Global Game-Changers

Egyptian activists in second revolution

2011-11-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

Egypt is having its second revolution in a year, I am told by one of my Egyptian friends in Cairo today. Over a million people are in Tahrir square and protesting in Alexandria today, calling for the ouster of military interim rule. At least 80 people have been killed as the protest, mostly non-violently, in just the past two days.
To watch events in Egypt streaming live right now,

Tomorrow, she and I will be co-facilitating a live video conference group of 9 university students from Egypt, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Europe and US, discussing how to better understand each other and events like this.

Voices from Egyptian Activists

2011-10-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

While some protesters with Occupy Seattle this week are getting arrested or awakened by cops in the wee hours of the morning , no one is getting run down by a car. Not so in Egypt.

This week, the car carrying the Dean of Mansoura University in Egypt ran over 15 students who were protesting university policies. I found this out this morning while talking with Nihal, an activist from Egypt now working with the World Bank in Washington DC, as she told me of the shocking responses by some leading university officials to demands of Egyptian students seeking change. And yesterday, Sumyia, an activist teacher I spoke with through Skype video in Cairo, informed me that Muammar Gaddafi's death had just been officially confirmed, according to official sources in Egypt.

No longer are we confined to just reading or watching the news about events in other countries. We can easily now gather first-person, unfiltered news directly from those experiencing events in other countries.

I am currently interviewing activists in Egypt in preparation for a presentation for the Global Washington Annual Conference at the end of this month. I will be moderating a panel with two other international activists as we examine the effects of the Egyptian revolution on education and non-governmental organizations (NGO's) operating in Egypt.

Using tools like free Skype video calls, the Egyptian activists and educators are sharing very personal stories with us about what it is really like now in Egypt. Despite the rare but shocking violent responses Nihal reported, there is also a sense of determination by most activists I spoke with, indicating that "we won't turn back to how we were before". We will not only share these comments with the participants at this conference, but we will bring in some of these voices from the field directly to you through a live Skype video broadcast. I hope you will come, ask your own questions, and get answers directly from our Skype participants in Cairo. See you there!

What is behind the mask?

2011-02-21T11:22:00.000-08:00

"Heart like rock?". This is the caption, my new friend, Huzaifa Hamid in Iraq tells me, for this photo above, taken by his brother at the protests this past week in Sulaymaniyeh. I visited this city last year, a city with a population about the size of Seattle, meeting with youth leaders there. The photo is startling to me for a couple reasons. First, it is of a young woman activist taking this brave, bold action, in a city where 4 young people were killed last week by soldiers. Most of the photos and videos we have seen so far from protests in most Middle East countries this week have been of young men. Second, it immediately reminded me of a famous image from our own anti-war and civil rights protests shown here.

More protests are planned for next week, calling for not so much an overthrow of the regime in Northern Iraq, but more focused on weeding out corruption in government, and an improved economy.

I was most struck by Huzaifa's empathy for the soldier. He writes;
"I think the soldiers themselves are very good persons and they do not wanna do violence but they take order from their boss from KDP or PUK (the ruling parties) that's why they are doing violence, and if they reject the order,they must quit their job and can not get money to keep their family a life."

To me this is most remarkable, this empathy for those with whom we often see as our enemy. Yet, this can be the most powerful part of non-violent resistance, this ability to keep one's own humanity in tact by remembering the humanity in others. When 4 people have just been slaughtered, this can seem to be an unimaginable, even abhorrent task.

Heart like a rock? My friend tells me the soldier is being challenged here to make a difficult choice. Accept the flower or risk a hardening heart.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela all helped us to seek non-violent change, fueled by this ability to be our strongest by remembering the humanity in us all. It tests us on both sides of the gun.

Maybe it is too much to ask the soldiers to put down their guns at this moment. But I wonder if they could be asked to pull off their masks?

Gambling on our future

2011-02-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

As events in the Middle East have unfolded this month, starting first in the streets of Tunisia, and this morning with the fall of the government in Jordan, I have been talking with activists around the world to get their take of the situation. Dramatic and surprising things are happening and I have been glued to the internet to understand it better. This is the new frontier for how we can get the news, not second-hand, but from direct sources. We no longer have to only rely on Walter Cronkite (my day) or John Stewart (my kids' new day), or Glen Beck (some of my blood relatives). Today, from Abdellah, my friend in Morocco, I learned that the streets in his country remain relatively quiet, but supportive of the street protests in Egypt. From Ali*, a youth activist from Gaza, I learn that Gaza youth are very active in support of the protests, and it could affect politics there, where both the local government (Hamas) and surrounding governments (Israel) remain hostile to freedoms of the citizens in Gaza. I talk via skype with activists in Lebanon, (who participated in running mock elections like the one pictured here) and learned that there is lots of talk among youth leaders there about these unfolding events and what it means for their own country.

