THE FADE OF CHARITY:

New Orleans’ Closed Hospital, Booker, and the Present’s Odd Friend–The Past

From Louis’ benevolence, the first Charity Hospital was erected on the then-outskirts of town, the land between present day Rampart, Basin, St. Peter, and Toulouse Streets. Named St. John Hospital, by 1737 it had 5 patients and “served a dual purpose of hospital and asylum to the indigent poor.” Services and structure grew over the next 40 years, only to be destroyed by the hurricane of 1779. The effects of its loss can be seen in the laments of the Spanish Governor Miro: “Many sick paupers are now wandering throughout the city in quest of shelter and succor and are hourly exposed to perish up the very streets, or in some obscure by-corner.”

In the wake of the destruction, Miro was encouraged and supportive of a new benefactor, Don Andreas de Almonaster y Roxas, who offered to fund the rebuilding of Charity and direct its operations. For the great amount of $114,000, he had one provision: that the material salvaged from the wreckage of the old hospital should be used in the construction of a new structure. Apparently this struck many New Orleanians as utterly ridiculous, and the public rebukes of Almonaster were harsh enough to bring a defense from Miro:

And why should this worthy alms-giver be looked upon in so questionable a light? If, at the time when the building was still standing, someone would have offered to build an annex to it, would any objection have been made, had one of its walls looking on the improved side been utilized in the same construction?….It is not less surprising that you should have taken this matter in hand at the very time when unexpected assistance is being tendered from other quarters, and which might be withdrawn, were I to acquiesce in your pretentions to have this worthy gentleman appear before you, and beg your leave for the accomplishment of a work of public utility. ²

Three years after the hurricane, ground was broken and the building was completed in 1784. Soon after Miro left for Spain, Almonaster struggled for control of the hospital and fell into dispute with the new governor, Baron de Carondelet. The contest went all the way to the court of the colony at Havana and finally to the King of Spain, and ended with Don Almonaster losing his founders rights. By 1792, a letter from Pontalba to Miro, now in Spain, noted that Don Almonaster “is entirely disgusted with being benevolent.” Almonaster died in 1798 and his remains were interred in St. Louis Cathedral in what is now Jackson Square.
**

One Saturday in April 2008, I spend the afternoon on the lawn of the shuttered hospital, sitting and thinking about James Booker, the great piano player. I do this at lunch some days, whenever I have the time and bent. This time I’ve brought a new camera. A few months ago, barbed wire fence went up and I can no longer walk to the main entrance or ascend the wheelchair ramp to the emergency room door. The focus of the lens is my recourse for detail.

As I put the camera back in the van, a truck pulls up on Tulane Avenue. An older man with white hair and a short goatee and sunglasses sits in the driver’s seat. His passenger is a younger guy, close-cropped brown hair and green eyes, a little edgy.

“We’re looking for Charity Hospital,” the driver says with a smile. “That’s it,” I say, thumb over my shoulder, “but it’s closed.”

“It’s closed?” He asks.

“Been closed.”

The passenger visibly sinks in his seat, lets out a low groan.

“Thank you.” They pull away.

**

The Charity Hospital that stands vacant in New Orleans today is the 6^th structure to carry that name, erected for the same purpose as its predecessors—providing welfare for the indigent. Previous buildings had either burned or were worn out. The 5^th edition closed in 1937, replaced by the present giant on Tulane Avenue. Like so much of life in Louisiana at that time, the transition to a new hospital played out under the shadow of Huey P. Long.

In 1933, the hospital applied for federal Public Works Administration funding for a replacement. The boiling feud between FDR and Senator Long stalled what might’ve been an easy process. Long’s prohibition of federal aid to the state, passed by the Long-controlled state legislature, effectively killed the application until Huey himself was assassinated in September 1935.

By the following year, the Roosevelt administration and Baton Rouge were on good terms again, and the money began to flow. FDR even made a stop at Charity during a visit to New Orleans as part of his reconciliation with Long’s successors. The construction of a new building was approved in September 1936.
Demolition of the old hospital was complete by February of 1937. In a fitting turn on Almonaster’s clause of 1779, building materials from the old Charity were spirited away by Long’s circle, ending up in new mansions on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The ensuing scandal–or rather this scandal’s place in the larger ménage of scandals–brought down several of the Long faction, including Governor Richard Leche (whose name graces the cornerstone of the current Big Charity).

What rose in place of the plundered ruins was the second largest hospital in the US. The architects followed the design of the New York City Hospital (now known as New York-Presbyterian), with some modification: separate floors for black and white patients.

According to the hospital’s 1942 Annual Report, the leading causes of death at Charity in 1939 were diseases of the heart, influenza and pneumonia, nephritis, cancer, and tuberculosis. The statistics are broken out into columns for Total, White, and Col., or Colored.

**

It is nothing to say that Charity resembles a fortress; that is obvious yet out of date. Now it is a fortress-turned-ruin, or, rather, a ruin in the making, whose original purpose is still clear, reachable. Little imagination is involved to conjur the original condition. Much more for a vision of a future.
Dark plywood closes off the front door, one of the handrails lies toppled on the steps. Closer to the curb stand two guard posts, one on each side of the sidewalk. Blanched mini-blinds remain on the windows of the right post, hang down its glass door. The left building is knocked open at one end, the tile walls off-white, bared to nature. The plywood covering the windows is so light it blends into the pale limestone. All of it behind barbed wire fence.

The hospital’s face is smeared with a black soot, uneven and rough, like swipes of charcoal. The whole neglected body seems to loiter, shamed and unemployed. Really, the neglect of so much of the city is what leads to any permanence, not direction or purpose. We grow long grass, plastic bags, chipped brick, and wildflowers. Not just daisies, but little pink things. New Orleans: fading to agrarian all over the banged up landscape.
I move down to the path to the entrance, and sit on one of the empty planters. After a few minutes, I realize a large caterpillar is riding on my arms, and I shudder and brush it off. This is where people used to smoke, I think.
**

The hospital is closed because a new hospital must be opened.

Charity is within the Louisiana State University hospital system. One of the centerpieces of the planned recovery is a new LSU teaching hospital, with “high-end specialty care that can also attract private-paying patients.” (TP 5/29/08). Mayor Nagin and his recovery chief, the star-crossed Ed Blakely, are onboard, and an historic residential neighborhood may be demolished to make way for this great biomedical beacon. In his May 28^th State of the City speech, Nagin asked the audience to travel with him to the future, where “[Y]ou pass through the biomedical district, where researchers and residents are leaving their offices after a hard day’s work of cancer or diabetes research. You pass beautiful mixed income housing developments and a state-of-the-art justice complex….”³ The old Charity must rot until the yellow-brick road to its replacement is clearly laid.

Like much of the so-called recovery process, it didn’t have to be this way. Yet, from the first days of Katrina, the writing was on the wall—Charity had to go.
According to a doctor who worked through the storm, morale at Charity remained high, despite countless challenges, including the total loss of power, rampant diarrhea, and sniper fire:

At the suggestion of our nursing co-director, we made a banner from sheets — “9 West has a big heart, Katrina can’t tear us apart” — and hung it out the fire escape. In 24 hours, 15 more banners followed on other units. One night, we hosted a flashlight-illuminated talent show, to which we invited everyone — including the patients with tuberculosis, who donned N95 masks.

This doctor also watched

… helicopters ceaselessly evacuating insured patients from the roof of nearby Tulane Hospital while our 250 patients were evacuated by twos or threes in boats said to lead to buses that sometimes did not appear. These halting efforts were interrupted for hours by gunfire. No National Guard was in evidence, other than as intermittent rescue personnel. Even colleagues at the neighboring Veterans Affairs hospital were unaware of the desperate conditions at Charity. Because our unit had a functioning telephone line and I had friends with media connections, I was able to communicate our situation to television and radio reporters. I received calls offering helicopters and one from CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta. When I sought clearance for him from hospital officials, they gruffly asserted: “He can film whatever he wants; the media is our rescue plan now.” When television cameras were pointed at us, the help came faster and more effectively.⁵

After the storm, a team of doctors, volunteers, and military personnel worked to clean up several floors in the hospital for temporary use. Citing a ruined electric system and the effects of the heat on asbestos (ironically, derived from the Greek for “fire resistant”), LSU refused to open the floor or take any steps toward repairs. In January 2008, a group of uninsured residents filed suit against LSU, charging that the hospital refused to allow independent inspectors to investigate the hospital and the possibility of salvaging it. As one activist noted, “Basically, you have the state and other government entities getting out of the business of delivering any public services,” to people in the city.⁶
**

Booker was born and died in Charity. His ghost and the ghosts of thousands have the hallways and stairwells and wards to themselves. The poor of the now get the underside of an overpass and a clinic in a double-wide, if they’re lucky.
The story is that Booker was left at the hospital that day in 1983, left maybe by a frantic coke buddy, perhaps someone he’d just met at a bar on Orleans Avenue, and then left again by the hospital staff, to die unattended in the waiting room. Booker always wore a patch over one eye, and the story goes that the nurses assumed his eye was the ailment that had brought him to the emergency room, and so didn’t think his was an urgent case.
The story also goes that Booker lost his eye after a money dispute with the, um, unsavory crew of Ringo Starr. (This was his explanation for the sequined star on the patch.) Booker told friends that Ringo had beat him out of session pay, but Booker’s friend Dr. John told me that Booker had scammed to get paid 3 consecutive times over the course of a few hours, preying on the Starr crew’s acid-addled short term memory. On the third try, the crew got wise and Booker lost his eye.

