideal American body
image for teenagers. Photos of skinny blonde models cut out from
magazines peek out alongside the portrait of Amanda's full face
and bright smile.
"I wanted to kill myself because I didn't feel I was perfect.
I'm thick. I wanted to be like the skinny girls," Amanda,
who is studying nursing, said in an interview.
Nicola Beckles, a 34-year-old artist from England whose portrait
incorporates images from her own work, shared the pain of her
drawn-out divorce from a drug-addicted husband and its impact
on her two daughters.
"It is very lonely to go from being a married woman to being
-- well, what am I?" she told her interviewers. "I struggle
with hoping that my daughters are going to be OK. They have wounds."
Her daughter, Jair Hope Beckles, 9, the exhibit's youngest subject,
is pictured in the yellow bathrobe with hearts and stars she wears
constantly, even over her clothes.
"I don't want to talk about things that make me sad,"
her interview reads. Instead, she details enthusiastic and youthful
plans for the life ahead of her:
"I want to cook a lot and have bushes in my backyard so
I can make berry pie and I want to dance ballet and tap in my
free time and I want to ice skate and swim."
Her words contrast with the frank admission of the woman portrayed
next to her, 83-year-old Oakland native Marian Carr Thompson.
"At this age, you know you don't have much time left. That
is a hard thing to think about," says Carr, who still works
out at the YMCA despite having lost her vision to macular degeneration.
Nicola Beckles said it was an honor to be included.
"There's such a rich heritage. All these women from different
countries," she said. "Oakland has a lot to offer once
you get underneath the surface."
"Stories We Tell" will be on display
through Friday at the Youth Employment Partnership, 2300 International
Blvd., Oakland.
A young man learns what's most important in life from the guy
next door.
It had been some time since Jack had seen the old man. College,
girls, career, and life itself got in the way. In fact, Jack moved
clear across the country in pursuit of his dreams. There, in the
rush of his busy life, Jack had little time to think about the
past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was
working on his future, and nothing could stop him.
Over the phone, his mother told him, "Mr. Belser died last
night. The funeral is Wednesday." Memories flashed through
his mind like an old newsreel as he
sat quietly remembering his childhood days.
"Jack, did you hear me?"
"Oh, sorry, Mom. Yes, I heard you. It's been so long since
I thought of him. I'm sorry, but I honestly thought he died years
ago," Jack said.
"Well, he didn't forget you. Every time I saw him he'd ask
how you were doing. He'd reminisce about the many days you spent
over 'his side of the fence' as he put it," Mom told him.
"I loved that old house he lived in," Jack said.
"You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped
in to make sure you had a man's influence in your life,"
she said.
"He's the one who taught me carpentry," he said. "I
wouldn't be in this business if it weren't for him. He spent a
lot of time teaching me things he thought were important...Mom,
I'll be there for the funeral," Jack said.
As busy as he was, he kept his word. Jack caught the next flight
to his hometown.
Mr. Belser's funeral was small and uneventful. He had no children
of his own, and most of his relatives had passed away.
The night before he had to return home, Jack and his Mom stopped
by to see the old house next door one more time.
Standing in the doorway, Jack paused for a moment. It was like
crossing over into another dimension, a leap through space and
time.
The house was exactly as he remembered. Every step held memories.
Every picture, every piece of furniture....Jack stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong, Jack?" his Mom asked.
"The box is gone," he said.
"What box? " Mom asked.
"There was a small gold box that he kept locked on top of
his desk. I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside.
All he'd ever tell me was 'the thing I value most,'" Jack
said.
It was gone. Everything about the house was exactly how Jack
remembered it, except for the box. He figured someone from the
Belser family had taken it.
"Now I'll never know what was so valuable to him,"
Jack said. "I better get some sleep. I have an early flight
home, Mom."
It had been about two weeks since Mr. Belser died. Returning
home from work one day Jack discovered a note in his mailbox.
"Signature required on a package. No one at home. Please
stop by the main post office within the next three days,"
the note read.
Early the next day Jack retrieved the package.
The small box was old and looked like it had been mailed a hundred
years ago. The handwriting was difficult to read, but the return
address caught his attention.
"Mr. Harold Belser" it read.
Jack took the box out to his car and ripped open the package.
There inside was the gold box and an envelope.
Jack's hands shook as he read the note inside.
"Upon my death, please forward this box and its contents
to Jack Bennett. It's the thing I valued most in my life."
A small key was taped to the letter.
His heart racing, as tears filling his eyes, Jack carefully unlocked
the box. There inside he found a beautiful gold pocket watch.
Running his fingers slowly over the finely etched casing, he unlatched
the cover.
Inside he found these words engraved: "Jack, Thanks for
your time! Harold Belser."
"The thing he valued most...was...my time."
Jack held the watch for a few minutes, then called his office
and cleared his appointments for the next two days.
