tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1 2008-10-27T14:31:01Z Movable Type 3.35 tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.14 2008-10-27T12:31:48Z 2008-10-27T14:31:01Z

I went early on election day  to vote at the polling station in the church on the cobblestone street in my neighborhood. The lines snaked down the block as neighbors read their morning papers, chatted, visited each other with their...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ I went early on election day  to vote at the polling station in the church on the cobblestone street in my neighborhood. The lines snaked down the block as neighbors read their morning papers, chatted, visited each other with their dogs on leashes and waited to get inside. After I voted, I went to the airport, and before the polls closed, I flew out to Africa.   When I arrived in Amsterdam, the big television screen outside the airport announced that Albert Gore was the next President of the United States.  I went to sleep for a few hours in an airport hotel before my connecting flight. When I awoke, the television announced George Bush was the next President of the United States. I boarded the plane, arrived hours later in Malawi and learned that the United States did not yet have a president.    For the next ten days in Malawi and Ethiopia I attended meetings, visited schools in villages and at every opportunity tried to find a BBC broadcast to let me know who was the next President of the United States.  The local press began to write stories to inform Americans how to conduct an election. The banana republic of the United States of America made people smile as everyone watched all the machinery of government at work as the country tried to sort out its leadership. When I arrived home, there still was no new President.   Indications are that the election of 2008 will not be as close, but it too will be a historic election.  Whoever wins, barriers will fall, and the profile of leadership at the top will change in the United States.  History will only really be made, however, as the sentiments are shed which once barred women, African Americans and others of color from opportunities.   As we’ve watched what has seemed like an endless electoral process over more than 20 months, we have also been watching the country coming to terms with itself and its ideals and its history. The ugliness and slurs that have accompanied part of this election for the most part have been dismissed by the electorate who wants more and insists that we grow up and into our national ideal of all men and women as created equal.   The other day I was discussing with several young voters why this election is so unique. In addition to the specific ground-breaking profiles of an African American and a woman candidate, this election in the U.S. is the first in over 50 years when no candidate is a sitting President or Vice President. The field and the possibilities are wide open.     I plan to stay around this year and watch the returns. In 2004, I was also in Washington, watching the returns with  friends. The lead in that election changed several times. At one point I looked around the room of experienced Washingtonians, many couples in long marriages who worked at senior levels in and outside of government.  I realized that almost every couple in the room had canceled each other’s votes.  When I tell that to friends from other countries, they are always surprised, yet it is more common than one might expect in Washington. For all its partisanship, the city is peopled with professionals who may vote on one side, but in their professional lives work to find ways to cooperate. They understand that for the country to run well, everyone has to work together.    I’m hoping this year, whoever is the victor, he/she will have the benefit of all the citizens in the difficult tasks ahead.  If not, then I’ll look forward to reading the press in other countries to advise us how to do that. tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.13 2008-10-01T02:32:59Z 2008-10-01T18:57:29Z

