Freedom...invisible or indivisible?

Today, I want to write about freedom. There's been so much talk of it lately, this being the final day that Nelson Mandela's body rests "in state" before being taken to his childhood village of Qunu. Listening to an NPR report this morning, the local Mayor, a woman, talks about how place shapes a person. The humble beginnings of this gentle giant of a global leader can be found here, but also in all the humble lives he touched, including mine. I opened his auto-biography, "The Long Walk to Freedom" a few days ago and fell on the chapter, The Black Pimpernel, where he recalls living as an invisible man in Johannesburg to escape the police state: 

... Living underground requires a seismic psychological shift. One has to plan every action, however small and seemingly insignificant. Nothing is innocent. Everything is questioned. You cannot be yourself; you must fully inhabit whatever role you have assumed. In some ways, this is not much of an adaptation for a black man in South Africa. Under apartheid, a black man lived a shadowy life between legality and illegality, between openness and concealment. To be a black man in South Africa meant not to trust anything, which was not unlike living underground for one's entire life....  The key to being underground is to be invisible. Just as there is a way to walk in a room in order to make yourself stand out, there is a way of walking and behaving that makes you inconspicuous. As a leader, one often seeks prominence; as an outlaw, the opposite is true. When underground I did not walk as tall or stand as straight. I spoke more softly, with less clarity and distinction. I was more passive, more unobtrusive; I did not ask for things, but instead let people tell me what to do. I did not shave or cut my hair. My most frequent disguise was as a chauffeur, a chef, or a "garden boy." I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car and I wore a chauffeur's cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master's car.

To walk "not as tall," or "stand not as straight," to not seek the limelight as a leader, to "speak softly,"  this I think is the Mandela example of freedom, a kind of invisible freedom. His 27 years in prison, his emergence into a world in tumult and transition, his absolute committment to reconciliation, these were beautiful lessons for me and my work as a young filmmaker and activist. 

Like many of my colleagues and friends, I can remember the exact place I was when he made that long walk to freedom, stepping out of a cell and onto the world stage. I was on a very tall ladder, painting the walls of a studio in the Brewery in downtown Los Angeles as partial, bartered payment for some work the owner of this studio had done on my film, UNCOMMON GROUND. I climbed down off the ladder, and sat alone in the vast emptiness of the studio, listening to Mandela's words and the chanting of the crowd. Tears flowed through this ridiculous smile I had, staring at my paint-stained hands, as I felt something enter that room...Hope? Reassurance? And I remembered all the beautiful moments we had, filming Uncommon Ground in Grahamstown, South Africa, where young people everywhere were flush with the fever of change. It was 1990, and black South Africans would still not have the right to vote for five more years, but the kids in Grahamstown, many of whom had fought in the underground Youth ANC league, well, they just knew it was coming. They had what Mandela had all those years in incarceration...a notion of freedom that is indivisible. They had faith.

Now, 24 years later, my mind is on Syria. Unlike South Africa's liberation struggle, when the world turned its attention towards the dismantling of apartheid with university campus sit-ins and corporate divestment campaigns, cultural boycotts, prayer vigils and diplomatic pressures, the world seems to be turning away from Syria. The mounting humanitarian crisis, with a documented 120,000 killed, 160,00 detained and over 2 million refugees outside the country and 6.5 million displaced within, it is arguably at neo-genocidal proportions, and still there is no sign of a solution...nor any sign of international outrage. Where are the mass protests and campus sit-ins for Syria? 

While Assad and his Iranian/Hezbollah/Russian supporters square off with the Jihadist hijackers of the Syrian uprising, the voice of the secularist Syrian people has been silenced. It seems U.S. foreign policy is more preoccupied with nuclear detente in Iran than massive human torture and death in Syria, what the brilliant Asli U Bali, an international human rights lawyer, refers to as "loss of a moral calculus." When it comes to Syria, it seems our world leaders have turned away from the legacy of Mandela and the lessons of South Africa. The quiescence of the international community on Syria is held at a terrible price: both sides are free to carry out more atrocities, the latest just three days ago in a Damascus suburb of Nabk, (reports of which I could only find in Arab news) when pro-government forces heavily shelled the area killing 40 civilians, mostly women and children. Further fragmentation of rebel factions and the increasing influence of outsider radical Islamists also targetting the Free Syrian Army only serve to strengthen Assad's position.