"Why?" Janet, his assistant asked.
"I need some time to spend with my son," he said.
"Oh, by the way, Janet...thanks for your time!"
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but
by the moments that take our breath away."
Have a great day and thank you for your time...
Arrived in mailbox without name of author
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Shut Up And Vibrate Already
Because you just know it's not all toxic war
and BushCo and homophobic senators, right?
By Mark Morford,
SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 2, 2003
So you look straight out into that winking sunset or up at that
star-gashed sky or over at that frolicking goofy mutt in the park
or at that funky yellow Mini Cooper or deep into the rich burgundy
flesh of that goblet of wine or over at the soft gorgeous rhythmic
rise and fall of your lover's chest as s/he sleeps and you think,
this is proof, isn't it?
This is proof that there's something more, something richer and
more divine and far, far more profound and enthralling and cosmic
and worthy and wet and delicious about this damnable existence,
right? You can just feel it, that divine kick, that lick, that
juice? Of course you can.
You just know, in other words, that this can't be all there is.
Surely, you think, it's not all smirking inarticulate presidents
and gutted economies and bogus wars and international resentment,
factories belching venom into the sky and the oceans with decreasing
federal restriction and increasing corporate glee.
Surely it's not all rabid psychopatriots and fear-happy Bible
huggers and homophobic Republican senators promoting their tyranny
of sexless ignorance, garbage-food conglomerates consciously poisoning
the population with toxic foodstuffs far more full of synthetic
goo and Agent Orange by-products and bioengineered rat dung than
actual food from which the body can draw life and energy and funk
and satisfied karmic burps.
You think: No way can it be all about thuggish 8 MPG SUVs and
inexplicably dying sea otters and 45 percent of the country actually
believing Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11. Can
it?
Millions of people invoking the name of God as justification
for war and hate and death, more homeless, more poverty, more
rampant population growth, more bitch-slapped civil rights, political
corruption and bizarre viral disease and Dick Cheney making you
question the very definition of sympathetic animate biped?
Because it's just so easy to forget. It's so easy to let the
crush and rush and chain-saw babble of the world, of the major
media's prepackaged hysteria, overwhelm your senses and numb your
id and pile-drive your innate ability to look, really look at
the world around you, and ultimately let them effectively asphyxiate
what you deeply sense to be true.
Not simply that everything is connected. Not simple that there
is a throbbing pulsing extant ever-present scientifically proven
energetic vibration to every damn thing on the planet, animate
and inanimate, breathing or not, each and every organism radiating
forth its sacredness and its profanity and just waiting for you
to raise your consciousness just a little so you can receive your
divine epiphanic ass-slap.
It's not just that. It's that you, right now, at this moment,
are much less removed from those pulsing vibrational things than
They want you to believe. You are closer than you think.
Here is the basic formula: The more They get you to ignore and
detach from and hurl sticks of dismissive ignorance at that divine
interconnectedness, the more you feed the common tyranny of fear,
the collective cultural moan, and the easier it is for corporations
and the government and the masters of televised dread to convince
you to buy into, say, a noxious war. Or toxic fast food. Or ultraviolent
entertainment. Or Celine Dion.
Conversely, the more you work to feel nature, imbibe it, soak
up that juicy interconnectedness like wine into a mattress, suck
up that vibrational hum and awe and kiss, the more you realize
the value of protecting and preserving and treading lightly, actually
taking the time to taste your food, integrate with those objects,
feel that breath of your lover. Simple, really.
And, hence, the less you require of the material world. This
is what scares them the most. This is why They don't want you
to notice, to feel, to remember, or to question their motives.
Because the less you believe that everything around you is just
a tedious lifeless resource to be consumed and shrugged off, the
less you feel the need to share in the massive force-fed belief
that we are here to devour as much as possible, as quickly as
possible, and blow the living crap out of everything that gets
in our way.
And then you take the idea one step further. You realize that
by soaking up that interconnected juice and raising that vibrational
consciousness just that little bit, on a day-to-day basis, you
are directly and immediately affecting everything around you,
inspiring it, them, us to do exactly the same.
The final kicker: It's all accessible right now. All you gotta
do is ask. Invite it in. Literally. Just ask.
Want to be healthy? Strong? More open and lickable and less bitter
and baffled and cynical? Ask for it, place some divine intent
behind it and breath it in and imagine what it would feel like
to radiate health and sexual vibrancy and self-defined joy and
really cool taste in shoes. That's how you start.
Because this is the biggest collective delusion of all, that
you can't get at it, that it's so much wimpy tofu-hugging BS,
so much fluffy New Age psychobabble. What a convenient excuse
that is to remain wallowing and acidic and humming at a simplistically
low, want-based pitch, happily drunk on the disinfo They want
to sell you. It's just too easy. And lazy.
