Commentary

Fear and loathing in London

What it means to be brown-skinned and backpacked in London after the July 7 bombings.


Could anyone wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine backpack want to blow up a train station?

The pale blue pages of my passport are littered with visa stamps, a testament to my many globetrotting adventures over the years. There are shiny silver holograms from the European Union, a red-white-and-blue U.S. visa, red-and-purple stickers from Malaysia, green ones from Turkey, Cambodia, and Chile, beige from Brazil, and orange from Australia.

I’ve always told myself that having a passport chockfull of weird and wonderful visa stamps is the upside of holding Indian citizenship.

The downside, of course, is the process of applying for those stamps.

The interminable queuing outside the consulate during predawn hours, the photocopying (in triplicate always for some reason) of bank statements, plane tickets, and hotel reservations as supporting documents for my application, the posing for unflattering passport photographs, and the not-always-polite questioning from consul staff convinced that I am either a potential illegal immigrant or an asylum seeker: They are part-and-parcel of what it means to be a citizen of a developing nation.

But I’ve never had a visa application rejected, and once I arrived in whichever country I was visiting, I always felt welcome. Complete strangers would tell me that I was the spitting image of Aishwarya Rai, India’s most famous model/actress and the 1994 Miss World, even though I don’t look anything like her. I was considered exotic or worldly, either of which I saw as a compliment, though of the two I preferred “worldly.”

But when I arrived in London a couple of months ago, I was also considered a potential terrorist suspect.

Mind the gap

I lived in Scotland for three years as a young child and I’ve visited the United Kingdom more than once since. And like most Indians, I have an inner Anglophile that peeps out whenever I’m in the British Isles rubbing shoulders with my colonial ex-masters. But as I wheeled my suitcase out of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Three this July after flying in from New York City, I felt foreign for the first time.

On either side of me, at the customs checkpoints, I passed South Asian families who had been politely pulled aside by uniformed customs officers and asked to open their suitcases. All the families having their suitcases searched were Muslim. The skullcaps on the heads of the doddering old men, and the hijabs covering the heads of the young girls and their mothers, were a dead giveaway. They screamed MUSLIM from 10 meters away. In the same way that my outfit — a long-sleeved black t-shirt from the Gap, khaki capris from French Connection, and my hair uncovered and tied up in a sensible ponytail — screamed WORLDLY, I suppose. In any case, no customs officer asked me to step aside, and I left Heathrow as quickly as possible.

I suppose I should have been relieved that there was such heavy security at the airport. It was July 17 — just 10 days after the first round of terrorist attacks on the city — and it was clear that all possible measures were being taken to ensure the safety of residents.

But rather than feel safe, all I felt was fear. Not fear of being blown up by an Islamic fundamentalist, but of being questioned, harassed, and discriminated against by Londoners who might think I was one, simply because I was dark-skinned and carrying a backpack as I traversed the city streets, map and camera in hand.

Not just at the airport, but at tube and rail stations, in shopping centers, at London’s newest business district Canary Wharf, and at all the major tourist destinations, an overt police presence stood guard. I avoided them as far as possible, trying to act natural (whatever that means) whenever I saw them in the distance giving me the once-over. I would go through my tourist routine, taking photographs and stopping passersby (and on one occasion, a policeman) to ask for directions to the next nearest sightseeing attraction. I tried never to run, instead walking at a steady pace. (I would later learn in the aftermath of the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes at London’s Stockwell tube station that even steady walking can get you shot eight times.) In the crowded corridors of an underground shopping mall, I came across a couple of young Muslim women being questioned by some British bobbies, an alarm ringing in the background. I scurried out of the place as quickly as I could.

In this way I managed to maintain a low profile for four days, but my luck finally ran out on July 21, when I arrived at London’s Stansted airport to fly to Porto in Portugal. I checked in for my flight and proceeded to the airport’s security checkpoint where I joined a long curving line of departing passengers — Irish football fans, young honeymooning couples, solo business travelers, and holidaying families — moving forward reasonably quickly. After a few minutes wait, it was my turn to place my backpack on the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt, and walk through the metal detector. No beeps or alarms sounded but the blond female security officer standing by the machine still blocked my path and asked me to raise my arms so she could pat me down — arms, torso, and legs.

“Just a random search, madam,” she told me, and then indicated that I show her the soles of my sneakers.

