An incovenient truth

A couple of nights ago, I finally rented An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary about global warming. Ironically, in the January issue of Texas Monthly we see that there is a huge article about Texas building a slew of new coal-powered power plants. I am sure glad I live inland. My property values are sure to rise when so much of the densely populated coasts go under water. Of course, that depends on whether or not my part of Texas will be breathable for allergy suffers like myself or if brains will be slowly poisoned by the high levels of mercury emissions that will be spewed forth by some of these plants.

Of course, the article was pretty balanced and talked about the new technology that would make these plants cleaner than previous generations, but the fact remains that they won't be clean enough. Just last week an ice shelf the size of Manhattan broke off Greenland and has begun its melt into the oceans of our planet. Yikes.

You don't have to be a fan of Al Gore to follow the science that he presents to us. You can fast-forward through his sad, navel-gazing political defeat sequence. But watch the science and turn off your lights. Use less electricity. Do something.

Even the fossil-fuel loving Bush administration has recently listed the polar bear as the first species endangered by global warming. Some even drown trying to get to ice thick enough to stand on. This was highlighted in Gore's film. Now, it has been acknowledged by a Republican administration. This is not a liberal or a conservative issue. This is a human issue. We all need to be informed and we need to do our part.

Nonetheless, as soon as the prices of gasoline dipped back below $3.00 a gallon, Americans went back to buying their SUVs to tool around suburbia. The average size of new homes continues to increase as family sizes among non-immigrant households, remain small. God save us from ourselves. But remember. God helps them who help themselves.

Immigration Detention Centers--What gives?

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a report on KUT, the local NPR affiliate about an immigration detention center in Taylor, Texas, just outside of Austin that was housing whole families--including children. I can remember being upset at what I heard; the facility it seemed was basically a jail with another name, but I was driving and I didn't have a way to jot down information. It stayed at the back of my mind, however, and then last night my husband and I went out to dinner at the local tacaria (a taco restaurant for those of you not from the region). On my way in, I picked up the last copy of ahora si, a local Spanish language newspaper published in association with the Austin American Statesman, the main Austin daily. Ahora si is a weekly, and this issue was dated 21 al 27 de deciembre de 2006.

In the paper was an article entitled "Grupos subrayan dificultades de familias inmigrantes encarceladas en Taylor", which translates to "Groups underline difficulties of immigrant families incarcerated in Taylor". Immediately, I thought back to the KUT report and began reading the article. The plus side, if there is one, is that the children are being kept with their families to avoid breaking the families apart and placing children in the care of the state. Laudable. Now having done some research, I am aware that in other parts of the country, there are children in foster care and group homes, while their parents face deportation proceedings, which we know, lamentably, can be lengthy to say the least.

But, this situation in Taylor does not seem a whole lot more favorable. The article states that the children are given an hour a day of English lessons and an hour a day of recreation. I thought it was the norm for hardened criminals convicted of violent felonies to receive an hour a day of recreation. And what about the rest of the schooling that these children are supposed to receive? The article states that many children are losing weight and that many of the "detainees" suffer from head aches and emotional distress, but are not provided with psychological services.

We can go 'round and 'round on whether or not illegal immigrants should be detained, but as I have written before, children are not responsible for their families decisions to immigrate to the United States, either legally or illegally. And let's say that after all the legal issues have been ironed out, that these children are eventually deported with their parents to countries they may no longer remember. What image of the United States will they be taking with them? I thought we were trying to limit the number of enemies and potential terrorists, not to increase them. Even if forced return to the detention centers to sleep, couldn't the kids go to school? Couldn't they interact with children who live more normal lives?

I also noted that the facility in Taylor is run by a for-profit company called the Corrections Corporation of America, which further research on the web led me to know runs others of these centers across the country. This corporation was, as its name suggests, originally formed to run prisons, which it still does. One can understand a for-profit company, especially one designed and organized to deal with violent criminals, not being concerned first and foremost with the education and emotional well-being of children.

According to an article published by The Progressive on April 18, 2006, KBR, a subsidiary of the infamous Halliburton, has recently won an contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to build more of these immigrant detention centers. As most readers remember, Halliburton is the former company of Vice President Dick Cheney and it and its subsidiary, KBR, are under investigation for bilking our country out of millions in Iraq. I would be quite surprised to find that Halliburton is concerned foremost with the education and emotional well-being of children, either.

The number of detained immigrants in this country has risen from 6, 785 in 1994 to more than 22,000 in 2006 according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union published in the Ahora si article, which also reported that Michael Chertoff, head of the Department for Homeland Security says that plans are indeed in place for more of the family detention centers to be opened in this country.