Qunu. Nabk. One village prepares to bury a beloved icon of peace while the world looks on, and another buries countless victims of an unending war, as the world looks away.

So while I am no longer painting studios to subsidize my life as a filmmaker, I need to go back to that empty space. I need to sit quietly and come to terms with this world out of balance, where the values of dignity, democracy, social justice and yes, freedom still matter. And as much as they may be invisible now, they are still indivisible. Like the eponymous Mandela, his absurdly tall bronze statue towering over Johannesburg's posh Standton shopping center, I have to remember where he came from. 

His humble beginnings in Qunu, coupled with so many tragedies like Nabk, really teach me the true meaning of Freedom. A long walk, a kind word, a quiet patience and steadfast belief. Yes, it's hard to find faith.

Until you read the story of Soundos, the 10-year old Syrian girl who was shot in the head by Assad's government snipers, and miraculously still lives, two years later, with the bullet still lodged in her brain. And guess what? Her father's name is Fatih... go ahead. Switch the letters around and what does it spell?

A Little Taste of Syria

A LITTLE TASTE OF SYRIA

There’s a sweet little market down the street from where I live on Jackson Avenue in Culver City, California, aptly named, Jackson Market.  Tucked between two duplexes on a residential street, it’s oddly incongruous for the area, but I’m told it was once a feed store for the livestock that served the grand Haciendas that once made up the verdant La Ballona Valley, now known as Culver City. Long before MGM Studios and the infamous backlots where Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz were shot, Mexican soldados accompanying Spanish explorers obtained land grants to settle and cultivate the land here, living somewhat peaceably beside the original inhabitants, the Native Tongva-Gabrieliños.

So Jackson Market holds a lot of history between its walls. It seems fitting, somehow that this little landmark is now owned by a Syrian.

I’ll call him Tony (he asked that his real name not be used for security reasons). Tony and his brother bought the market about the same time I bought my house up the street. I watched them transform what had become a rather rundown, utilitarian convenience store into a charming, popular oasis for Panini sandwiches, ice cream, fine wine, and what I found impossible to resist: home-baked red velvet cupcakes.

In the just over ten years that Tony has been running the place, I have watched Jackson Market literally blossom, as he planted more and more flowers outside, added breakfast crepes to the weekend menu, and built a trellis-adorned courtyard in the back, beguiling his customers with the smell of jasmine and a cascading water fountain.  If you didn’t know any better, you might as well have been eating at some French country cafe. During lunchtime on any given weekday, the place is packed.

As Obama stares down the barrel of world opinion on whether or not to launch a military strike on Syria in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad’s unleashing chemical weapons on his own people, I found myself wanting to learn more about Tony’s story. We sit inside his office, paintings of ancient Syrian towns on one wall, and hi-tech DJ turntables and speakers stashed against another, he tells me today is his forty-fourth birthday. We watch the end of Obama’s speech together on CNN… “I know well we are weary of war—we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military…there are ancient sectarian differences, which will take many years to resolve. We are not contemplating putting our troops in the middle of someone else’s war. But we are the United States of America, we cannot turn a blind eye to what has happened…” Deciding to wait for Congress to vote, Obama sidesteps the decision to strike, for now.

Forty-four years ago Tony was born in Damascus, where he still has family. Until last year, he had been traveling back and forth to Syria and Lebanon to help run the family business, a factory just outside Damascus that manufactured calcium carbonate, one of the main ingredients in house paint. Tony’s family is Sunni, which makes up about 80% of Syria today.

“Sunni’s have always been treated very poorly, as second-class citizens. All the government offices and major political positions are held by Aliwites. We moved to California because the life there was difficult for us, and my older brother wanted to be a doctor. He wasn’t able to get into medical school there, as things were closed to Sunni’s.”

For decades, the Alawites controlled the country, first under the brutal Hafez al-Assad, (who launched his own massacre on Sunnis in 1982 in Hama, crushing a rebellion that killed over 20,000 people), before his son, ironically a doctor, Bashar Al-Assad took over in 1994. Initially seen as a reformer, he was to repeat a similar attack in Hama in 2012 that has escalated into a massive civil war that has taken the lives of over 100,000 Syrians.

