We have become so accustomed to a certain Homeland Security
phrase since the events of September 11, 2001, that we have never seriously
contemplated its larger meaning. “If you see something,
say something,” for most people simply means that, if you notice something
strange, someone leaving a package on a train platform and walking away, for
instance, you need to call 911 or point it out to a nearby security official.
Having done our civic duty, we can go on about our lives and hope for the best.
We may save someone’s life, or we may simply be exercising caution. Check it
out.
But suppose we interpreted that phrase in the context of our
duties as citizens of an endangered, or even potentially endangered, democracy.
Suppose the threat were to our democratic institutions and not just to the
lives of those in a single public place. Suppose the threat involved policies
that affected thousands of people threatened by racism, ignorance, or hatred?
Ought we not to speak up? How different would the history of the world have
been if millions of Germans had spoken up about what they saw even in 1933? How
many Russians in the past two decades have risked their lives and their careers
to speak up about the threats they see to a democracy being strangled in its
cradle? In the past year, the people of Sudan have arisen against a brutal
military dictatorship and forced remarkable changes. Are we Americans somehow
so special as to be free from such obligations? Do we not eventually lose our
moral authority to speak for democracy in the world if we fail to speak for it
at home?
If you see something, say something. Let me tell you
what I see:
I see children
housed in filthy cages at the southern border by the U.S. government, separated
from their parents, their eyes full of fear and bewilderment, when their only
alleged crime was to be brought here by parents from Central America who sought
to remove them from gang warfare, violence, crime, and corruption in
desperately poor countries. I see a U.S. President, as a form of retribution, cutting
aid to those countries that was meant to promote reform and economic
opportunity to reduce people’s need to flee such chaos in the first place.
I see Temporary Protective Status (TPS) denied to survivors
of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, a neighboring country with deep ties to the
U.S., even as that nation struggles to rescue and house its own people in the face
of mind-numbing devastation. The rationale from the President was that “very
bad people” would harm our country if this were allowed, although TPS has
been standard practice in the past in the very same circumstances. It is
unclear, other than being people of color, what makes the Bahamians especially
dangerous in his eyes.
I see neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan
members marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us” through the campus of
the University of Virginia and the streets
of Charlottesville, defended ardently by a President who sees “very fine
people” on both sides while an innocent young woman is run over and killed by a
young Nazi sympathizer with his car. I see this rhetoric emboldening an ever-widening
circle of mass shooters who sow terror in American cities with unlimited access
to weapons of war, but I also see a widening
circle of brave citizens rising to demand effective action against such
terror.
I see America losing the moral courage of the Emma Lazarus
poem at the Statue of Liberty,
pleading for the world to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,” and nearly mocking Lady Liberty as she seeks to lift
her lamp beside the golden door. The Golden Door is becoming instead the Great Border
Wall built with money never legitimately appropriated by Congress, and members
of the President’s own party unable and unwilling to stop him or even raise the
weakest of objections lest they be expelled from the halls of power—or are they
becoming halls of obeisance, like the Roman Senate in Nero’s time?
I am telling you what I see because I understand the moral
and civic obligation to say something. We must all be whistleblowers for the
future of democracy. What do you see? Are you prepared to say something as well?
And what shall we do once we have spoken?
This week, it seemed as if the world was determined to break
my heart. I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way, but I may be the
one who puts two seemingly unrelated events together and wonders how we come to
such a pass. I often write about how we can minimize losses from natural
disasters, but today’s topic is tragedy wrought by humans upon others.
Illinois
Let me start closer to home. In Crystal Lake, an outer-ring
Chicago suburb, a five-year-old boy, “AJ” Freund, was found in a shallow grave
in an isolated site near his home. Police found him during an investigation
triggered by the boy’s father, who called 911 to report that he was missing.
Police dogs tracing his scent at home found no evidence that he had walked out
the door. Interrogation of the father, a 60-year-old attorney engaged to a
former client in a divorce case, the boy’s 36-year-old mother, caused the police
to become suspicious of the couple themselves.
It turned out that the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services (DCFS) had been involved with the family since the boy was born
with opiates in his system, clearly indicating a drug problem for the mother.
One police report a few months ago indicated that the home was filthy with pet
feces and utilities were shut off, but DCFS apparently found concerns about
neglect “unfounded.”
So, how did AJ wind up in his shallow grave? According to
the police, the couple kept him in a cold shower before beating him, resulting
in his death from head trauma. Needless to say, the couple are now in jail,
facing murder charges, and are separately secluded from the rest of the McHenry
County jail population for their own safety.
I don’t wish here to focus on the court case. Judge, jury,
and prosecutors will make their own determinations as the case proceeds, and
like anyone else, the parents are entitled to a defense. What concerns me is
what needs to happen at DCFS to prevent many more children from being similarly
harmed. This is an agency with serious problems that must be solved.