This all helps start to paint the picture of the real situation. And, when I combine it with on the ground reports from CNN and trusted voices like Nicholas Kristoff who is talking with folks on the streets in Cairo, I begin to get a sense of what is really happening now.

But using that to predict what will happen next is tricky. Obama is trying to do the same thing, and I suspect he has just a few more direct sources than the rest of us. And even with that, it is hardly predictable. Will Mubarek resign (I think yes) but will the government that replaces him be less repressive and improve the social conditions in any significant way? Will Egypt become more hostile to the US? Will Yemen, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia follow in the Tunisian path and democracy and civil society grow in the region? If Martin Luther King is right, and "the Arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice", then this may happen. Over time. A long time.

My brother and I celebrated my birthday this weekend with 3 days of golf, a massage, and then a rare trip to the local casino for a game of roulette. I won big, taking home an extra $67, (which will go directly into that very large, and very deep black hole we call "Jenny's College Fund" ). Yet, as my financial wizard brother informed me, "the Arc of the roulette wheel is also long, but it bends very predictably towards the House".

The optimist in me wants to say that the organizing in the streets calling for improved social conditions and free expression that is spreading like wildfire now will result in improved living conditions for folks in several more countries in the decade ahead. And the optimist in me also wants to return to the Casino table, now that I am on a roll.

I hope Dr. King is right. I know my brother is right.

*(Actual names in this post not used to ensure confidentiality)

Combating Fear in clothes that fit.

2010-09-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

“What should I wear if I do not have a long, loose dress? haha… that may sound trivial but I want to be respectful. Do you get my question?”

Now I generally do not wear dresses, but I did understand all too well her question she texted to me this morning. Molly, a 17 year old student and leader in Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps, is getting ready to lead more than a dozen other students from her high school to a press conference and tour of a mosque in Seattle Washington today.

It’s September 11th, a day of remembrance, and one in which Molly and her group want to recognize as a day to build bridges to understanding as an antidote to fear and distrust.

I understand her question all too well because earlier this month I faced a similar dilemma.

I had been invited by Charlene Teters, a high school classmate, to come to her annual Pow Wow for her tribe, the Spokane Indians. I had connected with her at our 40th year class reunion last month. We didn’t know each other well in high school, but I did remember her brother, George quite well. He was the guy who beat me with a high degree of regularity in competitive wrestling throughout high school!

At the reunion, I learned that over the years Charlene had become a nationally prominent activist, leading to major policy changes so that today many sports teams no longer use Indians as mascots for their teams.

As I got ready that morning to pack and go to the Pow Wow I realized I had nothing to wear that would work.

I pulled out my one clean white t-shirt, with a Seattle Mariners emblem on the back (that seemed ok) but the logo on the front was of Alaska Airlines, with a Native face. I grabbed another t-shirt I had gotten at the Grand Canyon some years ago, and then noticed the image of Kokopelli, a fertility deity worshiped by some Native American tribes in the Southwest. Not ok?

I grew up in Spokane, a western town of sorts, so decided to grab my leather belt and leather hat I had gotten in Peru a few years back. Both hand-made. And both etched with what some believe to be religious animal symbols, called the Nazca Lines, from the ancient time of the Incas. Another commercial exploitation of Native culture?

My last option was to go a little fancier, and pull out my best western-looking shirt, a black, decorative Cowboy shirt. Eek! Now that would be a real poke in the eye.

We really know so little about each other. Maybe none of this would be offensive, I really don’t know. And I didn’t fully know what to expect at the Pow Wow, or, for that matter, what we will see when we go to the mosque today. I have traveled to 26 countries so far in my life, a good number of them in the middle east, and in all that time, I don’t think I have ever stepped foot in a mosque.

What one wears, or uses for a mascot, or burns, or makes a cartoon about, or builds near; these things can seem trivial to some, but to others are critically important. We don't really know why it is important unless we all learn a heck of a lot more about each other. And come to understand what we mean with our actions. For that, we need to step into each others' worlds.

Today is a day to take one more small step. Time to get ready.

Silverdale to Sulaymaniyah

2010-03-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

“If you visit American city
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware,
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air”

I first heard this song by Tom Lehrer 30 years ago. Sometimes I think we have made great progress since then. Sometimes I do not. Recently I was torn between these two feelings in the space of an hour.

I headed out to Silverdale, Washington last week to see what a local Global Citizen Corps group was up to on this cold Sunday morning. I heard they were doing something about clean water and climate change, and I had a gift to bring them from their counterparts in Iraq.

As I waited in this lovely waterfront park, I gazed out to the windy sea and saw this surprising signage. Tom Lehrer’s song immediately revved up in my head. Just moments later, this song was interrupted and replaced by a loud and enthusiastic chanting coming from a crowd of 40 youth marching down the street.