Random my foot, as they say in Britain. When I — the sole South Asian in the line — am stopped and searched, while all the white passengers in front of and behind me are allowed to step through without any obstacles, “random” has nothing to do with it.

If you see something, say something

The BBC reports that hate crimes against Muslims, South Asians, and Arabs in the United Kingdom increased by more than 600 percent in the immediate aftermath of July 7.

Your average jingoistic British street thug is not going to stop to ask if you’re Pakistani, or if that turban you wear means you’re Muslim, or if you have a bomb in your backpack before he calls you a “Paki” and tries to bash your head in.

That’s what happened to two South Asian men who were sitting in a parked car and minding their own business in Leith in Scotland in the middle of the day this August. Out of nowhere, a gang of youths surrounded the car and started kicking it, then threw a hammer right at the front windshield, injuring one of the men. Another South Asian man had his turban ripped off during an attack by two white teenagers in the middle of Edinburgh in late August.

I don’t expect any better from street thugs. But I did expect more from British civil servants.

I’m not trying to pretend that the men who orchestrated the July 7 and 21 attacks were not mainly of Pakistani origin, or that all of them weren’t Muslim. But allowing the actions of a dozen or so men to justify racial and religious discrimination — and that’s what profiling is — against the approximately 1.5 million Muslims living in the United Kingdom is just plain wrong, not to mention stupid.

Upon arriving in Porto, after waiting in another long line of arriving passengers, the immigration officer-in-charge asked me to show him my letter of invitation from my European hosts, documents certifying my student status in the United States, and the reservations for my return flight out of Portugal. My many visas did not impress him; he just wanted to know why I happened to be flying out of the United Kingdom the day there were four attempted bombings in Central London.

While being frisked in London by the blonde officer, I had been swallowed up by a silent, burning fury directed toward that particular representative of British airport security (and by extension, the British government itself) who saw me as a potential threat to their country’s safety for no other apparent reason than the color of my skin. But standing in the airport at Porto, when everyone else who had been on the plane with me had already been cleared and gone on to claim their bags and I was the only one still stuck at immigration, all I wanted to do was cry.

For the next 10 days, in Portugal and in Spain, I was treated with exceeding kindness and warmth by everyone I met. I was called ‘exotic’ all over again. One woman likened me to a young Sophia Loren. But the compliments didn’t make me feel as good as they used to.

“Quit focusing on the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes,” I wanted to tell them, thinking of Edward Said and his writings on how the West created the notion of Orientalism. In their own way, these good people were profiling, too. In their minds, BROWN SKIN = EXOTIC, and somehow that label now seemed to me almost as bad as BROWN SKIN = POTENTIAL TERRORIST.

The New York Metropolitan Transport Authority has launched a safety campaign with the tagline If You See Something, Say Something, encouraging commuters in subways and buses to report suspicious-looking behavior or unattended bags they notice. In the wake of the London bombings, an employee of one of the open-top double-decker tourist buses that ply New York City called the police about a group of South Asian men with British accents and backpacks on his bus. The bus was stopped in the middle of Times Square and the men were handcuffed, then made to kneel in the gutter while their bags were searched. Nothing suspicious was found in the backpacks and the men were released shortly afterwards. Once again, you can see those racial formulae at work: BROWN SKIN + BACKPACK = DEFINITE TERRORIST.

Until things start to improve, I’m using an over-the-shoulder messenger bag whenever I take the subway in New York. I am also relinquishing my quasi-Brit status; I have lost the desire to continue visiting the country of my colonial ex-masters. And the next time anyone calls me “exotic,” I’m going to tell her that if she has to label me, I prefer to be considered “worldly.”

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Commentary

Little monsters

An insider’s look at the way that American pop culture has turned children against their mothers — and how Europe has managed to keep mothers at the center of their children’s universe.


A nicely dressed German family enjoys their day outside instead of in a shopping mall.

The children of women who fought for equality during a time of discrimination are now mothers themselves. And while these feminist activists struggled to get more opportunities and freedoms, it seems to me that their fight has brought more complications for us. According to Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, 70 percent of mothers surveyed in 2000 said they found motherhood “incredibly stressful.”

It’s no wonder why, when women struggle to balance family and a career and in order to keep up with their grueling schedules, today’s career moms end up placing their children in the hands of the electronic nanny.