I guess I believe Dr. John.⁷
**

One description of the characters who frequented that waiting room in the 1980’s includes the story of an old fellow who

…repeatedly came to receive care for asthma and for foul-smelling, severe leg ulcers covering his ankle and calf areas. He used various home remedies for his asthma and leg ulcers and insisted on wrapping his lower legs with some form of foliage that appeared to be banana leaves. One day, after receiving his usual treatment of antiseptic soaks, slight debridement, and topical antibiotics, he mentioned that ‘roach tea’ helped to retard the progression of his asthma and his leg ulcers. When asked how the tea was prepared, he said: “You goes to the kitchen late at night and turns on the light quickly and grabs up the roaches before they can run away…. Then you puts them in boiling water to make tea.” ⁸

**

Within a year of completion, the new Charity began to sink into the marsh of New Orleans. “By January 1939, it was nine [inches] below its starting point, more than two and a half times the average settlement in the city.”⁹ The pilings that formed the footprint of the building should have clued the architects into the coming “settlement.” According to one eyewitness, “It was really something to see when only one blow of the pile driver would send even one of the long pilings completely through the muck on which the foundation was being laid. They would disappear right before your eyes.”¹⁰ Rumors spread that the first floor had disappeared into the soil, so that when you walked in the front entrance, you were in the second floor. This wasn’t the case, but the sinking continued until 1943, when the building settled at 17.86 inches deep.

James Booker belonged to the first generation of babies born at the new Charity. He came into the world on December 17, 1939, when approximately 13 inches of the first floor had sunk into the mud.

**

In May 2008, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared Charity Hospital and its surrounding neighborhood one of the “11 Most Endangered Places” in the US. The trust’s director noted:

The reuse potential as well as the architectural and cultural significance of Charity Hospital should not be ignored in the process of determining the fate of this historic treasure. We cannot afford to stand idly by and allow the loss of such a valuable and architecturally significant building, along with the destruction of a large portion of the nearby historic neighborhood.¹¹

Other places on the list include California’s National Parks and the Lower East Side.

**

A block down Robertson Street, between Tulane & Canal, there sits a bar. Surrounded by parking lots, the bar is one of those narrow, rowdy, isolated spots we love down here. Sometimes I sit on that back deck and stare at the ashen face of Charity.
The Art Deco symmetry is supplemented now by dashes of coppery green below most windows.

A faded red curtain hangs in a corner window. The floodlights mounted atop the guard’s post appear intact. On one of the flagpoles, the cord is still attached, waiting on a flag. The LSU sign is in good shape.
“Charity Hospital of New Orleans” is engraved in the limestone in an Art Deco font. Above both guard stands, in the same font: “Visitors.” The branches hang down low over the sidewalk, and would impede an ambulance, or a speeding car.

Booker must have been someone’s emergency. How did it happen? Was he taken up the emergency room ramp on the side of the building, or dumped at the curb, or did someone grab a wheelchair, rush back out and take his slumped body out of the car, then wheel him in and dash?

Earlier, when he was born, Booker must have lain among all the other newborn black babies in the black ward, and screamed. In that scream was the voice I listen to late at night. The hands he balled up in the crib would grow into the hands of “The Bayou Maharaja,” “The Black Liberace,” “The Piano Prince of New Orleans.” Booker was a phantom genius, one in a beautiful, tortured line that began before there was any such thing as a state, or a nation.

He was born and died at Charity Hospital. Where would he be born now? Where would he die?

The first time we encounter John Cage, we think that he is somewhat interesting.  

Teaching a music appreciation class to a small group of high school students, I performed 4′33″ for them one day outside.  About 30 seconds into the first movement, one of them said, ‘oh, I get it.’  Still, I think there is some legitimacy for the school of gradual enlightenment.

The second time we encounter John Cage, we think he is a dilettante.  

Sometimes it is hard to see the extent to which Cage’s work participates in the modern Western musical tradition.  But the fact that he studied composition with many big names (”Schoenberg,” e.g.) gives him an interesting credence.  In addition to the later compositions which stretch the concept of music to its breaking point, he does have a number of more understandably musical works, which are in their own way very successful pieces.  Percussionists have noted to me that it is Cage’s earlier work for percussion, etc. ensembles which are most widely appreciated in their circles, while most of the world thinks of 4′33″ as Cage’s most famous piece.  In any case, neither his thoughts nor his compositions are the ramblings of one ignorant of music.  The issue of silence in Cage’s music, for example, though rich with many non-Western ideas, still maintains its relation to occurrences in more strictly western academic music.  The notion of musique concrète has been a legitimate compositional technique since Varèse.  Indeterminacy, as Cage himself argued, has been around for much longer.  In fact, it was only within a very limited historical period in which all musical elements were completely determined by the composer’s dictations as written in a score.  Calling the noise of everyday life a piece of music is merely an additive process using both the notions of sampling and indeterminacy.

The third time we encounter John Cage, we think he is more interesting than we had realized before.

A collection of 91 measures of rest in ¾ meter, where the quarter note equals 60 beats a minute turns out to be precisely four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  A fermata in music can also be dictated with a length of time as needed.  What is the significance of the indication of “tacet” which constitutes the instructions for this piece?  Tacere - to be silent; an excellent mode for listening.  Counting rests keeps the musician’s attention in the music.  The trumpet parts for Beethoven’s third piano concerto, second movement, indicate tacet-a sense of relief of being able to just take it all in.  Imagine the peace of having all three of the movements indicate tacet.
One of the prerequisites for taking Cage seriously is taking Buddhism seriously.  Today, we make a vague connection between hippies and Eastern thought, and for many hippies themselves it was doubtfully any more than vague.  But despite such an association, or perhaps because folks in the 60’s popularized it in the West, the philosophical ideas within of Buddhism, Taoism, and other ways of thought from Asia have come to be taken as very legitimate and productive notions with which to work.  But for musicians and composers, the concepts Cage was working with are very difficult to harmonize with traditional beliefs.  Brought up on the concept, however vague, of the genius, of self-expression through music, of pieces of music composed, owned, and appreciated by the subjectivities of individuals, to consider for a moment that there is no self that underlies all of it contradicts the very idea of music.  If I am not metaphysically more significant than the wind in the trees, how could my creations be qualitatively different?  To be sure, we all enjoy the wind in the trees.  People sell CDs of it.  But to say it is the same is to break down every possible barriers of what music is and is not.  A Zen koan is a pedagogical tool, in a sense, but it teaches us very little about Buddhism.  4′33″ is a musical composition, and this tells us everything about what music is.  Cage continued to compose music, after he negated the concept - a kind of Bodhisattva.

The fourth time we encounter john cage, we think he just copied Marcel Duchamp.

As with a lot of avant-garde art, the initial reaction to much of Cage’s work is something along the lines of “well, I could do that!”  Or to be dramatic, one might attribute the ability to something even less intelligent than one’s self.  “Well, my dog could do that!”  “Well, my infant could do that!”  When it comes to some works, this is simply not true.  When people mistake technical simplicity for facility, for example in Mondrian, they fail to realize what went into creating such clarity.  With Cage, however, we can write and perform work at a technically comparable level.  True, from 1960 on, we would be copying Cage.  But in contrast to the discourse in the plastic arts, Cage shares with Fluxus a feeling of welcome-that it would be good for us to listen to and ‘compose’ some happenings, some chance occurrences, or some periods of silence.

The fifth time we encounter john cage, we begin to appreciate his genius.  