They were marching the two miles from Island Lake to Puget Sound- from one polluted water hole to another, calling attention to World Water Day. And their efforts to raise money for purchasing incredibly low-cost water filters for families in Ethiopia.

They ended their march on top of a giant map of the world next to the sea, and stood in solidarity next to the eight countries where other Global Citizen Corps leaders were taking similar actions this week.

These young leaders all knew that if we do want to drink the water and breathe the air, it is going to take all of us across the globe, working together, to make it happen.

I offered them two gifts as we stood there on top of the world; a commemorative tea plate Iraqi youth asked me to bring to US youth leaders, and news that the Iraqi Global youth leaders had just planted 1300 trees and organized 2000 people to call attention to climate change.

I left the park a little chilled, but at least Tom Lehrer’s song was no longer rattling around in my head…

Voting in Iraq-an act of faith

2010-03-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

The biggest issue that regularly confounds me each time I vote here in Seattle is finding a postage stamp. Despite this, I have become a strong believer in the mail-in ballot, mostly because I don't have to haul myself to the polls at 7am before I head off to work.

But, as I learned this week, voting in Iraq presents other challenges. I was talking yesterday on video Skype with my colleague, Mohammed, a Mercy Corps staffer for the Global Citizen Corps program about the recent Iraqi elections and wondering how it had gone. "Oh, it's gone quite well, very safe, only a few very small bombs went off".

Now I don't know about you, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of safe "small bombs." Over 100 people were killed in these March elections in Iraq, so to me, it is a pretty big act of faith to march down to the polls, dip your finger in ink, and make your views known through the power of the ballot box.

But many, like Mercy Corps' Global Citizen Corps member Kardo (pictured) did. This desire we have to vote, to help shape the way we are governed, is very strong, it seems. And while I would hope I would do the same if I were in Kardo's shoes, I doubt I will ever get to the point of thinking of any bomb as "small".....

Crossing the Cultural Divide, even in Scotland

2010-03-08T02:29:00.000-08:00

Dear family and friends,

As some of you know, I headed for Scotland last week with some reluctance. Having traveled more in the developing world, I have acquired a taste for the unusual, the more close-to-the-tidewater kind of travel that countries like Guatemala, Iraq, Lebanon and Belize provide than the more comfortable developed Western World. It seems to me there is more to be learned when you cross these larger cultural and economic divides. Yes, there is the increased food poisoning, hole-in-the-ground toilets, and bullet-whizzing risks you accept that some have been quick to point out, but with every flowering cactus comes its thorn.

When I announced I was headed to Scotland, it was clear that it was far down my list of places I would like to go. Jenny, Boots, Denise and Erica all called attention to my cultural snobbery and were quite animated about the rewards for traveling in such a place. “It’s part of your own family roots, there are castles, and history, plus the famed golf courses of the world there!” they enthused. I was not convinced, but did decide to be a bit more open to the possibilities here. I have not been disappointed.

First I found that it is as easy to get sick in Scotland as in my favored poverty-stricken countries. Within my first two days in Scotland, I was attacked by a back-bending cough and chest cold as painful an experience, I am certain, as it was for those afflicted by Scurvy in the famed Irish Potato-Famine.

I finally dug out some old unused Cipro antibiotics saved from my last trip to Gaza and threw them at the Kilted Demon that set up shop in my lungs. Today is Day Six of my Scottish Adventure and while I continue to keep a “Phlegm-Cup” close at hand, I don’t have to empty it nearly as often.

Second, I was surprised to see how much there was to be gained in bridging the cross-cultural divide as well. On Day Two I met up with one of our local youth leaders, Thomas from Scotland. He is here with 16 other young leaders from Lebanon, Jordan and the US for our first International Youth Leadership Summit at Mercy Corps. We got into a very engaging discussion about electronics and he pointed out to me the great advances being made in IPod technology.

“Look at this tiny IPod player, its only as big as a thumb drive, and holds 16 Gigs of memory”.

I was impressed by its tiny size and power and how it could fit so easily into your shirt pocket. Thomas went on to say, “With the new headphones that fit around your head, the sound is crystal-clear brilliant... And get this, its only 60 pounds!”

“Well, I like the idea of brilliant, crystal clear sound, but headphones at 60 pounds seems like way too much to me”, I cautioned.

“No, it’s not too much, it’s the best you can get anywhere”, he argued.

“But isn’t that a lot of weight to put on your neck?” I inquired.

“NO, 60 pounds, that’s the cost, man!” Thomas exasperated.

I have learned much more in my time here, including a whole new vocabulary of English words that I did not know existed, from “bidden-lay” (a person of the opposite sex that you live with), to “a Quizzy”, a type of questionnaire. The sheep are so plentiful here even a Texan would be fully satisfied. And in the summer, I was told by one bloke, the mosquitoes are so big they can rape a chicken. Fortunately I return home in a few more days so will not be able to verify this.