While the feminist movement offered women visions of prosperity and independence it also took moms out of their homes and away from their kids. As a child, I walked into an empty house every day after school and was expected to take care of my sibling, do my homework, and wash the dishes before my mother came home. I lived in a household run by parental rules, without the parent present.

My generation grew up during the boom of commercialism. However, the media still had a sugarcoated veneer: MTV played decent videos; cartoons included Mighty Mouse and Speed Racer — characters who displayed schoolboy visions of aggression unlike today’s cartoons and Hollywood blockbusters full of Triple-X heroism. We were influenced by something still essentially wholesome.

As a result of today’s hyper-sexualized images of feminine perfection, Madonna’s stuffed torpedo bra was replaced by silicone, plastic surgery, Botox injections, and Schwarzenegger strength. Commercialism spread. Inflated and superficial heroes like the sports stars and superstars of today, who flaunt money, fame, and power, send messages to children that “this” is the way to gain happiness. But in reality, happiness is a state of mind cultured through positive reinforcement rooted in the family unit.

The times they are a changin’

At age four, my daughter was very capable of giving the “f— me” look. I say this because it should frighten you as it did me. Her heroes were Britney Spears, Shakira, and Christina Aguilera. She copied their sexual dances and suggestive lyrics, yet she had no clue what these dances meant. They represented what my daughter wanted to be: a singer and dancer. But when did singing and dancing require pelvic thrusts in skimpy clothing?  

At 30, I left America in search of a better life for my daughter after my divorce. Though she was innocent, she unknowingly displayed a sexual resonance and teen-like attitude, unlike her German classmates. I broke her of this by eliminating all American teen idols, music, and programming. As a result, her sexual looks have receded.

American culture has lost its innocence to teenage girls trying to look 20-something and pre-teens piercing their belly buttons to show off their bellies. To young boys, this only signifies sexuality, something they don’t understand. And young girls try to look grown up with Mary Kate and Ashley cosmetic lines and cool, yet grown up clothing. Violence, the other dominant theme, appears in cartoons like the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory and over-hyped Disney movies that allow characters to say words like “stupid head” and “shut up.”

Children in Germany seem different to me. Their culture demands intergenerational respect and people still believe that intimacy is fundamental to community, unlike America where most people don’t even talk to their neighbors. Three generations often live together in one house. Because of this, there is active involvement and interaction between family members, which helps build respect and character in children. And unlike my childhood, most children are surrounded by at least one family member for the majority of their day.

In Europe the ideas of family and simple living overpower consumption. Restaurants do not concentrate on table turnovers but allow guests to linger with each other as stimuli rather than television. Christmas markets celebrate the season with community instead of commercialism. People congregate in countless town squares and drink Gluwein (a spiced wine), while talking and enjoying each other’s company. Shopping is secondary.

A mother is the backbone of the family and yet I have witnessed American culture steal this respectable image away from them. As an American mother, I felt I overextended myself and never found quality personal time to recharge so I could be the best for my daughter. I was an unbalanced woman and mother and therefore was unable to guide her, so the media got to her first.

Two German children enjoy the wonders of nature from behind their cameras.

Recovering the age of innocence

Germany encourages children to enjoy childhood and preserve this time for discovery, play, and innocence. These things disappear as we age and succumb to society’s conventions. America is hypocritical because it preaches morality and wholesomeness yet it delivers the opposite. Instead American media endorse anything that sells, neglecting the negative effects of the images they market. As a result, the country is dealing with heightened violence and sexual activity among children and a complete loss of respect for elder generations.

I lived the American dream yet all I felt was stress and unhappiness. Like many mothers, my feminist role models came from women in fashion magazines and television sitcoms who were powerful women with babies who maintained a perfect marriage and sexy body. I became depressed because I could not achieve this image. But while a doctor in the United States would offer me a nice choice of antidepressants, a German doctor would suggest a walk with a friend or a passionate night with my husband. If the mother in the home is not balanced, the entire family falls apart.

Germany endorses the family institution. Women get two years maternity leave with guaranteed work upon return. Families receive kinder gelt (kid money), usually $2,000 per child every year. Stores close on Sundays; most shops close at lunchtime for family meals and close for the day by 6 pm. And an average employee receives five to six weeks vacation time per year.

Feminism and the American dream fuel mass media’s profit by offering fairy tale visions of life. However, these visions need to include accepting the responsibility of motherhood despite personal sacrifice. Part of this sacrifice is understanding that wrinkles will come, breasts will sag, and age equals wisdom.

