A Memoir by Edwidge Danticat

Brother, I’m Dying” is above all the story of Danticat’s uncle. As unrest intensified with each regime change, Mira urged Joseph to leave Haiti and the church he had built. It was only in 2004, when gangs including members of his own flock turned on him, that he was forced to flee.

“I wanted to tell my uncle’s story to honor him, to honor my family, but also to share that experience with people,”

`If our country were ever given a chance and allowed to be a country like any other, none of us would live or die here,” he said at Joseph’s funeral…………..Continue Review.

Democracy Now interview

Also check out Raj Patel’s book “Stuffed and Starved” reviewed here and here

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Edwidge Danticat
Haiti
Stuffed and Starved

A mixture of too much travel, personal issues, life changes, relocating and just plain old tiredness equals Blogger purgatory - that place you find yourself when you cannot think, read or write. Not only have I hardly written anything I have hardly read any blogs for weeks so today in the hope of finding some inspiration I checked out a few. I ended up feeling worse. All my daily and weekly reads full of pages of posts and still no inspiration. I did find one post that linked to a series of photos of the Burmese Buddhist monks protesting in Rangoon.

But seriously, these peaceful Burmese monks marching in their thousands for 7 days now in defiance of a repressive military regime - have given me my greatest inspiration this year.

I spent a long time staring at this photo hoping again to be inspired. I saw a young man with faith and courage standing in the rain for something he truly believed in. It should have inspired me but it just made me feel sad and humble as the drops of rain turned into the tears of thousands and thousands of people who just couldn’t take it any more.

Burma

Laura of “Hypathia’s Daughter” and “mi otro blog” wins an award for her campaign for maids rights in Peru.

First, I have to explain how the maids are treated in Peru. Unfortunately, because of our colonial inheritance, there are people here who think that some human beings were born to serve and others to be served. It is a complicated matter of race, gender and class. The maids (who have all of these elements: Andean or African heritage, women and from lower classes) are treated pretty badly: they have to wear uniforms that stigmatize them and differentiate them from the rest of the population, they earn almost nothing, live in very bad conditions inside the houses, cannot eat at the table with the employers, in some houses they cannot eat the same food the family eats. In the exclusive beach towns that exist 2 hours from Lima in a district called Asia the maids, besides all of what I just told you, are not allowed to swim before 6pm and have to wear uncomfortable uniforms while taking care of the children who are playing at the beach.

It seems like weeks since I have journeyed through the blogosphere and visited old friends and spaces - here are a few posts I thought of mentioning.

I read this post on No Longer At Ease which provides a reality check into what ordinary people want and what they think of democracy.

But what do the people of Hong Kong really want?. A BBC reporter asked one of the people of Hong Kong what he thinks:

Across the lane, Ming Chan was crouched over his flower stall, preparing an extravagant bouquet of purple flowers. He too was cynical.

“In the past, if you were poor, you could work hard and get on”, he said. “That’s not true any more. In today’s Hong Kong, you’ve got to be educated, a middle class professional. Not an uneducated entrepreneur.”

So what about democracy, I asked. He laughed. “Democracy? The poor don’t want a vote, we all want a better life”. “As for democracy”, he added, “we barely know what the word means.”

On a related topic, Annansi Chronicles wonders about the role of Africa’s billionaires in the scramble for Africa’s resources and where do they get their money from?

While this means there is more African representation in Robert Frank’s Richistan, many of us in lower to not-even-close Richistan, are beginning to ask even more questions about what role Africans play in the scramble for Africa’s resources. A BIG question raised in the conversation about African billionaires on Forbes’ list was, where are those billionaires getting their money?

An awful disturbing story from AfroMusing on the rape of a small baby in Kenya. Lucy is being cared for by the Nest home in Limuru, Kenya. As Afro says, her story is not comfortable reading but we still need to read it. For details on how to support Lucy see Afro’s blog.

Exhausting day - so much so Robtel and I missed the 8pm showing of the film Bamako at the Africa Tent - I really wanted to see this film but my legs were not cooperating - by the time we got back to my hotel room we crashed out and woke up after 8 so that was that. Great opening day -the Africa Tent is the coolest place to be literally as it has AC! Besides us at Fahamu, Trans Africa Forum, Priority Africa Network, UCLA Africa Studies Programme and the AFSC Southerland Institute. There is a buzz in the Tent and I get the feeling that it will be a success with a host of workshops planned and a special focus on Darfur. Also a couple of more films will be shown over the next couple of days which I will not miss - “Have you Heard From Johannesburg? Apartheid & the Club of the West” is on tomorrow evening.

A large African American and Latino presence and from what I could see I would say housing and immigration are two big issues and Iraq of course.

Ok so on to the opening day fun stuff - the march - brilliant despite the intense heat of marching at 2pm in Atlanta BUT it was a privilege to march along side 10 - 15,000 dedicated activists from across the US - real ordinary everyday people - just knowing these people exist and are committed is one hell of an uplift.

The serious work starts tomorrow but meanwhile here are some are some photos - I will try and get some video edited up by tomorrow evening

The Africa Tent

Fourth World

One Woman Protest

Those Damn Walls

More Photos

Tags: US Social Forum; Social Justice;