We could say that people like Cage, Morton Feldman, and all those others were a product of their artistic era.  But we could also say that the 1950’s and ‘60’s - as we now understand the time period 40 years later, was a product of these people.  Creativity itself has been changed by what Cage did and wrote, and even though music seems to have continued though nothing has happened, it is as a child who plays in a field even though he has learned to climb the fence.

Even an especially accommodating definition of what jazz is will not place its beginnings much before the first few years of the 20th century, and so this world of music, this hallowed tradition which constitutes an entire paradigm of musical practice, is barely one hundred years old.  Among many implications of this, one is that a single artist could participate in most of the history of jazz.  Many did; and those who were canonized as jazz greats did not merely influence the development of the art form with a notable recording or famous concert, but continued, on many occasions, to shape and refine the possibilities which jazz – and all music – could reach.  Born in 1917, 90 years ago this October, Thelonious Monk lived such a life within, parallel to, and constitutive of jazz as we know it today.
As an inversion of the history of European classical music, entire historical eras of jazz history make up mere periods of an artist’s style.  Because of this, a number of individuals like Monk held the power of changing the course of jazz history.  In some ways, it is remarkable that we have such a clear canon of great jazz artists, musicians who added such a distinctly creative element to jazz that everyone ‘afterwards’ understood jazz a little differently because of them.  The dust has barely settled on the 20th century and somehow we already know who is who.  Miles Davis, for example, was like the Pythagoras, Pope Gregory, Beethoven and Schoenberg of jazz, and weaved the decades of music together in a complex progression of music.  In contrast to a fairly straightforward lineage of composers through the eras of classical music, in jazz we find a complex progress of many simultaneous geniuses, who overlap and come together in groups and then go their own way again.  With Monk, too, we find a pivotal genius through which it is possible to understand jazz’s entire history.
.  But in many ways Monk is cleaner.  If we had to continue our classical music comparison, we will give him a single comparison and say Monk is the J.S. Bach of the jazz historical context.  What Bach did was unified the understanding of music before him into a style and concept of musical aesthetics which directed the next three hundred years of music.  His clarity brought the music of his past into the understanding of music of the future.  Though he did not make his strategies explicit, students of music return to him at every level to understand tonality, the possible relations among musical voices, and the boundaries of chromaticism.  We cannot credit Bach for the invention of major and minor tonalities and the other basic concepts of common practice theory.  We value him for showing us what was possible in the musical arena which history gave him and the rest of classical music.  Like Bach, we do not credit Monk for theoretically establishing the versatility of extended tertian harmony, or for creating an entire new technique of playing the piano.  The history of jazz presented Monk much of this: the style of stride piano, the practice of re-harmonizing popular songs, the established chord relations were where he found himself as he was developing his own concept of music.
For its youth, jazz cannot likewise be seen as proportionately smaller than classical music in importance.  It was a big hundred years.  In no sense metaphorically, Solo Monk is equal in significance to the collection of Bach’s chorals.  Both these collections, the pure articulation of these artist’s styles, establish music-theoretical aesthetics that escape – shall we say transcend? – their role as historical indexes.  They quiet the aesthetic relativism in us for a moment.  We think, against our postmodern condition: damn, this is fundamental.
The paradox with Monk’s music is that while he was playing within a new sense of harmony, and hence establishing that harmony, his solos and comping are filled with seemingly archaic, “corny” harmonic material right along side what was entirely new conceptions of progressions.  Yet the jagged, assertive character of the articulations and phrasing unified it all into a forceful style.  For most musicians, playing with two almost inconsistent harmonic vocabularies would sound either ironic, or as though they didn’t know what they were doing in one or the other.  Monk, though, plays a simple G major chord in the same character as a G7b9#11.  There are no wrong notes here, because each note, each passage, arises out of a decisive physical gesture of musical creation.  Unlike Bach, the harmonic context Monk established doesn’t matter in respect to what he played – it will catch up if it wants to.  For us, though, it is the only thing to hang on to.
For students of jazz, the piano keyboard is a map on which the history of harmony is understood, from Bach to Monk and beyond.  The context of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t is laid out in terms of interval relations and visual/kinesthetic patterns.  Music theory and eras of styles are situated there in terms of notes.  With Monk, the keyboard was not like this.  It was a place for events, physical gestures turned into music by a physical encounter of a person and an object.  While all
In music, we search for the right notes – because a composer told us to do so, because we heard them on a recording, because our elementary music teacher inculcated it thus.  Bach told us one way of making the right notes come out.  It involved, through intervallic relations, music which encompassed the entire keyboard.  Monk tells us another way of getting the right notes.  It begins with the keyboard, goes up and down it, then it travels out, floating above, into straight fingers, into the body, up walking around, an out of keyboard experience, then back to the single dimension of where the finger hits the keys.  How do you play like Monk?  Got me.  It’s extended tertian harmony, it’s un-extended triads; it’s what has taken the history of music out of the traumatic Modern rejection of harmony and kept things going.

Susanne Lee
227 Waverly Place, #6A
New York NY 10014
(212)620 -0165

Directions for being Colored, Asian/Female
Sample Dialogues & Exercises
Levels: Beginning to Advanced

1. Basics
   (Repeat as many times as necessary.)
   • “Where are you from?”
     “L.A.”
     “No, where are you really from?”
     “L.A.”
     Note: The inquisitor wants and expects answers like Taipei, Shanghai or Hong Kong. Any American city confuses them; not that they are really interested in any of the locations. They cannot wrap their minds around the notion that you could be from anywhere else less foreign.
   • “I really like your dim sum.”
     “And I love your puttanesca, your osso buco, your spaetzle and schnitzel, your bangers and mash, your spotted dick, your cuisse de grenouille and of course, your cervelle de veau.
   • “I’ve always wanted to visit the Orient.”
     Well, let me, as an official representative of the Orient, that nebulous region somewhere between Formosa and Siam, be the first to welcome you. Here is your visa –and your voucher for a 20% discount on all souvenirs — embroidered silk robes with dragon motifs, counterfeit DVDs of last week’s Hollywood releases, an hour shiatsu massage with Rei, a sheet of Astro Boy stickers, fake Qing dynasty porcelains, counterfeit Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Prada bags, pornographic manga and a set of Hello Kitty cell phone charms.
     Note: The inquisitor flatters himself and believes he is being sophisticated by talking about “Oriental things.”
   • “How long have you been here?”
     Avoid the more inflammatory, “Since I came out of my mother’s vagina.” And opt for the more modest: “I was born here like you, sweetheart.”
     Make sure the sweetheart is coated with honey-like sarcasm, which the inquisitor will, most likely, miss. The college educated ones prefer this question. Apparently, it sounds more refined to their ear, but actually, they are baffled by your language skills and are only slightly too polite to ask where you learned to speak English so well, since it simply cannot possibly your native tongue.
   • “Excuse me, where did you did you say you were from?”
     Repeat the first instruction as many times as necessary. It may take years.
2. Instructions for Assumptions
   Level 2, Second Generation
   Increasingly rude responses when questioner lack manners
   Characters: Trendy converse, horned-rimmed glasses wearing gel haired dad with child
   Colored girl with mixed child
   Location: Greenwich Village
   “Is he your son?”
   Not acceptable: “No, he’s my boyfriend.” “I am his wet nurse.” “I borrowed him.” “I stole him.”
   A slightly inappropriate volume and insipid vague smile: “Yes, what’s your son’s name?”
   “Sebastian.”
   Follow up with, “Did you get that from Shakespeare?”
   It’s Twelfth Night actually, but that detail will probably go over faux hip daddy’s head.
3. Smart Sex & Death: Advanced Education
   Character: WASP college boy
   Colored Girl
   Location: Ivy League University“I’ve never had an Asian girl before.”
   Avoid the following: “I think there is a spare room here.”
   “I pity you for I have been studying the Kama Sutra since I was 12.”
   “Actually, how much is it worth to you?”
   Note: Fulfill one of the classic stereotypes of the Asian overachievers by attending an Ivy League school; however, contrary to the other stereotypes, do not excel at Math or Science or Engineering or IT, much to the dismay of the traditional family. More importantly, do not be particularly quiet or well-behaved and challenge and defy authority frequently.
   Besides attending classes, go to a lot of receptions and cocktail parties, listen to many speeches where the speakers tell you that you are among the “Best and the Brightest,” and believe it all with a wink.
   Endure more propositions than you’ve heard in your entire life to this point. Leave the school with the conviction that there are more Asian fetishists per square inch there than any place else on earth, and with much more confidence than you will actually need, and the reassuring knowledge that if you ever win an Academy award or Nobel, make a scientific discovery, plagiarize a novel, murder someone or unfortunately, fail to live up to your potential and get murdered, the press will use its shorthand and simply and neatly reduce you to “the Harvard-educated blank.”

