Well, it's a new year, and I have a new job! I work for PATH now, a global health NGO (recently ranked 6th in the world!) based in Seattle (yup, my parents are happy, though I'm still in DC), on an MCHIP project, which is USAID funded. For me, that's a lot to mull over right there. New NGO, new mechanisms for global health, new world of fancy DC non-profit-ness to maneuver through. USAID, in particular, is quite the massive politically charged body to join forces with. Nothing is cut and dried, of course, so I don't have any all knowing judgements to pass down about these things. Yet. But so far the projects and the people working on them have been quite inspiring and exciting. We focus on maternal and child health, and my bosses in particular focus on anemia, nutrition, and newborn health. They work all over the world in very exciting places to which I would like to be taken. So far I have succeeded in being taken to the Dominican Republic for a conference on Kangaroo Mother Care (as cute as it sounds, and effective!) and a site visit to a hospital.
I realized recently that, despite all my revolutionary talk and self professed self awareness/open mindedness, I may have been holding something against Africa. Primarily because I had (have?) never understood it. In my mind it was mostly this vast land with lions and really, really poor dying people who would look at me with (justifiably?) accusing faces. My excuse for not going was that it was too desperate there, and because of that people couldn't be revolutionary, couldn't organize to make their own lives better, thus I could only offer them charity/pity, thus I wasn't interested. That whole excuse comes apart pretty fast. After all, Africa has been home to an amazing amount of inspiring revolutionaries, including this years trio of female Nobel Prize winners. And Africa is just so diverse, it strikes me as amazing that I thought I could generalize the whole continent without really thinking about it. Of course, I know this whole image is generated by the interaction I have had with media portrayals of Africa. Which is another reason that this charity based representation of international aid is a disservice to its recipients. How can a continent of strong, powerful, active, diverse people be condensed into one TV commercial for donating shoes? To be honest, I've started googling images related to each of Africa's countries. Mozambique looks gorgeous.
Surely my own ignorance/whatever negative -ism one could label this whole process as extends beyond the continent of Africa. Which begets the question- how do we know a place we have never been? How do we understand a culture or life we have never been a part of? Is it possible? I suppose if we get into this is-it-possible territory you could argue that it is never possible to truly understand someone else's experience in this world. But in some cases not understanding plays out as a disservice, or even an injustice, especially when the folks in power (or running the NGOs) are the ones not understanding. But how do we impact such a personal process? To me, experience has been the only solution. Be it meeting people, going to a country itself, living in it, even just looking at pictures of it. We can't know every place and every life. But then we don't act with agency over every aspect of the globe. It seems to me we owe it to be thoughtful about the things we do, here and as we work abroad. In fact, there was a super interesting article up recently on micro-agressions between races here, brought to my attention by the always informative broadsnark.
In any case, maternal and child health seems like a pretty awesome lens for action, though it doesn't always feel like activism. Activism, while we are on the subject, has received a massive infusion of enthusiasm from the Occupy movement (plus a few new radical vocabulary words for the media), and the scene in DC has now turned decidedly local. Which is super exciting! Folks are working more than ever on collaboration and supporting each other in all our various fights to make the neighborhood/city/nation/world into a better place worth living in. Let's talk neighborhood for a minute. Mt Pleasant, my old home (and still bordering my new one), is organizing to start up neighborhood assemblies. I first heard this term when I first read Horizontalism, preparing to go off to Argentina and learn from the real revolutionaries since we couldn't possibly build that kind of thing up here... and look! Here I am, sitting on someone's floor watching a volunteer translator collective hand out gear to the non bilingual, waiting to hear from fifty diverse voices on all the amazing things they do in my neighborhood and talking about how collaborating will make it all even better. How long has it been since I allowed myself to take mutual aid and consider it seriously? If I've been feeling old and un-punk, this has been lifting my spirits. Positive Force is also revitalizing, as we tackle the tyranny of structurelessness and other issues for radical organizing to put on awesome punk benefits and connect our community to the greater Columbia Heights community. As we change the world, slowly. Our last show was a youth benefit, and the littlest punk ones put a grin on my face that I couldn't shake all night.
Today I am feeling optimistic. So much so that I am going to have to make myself sign off. Thanks to those who read this far.
xo
m