Recently the White House enlisted several organizations to conduct a survey to find out why youth crime has dramatically increased this year. The answer is simple: Our children are confused and angry because moms can’t provide the family structure necessary for a society to prosper. Financially stable mothers are not home by choice and poor mothers are not home because of need. The American Dream no longer entails a strong family unit with a mother at the head of the table, but rather a nice house, a white picket fence, and a plasma screen television to baby-sit the kids.

Women of past generations paved the way for our freedom but through the initial excitement of freedom, we have lost the most important meaning of life: the ability to make personal, self-defined choices, that make us feel content and so we can positively influence our family. Spending time with a child is not about giving them all they desire. It is about offering children the best of a mother’s self. Until the United States redefines laws and attitudes that re-shape the way a mother and a family are viewed, it has little to offer those who walk on greener pastures. The oasis does exist but if society loses respect for the mother, it will slowly crumble.

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Blog

The prettiest face


While virulent but nebulously directed anti-Muslim sentiment sullied the British consciousness in the wake of the recent London terrorist bombings, the country selected its first Muslim Miss England. Hammasa Kohistani — 18, Uzbekistan-born, and able to chatter prettily in a stunning six languages — was crowned as the first Muslim Miss England in Liverpool on Saturday.

Kohistani’s ascension was greeted by cheering crowds in Liverpool but grumblings at the Liverpool Islamic Institute. “There is no way a Muslim girl should be playing any part in this competition, because it is unlawful … The ladies in that contest are very scantily dressed, and the only part of the body that should be on display are the face, the hands, and the feet,” stated Hashim Sulaiman.

Undeterred by the criticism, Kohistani will be vying for the $US100,000 prize pot at the Miss World final competition in China in December.

—Mimi Hanaoka

  

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Political Prose

Still made in America, but for how much longer?

Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting piece by Louis Uchitelle on American companies that continue to do much of their product…


Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting piece by Louis Uchitelle on American companies that continue to do much of their production in America. “Made in America” is more common than you’d think. In spite of two decades of intensified globalization, the United States remains the world’s top manufacturer, accounting for 23.8 percent of manufacturing output worldwide in 2004, compared to 24.6 percent in 1982. (This is measured by “value added,” which takes into account the dollar value created at each stage of production through the addition of materials and labor.)

Uchitelle profiles three companies — Harley-Davidson, Haas Automation, and Hiwasse Manufacturing — to see what drives their decisions to either keep their production and supply lines in America or look overseas for cheaper options. For those companies that managed to stay rooted in America, two factors stand out: the benefits gained from tariffs and other forms of protectionism, which stymied aggressive foreign competitors and sustained companies during their most vulnerable years, and the efficiencies brought about by automation, which slashed labor costs and helped American firms compete with competitors abroad who pay much lower wages (for example, Chinese firms).

But given the particular advantages they enjoy, the companies in Uchitelle’s article may be the exceptions that prove the rule. Today, with the World Trade Organization and other free trade agreements in place, it’s harder for the U.S. government to protect industries — a fact that may be good for poor people in China, India, and other developing countries, but does not bode well for Americans toiling in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the automation that helps American firms compete is quickly spreading throughout the world. These companies may not be able to rely on their technological edge for much longer. (Indeed, as Thomas Friedman points out in his new book, America is falling behind other countries in churning out the engineers and scientists who can fuel its future innovation.)

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

Death of the chief


Before the mourning began — indeed, even before his death — the speculation about his successor began; Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist succumbed yesterday, at the age of 80, to his very private battle with thyroid cancer, and now the media is engaged in as respectful a feeding frenzy as possible about Justice Rehnquist’s legacy and the changing face of the US Supreme Court.  

Justice Rehnquist’s legacy is undoubtedly conservative — advocating states’ rights and the public role of religion in America while rallying against abortion and desiring to limit civil rights and the rights of criminal defendants — but his successor may even sit more staunchly on the far right of center. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement earlier this year on July 1st, which leaves two vacancies on the court.