In the past four years, we had a governor with a serious
empathy deficit, who preferred to engineer a stalemate with the Democratic
legislature over the state budget while bills went unpaid and progress at
agencies like DCFS sputtered, and numerous nonprofit social service providers
went unpaid for months on end. But Republican Bruce Rauner did not
initiate the crisis at DCFS, which is a product of neglect and malfeasance by
several prior administrations, not to mention the frequent unwillingness of the
legislature to prioritize funding for social services. But funding is not the only
issue.
How bad has it been? According
to today’s Chicago Tribune, “DCFS
has churned through 14 previous leaders since 2003 and has seen its budget and
staffing dwindle.” This turnover implicates two previous Democratic
administrations as well as that of Rauner, who had his own revolving door for
DCFS executives in the last four years. No one can establish stability and
quality of services in such an environment. We can only hope that Gov. J.B.
Pritzker, who took office three months ago, can make this a priority and
turn the situation around. He has brought in Marc
Smith, previously the head of a suburban social service organization, and
more importantly, has requested a $75 million increase in funding for the
agency. He is taking heat for proposing to amend Illinois’s constitution to
allow a progressive income tax in order to gain new revenue from high-income
residents, but the money must come from somewhere and the state needs to
balance its wobbly budget.
But let me get more personal here. And I do take this
personally.
My wife and I have been foster parents since 1991. Two
daughters we adopted are now grown, and there are grandchildren. We also have
guardianship for one grandson at the moment, so we have a long history of
interaction with DCFS. Like many other foster and adoptive parents in Illinois,
we have long had reason to question the managerial culture of the agency, which
has tended to emphasize restoring or maintaining the custody of natural parents
whenever possible. I understand that generally, but not when there is obvious
abuse or neglect and caseworkers either fail to take notice or fail to act to
protect the children. As headlines have often suggested, that happens more than
we may want to know. AJ has become the
latest case in point.
Long ago, two children from a large family reached out to
connect with us, and we often let them visit and share their story. We relayed
some concerns to DCFS. As a teacher, my wife fell into the category of mandated
reporters under state law. Doctors, school officials, and others who may
suspect or witness abuse or neglect are legally obligated to report it to the
DCFS hotline. In this case, nothing happened until one child died of starvation.
Then the remaining children were placed in foster care.
On another unrelated occasion, I became concerned about belt
marks on a three-year-old child. I called the hotline, where an imperious
responder told me that “under Illinois law, parents are allowed to use corporal
punishment to discipline their children.” Appalled by her disinterest, I raised
my voice: “We are talking about belt marks on a three-year-old!”
“Mr. Schwab,” she
responded sternly, “it is not illegal for parents to use corporal punishment.”
Stunned by this indifference, I faced the same dilemma I am sure has confronted
others in the same position: Where do we go from here?
Such responses, to be sure, are not always the case. They
simply happen too often. Sometimes, an overburdened caseworker takes shortcuts
or fails to investigate. The point is that something must change.
Some Illinois legislators—from both parties—were seeking answers
from DCFS officials at a hearing in Springfield yesterday. I hope they are all,
finally, serious as hell about fostering positive change and not just grabbing
headlines in a dramatic case. Too many children’s lives and welfare are at
stake.
Sri Lanka
By now, I don’t imagine there is a need to rehash the
details of recent
bombings in Sri Lanka. It would have been hard to escape the news: suicide
bombings by apparent Muslim extremists in three hotels in Colombo as well as
several Christian churches on Easter Sunday, killing well
over 250 people. The body count has varied, in part because it is difficult
to count bodies that have been so badly burned and blown apart. Exactly who
planned what is not entirely clear yet, although authorities have blamed a
homegrown Muslim militant organization, National Towheed
Jamaat. Whether there are ties to Islamic State is a subject of
investigation. The precise motive is something that remains unclear.
This comes just a month after the attack by an Australian
white supremacist on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, which I discussed
last month. I noted that I had spent time in New Zealand in 2008 as a
Visiting Fellow for a research center in Christchurch. Thus, I found it
disturbing in part because of a personal connection.
It so happens that I spent 10 days in Sri Lanka in 2005 as
part of an eight-member interdisciplinary team of Americans invited by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects to assess damage
from the Indian
Ocean tsunami and recommend options for rebuilding. In the weeks before the
trip, I made a brief, stumbling attempt to acquire some familiarity with the
dominant national language, Sinhala, but found it daunting. But I find such
efforts allow me to breathe in a little more of the ethos of the nation I am
visiting. And from further reading and from talking to our hosts, I learned
some very interesting facts about Sri Lanka.