Poverty. What a leaden word, weighed down by fascination, guilt, indifference, romanticism. Modernity’s enigma, poverty is a many-faced god inflicting some incomprehensible sorrow in retribution for a sin humanity hasn’t realized it committed. We here in the west make penance for our hedonistic ways by sacrificing our dollars on the altar of poverty, thinking, “if I learn about this thing, if I give all that I have to help, I’ll be a better person.” It doesn’t necessarily work that way. In one way this sort of “mindful tourism” amounts to slumming it, opening one’s eyes to the horror of destitution in other countries while effectively distancing a person from the atrocities happening to the poor across the tracks in one’s own hometown. On the flip side, seeing poverty in all of its manifestations gives one the opportunity to realize the simple truth that if one person somewhere suffers unnecessarily, we are all impoverished on some

level. Yet it is through this collective misery that people learn how to have compassion for one another and, more importantly, act on that compassion. This conundrum hounded me the most as I traveled this past six months through Mali, Europe and Brazil.

A knowledge hungry traveler will work to build on their curiosity, using anything from academia to anecdotes in the hopes of understanding the culture. However, once the traveler arrives, they often realize there are lessons to be learned about nations and their active force on humanity’s current state that aren’t overviewed in any $9.99 guidebook or $75 university text. Fascinated by the country, I started reading up on Mali a year before I went. After reading The Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2003) lists Mali as the third poorest nation in the world, I expected to see the most devastating scenes of poverty while studying in Mali with the Antioch Education Abroad program. We’ve all seen the images of impoverished people in Africa; fly covered children, overextended bellies aching for food. Individual accounts can be just as valid as empirical information, so I spoke with a lot of my African neighbors in Harlem. They warned me not to believe everything I saw in the media.

I found all of their words were true. It is true, modern conveniences are scarce in Mali, even in the capital city Bamako, the fastest growing city in Africa. Yet that lack of amenities didn’t detract from the spirit of the people there. As a rule, Malians used their traditional methods of craftsmanship coupled with a sense of community to transform their environment thereby enriching themselves. The working Malians mindset wasn’t necessarily focused on “playing catch up” as westerners might think but “get ahead” in their quiet way. They didn’t see themselves as “poor” per se, just desiring more modern amenities.

If Malians couldn’t buy what they wanted, they made it. Sustainable recycling practices are conceived and implemented by the individual actions of Malians, not bureaucratic organizations. Inventive blacksmiths channel centuries of know-how through modern tools to morph defunct engine blocks into pots, bicycles into wheelchairs powered by hand pedals. Those chairs were much more user friendly than the ones in the states, are fast enough to use on the street, which people commonly did. On farms, people widely made use of solar panels that are easily purchased at the Grand Marche. Villagers were figuring out new means of irrigation for rice fields in remote areas. The young were testing different methods to attract attention to their tourism businesses via the Internet.

On top of the work Malians do to modernize their lifestyle, the people are willing to share whatever they have to help a neighbor. While in the city of Djenne my classmate, Nicco, and I wandered the streets, exploring the night. We weren’t even startled when a man leading his daughter home called to us, “Have you eaten yet? Are you hungry? Come to eat with us.” Invitations to visit stranger’s houses is normal, people offered us dinner all of the time, even though we were foreign. We always appreciated the generosity of people we knew really didn’t possess a lot, but were willing to extend what they had to us without any prompting on our part. If a Malian sees their neighbor cooking a meatless dinner, they will send over whatever they can to round out the meager meal. Sharing with everyone in the community is such a common practice that people use other people’s things without asking. When contrasted with western society’s tendency to encourage individuals to hoard goods, Malian community minded acts of generosity in the face of limited resources can only be described as courageous.

I won’t lie. Not everyone’s needs were met in this system. Legions of beggars composed of children, the handicapped, Muslim students and random people hounded shoppers in the Grande Marche. Panhandlers weave through street traffic, sticking their hands in open car windows. Sometimes I had to give people the “Come on now. You’re not hungry. Your butt’s bigger than mine,” look. More often than not I couldn’t resist the spirit of generosity floating in the air. Even though I had a feeling they were fed well, I always delighted in sharing all the coins in my pocket with street children.

Even worse off can be people of the slave class in Mali. Some “slaves” are only that in name. Their ancestors were slaves for a long time, hence their offspring are still considered as such as a sort of social joke, because their offspring have garnered wealth. Other slaves were just that- people bound to families who worked without monetary wages. Where I lived there were two females who took care of the household while everyone else lounged. The older one, close to my age, was resigned to her work. She took small pleasures out things like my expressions when she explained to me through Bamana and showing me ingredients, that I didn’t like a certain sauce because my foreign tongue could taste the caterpillars in it. The younger woman couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. She started her mornings on sitting on the porch, listening to children playing in the street on their way to school. All day she slouched over her chores, then hid in her room at night when everyone came home.

“I feel bad for that girl,” I told my professor’s nephew, Yacouba. “She’s depressed because she wants to go to school with the rest of the kids. There are only adults around here that are too busy to play with her.”

Yacouba laughed at me. “You Americans have crazy ideas. Not everybody can go to school. School is not free.”

“Yacou, in America school is free. Everybody goes.”

Yacouba expressed amazement. “If this is true, then who works? Somebody must work.” I explained to him that household technology like stoves, washing machines and vacuums frees up Americans to channel their energy to other pursuits. He was shocked. Until that point Yacouba had believed that having someone toil away was a necessary evil so that some people could live better, just another beast of burden.

This is a pervasive belief that goes unspoken among the ranks of the well to do. However history does not support the logic of this belief. The careful maintenance of class structure in society lends itself to crime, mental illness, environmental pollution and physical illness. So many Malian children suffer from Polio. I ask the pharmaceutical companies who can afford a primetime slot for new computer generated commercial that lists all the horrible internal bleeding side effects for the fiftieth allergy nasal spray on the market, why is this so when we have a cheap vaccine? I’ve seen so many working appliances in garbage heaps in New York City alone. I believe that when Malian women save the time it takes to start a fire by turning on stoves, when their children don’t have to beg because their handicap prevents them from helping in the home, Mali will have a cultural revolution.

It’s a technological revolution that Malians want. People I encountered during my stay in Mali generally expressed hope about the future development of their country. Complaining about misfortunes in life is distinctly un-Malian. People would rather pontificate over ideas about how to bring what they need to their country. Malians who aren’t born into well to do families (yes they exist in Mali) are united in the desire to bring America’s comforts to Africa. Although some Malians pass the time drinking tea, most use the highly caffeinated beverage to keep work productivity high. Judging by the amount of concentrated energy individuals channel into reshaping their world, it is evident Africa is going to change under the hands of Africans, not foreigners who want to mold the land in their homeland’s image. That happened once in history, to disastrous results. Well aware of the ramifications of foreign intervention, Africans accept assistance, but on their own terms. Even more heartening, is how the people there continue to break past their economic inequality with the industrialized world, enriching themselves with ingenuity and cooperation.

Reshaping my miseducation about Africa was something I strived towards for many years. Brazil was a journey of a completely different nature. In the past, I swore up and down that I had no desire to go to Brazil. Nightmarish stories about violence there turn up in anecdotes by people who are close to me. Most of the storytellers were all Brazilian, some of the sweetest people I ever met. So when I was given a chance to visit some family members and Nicco this past Carnival season, I reasoned, it can’t be that bad. People think Africa is completely a war zone and it wasn’t. The same has to be true with Brazil.

My thinking wasn’t too far off the mark. Brazil is no third world country. Being cosmopolitan is a Brazilian obsession. You see it in the soap operas that run all day long, women wrapped in sheik outfits, languidly pouting. Ladies on the street imitate that level of pageantry as best they can, whether they find the dress at H Stern or the neighborhood dress shop across the street from Bob’s Burgers. To appear well to do people only frequented certain neighborhoods, bars and restaurants. For a stylish accessory, they wear their emotions on their faces, unafraid to share whatever lurks in their hearts. People make out unabashedly on the street. Rival fans playfully insult one another’s teams while watching soccer together. Emotions meet feverish pitches, so there is an undercurrent of danger in the streets.

The anecdotes in America don’t even compare to the ones I heard in Rio. People don’t trust anyone around them. Most residential buildings are gated. People are cautious about whom they allow in their homes, even if it is a friend of a friend. When I got there, Nicco told me an acquaintance of his who had his necklace stolen by a kid who jumped up, snatched it off and ran away. Nobody blinks if there’s a fight. If it’s a passionate screaming match, it’s good entertainment. Violence is met with quick strides to safer places on the sidewalk. That’s life. Have to protect one’s self.