President Bush nominated John Roberts — a stalwart conservative who, at 50, is preposterously young compared to his peers, should his nomination be confirmed by the Senate — as O’Connor’s successor, and Justice Rehnquist’s passing has cleared the canvas of American law to be repainted to President Bush’s liking. As Justice O’Connor was the nine-person panel’s less predictable swing voter, Roberts would, as a justice, considerably change the Supreme Court. The new session of the Supreme Court is fast approaching, and if there are only eight justices serving when the court reconvenes on October 3rd,  any ties will fail to set a legal precedent (although they will affirm lower court decisions). President Bush’s term in office now has a definite expiration date, but he now looks well positioned to engrave his ideological legacy on American law.  

—Mimi Hanaoka

  

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Political Prose

‘We are throw-away people’

The National Guard is finally out in force on the streets of New Orleans, but for some it is already too late…


The National Guard is finally out in force on the streets of New Orleans, but for some it is already too late. Survivors recount stories of infants and elderly victims who died of dehydration and exposure after days without help. Journalists describe the situation as a war zone, with corpses decomposing in open air and rapes taking place even in supposed safe havens. Criticism in Washington mounts as refugees ask why the government relief took so long in coming. “We are throw-away people,” a refugee tells Reuters.

We won’t know for some time the full extent of Hurricane Katrina’s toll, but it will likely reveal many of the dead to be African American and poor. In New Orleans, the city devastated by a one-two punch of hurricane and levee collapse, 68 percent of the population is African American, according to 2004 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. One in five individuals and one in seven families in New Orleans live under the poverty line, which in 2004 was $18,850 for a family of four. “If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions,” wrote Mark Naison, a professor of African American studies at Fordham University, in a piece quoted by The New York Times. (Kanye West was a bit less diplomatic in his choice of words.)

Has New Orleans been ignored by the nation’s leaders? Mayor Ray Nagin thinks so. Democrats (and some Republicans) have harshly criticized the federal government for its handling of the disaster. Some have complained that the Bush administration diverted funds that could have gone to levee building and reinforcement to the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy. Matthew Barge of FactCheck.org provides an even-handed assessment of this charge, concluding that, yes, the president drastically underfunded an Army Corps of Engineers project to enhance the levee system protecting New Orleans: Bush’s budget allocated $3 million of the $11 million the Corps requested for the project in fiscal year 2004, and $3.9 million of the $22.5 million requested in 2005 (Congress subsequently raised the funding to $5.5 million in both years). That said, it’s unclear whether the money cut would have made a difference. “The Army Corps of Engineers — which is under the President’s command and has its own reputation to defend — insists that Katrina was just too strong,” Barge writes, “and that even if the levee project had been completed it was only designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane.”

What is clear is that local officials had been complaining as early as four years ago that not enough funds were being devoted to hurricane protection. Federal officials knew of the danger, but little was done. The last paragraph of the FactCheck.org analysis is especially chilling:

Whether or not a breach” was “anticipated,” the fact is that many individuals have been warning for decades about the threat of flooding that a hurricane could pose to a set below sea level and sandwiched between major waterways. A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report from before September 11, 2001 detailed the three most likely catastrophic disasters that could happen in the United States: a terrorist attack in New York, a strong earthquake in San Francisco, and a hurricane strike in New Orleans. In 2002, New Orleans officials held the simulation of what would happen in a category 5 storm. Walter Maestri, the emergency coordinator of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, recounted the outcome to PBS’ NOW With Bill Moyers:

Maestri, September 2002: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evidence that we were going to lose a lot of people. We changed the name of the [simulated] storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B… kiss your ass goodbye… because anybody who was here as that category five storm came across… was gone.

A terrorist strike in New York, a hurricane in New Orleans, and an earthquake in San Francisco — is our government trying to win the Triple Crown of disasters? This time, an entire American city was turned into a war zone. An entire urban population was thrown onto the trash heap. Do we have to wait for a third catastrophe for the people in charge to get the message?

—Victor Tan Chen

UPDATE, 9/8/05, 12:20 a.m. EST: The Guardian points out that earlier allegations of rape have not yet been substantiated by authorities.

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

Reflections on New Orleans


In the last two years, I have moved nine times with six different addresses over two states. For two months, I found myself lost in the streets of New Orleans. There was uptown, the Quarter, the Warehouse district, the Faubourg Marine, and the suburbs. Through the eyes of a transplanted but temporary local, New Orleans was an exciting adventure with every day bringing another experience to retell.