As I lay awake at 3:30am this morning,(my body’s “Just Say No” policy for Radical Time Zone changes), I was reminded that if you keep your eyes open in life, you can learn something new every day, and traveling only accelerates that process. Even in Scotland.

2010-01-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about hope and fear the past few weeks. It is hard to avoid at this time of year. Christmas and New Year’s are holidays of hope. Yet that hope easily can turn to fear when we find out people are flying with explosives in their underwear.

Fortunately, that attempt to kill innocents in the airplane failed. But in Iraq last month, one of the countries where I work with young people in Mercy Corps’ youth leadership program, the attempts succeeded, with terrorists killing 127 people in Baghdad.

One of the great things about working in Mercy Corps is the exposure you get to extraordinary people. I listened to two such people last month, hoping to get their perspectives. Both have dedicated their lives to bringing education to girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Greg Mortenson, author of Three cups of Tea, and Julia Bolz, a Seattle-based activist. Between the two of them, they have helped build hundreds of schools for girls in this part of the world, impacting not just these individuals, but generations to come.

The question weighing heaviest on my mind is what do we do to end the terror? There is no simple answer here. But one thing stuck out to me as I listened to them both. Both spoke with one clear message; “promoting peace is based in hope. Fighting terrorism is based in fear”.

Two days after the terrorist bombings in Baghdad, I heard from another group of extraordinary people. Two hundred Iraqi youth in our Global Citizen Corps responded to the bombings by organizing a caravan to the city and donated their blood, most for the first time. Their story was picked up by national and international media, reaching more than 5 million people with this story of hope. The driver of one of these vans was so moved by what these teens were doing, that he refused to take any money for his services that day.

I doubt we will ever capture, kill and eliminate every person who is set on terrorizing others around the world. But I am convinced that most people want to live with hope instead of fear, as these young Iraqi demonstrated last month. If we only give them a chance.

Palestinian Camps...not what you might expect

2009-10-27T11:59:00.001-07:00

I love to camp. I associate it with mountain meadows, alpine flowers, a warm fire, a cold beer. And the occasional bear.

So when I heard I would be going to a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around it.

I imagined there being tents in a desert, far from the urban landscape. Hot, dusty, maybe a fence around it just to give it a sense of place.

This was my second trip to the Middle East, to work with young adult leaders who are part of the Mercy Corps Global Citizen Corps program. Meeting these young people throughout the Middle East continues to be a daily myth-busting experience. This month, I found out what it means to be a Palestinian camper.

The first thing you notice as you come upon the camp is that it is anything but a camp. It sits just on the outskirts of Tripoli, one of the largest cities in Lebanon, and looks like a poor urban neighborhood, of several thousand people. And yea, there is a fence, but it’s impenetrable, and you need a passport and a pre-approved Visa to get in. The guards are heavily armed, and I am pretty sure it’s not about the bears.

We got the OK to enter, the five of us in a Mercy Corps vehicle, and drove several hundred yards inside where we stopped and got out. The roads are dusty, the “tents’ are concrete, bland-looking structures. It feels solemn, sad, and temporary. But it has been here for half a century. In addition to meeting with a local youth group that Mercy Corps works with, and hoping to get involved in the youth leadership program where youth discuss issues on-line and take action together, we visited a local after-school youth center run by Palestinian leaders from the camp.

We walked in as children were singing and dancing, and playing a game much like musical chairs. The walls were filled with colorful youth-produced art, along with a shocking black and white photo, showing 2 young people from Hiroshima at gunpoint, hands held high in the air. Startled to see such a photo here, I asked the director what it was about. He told me that it is part of the trainings they do to let youth know that no matter how difficult times can get, people are resilient and can find a way to improve their lives. “Hope is what we most need, and seeing examples of others who have overcome tough times is very important for us”.

This continued to be the most consistent and myth-busting discovery I uncovered in my work with young people here. And it was further reinforced reading “Children of Jihad” on my plane ride home. It is written by Jared Cohen, a young Jewish American who recently spent two years traveling in these same Middle East countries talking to young people to find out how they see themselves and the world. He too, talked with youth in Palestinian camps, Hezbollah youth groups, and on university campuses. He concludes this riveting read with

“I can say from my own experience, living and traveling in this volatile part of the world, that reaching this under-thirty generation is our best hope for greater communication-but only if we engage with them on their own terms. Amid the despair of war, poverty, and oppression, they are the ones who respond to creativity. Could it be that they will also find creative solutions for peace someday?....Like us, young people in the Middle East all desire better education; they all have a fascination with innovative uses of technology; they all get bored and crave adventure and entertainment; they all seek interaction and global connectivity; and more than anything, they all want to feel as though they belong, have a purpose in this world, and can have a better life. Young people in the Middle East are reachable-and they could be waiting to hear from us.”

Is it Safe?