Tony explains how most Sunnis in Syria could never hope to rise above their peasant-class status, and were relegated to a life of hardship.  “There was so much corruption. I remember, at our factory, government officials came to paint on our walls, YES TO ASSAD and we had to pay for the paint! There was a billboard across the road with this huge image of him, and they came to us and said we have to light the sign at night. And I kid you not, we had to run a wire from our factory and pay the electricity to light up Assad!”

The thing you notice immediately about Tony, reflected in the vibrant, personalized touches of his market is his effusive friendliness. He’s always joking with his employees, and has this boundless energy. When he threw a block party to thank his customers for ten years of business, he barbecued steaks for us. Later, he told me he remembered as a boy how hard it was for Sunnis to even buy meat.   

“The whole thing started because in this town called Dara’a, a group of boys, the youngest I think was ten… ten years old (!)  wrote graffiti on a public wall critical of Assad. I mean they were inspired by Tunisia and the Arab Spring, they were too young to realize practicing free speech was forbidden. And for this they were arrested, tortured, their fingernails were pulled out.  Their parents and the locals got very upset, and it grew from there.”

For most Syrians, and clearly for Tony, family is everything. His market has a distinctly family-run feel. His employees stay, his customers are local regulars, and he’ll go to any lengths to stock something you request. During those back-and-forth trips to Syria that abruptly stopped this year due to security concerns, I would often see little reminders of his homeland: olive oil soap, handmade jewelry, Lebanese wine. One morning, having run out of milk for my coffee, I walked my dog to the market. I was surprised to see a distinguished looking old man in a crumpled suit, dozing in the early morning sun at one of the two tables Tony had set up by the front windows.  I was later told this was Tony’s father, the family patriarch, who had been brought back from Syria for his safety. He was suffering from a long-term illness, which severely damaged his vocal chords, so he has difficulty speaking. I couldn’t help wondering what this man, given his personal history and his forced decades-long silence might have said if he could.

Tony told me his father worked in the oil fields in northern Syria. He later went to Cal Poly and became an engineer, and began selling emulsifiers and corrosion inhibitors to the oil companies. “A lot of eyes were on him because he was making money and he was Sunni. His life was definitely in danger. It was a big secret. Later I found out other Sunnis who did this were thrown off buildings and decapitated…”

Tony himself was jailed briefly last year, when he was stopped in Damascus for driving with an international drivers’ license, even though he is now a U.S. citizen. He was told he needed a Syrian driver’s license because he was “Syrian.”

I asked him what he saw in Syria’s future, and he shrugged. “Bush kinda ruined it for everybody…he scared everybody into going to war again. This falsifying of reasons and fake war is ruining the Middle East, when war becomes a huge lie. Syria is saying Biden is just like Colin Powell, a front man for all the lies” referring to Assad’s denial of the chemical weapon attack.

Unlike some of my leftist friends and the pundits on Democracy NOW, (“I love her voice” Tony shyly admits, referring to Amy Goodman)…Tony is all for the U.S. to intervene, but he cautions:

“They should have gone in there two years ago, and we would never be here.” He believes the answer is to get rid of the regime, but it’s beyond complicated now. He worries about the futility of a limited strike. We both agree the idea is absurd…how does one put “limits” on any kind of bomb? It’s like saying you can actually measure destruction in some scientific way. Try telling that to the now over 2 million Syrian refugees. Try explaining the concept of “pre-emptive or punitive” to the terrified new citizenry of entire cities bursting the desert seams of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq. In the largest of these camps, Za’atari, the population is roughly that of Santa Clara, California. As the West flexes its war rhetoric muscle and as Congress plies the partisan line to its debate, try telling the two thousand babies born in Za’atari to an uncertain future, the difference between action and inaction.

“There are all kinds of fighters converging on Syria now—Hezbellohs coming from Lebanon. Iran, China and Russia behind Assad. When Hezbollah came, Al Qaeda came to assist the Syrian Liberation Front…its depressing--its going to become a war not of the people of Syria, but of the world.”