The civil war that once raged is now over, but that was not
the case then. We traveled from the capital, Colombo, on the western coast
of this island, along the coast to Batticaloa, halfway up the
eastern coast, before we were forced to turn west through the Central
Highlands of Kandy back to Colombo. The Northeast and the Jaffna Peninsula were
under the control of the rebel Tamil
Tigers. Along the way back, we encountered some military checkpoints.
Caught in the middle of this long-running tragedy were the people of many rural
villages and smaller cities. As one architect on our team from New Mexico, who
was a Vietnam veteran, commented, “The rural people are the ones who always
take it in the shorts.”
But this struggle had little to do with Muslims or
Christians, except coincidentally. They were largely bystanders. The battle was
between the Sinhalese
majority and the Tamil
minority, which wanted rights to sustain its own Tamil language
and culture in a multicultural nation. That sounds fair enough, but the Tamil
Tigers became an incredibly vicious movement that had few compunctions about
sending suicide bombers to blow up public buses. They demanded a Tamil homeland
in the regions they controlled. Thousands of Sri Lankans died during decades of
armed insurgency. Finally, the rebellion was suppressed by the government about
ten years ago.
When we arrived, a cease-fire negotiated by Norwegian
diplomats was in effect, but 35,000 Sri Lankans had died as a result of the
tsunami—drowned in a wall of water, washed out to sea, crushed beneath
shattered buildings. The southern and eastern coasts were devastated. A nation
that had suffered so much needless death suffered even more at the hands of the
forces of nature, reinforced by a noticeable lack of preparation for such an
event.
Even before I left for Sri Lanka, I experienced a personal connection to it all. The Rev. Eardley Mendis, a Sri Lankan-American pastor, had worked as the custodian for Augustana Lutheran Church, of which my wife and I are members, while studying at the nearby Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. By 2005, he was the pastor of a local Lutheran church largely supported by Asian Americans. But his wife and daughter had returned to visit family in Sri Lanka over Christmas in 2004. When the tsunami struck on December 26, they were aboard the coastal passenger train that was destroyed by the second major tsunami wave, largely due to lack of warning of the impending danger. Eardley’s daughter survived; his wife did not. I interviewed him over lunch before I left Chicago. Later, during the trip, a villager in Peraliya took me to see the demolished train, stored on a side track as a memorial. For me, it was one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the entire tour.
The ghostly memorial of the train after the tsunami, May 2005
This man then showed all of us what was left of his home by the sea, including his makeshift oven, where he cooked meals that he sold to travelers along the road. That was his now fragile livelihood.
David Downey, Alan Fujimori, and others visit with my new acquaintance and his makeshift, post-tsumani home.
Sri Lanka has had a measure of peace for most of this decade
since the end of the Tamil Tigers insurrection.
A note on Sri Lankan demographics is in order at this point.
About two-thirds of the nation is Buddhist, mostly of Sinhalese ethnicity.
About 15 percent are Tamil and largely Hindu. The remainder of the nation mostly
consists of two religious minorities, half Muslim and half Christian. The
Muslims are mostly descended from traders who occupied the coastal cities since
medieval times, with Sri Lanka about midway between the predominantly Muslim
Arabian peninsula and predominantly Muslim Indonesia. While a very small number
of Christians are descended from European colonial settlers of centuries past,
most are converts of native Sri Lankan ancestry. The churches, both Catholic
and Protestant, are part of the fabric of modern Sri Lanka.
And so it may seem curious that one minority might attack
another, but it is far more important to know that the vast majority of Sri
Lankans of all faiths have had more than enough of war and bombings and
sectarian violence. The perpetrators of the Easter bombings appear to include some
children of a wealthy spice dealer in Colombo. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
apparently has expressed doubt that the father knew what the children were up
to, but the police rightly seem determined to find out. Muslims, like other
people across the planet, sometimes experience the pain of children who choose
an evil path. The Bible is replete with such stories.
So, for the moment, Christian bishops are warning worshipers
to stay home and avoid danger. Churches and other houses of worship no longer
appear to be sanctuaries, but targets. Here, it is probably worth quoting the
words of the chairman of one Colombo mosque, Akurana Muhandramlage Jamaldeen
Mohamed Jayfer, in an Associated
Press story today, describing the attackers as:
“not Muslims. This is not Islam. This is an animal. We don’t have a word (strong enough) to curse them.”
My only comment would be that he may have inadvertently
insulted the animals, who merely hunt for food. Only humans harbor hatred
powerful enough to motivate such heartless mass murder.