And it does require work. It takes some concentrated and open-hearted
effort to raise that awareness, to tune in on that level, sift
through the bogus media and healers and teachers and pretentious
yoga classes, gurus, smarmy inane Chicken Soupy books to find
the authentically divine heat and rush and thrust.
You gotta get off your ass. You gotta question everything. You
gotta see the world anew, always, every moment, to progress and
evolve and vibrate higher. And, to be sure, it can be a total
divinely annoying pain in the ass.
But, really, when you get right down to it, what else is there?
Subscribe to Mark's deeply skewed, mostly legal Morning Fix
newsletter.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday
and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply
skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at
sfgate.com/newsletters.
This is the blanket of hope. Prophecy is woven in its threads.
It is an ancient design that speaks of a time when the world is
in despair and famine because TRUTH has not been spoken. It speaks
of a time of great suffering and injustice because our world is
out of balance.
Our civilizations have been like a great bird. As in all things
created, there must be a balance so the bird has two wings. One
wing is strong. The other has been kept tightly bound. In this
condition, it will flap around knocking things over, going in
circles, creating chaos, but will never get off the ground. The
strong wing is the masculine consciousness, enforcing its vision
and its will. It has been writing history and making all the decisions
that have effected us and will continue to effect us for a very
long time.
The other wing is the feminine consciousness. It has not been
allowed equal place at the seats of power. This treacherous and
sorry imbalance has brought about our histories of war, subjugation,
mighty armies, and poor schools. Our societies are rushing headlong
into complete annihilation because only the masculine voice is
being heard. If we are to survive, women everywhere and the Sacred
Feminine that is in every man must be freed and allowed to step
forward to affect the general welfare of the earth's populations.
The blanket shows three corn maidens standing and holding arrows
of truth - arrows of ascending and descending truths. If we are
to survive, they must choose to act by stepping forward now, and
if those arrows find their mark, the blanket shows the corn growing.
This corn growing promises abundance for all people of the earth.
We will have abundance because finally there will be peace. There
will only be peace because finally there is justice. There will
finally be justice only because TRUTH has been spoken. We will
survive only because of the return of this balance - the MASCULINE
and the FEMININE side by side as equal strengths. Our societies,
our priorities, have been masculinized for too long. We are truly
out of balance. The men cannot do it by themselves. Feminine TRUTH
must step forward now.
There is a story of wisdom that goes with the border. It was
explained to me by a Maori elder (New Zealand, 1990).
It goes like this: The Border of the Blanket is the story of
our lives, our purpose, and the roadmap or book of instructions
that, in fact, is clearly in the laws/sacred ways of nature. That
is the spirals that emanate from the Earth-line (dark red/black
borderline) around the blanket. Then notice the stairway that
is supported by the spiral. This she called the "staircase
to heaven." She said that this represents the obstacles in
our lives. We must change our attitude about the obstacles in
our path and understand that the obstacle is the path. As each
obstacle presents itself we are to say THANK YOU and take another
step, and another, and another until its done. It is then we will
have our completion and our peace.
It is said by the elders that, "It is not the events in
our lives which cause the pain, it is our resistance."
It is my prayer and my deepest hope that knowledge of the existence
of this blanket and its meaning will inspire and give us a new
place to stand as we transform this terrible rush to vengeance
and inevitable world destruction.
Portland, Oregon, 3/8/03
International Women’s Day
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Reclaiming
our Courage
By Paul Rogat Loeb
It’s
hard to maintain hope when greed and fear seem to hold all the
cards. Despite Bush’s mangled phrases, the political operatives
who surround him are as ruthless and cunning as any in recent
memory. Some of them believe they’re taking orders from God.
Others are simply playing the political game. Either way, they’ll
do whatever they can to maintain and increase their power. With
the help of a compliant media and a fearful and distracted populace,
they may even temporarily prevail. But ultimately they’ll
succeed only if those of us who embrace more humane visions give
up in despair.
It’s tempting simply to wait for the
Republicans to overreach, or be brought down by a stagnating economy.
But when facing men who lack any sense of humility, limits, or
shame, we can’t let them keep setting the agenda. Think of
the critical Georgia Senate race. Republican TV ads linked Senator
Max Cleland with videos of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
and explained that because Cleland opposed Bush’s homeland
security bill, he lacked “the courage to lead.” Cleland
lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam. His Republican opponent,
Saxbe Chambliss, never wore a uniform. But that didn’t matter
to the Republican chicken-hawk strategists. And the ad helped
knock Cleland out of his seat.
I recently asked former United Nations
High Commissioner of Human Rights (and Irish President) Mary Robinson
how citizens could resist this bullying politics. The Bush administration
had just forced Robinson out of her job for questioning the United
States’ exclusion of Afghan detainees from the standard protections
given prisoners of war. “People need the courage to stand
up for what they believe,” Robinson said. “If I’d
backed down just because the US is the most powerful nation in
the world, it would have sacrificed all the moral credibility
of my office. By standing up, I preserved it. You have to keep
standing up even if it’s hard. You have to be willing to
pay the costs.”