2009-09-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

“Did you feel safe?”

This is the first question I get asked as I finally touch down on US soil, after a grueling 21 hours of travel getting from my bed in Iraq to one in Washington D.C. I say grueling, but this same distance would have been traveled by my grandmother over land and sea in about 6 months. She would no doubt have gotten sea sick several times along the way, and paid dearly for food the Jordanian Airlines stewardess slipped under my comatose head. (Her trip from Kansas to Walla Walla in a covered wagon was tough enough for her, so I doubt she had aspirations of a trip to Iraq. But still, you get the point).

In the airport, I picked up the Washington Post (yes, they still print the thing, its not just on-line, Dan!), and find out that 14 people recently died in a car bomb attack in one of the small Iraqi cities in which we work. Another car bomb killed 30 people weeks before in Baghdad. But this is not my experience there.

My experience is going to a local park in Iraq where a large group of high school students we work with are highlighting International Peace Day. Thousands are in this park, strolling with their babies, and laughing at the riddles posed by the students who hand out candy prizes for the right answers, and tell us about the world-wide movement to promote peace.

My experience is walking around the corner after dark in search of a little dinner, and finding an elderly Iraqi fruit vendor. His shop is no larger than my bedroom, with fruit boxes cascading outside on the street. My colleague and I buy enough for dinner, and because I speak no Arabic and he speaks no English, we hand-signal the fruit we want. After we weigh out what we want, he slowly keeps adding pieces of fruit, a pomegranate here, a bag of dates here into the plastic sack, then hands it to me. When I give him $7, he quietly but insistently refuses. It’s his gift to me. Natalie tells me it is his way of welcoming me to his country.

And I would bet serious money that there are more guns in the households surrounding my hotel here in Washington DC than in any neighborhood in Iraq I walked through. Feeling safe, and being safe. Who knows where the truth lies.

The second question I was asked as I rode in the Super Shuttle to my hotel here was, “Did you feel hopeful by what you saw in the Middle East?”

I met with students in Iraq and Gaza working to promote female rights, Lebanese students in Hezbollah neighborhoods cleaning up parks and soon will be working on creating more open meetings of governing bodies. I met students working on access to clean water issues. At the same time, I met with students taken in by the police for questioning because they were planting trees and taking photos to share on-line, but it was a group of both male and female students and the fundamentalists don’t like that too much.

Yesterday, I had the honor to meet with Landrum Bolling, author of “Search for Peace in the Middle East”, a war correspondent for many years, and long-time Mercy Corps advisor. He sadly told me that for the first time he feels pessimistic about prospects for peace in the Middle East. Yet in the next breath, said this work with young people, connecting them in cooperative actions across borders is absolutely necessary and is what can help make a difference.

The young people I met with throughout the Middle East face such tough odds. Some are imprisoned by a wall surrounding their land from which they cannot get out, living in cities where car bombs can explode without warning, or living under governments where a meeting open to the public is as rare as a banjo. Thomas Friedman once said "Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.” He must have run into some of these folks.

2009-09-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

Growing up in my neighborhood, what my dad called "Poverty Flats", I loved to daydream about “what heaven is like’. My mom said heaven was exactly what you wanted it to be. So I developed a very clear picture of it; me sitting on top of an endless series of sunlight-tipped, brilliant white clouds, with nothing else. Except a big refrigerator sitting in the clouds, all by itself, filled with watermelon and ice cream and the other building blocks of a well-rounded diet.

Flying into Lebanon Sunday felt like I had finally found that place We flew just over the tops of these brilliant clouds, then broke below them to find a deep blue sea, with the light chocolate hills of Jordan cascading down to meet the Mediterranean. We landed right next to the water, ensuring that all new arrivals got million dollar views of the waterfront.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as we drove through Beirut, a city of 2 million people. I remember when we were remodeling our kitchen years ago, and describing the scene in my Christmas letter as “feeling like we are living in the war-torn streets of Beirut”. Well, you can forget that image now. What I have experienced so far is a modern, robust city, filled with small shops, a top-notch university, and friendly people. While in Israel, I felt a continual tenseness in the air, and sharp divisions among the various religious and cultural sects, here it feels more at-ease and fluid.

Yesterday I participated in a fascinating meeting of people interested in what is referred to a “civil society”. This is short-hand for folks who work to create more open, democratic, responsive public systems of governing.

It was a meeting of around 30 people, roughly divided between men and women, with ages ranging from early twenties to early 60’s. Five men sat at the head table and made a presentation on key reforms the group wanted to make: lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, ensuring that there was a “woman’s quota’ of at least 30% elected to office, giving the vote to those detained (in jail), promoting open meetings, changing terms from 6 years to 4 years, and most importantly, instituting Parliamentary Representation. (PR for short). Most seemed to favor the PR, French –style of representation, seemed to fit their culture better, with the multiple sects that all feel they need a voice so as to not be run over by others. This is a very real consideration, given the quite recent and very bloody civil war, in the late 70’s, early 80’s, and factional fighting in the past decade.