My Portuguese is horrible, so I got with that attitude while keeping quiet so people didn’t recognize me as a tourist right off the bat. In Rio I typically only traveled with my host, Nicco or both. I didn’t flash a lot of money, didn’t bring a lot of money really, and whenever I needed something I only asked nice looking middle aged women or bus drivers. Caution didn’t get in the way of fun though. Some days I spent stuffing my face during family dinners. Nights Nicco and I went to parties or clubs with friends. We were ultra cautious then. Not once did we consider that things could be so bad a mishap could occur without warning or provocation in broad daylight.

For carnival, Nicco and I traveled to Salvador to revel in the streets. On the second night of the week-long festivities, the music of Ile Aye had us carried away in dancing from the night until the morning. We were making our way to the bus stop to get back to our campsite when five adolescent boys came out of nowhere, yelling indecipherable things at us. Their pupils were dilated, their hands thrashed about wildly. Wonderful, I thought. These kids are coked up. As we backed away from them, Nicco began telling kid we didn’t want any trouble. Mid-sentence, a couple of them leaped on him, tearing at his clothes. The others pushed me aside. Without thinking, I pushed them back, reprimanded them in English, tore at their hands to get them off of Nicco. One boy pushed me back again yelling something to the effect of, “Watch out unless you want some of this.” The boys had surrounded Nicco, so I couldn’t see what they were doing to him. All I could make out was the ringleader of the boys swinging a broken beer bottle over his head, then bringing it down repeatedly, making a shower of glass on the sidewalk, then Nicco stumbling backward, the ragged ends of his purse strings hanging out of his collar, the kids booking it in the opposite direction. Crap, I thought, they cut his purse away.

I ran up to Nicco, hissing, “I can’t believe those kids just took your stuff. Your harmonica is in there.”

“I’m not worried about that,” he said pained. “They cut my hand.” In my panic I hadn’t noticed blood was seeping from his fingers at a tremendous rate. As he spoke a river of blood sprung up in his hairline, and ran down his forehead. As we ran to get napkins to try to stop the blood on the way to the hospital, journalists, complete with cameras approached us cameras in hand. The police rounded the corner in their sedan. People pointed them in the direction of where the kids had run. We ran to catch up with the cops so they could take us to the hospital. While all this was happening I thought, where were all these people when those kids were on us? Oh yeah, on the safer side of the street.

Dealing with a whirlwind of medics and police was bad enough. What was worse was facing the complete ramifications of the situation. In the taxi on the way to the campgrounds, we turned over the morning’s events trying to sew together the ragged ends of our understanding. I told Nicco that I thought the kids were on drugs and he agreed that they probably were. I couldn’t understand how kids could be on something so serious at such an early stage in their lives. Those boys looked like they were the same age as the Malian slave girl. Nicco told me that kids on drugs who are apart of gangs is common in Brazil. “That’s the worst part about this whole thing,” I said. “Those kids are suffering just as much as you are right now. Over time, you’ll heal from this experience. Don’t those kids have a chance to get better too?”

“I don’t think so Kenya,” Nicco admitted tiredly. “Kids like those don’t live past 22,” he said. What he said made sense. On February 23 The New York Times reported that Brazil ranks as the second largest consumer of cocaine. Bolivia produces cheap, low quality coke at a high rate, inundating Brazil’s borders. Too many young people were turning to drugs to help ease the pain of their impoverished life situation. On one side of the Atlantic Nicco and I had seen impoverished people full of hope for their country, eyes turning to the future. On the other side of the ocean, disillusionment with modernity’s promise to improve the lives of all pounced on us like a jaguar hiding amongst bamboo.

As far as I could tell, that robbery had just as much to do with poverty as it did with racisms role in that class designation. All those boys were poor and brown. It’s obvious that I’m foreign by the way I talk but I’m brown too. I could be wrong but I think that’s why they were more careful about hurting me. The callus attitude those boys assumed while perpetrating a violent crime led me to believe that they had committed violent acts before. The anger that energized their actions was bred out of then rationalized as justified retribution for too many centuries of violence, moral degradation and psychological abuse. I saw those boys’ actions as their way to lash out against the systematic oppression of brown people in Brazil for the perceived benefit of whites, the last legacy of slavery handed down like some sadistic inheritance from Brazil’s ancestors. I say perceived because the people who lead luxurious life styles must do so in fear. For well to do Brazilians, venturing outside is best done in cars with tinted windows rolled up at stoplights, breathing air chemically cooled by oil combustion. I can’t blame them. It’s dangerous! What a limited life we lead when wrought iron gates stand between us and our environments, whether we are in a cell or a gated community. In this way, poverty wraps its shackles around everyone, not just those without monetary wealth.

It can’t be denied that the hammer falls hardest on those with tin roofs. Brazil federal research institute, The IPEA, states that 70% of the poor are black. Higher education is virtually unattainable for poor blacks in Brazil. The University of São Paulo recorded only 9% of black students in its last census. This number is astounding considering that 50% of Brazil’s population is black, creating the largest group of African peoples outside of Africa. The most reliable way for people to climb out of poverty in a modernized society, education, is being unequivocally denied to Brazil’s poor. What are people supposed to do if they are not equipped with the know how to improve their situation?

In Brazil’s cities the windows of favellas open up to views of glass condos. That’s like making a poor child’s bed right next to $100 under a glass case, then telling them, “Now sleep here every night, but don’t ever break this glass to get the money.” Yeah. Sure. Desperation inevitably clouds the mind. That’s $100 to help pay the rent, could buy new clothes, maybe give mom some money for a nice dinner, or what the hell, $100 isn’t gonna pay to fix all the problems, let’s just get high again to forget it all for a little while. How can an uneducated child think their way out of a situation like that? I understand that anger as a brown person who has experienced harsh bias at different times in my life. The only difference between those kids anger and my own was that I knew dishing out the same sort of hate towards people who looked like they might be benefiting from the status quo doesn’t make the situation better for anyone. I asked myself as we neared the campground, “What does make it better?”

Not too much seemed like it would be better when we arrived back at Camping Ecologico with Nicco all bandaged up. Amazingly, things got better as soon as we were among the community of campers. The just working class families came to our aid without hesitation. In a world where criminals assert themselves without fear of repercussion, people have to protect themselves and those they saw as needing help. Whenever we shuffled our way through the tents they would ask how everything was going, offer assistance. Try this herbal remedy. Here are the leaves. Do you need a ride to pick up medicine? Drive carefully with her on that moto. Do you have enough money? You sure you don’t need to borrow some? Ah, the comfort that is neighbors offering support. The campers shared with us was intangible, yet just as nourishing as any Malian dinner. Their demeanor said, “Put that weighty sadness down. We’re here to carry a bit of your pain.” They took care of us on a level we would have never received in a hotel, no matter how luxurious. That’s when I realized the secret to solving poverty is hidden in the life of poverty itself. People coming to one another’s aid during tumultuous days.

Sharing as a solution to this problem? That’s just crazy Jesus freak talk, right. Who wants to give up a good hunk of what makes their lifestyle good for somebody else’s benefit? Who says we have to give anything up? Truth is that there is enough abundance for everyone in the world, we just haven’t figured out the best system to get everyone’s share out to them without wasting resources. Capitalism is not the way, that’s for sure. The Green Revolution has come and gone, but how do we ship rice from India to Ethiopia if Ethiopians don’t have the money to create a high enough demand that will cover the cost of shipment? Throwing money at poverty won’t resolve the issue because the creation of money helped feed the problem of poverty. Right now we need the trees more than the paper.

It would be teddy bear huggin’ nice if all people shared like they teach us in kindergarten. Unfortunately, right now humanity isn’t strong enough to get to the point where people can trust enough to take care of one another. We all are busy looking out for number one. Somebody is going to get jealous of the new car you worked a year for and try steal it. A nation is going to see another nation has a resource they want, so they’ll war over it. For rival businessmen, cooked books make better dinner than steaks. When one person feels lack, they overcompensate for what they feel is missing, leaving those around them feeling like they’re missing something. What a sickly, cyclic thing poverty is. Just the simple desire for individual ownership puts one in a precarious mental situation. How did we get to a point where people decide who has access to basic human necessities including land and food? What happened to the Native American idea that resources don’t belong to anyone, they are just there to be used by all? If a group of people thought this way at one point in history, this belief can be fostered again.