New
Zealand is a nation that counts its annual
totals of gun homicides in single digits, as a friend of mine who just
returned from a visit Down Under accurately notes. It is, by comparison to most
of the world, an incredibly peaceful, peace-loving country. Yet two days ago,
on Friday, March 15, an Australian
white nationalist allegedly killed 50 people and wounded 39 others in a
mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, the largest city on the South
Island. This same city lost 185 people in a series of earthquakes
in 2011, but that was a natural disaster. While it delivered painful
lessons about building standards and preparedness, it did not hang the specter
of evil over the city or the nation. Brenton Harrison Tarrant is alleged to
have done exactly that. Christchurch is a city in shock and mourning.
I don’t ordinarily use this blog to discuss mass shootings,
bombings, and terrorist incidents. For one thing, they have become too common
in some parts of the world, including, sadly, the United States, and I prefer
to spend my limited time trying to use my special expertise to make the world a
better place to whatever extent I can. That expertise lies largely in urban
planning and natural hazards, not in terrorism or crime, but readers will
notice that I also discuss more pleasant topics like travel and books and the
arts. I write a blog because I am also a professional writer.
But some events become more personal. In 2008, at the invitation of the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ) at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, I accepted a three-week Visiting Fellowship to work with CAENZ on land-use policy for addressing natural hazards in New Zealand. In late July and the first half of August of that year, I traveled the country with Kristin Hoskin, then a member of the CAENZ staff and currently an emergency management consultant who lives in Christchurch. I delivered seven lectures and seminars in those three weeks, visiting several cities on a tour that ended in Christchurch, which did not experience its earthquakes until more than two years later. In the course of much advance reading and a great deal of inquisitive conversation and exchange with Kristin and others, I learned a great deal about the country. When I left, I was aware that, while it faces challenges and problems like any other nation, it generally does so through remarkably civil debate and politics. While I realize that New Zealand benefits, in that regard, from its relatively small size—about two-thirds the area of California and a population of roughly 4.2 million—I still must say, as an American, that my own country could easily learn something about civil behavior from the Kiwis. Far too much of our own current political debate is not only over the top, but downright crude and thoughtless.
And so I reacted, when I learned of the shootings in
Christchurch, like someone who had, on an emotional level, been stabbed in the
heart. It was hard even to picture the scene that was being painted on the
news. I tried to imagine the horror felt by people like Kristin, and George Hooper,
the executive director of CAENZ when I was visiting, or others I had met around
the country. I will admit it brought tears to my eyes thinking about it. How
could it happen?
I first got the urge to write about it on Saturday but did nothing about it. I labored to produce a title, then sat there, staring at the screen. Mind you, I am not one who ordinarily wrestles with writer’s block. The words often come pouring out, and the challenge is simply to edit and refine them. But this time, I could not get started. Two or three times, I stared at the screen but wrote nothing. It was too hard. More than ever, I am filled with admiration for the young people from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who found their voice after the mass shooting there, or others who have similarly taken action after violent tragedies. It is not easy. But it is extremely important. And if New Zealanders respond positively to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s promise to tighten gun laws, then they are far ahead of the tortured American politics that have stood in the way of gun reform in the U.S.
I would also note that I am spurred by some of what I have read today in the Chicago Tribune. One article recites the story of Abdul Aziz, 48, a father of four sons and a member of the Linwood mosque, who shouted, “Come here!” to lure the gunman away from the mosque, risking his own life, and who stunned the man by throwing a credit card machine, which he said was the first thing he could find, at the shooter’s car, shattering the window. Other stories of courage will probably emerge in coming days, but it is a reminder to all of us that such courage is not tied to any one religion, race, or nationality. It reflects depth of character.
That is the saddest part of it all. There are those among us, and they hide within a wide variety of identities, whether it is Islamic extremism, white nationalism, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu tribalism, or some other perceived affiliation that somehow fosters hatred instead of a common love of humanity, who fill the void in their own emotional and intellectual development with a fear of others that causes them to fail to see our common humanity. The justifications vary, but one common thread is paranoia and a painful, even crippling, inability to reach out and open their hearts to those different from themselves, whether in language, skin color, national origin, gender, religious belief, or some other supposedly defining characteristic.
And every so often, that sense of separateness and need for a feeling of superiority erupts in an attack against people who are simply living their own lives, worshiping as they believe they should, but have done nothing to the perpetrator(s). In the case of Dylann Roof in Charleston, members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church welcomed him into a Bible study before he unexpectedly opened fire on them and killed nine people. Welcome was greeted with murder.
The real miracle of God is when his worshipers responded to such violence by insisting that more love is the answer. The Charleston survivors chose to forgive Dylann Roof. People suffering such attacks are certainly entitled to ask, “Why?” Even, and most certainly, “Why us?” That is a vital part of the grieving process. But don’t be surprised if New Zealanders, and the Muslims of Christchurch in particular, insist that love is the only path forward.