Nigerian Night The night sky swarmed with pale insects like snow flakes fluttering outside the window of the airplane as it landed at the small airfield in Northern Nigeria. At first they looked like moths, but they were hundreds…thousands of...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ Nigerian Night The night sky swarmed with pale insects like snow flakes fluttering outside the window of the airplane as it landed at the small airfield in Northern Nigeria. At first they looked like moths, but they were hundreds…thousands of grasshoppers diving into the headlights and fuselage of the plane. Were they cruising the night sky, interrupted by our descent, or had the lights and the hum of the airplane drawn them to their end? Inside the terminal a luggage belt creaked as bags were pushed one at a time through a small portal onto a set of rollers. When the lights went out and the terminal fell dark, we waited, but the power didn’t return. One by one cell phones flipped open-- small arcs of light aimed at the weathered belt as the passengers from Lagos searched for their bags. Dragging suitcases behind us, holding cell phones in front of us to light the way, we plunged into the warm night. I was in Nigeria as a board member of Human Rights Watch which held meetings there last year. We spoke with government officials after a dubious presidential election. We met with lawyers and human rights activists and teachers and judges and other members of civil society. See HRW reports on Nigeria. We brought experience, research, and expectations. We gained further experience, laid out the expectations, found bridges and absorbed the cacophony of the night. Tanzanian Morning On the eastern edge of Africa on the coast of Tanzania the sun rises out of the Indian Ocean like a giant topaz transported from the sub-continent. Around the sun the ocean crashes against the rocks on the coast of Dar es Salaam. After breakfast I climb into a four-wheeled drive vehicle to go outside the city to visit schools in the countryside where children and teachers are reading and writing and telling stories in Kiswahili and making books to share with other children in the local language. The Children’s Book Project, started in Tanzania in 1991 and has assisted in bringing hundreds of books to publication, distributed these paperback readers into schools, set up libraries in the schools, and trained teachers and artists on how to write and illustrate books and how to teach with these readers. The schools where the CBP is involved have regularly out-performed many of the schools in the country. In one classroom students perform a story they have read in one of the storybooks. Tabu wa Taire was written by a teacher and tells of a young girl who doesn’t listen to her parents and prefers to play rather than work. One day she wanders too far from home and is captured by a man who puts her inside his drum. Her parents and the village look everywhere for her, but can’t find her until the man comes to their village to play his drum. Someone hears crying from inside the drum, and there the village finds and rescues the girl. The students act out this story for the class and the visitors and end with a celebratory concert on the drum and orange fantas all around. Ugandan Afternoon We drive through the bush along a narrow dirt road, the sun beating on the closed windows, the trees hanging down over the path, crowding the road on both sides so that the 4-wheel drive car is literally pushing back the brush as we plow carefully around the turns, occasionally dodging another car or long-horned cattle who amble across the one-lane road to graze on the other side. We are several hours outside of the capital Kampala and over an hour off the main road, rocking from side to side in the dense undergrowth when suddenly we come to a clearing and a school. The school’s red earthen huts rise from the ground with tin roofs. There are no doors on the huts. There are few books here, and the learning materials hang from the ceilings so that the cows, who can wander in and out of these classrooms, won’t destroy them. This school is for 75 children of pastoralists--families who make their living tending cattle, moving from place to place with their cows looking for grazing lands. The children usually travel with their parents and don’t have an opportunity to go to school. But here in the clearing, on land donated by one of the more successful in the community, a school has been built; the roofs have been donated by the son of one of the wealthier families. Teachers have been recruited and trained by Save the Children. The children in the school are studying in grade levels 1-4 with the hope that the school will be able to add grades as the children grow. Because there is a school, many of these families, at least the women, will stay in the area while the children attend classes. Some of the women are discussing how to keep the cows out of the classrooms. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.11 2008-08-31T14:07:39Z 2008-10-02T15:31:03Z

I’m sitting looking out at the Indian Ocean from the eastern edge of Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It is Labor Day, at least in the U.S., though in the U.S. it is actually still Sunday night; but here...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ I’m sitting looking out at the Indian Ocean from the eastern edge of Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It is Labor Day, at least in the U.S., though in the U.S. it is actually still Sunday night; but here it is morning with billowing white clouds, blue sky, palm trees, sun shining through—the end of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. It took 17 hours of flying and a few hours of waiting in Amsterdam—roughly 20 hours to get here. When I arrived in the hotel room last night and the bellman turned on the TV, the BBC in a pulsating picture and sound was reporting on the approach of Hurricane Gustav to New Orleans and the interruption of the Republican National Convention. Was this important news in Tanzania? It was, in any case, the BBC news, and I was interested but couldn’t help but note how far one can go and still have America follow. Outside the window in the hotel this morning, men are cutting the grass by swinging machetes across the lawn. From a distance it looks as if they are practicing their golf swings, but in the morning sun they are tending to the grass without lawn mowers or power tools. In the following days here and in Uganda I’ll have the opportunity to visit schools and projects where educators and writers are responding to the shortage of books for children, particularly books with stories relevant to the children and books in local languages. This morning I’m aware of the stories we carry with us, the narrative in our heads wherever we go, the power of this narrative in shaping our lives and the importance of listening to the stories of others and opening up the narrative. “Once upon a time in a place where the sun usually shines and the winds blow through the palm trees, there is a little girl who lives on the edge of the Indian Ocean, and every morning when she wakes up, she….” tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.10 2008-07-31T14:00:57Z 2008-10-02T15:30:36Z