Fourth of July weekend was spent with my best friend, Ally, and another college friend. As we left the bar in the Warehouse district, we got lost finding our way back to the French Quarter, where we parked as far away from the Warehouse district as possible. With blisters on Ally’s feet, we stopped at Café du Monde at the halfway point. Drinking our chickaree coffee and eating our beignets, we thought we were never going to get back to our car, much less where we were sleeping. Despite the blisters, the walk, the generic bar, the laughter that flooded the desolate streets still haunts me, as if the laughter of the dead cemeteries rang with us that night.

New Orleans is a place of a haunting. The antebellum mansions, the cemeteries every few blocks, or the voodoo that litters the streets of the French Quarter like so many tourist traps; you are never more than a block from history. The city breathes the slave trade and Andrew Jackson, decades after both of their deaths. Whether riding the streetcar on St. Charles past houses that have been there since before the city or passing time in a coffee shop opened while you were there, you inhale the city past and present without judgment or celebration. To ignore is to forget, which the city’s inhabitants are reluctant to do. Everyone knows something, even if everyone knows it. There is art, life, movement, and beauty in the dirtiest crevices of the city.

Now that dirt has washed away. The city is covered in water, and no one knows when it will be evacuated. The bodies of the dead remain unburied; the bodies of the living are still uncertain as to when they can go home or if they have homes. To think of a city engulfed by history, now by water, confuses me, especially since newscaster[s] act [as] i[f] the city is dead, when perhaps it just needed time for cleansing and healing. The city has not forgotten the sieges and the wars and also reemerges stronger, healthier, and more beautiful, daring nature to fight with it again.

While the houses and landmarks are forever altered, our histories of the city have been added to. Much like Gloria Gaynor, it will survive, and so will its people. I raise a glass to the city that haunts my memories still. The ability to forget you is not even succeeded by death. You will rise, again, stronger, more capable, and more beautiful. We merely await your rebirth from hibernation.

—Brett D. Currier

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Political Prose

Help for victims of Hurricane Katrina

If you want to help the relief efforts in Louisiana and elsewhere, please consider making a donation to the American Red Cross. The local and national websites are jammed with visitors, so you might want to try …


If you want to help the relief efforts in Louisiana and elsewhere, please consider making a donation to the American Red Cross. The local and national websites are jammed with visitors, so you might want to try the Red Cross donations site set up on Yahoo.

Below is an excerpt of an August 31 message by Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist in New Orleans. The email, which has been circulating on the Web, gives a first-hand account of the devastation in that part of the country. (The text has been edited slightly for typos.)

—Victor Tan Chen

UPDATE, 9:34 p.m. EST: If you live in the Southeast and can offer hurricane victims a place to stay, the grassroots organization MoveOn.org is organizing an emergency national housing drive. Also, a reader asked if the authenticity of the email below can be verified. It was sent to me by a friend who said her family knows this doctor, so I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. If you know otherwise, of course, please let me know.

UPDATE, 9/4/05, 7:37 p.m. EST: Some errors corrected and the email header changed in the text below, based on the original version of the email posted on the Web (I was using a forwarded version before). The rumor-quashing site Snopes.com is looking into the veracity of this email, so you might want to check this page later for their determination.

UPDATE, 9/6/05, 1:52 p.m. EST: See this post for more details.

From: Gregory S. Henderson MD, PhD
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:21:55 -0500
Subject: Re: thoughts and prayers

Thanks to all of you who have sent your notes of concern and your prayers. I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2 p.m. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don’t know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from reasonable sources. They are allowing limited internet access, so I hope to send this dispatch today.

Personally, my family and I are fine. My family is safe in Jackson, Miss., and I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New Orleans. I figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good wine list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street that could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests may be evacuated here.

Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today. Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is indeed a canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have heard that Charity Hospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains fully functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on generator and losing food and water fast. The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that is admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous. We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal Street is occupied by armed looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. We hear gunshots frequently. The looters are using makeshift boats made of pieces of styrofoam to access. We are still waiting for a significant national guard presence.

The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases…. There are [Infectious Disease] physicians in at this hotel attending an HIV [conference]. We have commandeered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into a makeshift clinic. There is a team of about seven doctors and PAs and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter.

Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police escort. The looters had to be held back at gunpoint. After a dose of prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine. In all we are faring well. We have set up a hospital in the French Quarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. Many will be from the hotel, but many will not. We are anticipating dealing with multiple medical problems, medications and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are imminent.