From across the web, I found more and more frightening reports of people be held, some for years, in government sponsored detention centers awaiting action on their cases or impending deportations. Many have filed asylum claims. Many are legal residents with green cards who have been picked up for or who have served time for very routine offenses--including traffic stops for broken taillights. Some have been legal residents for decades and have few if any ties to the countries they will likely be deported to. I can only assume that some illegals immigrants are in these detention centers for actual dangerous crimes and should be deported post haste, but I pity the guy with the broken taillight locked up with those guys.

I also read a disturbing account in the People's Weekly World, written by Paul Hill, of a Nigerian man being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Oklahoma City. In his article, "Lifting the Curtain: Immigrant Detention Centers in U.S.", Mr. Hill tells how Mr. Daso Abibo, 51, while shackled, was assaulted and tortured by six federal Homeland Security Deportation Officers. A woman, Deanna Burdine, 65, happened upon the attack and feared he had been killed. She reported the incident. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Burdine was fired and Mr. Abibo was deported. The situation in the Oklahoma City facility is now under investigation by the FBI.

The Oklahoma City center is under the direction of a department of the United States government. I fear what abuses may come to pass under the direction of "rent a cops" and their for profit bosses. From all I can glean thus far Mr. Abibo was not in a "family facility", but that should not give us much comfort, because as these are not U.S. citizens, the whole issue has not gotten the attention it deserves. Until light is shown on problem, little will change.

What gives?

They are our neighbors, too

Normally, I tend to gravitate towards Latin American affairs when I am following international politics and events. Even when I am looking at domestic topics, I tend to focus on immigration, much of it from our neighbors to the south. As a speaker of Spanish and Portuguese, and having lived in Latin America, it makes sense. In fact, tomorrow I will probably be back to the immigration debate, but today, I want to focus on another region of the world--Africa

The continent has been in the news again as Ethiopia has bombed its neighbor Somalia, that tragic war-torn country that seems ever more to be under the grip of the next batch of Islamic radicals. The United States, with its ever-dwindling strength and world influence, is backing Ethiopia, a country with a largely christian population, which has faced attacks and growing hostility from Somalia in recent months. Add to this Eritrea, who seems destined to get in on the fight, because, why the hell not? It is more complicated than that, of course, but to sum it up, "The Horn of Africa" is one tough neighborhood. Now, it is the next front on the War on Terror, as Al-Queda is suspected to be backing the Somali Islamic faction, which aims at setting up a Taliban-styled regime in this poor, blood-stained African country.

What we will be able to do with our troops already stretched thin in Iraq remains to be seen. Only a time machine seems to be able to save that fiasco. But we can't go back in time and our resources are there.

And God help the people who live in this region. While their governments and armies fight, what will happen to the people? The children, the few elderly who have managed to grow elderly? We in the West are aware of the horrific famines that periodically sweep this region and cruelly starve huge numbers to miserably long deaths, but what of those that don't die? An article in the New York Times today, "Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa's Future" by Michael Wines, highlights the lingering after-effects of malnutrition. Many of the regions children have stunted growth, are sickly, tired and have IQs so diminished that they cannot even focus on a lesson let alone learn it. In some parts of Ethiopia many of the mothers are so malnourished themselves that they suffer night blindness during their pregnancies and then are unable to produce enough milk to feed their children.

The government of Ethiopia has recently been focused on this problem and is adding nutritional supplements to the food supply. Poor as the country is, it has made great strides considering all that is against it, and its reaction to the problem and the program it has put in place is seen by many as an example for other countries in the region to follow. But now, at war yet again, I fear that the focus on this problem, which threatens the long-term bettering of the country's lot, will be neglected or abandoned all together.

Elsewhere in Africa, the HIV-AIDS scourge continues to wreak havoc on an already vulnerable population, with children, some infected themselves, being orphaned daily. Child slavery and sexual abuse is almost epidemic in some regions of the continent, with desperately poor families unable to protect or support their children. Overstretched and corrupt governments are unable to unwilling to care for their most imperiled citizens.

Where do we begin? We can't even seem to take care of our own citizens--Katrina finally shoved that reality into our faces. But the people of Africa are our neighbors, too. If even the tunnel-visioned Bush administration is willing to pick a dog in one of the continent's fights, then Americans have to sit up and realize that in this global age, we all live in the same neighborhood. You can only hide in your walled communities so long. One way or another, the horrors of the children of Africa will end up on your doorstep.

Like war-torn, impoverished Afghanistan before it, Somalia is ripe for order. Who will deliver it to that country? Al-Queda? Who will stop them? Malnourished children in Ethiopia? AIDS orphans who dropped out of school to care for younger siblings?