This past Sunday in the late summer afternoon with a thunder and lightning storm at two, then blue sky and sun by four, we held a small family barbecue to welcome home from Africa the daughter of a good friend...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ Advancement of Girls Education—AGE). Our friend’s daughter had brought back a bundle of glass bead jewelry—blue and brown beads, black, red and white beads, etched beads, green and yellow beads, and red, white and blue beads all strung together in an array of bracelets and necklaces--as well as brightly colored children’s clothing, all of which she spread out on the table. She is selling these and will send the proceeds back to the refugees and the surrounding community; she’s also raising funds for at least one high school scholarship for a young man who helped her during her stay at the refugee camp. ]]> Peace Corps as an agency set out to assist underdeveloped countries meet their needs for trained man/woman power. I was recently told by a young military officer that today we need an additional Peace Corps on Steroids because while the military can provide security, it can’t accomplish the necessary reconstruction in the countries. Instead there needs to be a civilian corps committed to work in dangerous areas and assist in rebuilding, along with those in the societies. Today the globe is connected as few could have imagined even a decade ago, but this shrinking of the world has not yet shrunk the problems though it has opened up possibilities and a global dialogue. What is the responsibility of the current generation in this eventual hand off? A rather weighty question for a blog, I admit, but if anyone wants to offer a thought, I’d love to hear. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.9 2008-06-16T18:42:32Z 2008-10-02T15:30:07Z

Since April I’ve been back on the Potomac River, sculling in the rushing waters after the spring rains, dodging logs and flotsam flowing downstream from Great Falls and beyond. I’ve been pressing into the middle of the river on hot,...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ Since April I’ve been back on the Potomac River, sculling in the rushing waters after the spring rains, dodging logs and flotsam flowing downstream from Great Falls and beyond. I’ve been pressing into the middle of the river on hot, sultry days in June when barely a breeze stirs the air, though the current still hurries beneath the boat. I’ve been rowing beside much larger sculls from the universities, dodging the wake of the speed boats which cruise along beside the Viking-size crafts as coaches shout instructions. In my small white scull I’ve tried to hear what they call and emulate the grace and power of the collegiate oarsmen and women. Facing forward, watching the landscape recede as I move backwards, I’ve been thinking about the past even as I plunge into the future. This perspective of the rower, driving headlong towards what he can’t see except for quick glimpses over his shoulder, is a useful one to master. No Marble Angels and The Dark Path to the River. Many of the short stories in No Marble Angels are set during the Civil Rights era—the Nashville sit-ins, the Little Rock school integration, the aftermath of the ’68 riots in the cities. It was a time when ordinary citizens took extraordinary actions. It’s easy to romanticize the times, but the consequence of many of those actions changed our laws and our lives and opened up our society. The future grew out of the clarity of purpose of those who could glance over their shoulders and press towards the future even as they had to face the restrictions of their present day. As the U.S. moves into its next era—whatever that may eventually be called—one hopes it will be a period of national and international Rights Realized. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.8 2008-05-28T22:59:04Z 2008-10-02T15:28:56Z