Over the years, I have met some types of people who, strangely in my opinion, have believed that anger is unbecoming for a Christian. Most people understand that there is a place for anger in our lives, although it needs to be tempered with judgment and compassion. The bigger question is what role anger plays and how we use it for positive purposes. Clearly, anger can be poisonous if unchanneled or misdirected. At the same time, suppressed anger can lead to sadness and even depression when we fail to give ourselves an outlet for legitimate reactions to injustice, or indifference, or even just incompetence in situations where competence truly matters.
It may be clear by now that I am not leading into one of my nicer, happier blog posts. I have not written much lately because I have been very busy both professionally and personally, the latter attested by my previous blog post about our home kitchen renovation, an undertaking that requires some patience amid necessary temporary disorganization. While I have been absorbed in such matters, a number of unpleasant events have unfolded on the world and local scene that have me very concerned about our moral fiber and angry about the tone of much of the public dialogue on those events. Let me start with the world scene before I focus back on Chicago.
By now, anyone unaware of the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13 could fairly be assumed to have been sleeping under a rock. The attackers, allied with Islamic State, killed 130 people and wounded many more, indiscriminately shooting at a variety of public places including a concert hall and restaurants. It was indisputably a despicable act, one that cries out for authorities to carry out justice, and certainly raises questions about security in many of our public spaces and how we can better protect people from those who clearly lack a conscience about murdering innocent and unarmed people. It is entirely proper to react to such circumstances with a mixture of anger and sadness, no matter what justifications the attackers claim. It is equally clear to anyone who is not incurably prejudiced that most Muslims want nothing to do with such people, any more than most Christians would agree with the tactics of the shooter who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
In fact, to escape just such brutal butchery, thousands upon thousands of ordinary Syrians of all faiths have been fleeing their homeland in recent months. Any thinking person must realize that it takes a great deal of both fear and courage for any person or family to flee their homeland to find a better life elsewhere. Most people are deeply averse to abandoning their native land. During World War II, millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other targets of the Third Reich perished not only because of the barriers to emigration erected by democratic nations including the United States, but because they were in many cases deeply reluctant until it was too late to believe that matters would become dire enough to require them to do so. There is far more push than pull for those who risk all to become refugees.
So how do numerous American politicians, including those in Congress and presidential candidates, react? We get calls to bar or severely restrict Syrian refugees on the grounds that we have no way of guaranteeing that just one of them might be a terrorist. There is, of course, no way of disproving a negative. And sincere Christians and patriotic Americans who believe in this country’s highest values must be nearly aghast at hearing someone like Donald Trump appear to suggest a database for American Muslims and the possibility of closing mosques—a concept eerily akin to the Nazi requirement that Jews wear yellow Stars of David. The underlying strategy is to make anyone who voices opposition to such measures suffer the blame when something inevitably goes wrong in a world where we can pretty much count on another terrorist attack somewhere, somehow, some day. Like the Boston Marathon bombings, which involved young men from Kazakhstan, not Syria, who grew up in America but dramatically lost their way, to put it mildly, and whose relatives were despondent over their actions, much like some of the relatives of the Paris attackers. It is not unusual, in fact, for such criminals to be lone wolves, alienated from their own families. In this respect, at least, they have much in common with the home-grown mass shooters who have repeatedly plagued American communities in recent years.
But there is a way of asserting a positive vision driven by compassion and common sense instead of directing fear and anger at people who are seeking refuge from the very terrorists and hypocritical bullies who engineered the attacks in Paris. And it is deeply rooted in both Christian and Jewish teaching. Let us start with the Old Testament passages concerning Jewish approaches to the topic:
Deuteronomy 10: 19You shall love the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:34The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
You might not know, from recent political reactions to Syrian refugees’ pleas for assistance, that the Bible ever offered such advice. Some 26 governors, mostly Republican, have vowed to keep Syrian refugees out of their states, including Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois. The U.S. House of Representatives demanded stringent measures before allowing such refugees to enter the country. Admittedly, we want to screen people for questionable backgrounds before admitting them, but many such mechanisms are already in place, and we have not been open to very many Syrian refugees so far. But let us move on to explicitly Christian teachings in the New Testament:
Matthew 25: 35I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Matt. 25:40Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me.
To give credit, by the way, I have lifted these passages directly from the website of Cois Tine, an outreach project of the Society for African Missions. Whatever else the critics of Syrian immigration may say, this is clearly a Christian organization based in the Gospel and aware of its message of welcoming the stranger in need. It is just as clearly an organization concerned about social justice on a global scale.