It’s easy for me to reach this perspective on collectivism now from the comfort of my home. Thinking the problem could be resolved by just asking people to disburse their excess wealth would be shifting the blame to the rich. In Mali I’m considered a rich person, so in essence I’m blaming myself, right? The grand irony is that I’m not exactly living in a tin roofed shack, but according to the American standard of living, I live well below the poverty line. I’m not ashamed to reveal that. If destitution is a home complete with a laptop, stereo with hundreds of CD’s, queen sized bed, carpeted floor and a fully stocked fridge, I’ll take that sans complaint. Admitting that makes me even question what “true” poverty is.

Here in the states we have the richest poor people in the world. When I was homeless in New York, I regularly saw an overweight man who slept in the park wearing gold chains and a diamond ring. I noticed him because I over heard him bragging about how he would never sell it. Somebody special had given him that ring. His portly stature was evidence that he rarely felt hunger hunger. Fried chicken and French fries purchased anytime he scrounged up enough change does not a make a balanced diet. Yet this fellow was as bereft of nourishment as any war refugee. Why? Healthy food cost more in the city. The different diseases are all the symptom of the same cause. Selfishness. Greed. Poverty did not spring forth as some pestilence with no cure. It’s not even “the way the world works.” We must remember before the creation of “civilization,” people lived together, worked together and shared what they had. It is heartening to see people in developing nations continue the traditions of unified community, using it to break past their economic inequality with the industrialized world, thereby enriching themselves with ingenuity and cooperation. At a time where our own country is on the brink of economic collapse, a time where we will have to look past our petty biases to make a New America, it is a tradition that, if adopted, will serve us well.

1. Introduction

Today many analysts, both inside and outside Afghanistan are saying that success in Afghanistan is not achieved by military alone. I believe that the military option is extremely important and there is no success without the military. But here tonight I am going to talk about what defines this ‘non-military’ part for me, as someone who has been living there for the past 6.5 years and who is committed to success in Afghanistan.

As far as I can tell not much has been written about defining the strategy itself.

My own vision is for Afghanistan to be a legitimate, self-ruling, independent country with a modern democratic state that is stable, peaceful, and developing, without the degree of vulnerability that it has today. I think this vulnerability today has reached a critical level and is at the core of the many problems that plague Afghanistan - - both for the Afghans and the world.

How can we reduce this vulnerability and get to this modern democratic state? Obviously, there are many things that need to be done (and I have talked at length about some of them in my writings). Here I am concentrating on three areas that in my view most affect this vision and need to be addressed: the international dimension, the governance dimension and the ideology dimension.

2. International/Regional Dimension

Public recognition of the Durand Line through internationally-backed negotiations. Afghanistan has recognized the Durand Line in a de facto manner and the two countries have had embassies for a long time. But now there is a good opening to extend the de facto to the de jure recognition. In August of this past year there was the Peace Jirga in Kabul. There, President Musharraf laid down Pakistan’s conditions. To my knowledge this is the first time that Pakistan has publicly proposed a solution: Afghanistan to recognize the territorial integrity of Pakistan and give Pakistan permanent secure land access to reach Central Asia, and in return Pakistan will give Afghanistan permanent secure land access to the Gawadar Port. I think this is a good opportunity for a negotiated settlement of the Durand Line. Afghanistan now should develop its own terms and the two sides should have a conference and settle the issue. Of course, the first point from Afghanistan must be that in return for this recognition, Pakistan will cease to aid the Taliban and Al Qaeda groups and will not allow these groups to come into Afghanistan from its own territory. To do this Afghanistan will certainly need its international friends to help her develop the points and actively participate in the conference, something the international community has thus far shied away from. A negotiated recognition will help alleviate some of the fears that exist in the tribal areas of both countries. But it will also remove once and for all the most basic and deepest excuse for the continuation of hostilities and for the mistrust that now exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan will then have to rethink its strategic depth policy as it can no longer play the card of the Pashtuns on the two sides of the border as being the same tribes but rather as being citizens of two different countries.

I must add that in the last six years there have been several public debates on this point inside Afghanistan and the desire to resolve the problem has been very clear.

The second point in the international arena is Iran that also has a very long border with Afghanistan. During the entire period of conflict in Afghanistan, Iran’s door to our international friends has been closed. Iran as another option to get to Afghanistan has been non-existent. This has made the world’s Afghanistan policies a hostage to the only door open, namely Pakistan. Resuming better relations, in whatever form, with Iran will really help us in Afghanistan on many levels.

3. Governance Dimension

Today, the moral authority of democracy does not exist in Afghanistan. Let me illustrate by touching on four points. First, we must insist on correct democratic relationships within the state. Currently, relations between the executive, legislative, judiciary and the citizenry are at an impasse. We have emphasized mostly the executive at the expense of the other three. For example, I was appalled that the recent report by the Afghanistan Study Group, which has many good assessments and recommendations, did not address the Parliament at all. If we want to improve the rule of law, which is the backbone of good governance, we must give as much importance to the legislative and judiciary as has been given to the executive.

Then too Afghan governance, especially in the executive branch, has developed so many horizontal and vertical organizations that it is
hard to know what the government is. Ministers, minister councilors, presidential advisors, ministry consultants, committees, commissions,
zsars, super administrations, tribal councils, development councils, women’s councils, elders’ councils, ulema councils, state and non-state actors, are proliferating, all at the expense of teaching Afghans what a democratic state apparatus is all about. The responsibilities of the state, the accountability of the state and the obligations of citizens are all diluted in this manner and confusion reigns. To remedy this, we must change the constitution to institute the office of the prime minister and better define the provincial administrations while at the same time reducing these other extraneous bodies to a manageable size and clear delineation.

Many analysts are also pointing to a lack of capacity. In one respect, this is absolutely not true. Currently, we do have thousands of Afghans who are either experienced or educated or both, but who are without a job because of some perceived political consideration. This includes many intellectuals and bureaucrats as well as many many Mujaheddin who are not only versed in how to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda but also know every inch of the country. Bringing these political discards back into the fold of the establishment, to my mind, is a big step in ameliorating the situation.

But perhaps the strategy that has made governance most vulnerable and has backfired is the ethnic strategy. Today the spirit of the Bonn Agreement that required inclusion of all Afghans in Afghanistan is totally shattered. It is replaced by promoting governance by one ethnic group, i.e. the Pashtun ethnic group. Some say this was from the beginning at the behest of Pakistan. Several books written about post 9/11 Afghanistan talk about this. It started in the guise of bashing and marginalizing and excluding the Mujaheddin, and has now reached into a painful and divisive ethnic situation. However, this has actually made the Afghan Pashtuns more vulnerable and put them under tremendous pressure; many of them feel very defensive; and many of them do not feel it is a right strategy to make Afghanistan the land of the Pashtuns alone. This situation has resulted in the creation of so many groups, even among the Pashtuns, that reaching consensus on any issue is becoming extremely difficult.

Afghanistan is no longer the country of 40 years ago. Today each ethnic group is fully politicized, fully experienced in struggle and fully willing and able to contribute. Each feels entitled to the equality that democracy requires. On a daily basis, these ethnic groups talk, write and voice their unhappiness about the situation.

Let me emphasize that nobody in Afghanistan thinks that the Pashtuns are not entitled; on the contrary, everyone thinks that the Afghan
Pashtuns are legitimate citizens. But most think that the other ethnic and social groups are also entitled, can also offer benefits, and that
Afghanistan is the homeland of all of them. This unfortunate strategy has led many Afghans to think that the new international friendships
are a modern rerun of nineteenth century colonialism and at the very least another way of implementing in Afghanistan what Pakistan failed
to do with the Taliban. They feel cornered by their international friends. It is this unspoken, divisive situation that is fueling corruption, discontent and distrust, and it is creating unwillingness in Afghans to cooperate with the state.

On this point also the Afghanistan Study Group remains silent perhaps because it still continues as an underlying strategy. In my view we
must rethink this strategy and really insist that the Afghan state and the international friends actually walk the talk of democracy - - and
yes, it does mean we renegotiate with Pakistan. But, if we go forward with the Durand Line negotiations that I mentioned earlier, this
strategy then becomes moot. So, before investing too much more on this that will eventually push us into a corner, we must realize that in
the current realities of Afghanistan no one ethnic group can perform all that is necessary. Creation of a democratic and durable Afghanistan is the responsibility of all Afghans. We must proceed to develop new ways of truly including all Afghan ethnic and social groups equally and holding all of them responsible for Afghanistan.

