In a Time of War and Fear, Seattle Writer Paul Loeb's New Anthology Discovers
Hope for the Future in the Dissident Voices of Yesterday and Today
On a fall day in 1998, a group of people gathered for a conference on
spirituality and ecology in a church basement in the college town of Bloomington,
Indiana. They spent had part of a day sharing stories, ideas, and opinions on how
they had and could live more meaningful lives as activists and
environmentalists. But when one young woman voiced her frustration at her sense of
powerlessness, complaining that the world was in such bad shape she couldn't believe
there was anything she could do that would make a real difference, a voice in
the room rose in protest.
It was the voice of Danusha Veronica Goska, a graduate student at the
University of Indiana and a contributor to a new anthology,
The Impossible Will Take
a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Keeping Hope Alive in a Time of Fear
(Basic Books, 2004), edited by Paul Loeb. As she recounts, Goska was then
suffering from a debilitating medical condition known as Perilymph Fistula, a
vestibular disorder that can produce symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis. As is
often the case with a chronic illness, Goska had good days and bad days. On the
really bad days, she could not walk or stand or leave the house. There was
nausea and faltering vision.
But the challenge of illness had taught her something about power and
powerlessness, as Goska shared with the conference participants. After years of
living in the realm where morning might bring a day of relatively normal health, or
a day of paralysis, she had become highly attuned to the profound difference
the small, unadorned gestures of human solidarity could mean in a person's
life. Like the action of the neighbor driving in his car who once saw her
wobbling down the road in a snowstorm. She was on her way home when symptoms of the
disease had suddenly flared. While car after car drove by, this man stopped his
to give her a ride. They had never spoken before. In her years living in the
neighborhood, no one else had ever stopped. Of course, the man's actions were
just a ride home. They didn't change her life. But it was the difference for
one day between despair or hope, isolation or a sense of belonging. He had the
power to help her, he did, and it made a difference.
Goska's remarks to the conference participants were astute. Going through
times in life when you can no longer take for granted what others routinely take
for granted, like coordination or the stamina of leg muscles, does tend to
sensitize a person to where strength in their life (physical or emotional) comes
from. It is a different level of awareness. But dark times in the life of a
people or a nation also tends to clarify. The aspirations now of millions of
Americans now for a better life, for peace and prosperity, have also been, shall
we say, a bit weak in the legs in recent years. The terror of September 11
blew apart not only buildings and bodies but our culture's sense of separation
from a world already long battered by terrorism. Then came a floundering economy
on top of an already grotesquely unequal economy, and a war inspired by a
President's deceptions that now inspires only more threats of global conflict.
Meanwhile, soldiers and civilians die in Iraq by hundreds and thousands, while
our great American democracy claims the right to imprison some individuals
without the right to counsel or due process. As we enter a national election
period, the cultural psyche of much of the nation stands frayed, angry, and
bitterly divided. There are deep-set fears for our future, but few hopes for "endless
peace."
Confronting Despair, War, and George W. Bush
So, what about hope? Is there any good reason in this age of Bush and Bin
Laden, of war and terror, to have any? Wisely, The Impossible Will Take a Little
While explores our larger political hopes from a historical perspective that
goes beyond the invariably more fleeting infomercial-style "hope" sold at the
political conventions, which usually has a post-election shelf-life of about
two months. In the voices of such contributors as Diane Ackerman, Eduardo
Galeano, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jonathan Kozol, Tony Kushner, Nelson Mandela,
Arundhati Roy, Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, and many others, The Impossible Will
Take a Little While reminds us beautifully of the hope that comes from the
capacity of human beings to resist and persevere against not only personal hardship,
but the most far-reaching social injustice and adversity.
This is not Pollyanna stuff. These are the stories of the heralded and
unheralded, of the weak and the strong, but mostly of those who have hitched their
personal fate to the cause of justice in life. Here are the Uruguayan political
prisoners whose banned voices devise an ingenious, underground finger
alphabet to communicate their solidarity and spirit of resistance to dictatorship.
Here are a group of women whose small, early '60s White House protests against
nuclear proliferation, unbeknownst to them, influenced Dr. Benjamin Spock
toward peace activism. Here are the survivors of Chernobyl, confronting the grief
and cruel fate of their land as they search for and discover new hope for
themselves and their children. Here are many stories of ordinary people of uncommon
spirit and dedication to the cause of humanity.
The Impossible Will Take a Little While also recalls some larger than life
stories, such as Nelson Mandela's account of surviving 27 years in the sparse
and brutal conditions of apartheid imprisonment, years of darkness that in the
end revealed not only the corrupted mission of his captors, but the radiance of
one man's faith. Reading Mandela's story is a humbling testament to the
depths of his personal fortitude. But the South African leader's personal strength
also came from the power of ideas, and of the way he and his fellow political
prisoners developed their own surreptitious culture, one rooted in the justice
of their cause and a common solidarity no guard or official could ever touch.
Reading Mandela it is tempting to contrast the man's moral courage with that
of a certain Vice President of the United States. In Congress, Dick Cheney,
once as ardent a youthful supporter of the Vietnam war as he was equally ardent
in opposing his own participation in that war, long opposed Mandela's release
from prison. Cheney believed Mandela was leader of a "terrorist" organization.
It is especially heartening to be reminded of the courage and dignity of
Mandela's story and voice now, at a time when our own media circus of a political
culture appears so crass and dispirited, so littered with aspiring hacks and
pundits and enlistees in what Loeb calls "the fraternity of the cynical and the
contemptuous."