My point here, however, is that there is more than legitimate reason for me to feel serious Christian anger at the sheer ignorance of the reaction to the dire prospect of numerous Syrian refugees desperately fleeing war, barbarism, murder, enslavement, and every other horror being inflicted on Syrian Muslim and Christian alike in a multi-sided conflict in which human compassion has not merely taken a back seat but has been crushed underfoot in the battle for survival. And while we who are privileged to live an ocean away from such conflict cower in fear of widows and orphans, it is Turkey, the nation next door to the conflict, which has just agreed to accept refugees in exchange for financial assistance from Europe. And before any cynic can scoff at the fact that Turkey negotiated financial aid for its generosity, we should note that Turkey has already hosted thousands of such refugees at great expense to itself with only a fraction of the resources available to the U.S. and most of the European community. It would be the height of hypocrisy to criticize Turkey, of all places, for seeking additional resources to handle the job. Few other countries could claim to be as vulnerable to attacks by Islamic State terrorists.
Admittedly, the United States has suffered its share of terrorism. The September 11, 2001, attacks claimed more than 3,000 lives. They also caused us to take airline security far more seriously. But it is also worth noting that, after that tragic episode, numerous people across the nation, including prominent political leaders, had the courage and integrity to object to targeting Muslims for discrimination and abuse. Where are those voices now?
If there is a legitimate basis for Christian anger, it is the righteous anger that should object to mistreating and isolating the stranger who seeks safety on our shores.
By the same token, we should be angry about the violence already occurring on our streets. Disappointingly, some of that violence seems to be emanating from those sworn to protect us. And just as I firmly believe that most American Muslims are peace-loving people who came here to enjoy freedom, so I also still believe that the vast majority of police are sincerely committed to protecting the public from criminal activity and want to uphold the values that their badges represent.
But there are others, and sometimes the code of silence among fellow officers allows them so much latitude to engage in abuses of power that the results become outrageous. Such now appears to be the case in Chicago with the shooting in October 2014 of Laquan McDonald, a young man trying to recover from drugs, with a troubled history that made a solid start for his life problematic, but who did not appear to pose an imminent danger to police when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him 16 times, killing him. A police video released only after a judge’s order in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act suits by journalists show he was walking away from police when shot. He had a knife he had used to slash the tires of a police car. He was admittedly a troubled young man, but police handle numerous similar situations daily involving the mentally ill and the drug-addicted without killing anyone.
If that were the entire story, the outrage that triggered protests on Black Friday on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue might not have entailed the level of anger that it did. We have learned that two officers immediately after the shooting demanded access to a security video from a camera at the nearby Burger King at 41st St. and Pulaski Avenue. The next morning, the Burger King manager and his employees discovered an 86-minute gap in the video covering the time of the shooting. Other police shooed away eyewitnesses from the scene without collecting names of those who could become material witnesses to a murder. Cameras from other police cars all seemed to be missing the audio that would have revealed police conversations at the time. Later, the city council, at Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s request following an investigation, quietly approved a $5 million settlement for the young man’s family to avoid a messy lawsuit. And no one can explain the video gap and missing audio other than to refer to technical difficulties.
Let’s cut to the chase. The public, including numerous African-American clergy, is angry for a reason.. The city cannot reasonably rely on a “trust us” rationale for these unexplained gaps, some of which potentially constitute evidence tampering and obstruction of justice, both of which are crimes whether committed by officers or civilians. It is time for an independent prosecutor because it will be hard for any of the players, whether aldermen who approved the payout, the mayor, the police chief, or state’s attorney, to be taken seriously without a thorough investigation beyond their control. It just does not pass the smell test. This is truly a test of the integrity of the system, and the famous “Chicago way” is in no way compatible with Christian ethics. It is also true that many honest Chicago police officers fear retribution from fellow officers if they speak up. That said, there is a time for courage and convictions. This is that time.
Many people have fairly also raised the question of the reluctance in the black community to speak up, or “snitch,” about gang activity that has resulted in far more deaths than have resulted from police misbehavior. This is a legitimate issue that affects much more than black Chicago. It affects civic morale citywide. When witnesses to crimes refuse to cooperate with the police, the gangs win, hands down. The police cannot properly prepare a case against gang criminals when witnesses refuse to help. This reluctance seems to have two key sources: first, a legitimate fear of gang retribution as a result of speaking up. These people have to live in these neighborhoods and are often unprotected, even by police. Second, however, the very reputation for abuse of power that the Chicago Police Department creates with such fiascoes as the Laquan McDonald case only serve to contribute further to the mistrust that many people feel toward the police. Being caught between gangs and corrupt police is truly a formula for creating a cynical public. We have a long way to go in this city in restoring the sort of trust that will let us overcome the plagues of violence that afflict us.
So where does that leave the question of Christian anger that I raised at the outset? We have to help channel that legitimate righteous anger at social and official injustice into a productive passion for justice that forces solutions and makes clear what a truly compassionate, caring society looks like. Martin Luther King, Jr., helped show us the way. So did Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. We have seen significant moral leadership before, and we can all help provide it if we muster our courage and root our moral beliefs in hope and compassion rather than fear and prejudice. I know we can do it, and I have said my piece.