Calling for moral courage sounds like praising
mom and apple pie. But what would it mean for us to apply Robinson’s
message to our own lives? To begin with, it would mean speaking
out in contexts where not everyone agrees with our words, because
only then can our culture change. Whether as members of civic
or religious organizations, as educators, or simply with co-workers,
neighbors, and friends, we can’t be afraid to raise the difficult
questions—challenging the administration’s right to
attack any other nation at will, to deny critical environmental
crises like global warming, and to hand over national policies
to the Enrons of the world. Sometimes our words will draw heat.
After Sept 11, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an
organization co-founded by Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynn, publicly
targeted professors who made even the mildest suggestion that
the terrible attacks might have deeper roots. But if our democracy
is devolving into a manipulated nation of inattentive spectators,
we have the responsibility to speak honestly about our national
choices, and to do so even if we feel hesitant or scared.
Overcoming fear means thinking about the
kind of world we’d actually like to see, and not being afraid
to advocate for it. In Poland, in the early 1980s, leaders of
the workers support movement KOR made a point of printing their
names and phone numbers openly on the back of mimeographed sheets
describing incidents of police harassment against then-unknown
activists like Lech Walesa. It was as if, in the words of reporter
Lawrence Wechsler, they were “calling out to everyone else,
‘Come on out! Be open. What can they do to us if we all start
taking responsibility for our true dreams?’” Whether
we’re raising questions in difficult contexts or engaging
in nonviolent civil disobedience, that might be a model for us
now.
We might actually make a public issue of
the very ruthlessness that put this administration in power. It’s
easy to dismiss the Cleland ad and others like it as politics
as usual. But when I’ve spoken about these ads, even very
conservative people have had trouble justifying their moral viciousness.
We can point out how attacking the patriotism of a man who lost
three limbs for his country parallels the shamelessness of so
many high administration officials whose careers have embodied
contempt for democracy: Otto Reich, Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter,
and John Negroponte lying during the Iran-Contra investigations;
Henry Kissinger (now resigned but still kitchen cabinet) launching
a secret invasion of Cambodia and a military coup in Chile; John
Ashcroft obstructing the registration of African American voters
in inner-city St. Louis; Dick Cheney opposing the freeing of Nelson
Mandela; and Trent Lott waxing nostalgic about the good old days
when Strom Thurmond fought to keep blacks in their place.
It’s an ugly legacy, and when administration
spokesmen say Americans have no right to disagree, we need to
respond with outrage. They’ll also suggest we lack the knowledge
or standing to speak out: Professors are academic eggheads. Religious
leaders are unrealistic. Students are too young. Baby boomers
are reliving the sixties. Immigrants are disloyal suspects. Celebrities
are limousine liberals. We’re conditioned to accept an impossibly
perfect standard on political speech that dismisses everyone but
the Kissingers and Rumsfields as insufficiently credentialed.
We need the courage to challenge this standard, and recognize
that we all have the right--and responsibility--to act.
We also need to develop new ways to speak
out together. This means connecting with whatever organizations
can give us shared strength, and working to bring together the
often-fragmented groups that promote more humane social visions.
More than ever, we need to leave our comfort zones, reach past
what divides us, and find opportunities for common action. We
particularly need to approach those vast numbers of individuals
who are exposed to little beyond the official manipulations and
lies. Since only 17 percent of eligible Americans actually voted
for the Republicans this round, the potential for outreach is
huge.
Some of this outreach has already begun.
In the past few elections, unions have developed worker-to-worker
outreach projects that often made a critical difference in key
campaigns. Even in the most recent defeat, they mobilized significant
numbers of voters and volunteers, but found themselves lacking
enough other organized allies to prevail in areas where their
strength was limited. What would happen if unions joined environmental
and social justice groups to foster local discussions on key issues?
In early December, a coalition of Seattle peace activists drew
together 2,000 ordinary citizens to spend an afternoon talking
in neighborhood-based groups from the city and its suburban fringes.
Each group then collected local emails and developed neighborhood
education and action projects, like vigils, tabling, and letter-writing
campaigns. The same week, organizations including the National
Council of Churches, N.A.A.C.P., Sierra Club, Physicians for Social
Responsibility, National Organization for Women, Working Assets
and MoveOn.org launched a new national peace coalition, Win Without
War. Major labor leaders are also interested. Imagine if the Seattle
approach was combined with the grassroots resources of these groups,
and if the coalition took on domestic issues as well. The resulting
pressure might even wake the Congressional Democrats from their
slumber.
Courage requires reaching out to those
who may not share all our assumptions or agree with us on every
issue. The Republicans have seized power through an unholy alli