Admittedly, it can be very disheartening to encounter, day after day, the
effects of the relentless propaganda of a largely conservative, pro-war media. On
the road recently in Chicago, I happened to pull up at an intersection behind
a car with a provocative bumper sticker. It read: "'When it absolutely,
positively has to be destroyed overnight," followed by a logo for the U.S. Marines.
As I sat at the light for a minute staring at this driver's roadway ugliness,
my first reaction was irritation. But the feeling quickly notched up a level
to disgust and anger. For a moment, I pondered pulling up to the fellow at the
next light, motioning for him to roll down his window, and then offering my
own dissenting opinion to his crass, mindless homage to militarism and
violence.
I didn't. But the moment was symptomatic of life in 2004 America. A dark,
toxic cloud of xenophobia and right-wing extremism has since 9/11 slowly swept
across our beautiful land. A vitriolic atmosphere toward dissenters exists, at
such a pitch now that even former high-level colleagues of the President find
themselves quickly ground up by the meat grinder of patriotic Republican
intolerance, lest they dare suggest that the President is not—gasp!—infallible.
Equally, a glorification bordering on mythology of military might as the ultimate
determiner (or is it Terminator?) of global conflicts now pervades sizeable
sectors of mainstream American thought, media, and the public. Lies abound. War
abounds. Dying abounds. We have George W. Bush as President. The only
candidate with a chance to replace him talks like a man who prefers to forget his own
antiwar history.
"Among those who would seek or want social change, despair is endemic now,"
acknowledges Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones, in a contribution
that examines the nature of hope in the lives and art of such figures as poet
Robert Desnos and photographer Tina Modotti. But in Modotti's decades-old
photographs of defiant Mexican campesinos, Griffin is reminded of a level of
existence beneath theory or politics, where ordinary human beings of every generation
have always yearned and hoped for a better life, willing to struggle and dream
and defy the odds. Or those who would mistreat or oppress them. In the hard
faces of men who lived lives much different from her own, Griffin nonetheless
recognizes the familiar face of hope. It's like some timeless hurricane force
in the human heart, out of whose storms have come such civilizing ideals as
justice and solidarity, dignity and democracy.
Griffin also rightly reminds us that to imagine a radically different future
from our own bloodied, war-weary world is by very nature of the act more than
an idler's daydream. Because seeing what could be is impossible without the
willingness to gaze unflinching at what currently is. But I suspect we don't go
far enough with the latter. In the alternative and progressive media, there is
certainly a great deal of Bush-bashing, justified as it is, but not nearly
enough discussion of the root causes of war, inequality, and violence. That's
the kind of discussion that goes beyond the outcome this way or that of the next
Presidential election.
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Power
The Impossible Will Take a Little While is motivated by the wisdom that
acknowledging our despair is the first step toward challenging it. That car with
its belligerent bumper sticker angered me but frankly it mostly saddened me,
throwing another small match on an already smoldering sense of alienation I'm
harboring that this country I know so well is slowly becoming an ugly,
unrecognizable place. I suspect it's not an uncommon feeling. I suspect also the wild
enthusiasm for Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 suggests the depths of the almost
desperate desire now existing among millions of Americans for some decisively
alternative political vision to rally around. There is no doubt a strong
undercurrent, long-brewing in this country, of disgust and disillusionment with the
endless, seamy, wealthy corruptions of American politics. Unfortunately, it's
a level of disenchantment the current Presidential campaign mostly glosses
over.
As I read the many stories and perspectives expressed by the contributors to
The Impossible Will Take a Little While, I found myself returning to Goska's
theme of the power of ordinary people. How often that power has changed
history, but how often that power has also remained unrecognized. Untapped. Indeed,
it has always been the ordinary, mostly unheralded people who in their personal
as well as collective efforts have driven our world forward.
We live now in an era when the Bush Administration can send 150,000 U.S.
soldiers across the world on the wings of a lie, sacrificing the lives of hundreds
of American soldiers and some 10,000 Iraqi civilians to their duplicitous
cause. But rather than despair now, we can challenge this war through our voices
and our organizing, our spirits and our resolve. We can discover our power.
The Impossible Will Take a Little While is a primer on the topic. In his
accompanying notes, Loeb shares with us an important but little known story from the
days of the Vietnam War. In 1969, President Nixon was secretly preparing to
use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, unless the Vietnamese surrendered by
November 1. But only two weeks before the secret deadline, millions of
Americans joined the National Moratorium Against the War, taking part in marches,
vigils, and other antiwar protests. Publicly, Nixon pretended that the antiwar
protests would not influence him. The truth was different. Confronted by an
escalation of antiwar activism, Nixon knew, as his memoir would later reveal, that
he could no longer politically afford such a brazen, criminal escalation of
the war.
Now, that is a story worth remembering. We should keep it in mind the next
time a President or some talk radio saber-rattler declares that the voices of
those of us who now speak for peace don't count.
--
Mark Harris is a writer living in Bloomington, Illinois. His work has
appeared in Utne, Z magazine, and elsewhere. Visit his web site at
www.Mark-T-Harris.com. You can write to him at
TheEditorPage@aol.com
For more information or to order "The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A
Citizen's Guide To Keeping Hope Alive in a Time of Fear," edited by Paul Rogat
Loeb (Basic Books, 2004), go to:
www.theimpossible.org