Call me the angry Christian. I am proud to be angry when it matters.
Less than three weeks ago, on June 2, a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus mysteriously crashed a red light on Lake St. during the evening rush hour, jumped the curb on the eastern side of Michigan Ave., and killed one pedestrian while injuring several others. The lady who died while pinned under the bus was a mother who seemed beloved by all who knew her.
I learned about the incident after going home, where my wife was watching the news. I immediately realized that this happened on a plaza in front of the office where I work, at 205 N. Michigan Ave., and that I had crossed that very corner not more than a half-hour before the accident. A co-worker related later that he had left just five minutes later. But for a matter of simple timing, either of us could have been swept up in the maelstrom. In the words of the Joan Baez folk tune, “There, but for fortune, go you or I . . . “
I was reminded of that when the news burst onto our screens this past Wednesday, June 17, of a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, at the Emanuel AME Church in the heart of the downtown tourist district. As related in my blog just a week before today, my wife and I had spent the better part of a week in Charleston celebrating our 30th anniversary. While we did not step foot in the church—indeed, we did not visit any churches during our stay—we passed in front of Emanuel or near it multiple times while visiting museums and tourist attractions in the city. Had Dylann Roof chosen to launch his attack the previous week, who is to say that we might not have been caught up in some other kind of maelstrom, perhaps as he was fleeing the scene? Admittedly, being white, we were not among his intended targets, but when plans go awry, there, but for fortune, go you or I. And who is to say why it was the turn for any of his nine victims, including preachers who counted among them a state senator, to become part of the carnage? For that matter, how much do we know as yet of what made this young man the racist terrorist he apparently became?
I will not belabor the matter because we are all, at various times in our lives, either victims or beneficiaries of dumb luck. What makes us most human is simply our humility in coming to terms with that fact. Let life take a left turn here, a right turn there . . . . yes, some people fight back nobly in the face of adversity while others collapse and surrender, but even that is to some degree a reflection of prior good fortune and mental conditioning, getting enough of a running start in life to acquire the necessary resilience, but still . . . . At some point a gun shot, a bullet in the wrong place, makes an end of things.
What makes me reflect on this is the almost absurd level of self-confidence and lack of reflection in some of those who seek leadership roles or some sort of public office. Sandwiched between the two incidents I mention above, for instance, was the announcement by Donald Trump of his latest campaign for the presidency of the United States. No humility was on display there. No sense of the limitations, real or potential, of Donald Trump. No sense of the degree to which fortune has shaped him for good or ill. He will solve everything for us, while others are simply stupid. Listen to the tape to count the number of times he uses “stupid” to describe others.
But he is not alone in his vanity or lack of self-knowledge, although his certainly seems to run deeper than the norm. Rick Perry reverts to the usual gross exaggerations of the National Rifle Association by decrying the “knee-jerk reaction” of the left in supposedly trying to take everyone’s guns away after violent incidents such as that in South Carolina. Rick Santorum, a lawyer but no scientist, says Pope Francis, who studied chemistry and once worked as a chemist before joining the seminary, should leave climate change to the scientists. (But he did attend the Sunday service at Emanuel AME Church the Sunday after the shooting.) It is a sorry spectacle.
And then there is Abraham Lincoln, a man of known frailties who somehow united a nation in the face of the worst conflict over its fate that it will likely ever face, who bled with his nation, who could express humility and inspire confidence, who led in part because he understood both the complexities of his times and how to lead in the face of controversy. And in the end, an assassin’s bullet found him. There, but for fortune, went our nation. We have not yet escaped the consequences, as another young man with a gun he should never have obtained proved yet again just last week.
Fortunately, in the most meaningful demonstration of the spirit of Christianity imaginable, several relatives of the victims of the Charleston shooting have publicly forgiven the young man. He may have a long time to ponder that forgiveness.
In view of American journalist Steven Sotloff’s fate—beheading at the hands of the Islamic State rebels who now control much of Syria—this is a rather dramatic statement. It came from Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the Columbia University Journalism School in New York. He was speaking over lunch at a workshop, “Disasters and Extreme Weather,” at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans. His speech lay between my lunch and the panel on which I myself spoke, the first of the afternoon, which was intended to provide a toolkit of ideas for freelance and other writers covering disasters.
The point was, in part, that Steven Sotloff, however dramatic his fate, was not the first, nor would he be the last, journalist to suffer trauma or even death as a result of his work. In fact, he was the second journalist in a matter of weeks to suffer beheading by the Islamic State, following an earlier incident involving James Foley, who had already survived captivity in Libya. In typical, grisly fashion, the Islamic State terrorists had recorded and broadcast on the Internet the murders of both men. They are not seeking admiration; they seek fear.