Lebanon currently is in its infancy of democracy, very fragile. It is described as a country that is half Christian, half-Muslim, but each of these halves are divided into many more sharp divisions of Sunni, Shiite, Palestinians, Armenians, and then further divided by families that lead sects within those. Most municipal meetings are not open to the public, but if you are lucky, they will post the results of the deliberations on the door when they finish.

So while things feel pretty good on the surface, underneath, we got problems…

As they talked, I marveled out how familiar this felt. This is how I imagined it was with John Adams, Ben Franklin, John Hancock and them sitting around for months trying to hammer out the US constitution. At least that is how Mrs. Elias explained it to us in 8th grade. But while I imagined America’s Founding Fathers as a very analytical, well-reasoned deliberation, the conversation I was in felt really ‘seat of the pants”. Everyone saying “we are late, this should have all been done yesterday. Let’s just draft something, anything, we can change it later, and get it in front of Parliament next week so we don’t lose momentum”.

Maybe that is how John and Ben felt too.

First day in Gaza

2009-09-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

My morning begins when, in the space of 100 yards, I go through no less than eight reinforced steel security gates and have my passport closely scrutinized at two separate guard posts. I lose count of the number of security cameras watching me before I am able to cross into Gaza.

One and a half million people live inside this 30 foot high, miles long, concrete wall. Few are allowed to leave. They are all Palestinians, guarded by Israelis, and today, we are driven to a small youth center, where I am meeting with Palestinian students preparing their own photo-exhibit, entitled "Recognizing our Common Humanity". (photo of young girls pictured above is from the exhibit)

I meet with 30 of the more than 1000 students who come here each week. All part of Mercy Corps' Global Citizen Corps program we operate in 6 countries. They tell me about the local action projects they are leading; going to a local orphanage to play with the kids there, going last week to 9 homes of families who have been found by the students to be living in dire poverty and so they have brought food and comfort, going to a field and planting seedlings for new trees, since so many were killed in the war last January. I do a presentation to about 20 of the students on how to use on-line communities like Facebook, Twitter, Diggs and others to mobilize others for the causes they care about. They show me a crazy on-line game they use with friends called Barn Buddy and get me to join. Its Ramadan, so they are all fasting each day from 4am to 4pm for 12 days. We are sitting around a table talking, I am drinking from a very large bottle of water trying to hydrate in this desert heat when I remember. "Uh, sorry, I forgot it is no food AND no water". They laugh. Say its fine, no matter.

In the afternoon, I sat in on one of several classes being held that day in their youth center, and found the teacher presenting Steven Covey's 7 habits of highly effective people, for the leadership class. 25 students were piled into a 10 x 10 room, hotter than the blazes, sharing seats because it was so crowded. Everyone seemed very attentive and engaged, while I sat there wiping beads of sweat off my forehead.

I leave at the end of the day, shaking my head in wonder. Here is a group of students, majoring in things like Business Administration, Pharmacy, and Engineering, living in a community with 60% unemployment, and not able to leave. Held there by another country. And rather than raging in frustration, they are instead volunteering to sit in a crowded classroom, learning about becoming a good citizen, a good leader, carrying out community service projects and putting on a photo exhibit about "our common humanity?". I wonder how I would do in the same circumstances.

I leave after spending 6 hours with them, get driven to within a quarter mile of the wall, show my passport to two different sets of Hamas agents, then go through the gauntlet of 8 gates, multiple guards (they double checked my banjo and chapstick I was packing to be sure everything was on the up and up), get in the car, and soon fall asleep in mental exhaustion. Andy, the Country Director for Mercy Corps, drives us back to Jerusalem.

Gaza voices, unexpected findings

2009-04-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

When I was finally able to get through the 9 gates of Israeli security guards at the Gaza Prison-like walls, and walk the 800 yard gauntlet inside, video cameras watching every move, and get past the second set of guards of Hamas who staffed a shack-like structure inside these walls, this is what I found...

heading home

2009-03-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

A few summary comments as I get ready to take the 9 hour flight over the pole straight from Amsterdam to Seattle, non-stop. Surprisingly, Iraq turns out to be the easiest, quickest country to get your passport approved of, one minute in and out, and Amsterdam, heart of liberalism and carefree-ness, the most difficult (next to the Israeli crossings)..almost didn't let me through...something about not liking the Iraq, Israeli travel itinerary and all....imagine if I hadn't been of the White American persuasion...

(By the way, all the comments made on this blog are my personal reactions, opinions and commentary, and mine alone. They do not represent the position of MercyCorps or any other organization).