Otherwise, another Kenya may not be so far fetched. (For example, as a starter, we must change the national anthem to include other languages
as well. The current anthem that is all in Pashto signals the wrong intentions. Or, in the provinces, assign their own natives as governors. I mean really, what catastrophe, what calamity would befall Afghanistan or the world if the national anthem is in several languages or if the governors are natives of their own provinces?).

4. Ideology Dimension

On the ideology front, I think the vulnerability lies in not understanding and not giving social legitimacy to modernity. All the talk is about the deep traditions, the cultures and the way of life of Afghans and how to leave a light footprint. Most people talk about modernization equating it to Westernization. This view of modernization as Westernization carries with it a loss of indigenous identity, a move from what is known and familiar, and an imposition of others’ ideas. However, the sociological reality is that modern traditions, social change and multiple ways of life are all unavoidable and legitimate characteristics of any human society - - including the Afghan society, and there is nothing foreign or untoward about it.

The Afghan state and friends of Afghanistan have to find ways to incorporate this idea in all our dealings in Afghanistan. Modernity i.e., updating your own way of life and values and traditions in order to respond properly to the requirements and conditions of time and place must become a motto. Otherwise, the concepts of Westernization, traditions, culture, tribalism will all continue to be abused by all sides to create impasse and endgame.

Many Afghans have complained to me that their interlocutors have preconceived notions of them and so they cannot express themselves in modern’ ways. Their interlocutors do not believe them to be capable of such ideas. And so, they feel too boxed in and only rise to the level of their interlocutors’ expectations. We must empower Afghans to take ownership of their modernity; indeed we must demand it.

Finally, in fighting the extremist ideology we must give social legitimacy to women. The Taliban and Al Qaeda’s treatment of women as property is at the core of the extremist ideology for social control. We must counter it by treating women as equal citizens active in the life of society with dignity. I am disheartened by the silence that pervades the issue of women since the adoption of the Constitution of 2004 - - both by the state and by the international friends. It is as if these decision makers want to appease the Taliban, want actually to show the Taliban that they - the decision makers - are accommodating extremism. As if the Taliban ideology has been effective in creating fear among these decision makers. As if women, half of Afghanistan, have already been bartered – of course, so blatantly, to no avail.

I hold the opposite view, the more we show that society is comfortable with and benefiting from women’s presence and the more we show that the role of women in society is ethical and legitimate, the weaker the extremist ideology will become - - and the weaker its actions and moral messages. I know politics is still patriarchal but on this, make no mistake about it; this is most certainly the axis to durable success in Afghanistan.

5. Conclusion

I do believe that we must develop a new paradigm of dealing with countries. The old concept of divide and rule, or the newer one of confuse and conquer no longer create results that promote correct and enduring success. We must develop relationships that deal with peoples and cultures and countries on an equal footing and with the same standards of caring and dignity. (For example, we must find a solution to the question of how we should approach if all groups in a country are on our side.)

We must also not be afraid to promote and acknowledge our own belief in modernity and democracy, and not fall back to the lazier concept of Westernization. In Afghanistan, with all these course corrections, the road will still be long and hard and painful. But at the end of the day we will have lowered the vulnerability and helped achieve a more peaceful and viable Afghanistan - - for my beloved Afghan people and for the cherished humanity at large. The time to start is now.

Nasrine Gross is an Afghan American writer and women’s rights activist who lives in Afghanistan. She can be reached at Kabultec@gmail.com.

For more of her writings visit www.kabultec.org

The above article was presented on February 6, 2008 at a conference
organized by the American University of Paris entitled ‘Afghanistan:
Strategies for the Future’.

On Tuesday, August 7th, the city of New Orleans celebrated its “Night Out Against Crime” with block parties at 155 locations. Various community organizations teamed with the police department to host these get-togethers. Free food, raffles, and entertainment, made for condensed versions of the usual sit-around-in-the-evening, with gatherings in parks and public spaces that remained full and safe after dark.

I got home from the day job around 5:30 and relaxed for a minute, then got on my bike, the summer sun still beating powerfully on my back.

First stop: two blocks down my street, Magazine, where the construction crew is putting the finishing touches on the reopening of this “vital commercial artery.” I note the smoothness of the concrete, the contrast to the crumbling red wall along Melpomene Street, the way a whole pocket disappeared under the bulldozers.

See, people were bent, I mean BENT about the street being closed. It lasted 4 years and broke the flow of traffic from downtown to the spreading consumerist suck-off that blooms along Magazine. Hair salons and property value suffered and chop shops and miscreants had good cover as long as that block remained unfixed. For some reason, I enjoyed the placid waste of it all, the way it reminded me not of the storm’s damage, but of the old city as it once was, a beautifully grotesque mash-up of battered cars, bamboo and banana trees, paint chips and madmen, isolated from progress and “the way things oughta be.” But glory be to the commerce and its persistence and clean edge! The “Sliver on the River” flows freely with traffic! Have a cocktail/California Roll/vintage blouse!

I cut across on MLK to S. Claiborne Avenue and swing into the parking lot of the mega-convenience store, complete with hip hop clothing outlet and taco stand. The corner lot is a center of activity, from the afternoons when day laborers await jobs to the night when it’s the easiest place to pick up booze. Across MLK sit two charred buildings which look to be staying and down the block are the remains of a brick house with a John Scott sculpture attached. Many of the Latino laborers chill right on the blackened steps of the burned building; a yellow, 10’ statue of liberty stares at them from the sculpture.

My target is the taco stand under the service island, where I know there’s a sign for one of the Night Out locations. I stopped in there this weekend to get some tacos and the woman asked, “For here or to go?” I said to go, since for here would mean right between two gas pumps.

“Taylor Playground, Washington Ave and S. Derbigny St,” says the sign. That’s only a few blocks away.

When I reach the playground, there’s a football practice on the field and several tents sit next to a large, sheet metal pavilion, a common shelter in neighborhood parks here. Inside the pavilion, I get some free tacos from another taco truck and sit down next to a pile of trash to watch the entertainment at the DJ stage.

The situation with the immigrant laborers is tricky. The Latinos move right into the ghettos, sometimes in damaged neighborhoods where no one else will go. It’s unclear how they get these houses, and I’m pretty sure that some guys are squatting a couple blocks away from my place. You drive by porches of Latino men sipping beer, with porches of young black guys doing the same the next house down. I haven’t heard much about conflict or lack thereof, but wonder how that goes down. There are signs that politicians may try to stir trouble between the groups for their own gain, as in the case of one brilliant city councilman who asked, “How do the tacos help gumbo?” Real poet, this guy, and he wasn’t asking because he wanted a good answer for the underclasses―he wanted a scapegoat. So, today in the park, it’s nice to see the taco truck there as a member of the community.

Man, there are a lot of cops, though. This is Central City, most dangerous in the post-Katrina landscape, and evidently the police want their presence felt. One cause of the crime plague is a lack of cooperation from citizens in criminal investigations. People don’t trust the cops, and would rather stay quiet than involve themselves with a historically corrupt, inept, and sometimes murderous department that can’t protect them from street retribution. What’s fucked is that these people continue to suffer from the violence, but refuse to endanger themselves by cooperating.

Most recently, this played out within the ongoing beef between the NOPD and the office of District Attorney Eddie Jordan. The DA announced that the case against the accused murderer of 5 men on one Central City block was closed because the one witness, a teenage girl, had disappeared. A day later, the mayor and police chief called a press conference and announced that they’d found the girl, and what the fuck was the DA’s problem? This resulted in demands for the Jordan’s resignation, followed by a defense of the DA along racial lines (he is black, as are the mayor and chief, but apparently white people said something). The result? Nuffin. Basically, the tempest gave the mayor and chief some cover for their ongoing bungling, and the DA weathered the storm because “he’s not the only problem.”

You sort of understand why people don’t want to cooperate with this system, huh?

But this evening, everyone’s getting along. The cops mostly keep to themselves and out of the way, and a group of giggling girls from the Israelite Youth Choir sings into the PA system. I check out the football practice, then make my way out, passing by some sort of Guardian Angels-type crew, with navy shirts and camouflage pants.

Riding a bike gives you a certain perspective, since you pass by at a slower speed with more time to look around. I drive up and down S. Claiborne all the time, but on my bike I notice a few things. First, a road crew is working somewhere, as there are barrels and uneven pavement along the shoulder. Second, after two years, the avenue is returning to what it was―a portly strip of fast food and gas stations between two large neighborhoods. The old Taco Bell reopened as a po-boy/Chinese food joint, and the Canal Villere grocer gave way to a coming Walgreens. But I notice more this time how many retail outlets are still shut down, and above all, how nothing new has come, no re-thinking of the avenue for the better.