Reaction to such trauma was the theme of Shapiro’s bold presentation. We have not always understood such reactions; in fact, says Shapiro, what understanding we do now possess is relatively recent, largely an outgrowth of the Vietnam War, after which many thousands of veterans began to suffer the impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Our understanding of what we used to call “shell shock” was once so poor that only our sense of humanity, and not psychological knowledge, produced the adverse reaction in World War II when Gen. Patton slapped a shaken soldier in the hospital in Italy and called him a coward.
After Vietnam, Shapiro says, “psychologists began to notice something. Clinicians realized they were on to something new.” Patients were suffering not from the awkward childhood memories that were long the focus of Freudian analysis, but from “memories that were too big to contain.” Resulting from severe trauma in wars and disasters and from torture, these memories “intruded on the daily lives” of their victims. The Dart Center, he said, is “working on representative survivors,” who may have survived torture under dictatorial Latin American regimes, as well as combat in Vietnam or wars in the Middle East. In 1980, he noted, the American Psychiatric Association finally decided to recognize PTSD, and the term has become common parlance since then, even if not everyone grasps what it really is or its practical implications. But it goes a long way toward explaining the persistence of homeless veterans, or those who withdraw into solitary life in the woods.
“We need to understand these changes to be innovative, effective journalists,” Shapiro told the crowd. We need meaningful coverage before, during, and after disasters. People store these overlarge memories in different ways, but the bottom line is that effective responses to danger, based on inherited mechanisms of fight or flight, become “maladaptive when we’re safe.” Thus, the Vietnam veteran who is easily rattled by fireworks or loud responses that trigger learned mechanisms for reacting to enemy fire. Once stored in the body’s defenses, these reactions are hard to unlearn.
But Shapiro was not discussing this with reporters simply to make them better observers of the phenomena he described. He told them bluntly that they, too, could become victims of trauma through their work in covering disasters. Hence, the headline quote of this article. Journalists have long learned to “suck it up,” he said, but in fact that may be the wrong approach entirely, however tough or macho it may sound. The myth was that, if you could not handle it, maybe you were in the wrong profession.
Shapiro instead outlined what he considered “three basic mechanisms of significance for our work as reporters”:
1) Intrusion. This is the unwanted presence of memories that are not going away. Intrusive memory overwhelms the mind’s memory.
2) Biomechanical. This is hyperarousal, the inability to focus. Those suffering from it have great difficulty establishing trust and become angry. They live permanently on the “fight or flight” threshold.
3) Numbness. Eventually, some victims avoid interaction with other humans that may arouse problems. They sink into withdrawal from society.
These impacts are not mutually exclusive; in fact, Shapiro noted the possibility of victims being “whipsawed between impacts.” This is of particular importance for journalists because, he said, “We rely on our ability to concentrate and ability to build trusting relationships as journalists. We all know journalists who are casualties.” Trauma and personal injury are of particular significance for environmental journalists because of the subject matter they routinely cover. “Psychological trauma is measurably worse when there is human agency involved,” he noted. “When human technology plays a significant role in disaster, there are more enduring problems for more people. The failures of leadership in Katrina were so profound.” Hurricane Katrina, he noted, was “interwoven with violence and urban poverty.”
Shapiro made one important point about connecting with traumatized victims of disaster, even if one must also, as a reporter seeking to reveal truth, sometimes discount some of what one hears. Instead of “pulling at heartstrings” or asking detailed or pointed questions, why not just ask, “What happened to you?” Then let the story spill out as the victim wishes to tell it.
Journalists, he asserted, need to think about themselves as well as their subjects. They can, among other things, suffer from “vicarious trauma” in covering the disasters that have befallen others. Environmental journalists often find themselves reporting on “abuses of power, the trauma of losing power and status.” People fall victim to the whim of violent actors and corrupt politicians, and “when abuses of power are involved, all those injuries become worse. Nowhere more important than on the ground of environmental issues and climate change amplified by official abuses.”
“Avoiding the subject of trauma for journalists is actively destructive,” he concluded.
The answer: Stay connected with others and believe in what you are doing. “Ethical journalism practice in the face of trauma protects us,” he told the audience. He concluded by quoting Rachel Carson, the renowned author of Silent Spring, who wrote, “Who has made the decision that sets in motion this wave of poison?”
Shapiro did not say this, but I have to wonder: Is it also possible that positive religious belief, that is, faith in a loving God, is also part of the remedy? Clearly, it is possible to have a religion of hatred, or Steven Sotloff might still be alive, but that is not a religion of healing and spirituality. Reporters sometimes like to think they are above that sort of faith, but in the face of trauma, might they be missing an ingredient for survival? I like to think there is a greater purpose in what we do. And I have seen more than a few disasters myself.