We cannot look inward. We must love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Tis the Season

Tis the season for joy and peace and good food and lights and song. Tis the season to evaluate the old year and anticipate the new. Tis the season of the generous heart.

On Christmas Day, I went for a walk in the woods. It had been a few days since I had hiked, because we had had some well-needed rain here in Austin. Some were down on the weather. I normally would have been, too, because when the sun is hiding I normally feel very drowsy, unable to fully wake up. But I had only to think of the thousands of people trapped at the Denver airport for days after far worse weather than what we had experienced, to realize that I, comfortable in my warm home and with my shining tree, had nothing to complain about.

As always, the walk was good for me. My mind seems to expand and see things more clearly in the fresh air. But something else affected me. I was driving home from the woods, listening to All Things Considered on NPR, when an essay by Jimmie Dale Gilmore came on as part of the This I Believe series. Towards the end of the essay, Gilmore quoted an Indian philosopher-poet called Shantideva:

All the joy the world contains/Has come through wishing happiness

for others./All the misery the world contains/Has come through

wanting pleasures for oneself."

I heard this quote and thought, this is what so much in my life has been leading up to.This is what I see day after day in the world. It is something that I have sensed in all my life, but have resisted and in doing so-- tortured myself. I have always had a desire deep within me to change the world for the better. I have also wanted to create and to write and sing and so on--but not so much for myself but for what I can give to others. I liked it very much when people liked what I did, but not so much because I wanted to be so great, but because I wanted to know that I was spreading some joy or some knowledge or adding some value to some one's life.

Every time though, that I spoke to people close to me about pursuing these dreams--I was treated like the crazy dreamer or with worry that I would not be able to support myself or be "successful". Sometimes I would sing for strangers at a party or for my students and they would say, you should do that professionally. Sometimes I would write a newsletter or a funny invitation and someone would tell me I should be a writer. But these were never the people closest to me. These were not those who would have to live with my "success" or "failure".

So I would convince myself that I would be better off working in a bank and wearing nice clothes and aspiring to do all my shopping at SAKS and Bloomingdale's. That is what everyone wanted, no? To succeed would bring me happiness. At first I tried to write. I did often on the subway, but it was poetry and it was in Portuguese and who wanted to read that anyway? I started taking classes in finance and economics at night and then I started an MBA and I had no energy left to write that stuff anymore. I let it go.

But I was not happy. Not completely. Nothing could move quickly enough for me. This success needed to come NOW! Because without the success and the money, the happiness would not come and then what? I had to get out of there. I had to get out of there!

I moved to Texas, I became a teacher, because even though I wasn't going to get rich, there would be job security and there would be health insurance and enough money to take care of myself and plan retirement. Plus, I would be helping people. And I did. And I loved it, but the system is such a mess and there are so many people in it that are worried about job security and health insurance, that you feel like you are spinning your wheels half the time. And you find yourself doing so much paperwork and such that you are exhausted when you get to really helping someone. And then when you do extra things to help students, others tell you to cut back and do less. They never want to help fight the system that relegates meaningful work to the "extra" pile. You know some of them truly care and you know that others of them just don't want you to make them look bad. You have to sort the two out by yourself.

So what do I have to do? I have to stop being afraid. I need to stop listening to everyone who tells me to worry about health insurance more than others' happiness and I need to take a leap of faith. I have to believe that if I write and put out ideas that people will read and that will help them, that I will put goodness into the world. I need to stop worrying so much about providing comforts for myself, because I am not comfortable with them anyway. I need to tap into the talents and the desires that God gave me and go for it.

I have an aunt I love very much, who is still teaching, but who could have retired by now. On the one hand, she does like her job, but she has many other interests, as well, and she was complaining about her new principal and some of the kids in her class. I asked her why she didn't retire. Well, I might if I could really do what I want to do, but it isn't as though I have enough money to really travel or anything, she said.

This particular aunt is married to a man who makes very good money, as well, and has for years. They are not the Gates or the Buffets, but they live in a house worth well over a million dollars and have a second home, a condo, in Vermont. They have retirement savings--more than most. If they don't have the money to "do what they want"? What do they want to do? Who can retire? Is that what I have to look forward to if I manage to deal with my kids and my co-workers for thirty years? More fear? Half the world's population makes it by with one dollar a day. Not that I expect my aunt to, but come on! Get some perspective.

Tis the season for new beginnings. Tis the season for a fresh, joyful outlook. Tis the season to give my gifts to the world and to find happiness rather misery. I don't think we will ever accumulate enough stuff to feel truly safe. So we need to find a way to feel truly happy.