The biggest question to all of us is where is the National Guard. We hear jet fighters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army. In a sort of cliché way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of life. It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care physician. We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don’t know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. Despite it all, this is a soul-edifying experience. The greatest pain is to think about the loss. And how long the rebuild will take. And the horror of so many dead people.

PLEASE SEND THIS DISPATCH TO ALL YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED IN A DISPATCH from the front. I will send more according to your interest. Hopefully their collective prayers will be answered. By the way, suture packs, sterile gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a MASH.

Greg Henderson

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Gays: the “real” weapons of mass destruction


We’ve all heard the claim that gays are destroying the so-called moral fabric of America — not to mention that “sacred institution between a man and a woman” — with their calls to wed. And, of course, we’ve all heard that gays are to blame for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But here’s one I bet hasn’t even crossed your mind:  Gays are to blame for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Or so says Rev. Fred Phelps, the founder of Kansas’ Westboro Baptist Church. The church, which isn’t associated with any denomination, claims that God is wreaking havoc on American soldiers in Iraq out of vengeance for “a country that harbors gays.”

Not only does this claim essentially equate gays with terrorists by buying into the war on terrorism’s rhetoric of certain Arab states’ “harboring” of terrorists, it also calls into question the validity of the claim that the U.S. “harbors” gays. That is, while plenty of gays and other sexual minorities reside in the United States, does the U.S. really provide sexual minorities refuge in the truest sense of the word? Sure, sodomy is now legal. But on November 2, an awful lot of Americans went to the polls because they didn’t want gays to be able to — gasp — marry. And that’s just one civil liberty amongst dozens (hundreds?) that gays lack in the United States.

It’s worth noting that Phelps’ following is fairly small and self-contained. In fact, almost all of the members of his church are his relatives. But, still, I can’t help but wonder what on earth is going on in their heads. This isn’t even a question of why troops are dying in Iraq. It’s a question of whether middle America — or in this case, a Kansas church — will ever recognize that you can’t keep blaming everything on gays, especially when you’re part of what keeps gays from gaining the political power necessary to “threaten” that of the Religious Right.

Perhaps even worse, though, is that as insulated as Phelps’ group might be, their message isn’t contained. Phelps’ followers have been out in droves across the country at funerals for U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, holding up signs saying things like “God hates fags” and “God hates you.” Believe what you will, I suppose, but there’s a time and place for everything (though, I’ve got to wonder why Phelps’ church doesn’t seem to have the time to embrace love and compassion). And that’s probably why Phelps’ followers haven’t been winning over too many supporters with this strategy of harrassing the families of the fallen.

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Burning visions of an alternative society


On Monday, August 29, thousands of people will converge upon the Black Rock desert 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada, to create an ephemeral arts utopia known as Burning Man. For eight days, their nomadic community in a city of tents and caravans will flourish in the desert. On the sixth of September they will depart, and the desert will be as empty as it was before they descended upon it.

Burning Man is an annual event which has grown from an interactive performing and visual arts community of twenty people in 1986 to its current manifestation of over 35,000 in 2004. Its “Leave No Trace” manifesto both preserves the integrity of the desert environment as well as perpetuates one of its many reasons for being: Burning Man has been described as an alternative to modern consumerist, capitalist society.

The festival takes shape from the supplies its visitors bring with them in their cars. Since weather is extreme, “radical self-reliance” is advised in order to avoid overexposure to a drastic range of temperatures. The only goods sold are ice and coffee: participants must bring with them everything they will need to survive for a week in the desert. Tickets are sold in advance to discourage last-minute participants from traveling into the desert unprepared.

The focus, according to founder Larry Harvey, is to create a visionary utopia where participation, creativity, diversity and self-expression are valued above consumerism and capitalism. Each year artists are given a different theme. This year participants are invited to explore the Psyche: the amorphous, ever-changing territory of identity and dreams.

Burning Man has been viewed as a modern-day Woodstock, a Las Vegas which rises each year from its own ashes to which many escape the obligations of modern life. However, the tremendous success of the festival, well-documented on the website, suggests that Burning Man has transcended mere escapism and has accomplished what many artists aim to achieve with their work: an inspiration which outlasts the moment of contact between audience and artwork and follows the public into their homes.