He stops to rush out to greet some guests who have come to help him celebrate his birthday. I sit on his plush green velvet couch and stare at his collection of albums, wondering what kind of music he listens to at night, when the memories get to be too much. I think of all the ways in which Tony worked hard to bring beauty to his establishment: planting, watering, making countless smoked turkey paninis, treating Sony film executives with the same care and compassion as the skinny drug addict who sits on a curb at the intersection, talking to herself. I’ve seen him offer free food countless times.   

“You know, my Dad told me one time one thing—my end is in my country.

He meant it. He left a lot of hope for us there. My family helped to build Syria.  He was the engineer that built the giant windmill in Hama. He wasn’t interested in politics. He was interested in bringing technology to Syria. He just wanted things to work.”

He stops, interrupted by the laughter of his friends outside.

“He would bring us back sweets—cream of wheat little balls stuffed with condensed milk, I had some here for a while…it was so great. That’s the taste I remember.”

That’s the Syria Tony will probably never taste again.

ON LOSS AND YARD SALES

Today, I want to write about loss. I have been thinking a lot about this, since GlobalGirl had its first official yard sale recently, and I parted with a lot of little detritus from my past…things I once cherished that now seemed empty of their meaning, or personal association: a cigar-smoking female figurine from Cuba, a box full of old sound cables, some Howlin’ Wolf CDS, and lots, lots, lots of books. I LOVE books.  How does this happen? How does a person we love with abandon, suddenly seem so distant, or a passion say, for date squares suddenly replace your craving for brownies instead? Here’s a great date square recipe, by the way.

As I write this, four people have just been shot and killed about 5 miles from where I live on the campus of Santa Monica College, by a lone gunman. One woman was shot point-blank at the intersection of Cloverfield and Pico, another man while sitting in his SUV in a parking lot.

Loss. Of life, Of meaning. How do we cope? Only last week I was at Santa Monica College with Ebonee, our Office Manager, having a meeting with the fabulous feminist maverick and writer, Melanie Klein, @feminist fatale on twitter.

Melanie and I were discussing this then...how women are so naturally inclined to be lifers, givers of life, the perpetual upbeat, look to-the-light-type of tribe. But lately, with all this “lean in” hysteria, (apparently Cheryl Sandburg's book is the number one gift for female college grads) I wonder: what are we leaning AWAY from? Avoiding… getting rid of to stay positive?

Here at GlobalGirl Media we waited and waited for one of our star reporters, Manto from South Africa to get a passport so she could attend our Chicago World Summit. South African Home Affairs stalled, and she can’t come. She is devastated, and so are we. But we are thrilled we are hosting one girl from each of our projects to attend a week-long summit, sponsored by the Harnisch Foundation and the OpEd Project, whose mission it is “to increase the range of voices and quality of ideas we hear in the world.  A starting goal is to increase the number of women thought leaders in key commentary forums to a tipping point.” I think of Manto, with five siblings she supports because her mother’s paltry salary can’t feed them all, dreaming of coming to Chicago, then something blocks her that is out of her control. And she feels the loss. We all do.

I try and explain to her that there will be other opportunities, to not quit on us because she is angry (and rightly so). How can I also explain my own devastation that this girl thinks a trip to Chicago is going to solve the horrifying poverty she lives in and/or the stifling bureaucratic government ineptitude and corruption that continues to eclipse her dreams? She was the one, when I visited recently who interviewed her fellow GlobalGirls on Freedom Day, the day they celebrate when Blacks finally got their right to vote in South Africa (you’ll be shocked to remember it was only in 1994). She chastised her friends when they all scoffed at trudging to the polls: “Isn’t this your own democracy, your own responsibility?” she asked.  Here she is, interviewing her peers.

Another loss we are inevitably facing, the loss of "Madiba," or Mandela, who is hospitalized and critically ill. He was the inspiration behind most of my work as a filmmaker. My first film UNCOMMON GROUND was shot in Grahamstown, South Africa the year he was released from prison. I will never forget the swell of my emotions when I watched him take "the long walk" to freedom, surrounded by waves of jubilant South Africans. Such a short few decades ago, there was so much hope. Now, with South Africa on the brink of economic and spiritual collapse-- just read the latest on how its becoming the rape capital of the world in this Sunday's NY Times--I wonder how to bear the brunt of all this brutality.