Gaza: Worse than expected. Gaza felt like the near-perfect breeding ground for cultivating and growing hatred. Not a good strategy for peace. Israel seems to me to be in a position where it has enormous power, doesn't have to do anything, but to create some kind of positive change will need to make a magnanimous move. But they may not do it unless Palestinians go into a big non-violent civil disobedience campaign to force the moral issue, like Gandhi did with Britain. Things felt to me to have gotten worse here instead of better, since I was in this part of world 30 years ago. If only because of what Israel has created here with its settlements in the West Bank, erected walls and guard crossings nearly everywhere that have been created out of fears (very real), and an abundance of power. It has been said that power tends to corrupt. I hope Martin Luther King was right when he said “the arc of truth bends toward justice”….it better start bending here, and soon. What happens here continues to deeply affect the political situations in Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere. Yes it's complex here with the myriad of cultures and deep histories of mutual hurt, but I know we can do better than this.

Iraq: Way better than I expected. More patriotic toward US than I expected, even if it is Northern, Kurdish Iraq). Felt much safer than expected (although the breath of paranoia rustles the hairs on the back of your neck at times due to the possible unknowns). Taking photos is tough when you have one eye on the item of focus and one out for some underground security personnel who might not approve. Young people I met in both places (over a hundred I talked with) seemed generally optimistic, had a good dose of hope, and good and unique senses of humor. Mohammed and I, (he is local teacher, Arabic, that I got to know) we were joking around and grandly fantasizing one day in the car, planning how we could fix things right up in the world.

“You organize the Arabs, Mohammed, I will organize the Christians, but we need someone to organize the Hindu’s”…
To which Mohammed replies, “Go find a Cowboy”.
“What?”, I say.
“A Cowboy. You know how the Hindu's revere cows”…..

Jordan. Feels quite rich, relatively speaking. And is westernizing at breakneck speed. McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFC’s, western clothes, jewelery everywhere. Hard to find indigenous stuff. (Also hard to find it in Iraq too, and they have few of the chain stores anywhere.

Food. Great food in Iraq and Jordan! Lots of vegetables, superb spices. Could eat the same stuff for weeks in a row… Come to think of it, I did.

OK, internet access here in airport is going kaput now….got to throw in another 6 g’s if I want to keep it up, and my wallet is drained as usual. By the by, there are no ATM’s in Iraq, so bring cash when you come! Even in small African and Guatemalan towns you could find an ATM. I nearly had to beg on the street, and I didn't even bring my backpack banjo this time to draw a sympathetic crowd!

OK, see you all soon!

Last night in Iraq

2009-03-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a live video conference with my daughters, Erica and Jenny. Iraq to Seattle, my bedroom to theirs, easier than a phone call, and it’s free. This is the new world of today. Electricity goes off from time to time each day here, there are worries of terrorist attacks in the markets and there are virtually no Americans in the two small towns we visit. One hundred percent Kurds. American, or any other non-Arab/Kurdish face is hard to find anywhere around here. (Military personnel are farther south). But every Kurdish /Iraqi teen worth his salt has a cell phone, peppering each meeting I attend with cell phones going off, and texting going on non-stop. And if you have a computer and internet (common) and a $50 webcam, you’ve got some potentially serious global legs.

The most disconcerting part of being here is the tight security leash we must be on.
‘When you leave here at the MercyCorps offices you must text message the Director to let him know you are leaving”, I tell my daughters on our call. “And then you have to text message him again when you arrive at your destination just a few minutes away to let him know you have arrived safely”.

“Wow, it sounds just like when we lived at home in high school”, Erica exclaims.

Despite the heavy security that can be a real downer, I leave tomorrow with an enormous dose of optimism. The young people I have met in Gaza and Iraq, two of the most war-torn areas of the world in recent years, are filled not with hopelessness and grinding despair, but with hope and enormous energy. They are painting and repairing schools neglected by their governments, doing teach-in’s on democracy, and educating children and teachers about how to dispose of unexploded bombs that still lay about the community. They want to really connect with Americans, and see it as a beacon of hope, of freedom and potential allies to discuss problems they face that are similar. Sometimes it is an unrealistic picture (no poverty, no garbage, no political corruption in America), and sometimes they think “why should Americans even care about them?” I will give you one reason, we could all learn a thing or two from them about hope.

“When we open our eyes, we first smell catastrophe”, Nazim, a local teacher tells me at the end of our training session today. He is twenty five years old and has lived through three wars/invasions. “Our last escape involved my family piling into one car with five other families and racing to the border. I still don’t understand how we all fit.” Yet, despite this, Nazim is daily teaching students the critical importance of talking directly with people from other cultures so they are exposed to new ideas and to take positive, effective local action. “It’s the only way we are going to make this world better for all of us”. And now, for the first time in his history, his students are doing just that.

The internet is a great thing. It can connect families like mine when some member is half-way around the world in a war-zone, to ease any fears and joke about being held hostage as a teen in high school. And it can connect Kurds with Americans with Palestinians with Jews to get to know one another as human beings. That alone won’t solve the nasty problems we now face. But it’s a heck of a start.