Back when the planning sessions were open to the public, many people voiced a desire to see Claiborne become a thriving district, a central piece of the city, perhaps with a transit line or even a protective levee. Still waiting for a sign that those plans will come true, Claiborne goes about its business, as disorderly and crass as ever. Two years into this mess, hopes of the grand vision for a better city begin to wane, and you appreciate things like small street lights and drive-thru windows.

When I pull up to the Night Out on Freret Street, I see Kim and her boss speaking with someone in one of the tents. I lock up my bike and enter and find out that there’s no electricity, so the participating radio station has to play from their SUV and the snowball machine is down. Otherwise, things are mellow. Burgers, red beans and rice, and popsicles, kids getting their faces painted, the whole parking lot like a front porch. The neighborhood is diverse, a lot of families, close to hospitals and the universities, and helped by the guiding influence of Neighborhood Housing Services, the organization that sponsors the neighborhood center that Kim directs. A lot of people know each other from way back.

So we walk around, watch the kids play games, check in with residents we know. At one point, I walk back to the van and listen to Kim being interviewed on the 102.9 radio station. It’s still so hot that sweat drips down my back as I sit in the baked driver’s seat and watch people drift towards the party. Freret Street could be a town in the Caribbean, with its stucco and tile roofs and bent balconies. The street is fighting to stay alive, and the squalor of the boarded up dry cleaner is offset by the nursing school and boxing gym on the same block. Mixed-up, low slung Freret Street, oozing into evening. I lived here in 1999 and sit here now in a minivan, listening to my love on the soul station, her voice telling people to come to the neighborhood.

Back in the parking lot, they’re calling off raffle ticket numbers through a megaphone. Nights like this, when black and white neighbors just kick it, eat together, wait in line together, are our only hope. If we’re going to make it, we can’t pull any further apart, as that void is where the free market and violence mingle into a poison and ruin what’s left of the city’s lifestyle. People must stand together to reconstitute the basic machinery of civic sustenance, and the finger-pointing over the bodies of young black men makes the bullets doubly lethal, empowering hate-mongers on both sides who want to know why the other isn’t doing something.

While it’s hard to tell just how wide the gulf between black and white stands today, there are ominous signs in the public discourse. Like many newspaper websites, the Times Picayune’s nola.com now features a comment section. And while New Orleans blogs provide important critiques and watchdogs in the vacuum left by local media, this particular online sphere is home to the shrill, the nonsensical, and the determinedly racist. You can read a report about, say, trash collection, and within 4 comments, people are blaming thugs and lazy blacks for the last 500 years of New Orleans bullshit. Really, I’ve never read anything in the main stream internet so wildly defamatory as the little digs, jokes, and accusations at the bottom of TP articles. Perhaps I forgot how deep the divisions are, or maybe they never enjoyed such a public, anonymous forum, or perhaps, as I suspect, the tensions between races have worsened as the recovery remains mired in government missteps that fray the nerves of everyone.

Not to pin the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and the storm on one man, but I believe a lot of this is the consequence of Nagin. Originally elected as a corporate, “white” candidate, his use of racial shading in every speech (especially the national ones) to appeal to blacks; his melodramatic pandering and whining in front of white national political figures; and his inability to staunch the bloodshed or handle the basic roles of a mayor in a (continuing) crisis, provide the perfect ammo for both sides of the division. Isolated and strangely emboldened, Nagin refuses to tone down his rhetoric, and instead plays odd games with the fate of thousands, as seen in the set-up of the DA.

It should be noted that Jordan is a protégé of Congressman “Dollar” Bill Jefferson, he of the cash-in-the-freezer investigation. If Jefferson is convicted and his House seat opens up, guess who goes to DC? Coincidently, Nagin’s frequent out-of-town trips now include fundraisers for an unspecified election run. Our best “hope” is that this happens, since he’d be out of the way and could hardly do worse representing us than a crook without committee assignment (Jefferson) or our diaper fetishist senator, Republican David Vitter. Or maybe he could, as there seems no limit to Ray’s talents for ineptitude. There are also rumors that he’ll jump into this year’s gubernatorial race at the last minute, but the predicted loss there would return him to us for another 3 years, likely with the even more swollen head of a “contender.”

At the party, I bend down to speak with a clarinet player I know who lives in the neighborhood. He’s holding his 12-week old baby and sitting against totem pole-like sign for a market that never inhabited the parking lot. I tell him that Da Truth Brass Band is running late, due to a police check a few blocks away. As we talk, the radio station’s SUV dies and they begin to push it out. Just then, the sounds of Da Truth reach us and we turn to watch the crowd gather at the lot’s entrance. The top of a tuba appears, then a large golf umbrella opens, and soon a miniature second line develops behind the band. They stop at one end of the lot and keep playing. There are seven of them and all look to be under 20, blasting away as the older folks circle them under the now lit street lamps.

I watch for awhile, dance some with Kim, then sit down, the heat being a little to strong for me. My phone rings and it’s old John Ringo, so I let him listen to the whole “Hooo Na Nay” chant. Then people begin running towards the back end of the parking lot and I turn to watch, telling Ringo I got to go.

The woman who organized the backpack giveaway has a metal chair in her hand and faces off with another woman who holds a cinder block. Fortunately people grab hold of them, but they keep trying to get at each other. It seems the cinder block lady stole the organizer’s purse from the booth where the giveaway was. She used a friend to distract the woman, but not for long. The organizer landed two good punches and snatched her purse back before the weapons were picked up. Unfortunately, one of the neighborhood guys escorts the thief out the back before the cops get there.

And the whole time, Da Truth Brass Band doesn’t stop. I talk to an old lady and we shake our heads. People always have to do stupid shit.

But the night ends fine, with my buddy the clarinetist jamming with Da Truth and the head of the community organization declaring through the megaphone that he’s “proud to live in this neighborhood.” We pack up tables and chairs in the minivan and drive back to Kim’s center, where a few dedicated people unload everything into the backyard.

The Night Out Against Crime took place in a week when 6 people were found murdered in New Orleans. The summer is a surly, irritated season, when time drags on like tired feet and you start sweating when you get out of bed. We live in an effortful, plodding period of survival mentality, pushing the rock, hoping against the calendar and the evening news that we’ll make it, that the place is worth it and too deep to die.

There is a madness to the summer, and a madness to staying here. But when the air cools a little and you’re good and tired and the street is empty but for bicycles, and you cut through the orange glow of silent neighborhoods of stubborn houses and people, a space opens up and you hope. You hope for the old people with walkers and the Popsicle stained toddlers, and for people who won’t give their purse up to fools, that this place is worth the long, unrelenting heat.

Local legends are essential to small boring towns and the one I grew up with maintains that you can never actually leave Grand Rapids, Michigan.  You can go somewhere else for a while but you will always feel compelled to return.   Family values beget family values and Christianity Christians so it makes sense that a number of people choose to stay here and raise families.  And raise families you do in Grand Rapids.  It sounds very fifties, but by the time I left, one year after graduating from college, friends and acquaintances were getting married left and right.   Now they are having babies.

But for those who are not necessarily satisfied by such a lifestyle, an excuse has to be made for why they are moldering away in this place that will never, it seems, be as good as it should be.  Hence the transmutation of demographic trends into legend.  If you happen to hear this in one of several smoke filled coffee shops catering to a mixture of homeless people, disaffected teenagers, artists of varying levels of dedication and bored college students, the excuse will go something like this:  Downtown Grand Rapids was built on Indian burial grounds and now any white person who has settled there or whose parents had settled there is stuck with the place for life\footnote{1}.  This narrative does well with angry teenagers who now have an excuse to fault their parents with an inescapably boring Midwestern existence that is not only inevitable but eternal and has nothing to do with a level motivation that does not allow for much more than occasional road trips to Chicago or Detroit for a show or a night at a bar that is not Mulligan’s.  And it works as well for failed poets and unpublished writers whose location precludes any appreciation for their art.  I can’t say that I ever heard this story from a homeless person but one winter afternoon Ruby a local inhabitant of the ministries on division, bestowed upon me a wealth of angry un-sourced information about her land rights while snapping pictures with a disposable Kodak and using the opportunity to ask for countless cigarettes and coffee refills.  I believed her- her claims not being far from the historical picture painted by my mother whose inordinate pride in our distilled Native American heritage colored my childhood.

We are in fact built on Indian Mounds. Southwest of what most would consider downtown proper are the Norton Indian mounds.    In a place that makes every effort to deny the existence of its history despit