Loss, and how we deal with it.  Loss of a senior statesman who did more for restoring faith to the world than perhaps any contemporary leader, yet his vision has been so sullied, nearly forgotten. Loss of faith, loss of dreams, loss of momentum, loss of self-respect.

Well, here’s my answer: you look for the things that DIDN’T sell in the yard sale.

The stuff you collect to give away at Salvation Army after its over, or maybe not. 

Maybe you save them. You carry these items gently in your arms back inside your house and place them back on the shelf.

What if we were able to have emotional yardsales, and clear out our brains and hearts from all the disappointments, the let-downs, the overwhelming “what-the-f?” is happening to this world, when a gunman shoots a woman in the street, or hacks a man to death with a cleaver, when a beloved world leader passes away, along with his world vision?

Maybe you cling to this: according to a recent article in the Washington Post, throughout the Muslim world, women are giving birth at a much lower rate than before. Does this mean that, despite the sweeping securalist attacks on women's rights post-Arab Spring, they are actually standing up and claiming their sexual and reproductive rights?  

Bono and the fine folks at one.org recently released information that prove we are actually winning the war on poverty, with the stunning statistic that 7,256 childrens' lives are being saved daily thanks to programs that are working. In his Ted talk, he encourages us to become FACTIVISTS. I love that.

I'm going to become a FACTIVISTA...facing loss with the facts. 

Right after I hit a few yard sales.

OSCARS, WOMEN AND OUR OWN RED CARPET

Writing this the morning after. Hungover from Oscar disgust and fatigue: where once again, women, people of color and the poor are relegated to the gallery of the absurd. And the final twist: our own Michelle Obama, flanked by staff in military, presenting Best Picture to Argo. Now, just because I'm dating a Persian guy and have a kind of inside track to how the Persian community is feeling about this, I still want to quote something I read this morning on my FB:

"I would like to think, in the ideal world of ART, politics would have no meddling power!

Is Argo really that great of a movie, to be picked as the best picture?!!! 
Or is it just another way of portraying the unknown Eastern world for Westerners, the way it has been done for decades?!!!  And wow, what a coincidence that the first lady should announce this victory--flanked by young men and women in military dress?"

In the First Lady's plea for more funding for the arts for kids, I couldn't help thinking about the countless, nameless artists killed, tortured or incarcerated for their work against regimes we supported or looked the other way: Think: Chilean musician Victor Jara,  Bassel Al Shahade, a Syracuse Film student recently killed in Syria, and my own dear friend, the poet/author Philo Ikonya, the Kenya PEN-Chapter President, self-exiled to Norway after being beaten and tortured in a Kenyan prison last year for speaking out about political corruption and women's rights. 

I don't want to lob the tiresome complaint about the number of women nominated this year ( the roster of 2013 nominees includes 140 men and just 35 women), but what's the point of counting anymore? It's a tiresome refrain. I like to look at the power behind the powerless...I guess its no surprise to anyone that the Academy voters are overwhelmingly white and male...77% according to a 2012 LA Times report and 90% in some categories like special efx and cinematography. Of the academy's 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.

So maybe its time to look at ANOTHER red carpet:

The one we are rolling out at GlobalGirl Media. I am so proud of our very own Wendy Garcia, who less than 24 hours prior to the Oscars, took home her own award as part of the national Connecther video contest, celebrating "stories about girls worth telling." Here she is with her certificate and well-deserved grin. 

Yes, we need more government money for the arts, but we also need a stronger commitment to gender and racial equity in the arts. If its only white men choosing who wins and the winners next projects get green-lit...and we have an entire Gay Men's Chorus singing songs like "We Saw your Boobs," as part of the opening ceremony of one of the most watched television events globally, (how many of those actresses were portraying rape victims?)...how is this funny? The way Seth MacFarlane presented it, teeing it up as a tasteless joke, the whole point was to laugh, NOT find it tasteless, masogynistic or just crudely cruel. 

I think Amy Davidson said it best, in her New Yorker blog: Beyond cameos and torture, the ceremony engaged in a political fight involving women, and took the dumber side. Movies, and what women do in and to them, are better than the Academy seemed to realize. The same could be said about a lot of women in a lot of jobs. And women can’t forget it.