The “Afterburn Report,” published by Burning Man organizers each year on its website, details the evolution of the festival and of efforts to respond to the needs and interests of its participants. Last year’s report describes a recent effort to organize a regional network “designed to aid and enhance the independent efforts of our far-flung communities,” providing “a means for regional groups to gather, collaborate, and interact all year long.”  

For the many participants motivated to extend the ideas of the community they helped create to their daily lives, Burning Man has become more than a laboratory for social change: it is a growing grassroots movement which is gaining momentum and crossing continents.

—Michaele Shapiro

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Political Prose

A conversation this country needs

An anonymous reader took the time to write a detailed response to my post last week about Cindy Sheehan and her efforts to meet with President Bus…


An anonymous reader took the time to write a detailed response to my post last week about Cindy Sheehan and her efforts to meet with President Bush. Here it is:

Why would you meet with a woman who said the following at a S.F. rally in A[p]ril 05:

“We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!”

So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University.

Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: “We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now.”

Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005:

“They’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up…” Sheehan said of the Bush administration.

“If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bullshit, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?”

“The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war.”

“We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog shit in Washington, we will impeach all those people.”

—But I wouldn’t expect someone who can only look at one side of an issue to see why the President wouldn’t want to meet with her. Common sense people. Stop thinking with your lust to hate Bush and use common sense.

It’s certainly true that Cindy Sheehan is not the most subtle or diplomatic public speaker. Personally, I wouldn’t phrase some of those comments the way she did. But then again, I didn’t lose a child in Iraq. If anyone has the right to be angry, it would be Sheehan. Most of us Americans have the luxury of living our lives as if the United States was not in a state of war. Sheehan no longer has that privilege. If she’s not the most moderate voice in the chorus, there may be a reason.

The reader justifiably complains about the hateful rhetoric that afflicts this country. The first step we can take to stop the hatred is to start a dialogue. If Bush would meet with Sheehan, he could begin such a dialogue. Meeting with her doesn’t necessarily mean that Bush would have to compromise his views, or Sheehan hers. But it’s a necessary step to begin some healing. It’s the only way that both supporters and opponents of the president will ever learn to look beyond their side of the issue and consider seriously what the people across the aisle have to say.

Instead of constructively engaging his critics, the president seems to believe he can wish them away. Thankfully, however, there are Republican leaders who want to see a dialogue take place. Some have had the courage to speak out publicly, comparing Iraq to Vietnam and asking tough questions about when the troops will come home. A few have even come out in support of Sheehan’s request to speak with her elected representative. Senator George Allen, Republican from Virginia, said that it would be good for Bush to invite Sheehan in “just as a matter of courtesy and decency.” Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican from Nebraska, said that “the wise course of action … would have been to immediately invite her into the ranch.” The fact that Bush is not doing the “courteous and decent” thing is inflaming hostilities and showing the world that Bush would rather stick his head in the ground than face the reality knocking on his doorstep.

Cindy Sheehan is one woman with a tragic story. Fervent supporters of the president have spent a good deal of time dragging her name into the mud. What’s more important than what this suburban mother said or didn’t say, though, is what she represents: a conversation waiting to happen. A conversation on this war and on its future end. A conversation that this country needs and the president needs to begin.

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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What makes you gay?


While gay marriages have been variously performed, overturned, and sanctioned — most recently in Spain — the question lingers: What makes you gay? And, more importantly, why does that matter?  

A recent article published in The Boston Globe summarizes the theories relating to homosexual behavior; it is entirely unresolved whether homosexuality is determined on the cellular or genetic level, in the social sphere, or in related hormonal developments and reactions, or a myriad of determining factors.  

Scientific breakthroughs aside, one reason to determine the source of homosexuality would be to further social acceptance. Should homosexuality be explained as an inborn characteristic, certain biases would lose their foundations. The ambiguously named Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization, spawned the book Getting It Straight, in which the organization claims that should there be research that proves that homosexuality is an innate characteristic that precedes any nurture, such a discovery “would advance the idea that sexual orientation is an innate characteristic, like race; that homosexuals, like African-Americans, should be legally protected against ‘discrimination;’ and that disapproval of homosexuality should be as socially stigmatized as racism. However, it is not true.”

It was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association scrapped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders; in an ideal world, a scientific explanation of homosexuality would melt away the profoundly illogical prejudices that can accompany discussions related to homosexuality.

—Mimi Hanaoka

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