2009-03-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

Today four of us hop in an SUV driven by a MercyCorps driver, and take a 2 hour drive to Kalar, a small town near the disputed border between the Kurdish territory in Iraq, and the rest of Iraq, run by the Shiite-led government. As we move out of the town of Sulaymaniyah,, my main base camp, the mountains surrounding us grow, until we begin to pass through a valley that has the look and feel of parts of Central Washington, with small jagged cliffs. It’s the start of the New Year here, 2071, and the valley is dotted with families who have pulled their cars off to the side of the road, quite randomly it seems to me, and are dancing, building fires and sitting on the ground chatting away. There are few national or local parks anywhere to be found, so people seem to just go into the countryside and hang. We drive through a series of checkpoints run by the Kurdish police. They all know our driver who lives in this valley, and wave him through at each point, while other cars are stopped, despite having two gringos in the car, who stick out like sore thumbs in an area that is virtually 100% Kurdish.

“This is the last place on earth where you can find people who just love George Bush”, I am told by the Director of a local humanitarian organization stationed in Kalar, the town we settle in tonight. The sentiment echoes what I have been hearing from others in northern Iraq, Kurdish-country, the past few days.

“I was utterly hopeless before. Now I have hope”, Mohammed states, a bright, engaging man who lives here and shares a dinner with me.

“Yes, its true Bush invaded Iraq, and may have done so for oil or other reasons that were not right, but now we can live a life, and before we could not.” Bush as a beacon of hope. It is a hard pill for me to swallow, yet here it is, clear and true.

The younger Iraqi students we meet with today, 13-15 year olds, uniformly say how much they value freedom, and a good life. “Here people throw garbage in the street, children are not in school and need to get back in. In America, this does not happen, and people can do what they want”. We suggest they discuss this with their American counterparts when they go on-line this week. “You may be surprised by what you learn,” I say. They stare back with a look of skepticism in their eyes...

First Impressions

2009-03-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists. " — Thomas L. Friedman ...

"So, what are your first impressions of Gaza?", Reem asked me excitedly as I settled in to my chair with a room full of her 14 fellow Palestinian students at the MercyCorps Youth Center in Gaza.

Just four hours earlier, we had left beautiful Jerusalem for a 45 minute drive to one of just three entrances to the Gaza strip. A 30 foot wall surrounded this 26 square miles of land pressed up against the sea. 1.4 million Palestinians reside within, a virtual prison camp in which no Palestinians are allowed to leave, but visitors with the proper credentials can sometimes be allowed in by the Israelis.

I assumed I fit that category of the properly credentialed.

Along with 4 other MercyCorps staff, we were allowed in after a 2 hour wait , despite having been approved for entry days before by submitting our passports to the Israeli authorities. After showing our passports twice, walking past multiple machine-gun toting young men in khakis, entering through at least 6 locked gates, and down a deserted 800 yard tunnel, we entered into Gaza. As we walked further still to catch a taxi that awaited us about a quarter mile away, you could look in any direction and see bombed out buildings. We later toured Gaza and saw more devastation on every block, with dozens of makeshift tents set up by the UN to house the now-homeless. We later stopped at the site of recently bombed "American International University", a prestigious university that previously had attracted 230 local Palestinians, attracted to its more liberal university education. As one of the board members, Sharhabeel Al Za'aem, explained to us as he stood in front of the devastated university, it is hard to comprehend why it was targeted. It had been hit twice before by Israel, by accident, so they knew where it was located. He had met just weeks before with Senator Kerry and Congressman Baird from Washington State to talk about the destruction of Gaza, and told them, as he told us, "all we want is a chance. Just treat us as half a citizen with just half the rights others are afforded so we can at least show we can contribute".

As we drove up to the MercyCorps office in Gaza, the sky opened up and we all were afforded a panoramic view of the sparkling Mediterranean Sea just a few hundred yards away. I love the ocean and wanted to go dip my toes in it after a very hot, dusty ride. "Yes, it is beautiful, but it's very cold right now and you wouldn't want to go swimming in it, you could be shot. It's heavily patrolled to blockade any entrance to Gaza by the sea". I looked up and saw the drone flying over all our heads, a Goodyear-like looking silent machine, with the watchful eye flying several thousand feet above Gaza, filming everything as it moved slowly across the sky.

We then walked inside the office, where we sat down in a roomful of excited high school and university students, so happy to see us, welcome us to their community, feed us great falafal and hummus and wanting to know more about Ryan and Catherine and Raisa and everyone else they were talking with on-line and wondering what these US students REALLY thought about them...

"So, Greg, what are your first impressions of Gaza?", she said........

Getting ready to leave...

2009-03-08T14:04:00.000-07:00