On June 4 China will face the 19th anniversary of the killing of citizens occupying Tiananmen Square. Nineteen years ago as president of PEN USA, I remember well sorting through dozens of unfamiliar Chinese names as we sought to untangle...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ On June 4 China will face the 19th anniversary of the killing of citizens occupying Tiananmen Square. Nineteen years ago as president of PEN USA, I remember well sorting through dozens of unfamiliar Chinese names as we sought to untangle what writers had been arrested. Today there are at least 42 writers imprisoned in China. I wake up 22 stories in the air. Most of Hong Kong is in the air with thousands of high rises shooting into the sky. I’m in a cubicle—two small beds pressed against each wall, a tiny shelf between, a TV mounted on the wall at the foot of one bed. At the head of the bed is a large window so the room is airy and looks out on other windows in the sky. I wake in the middle of the night because of jet lag and then again early in the morning before the sun rises. I turn on the TV whose screen flashes the financial news of Hong Kong—the major world indices, Hong Kong currency exchange rates, global gold prices, Hong Kong stock market prices, statistics on which the financial world relies, accompanied by jazz and elevator music. The only news channel on this hotel TV is the Chinese Broadcasting Company from the mainland; it broadcasts the mainland government’s view of the news. ]]> freedom of expression symposium: One Dream: Free Expression in China, sponsored by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, International Federation of Journalists, World Association of Newspapers, PEN, Reporters Sans Frontieres, and others. In its bid for the Olympic Games, China promised to open media access in the year running up to the games. The conference is assessing that promise; the continued arrests of writers indicate the promise has not been fulfilled. Our colleague, the General Secretary of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, was detained at the airport and not allowed into Hong Kong even though he holds a Chinese passport, even though Hong Kong is supposed to be the freer arm of China. Other writers from the mainland were kept out at the border between China and Hong Kong. As light dawns through the window, I watch 17 Buddhist monks in bright orange jackets sentenced for their alleged role in the disturbances in Tibet; their actions, the report says, threatened the peace and prosperity of China. I watch a report of Chinese President Hu Jintao meeting with Taiwan’s Honorary Chairman. The commentator explains these two men, sitting stiffly on large white chairs, are discussing the peace and prosperity of China. This orderly, stylized version of life, this peace and prosperity promoted by the news, contrasts with the bustle and chaos on the streets below where the lanes and avenues are filled with honking and shouting, with people, rickshaws, cars, bikes, with stores, food stalls, neon lights, electric wires strung everywhere. On the ground is the commotion of a city overgrown and rising higher and higher into the air. But on TV the government spins the news until it is a confection floating above reality on the ground. I consider the spinning that goes on in my own country—to some extent in most countries when governments and politicians offer their version of events. But an important difference is the multiple points of views citizens can hear, the independence and variety of those views, the freedom citizens have to write, report and even spin the news themselves differently than the government, and the right they have to choose. * * * * * Ten days after I leave Hong Kong, a major earthquake shatters the Sichuan province on the mainland. The authorities order websites to delete postings on the disaster and detain activists who question the government’s response. A number of Chinese journalists ignore the orders that ban direct reporting and go to the sites. Finally media is allowed in, at least some media. But one writer Guo Quan, Assistant Professor at Nanjing Normal University, is detained for his articles criticizing the government’s response and questioning the safety of certain structures, including nuclear facilities nearby. Another writer, Chen Daojun, was arrested three days before the earthquake and charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for an article criticizing the building of a chemical plant in Pengzhou, just 39 km away from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province where the earthquake shattered buildings and threatened those very nuclear facilities, including fuel processing and weapons plants. The last article Guo Quan posted online before he was picked up urged the government to release information about the safety of nuclear facilities in the aftermath of the quake, but the damage to these high security installations still has not been fully reported. For more information about freedom of expression in China and how to assist writers in prison in China you can link to International PEN’s China Campaign and the We Are Ready for Free Expression Campaign. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.7 2008-04-21T19:44:51Z 2008-10-02T15:28:03Z

One of the more creative and moving responses to the Olympics in China this year is a poem relay, initiated by writers and members of International PEN. The poem June, was written by Shi Tao, who is currently serving a...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ International PEN. The poem June, was written by Shi Tao, who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for sending to pro democracy websites a government directive for Chinese media to downplay the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. You may recall in 2004 Shi Tao was identified when Yahoo! turned over his email account to the authorities. Charged with “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities,” Shi Tao now faces the next decade in prison. His poem June is his memorial of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. June By Shi Tao My whole life Will never get past “June” June, when my heart died When my poetry died When my lover Died in romance’s pool of blood June, the scorching sun burns open my skin Revealing the true nature of my wound June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea Toward another place to hibernate June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent Piled up letters unable to be delivered to the dead. (translated by Chip Rolley) ]]> Pen Poem Relay where a map will show the journey and an arrow will allow you to click on the translation, or click one of the PEN centers to read and listen. The poem relay began in Athens March 30 and started its journey through Europe and the Middle East then to North America and Latin America. On May 2 the poem arrives in Hong Kong, and in June to Tibet, where it will be translated into Tibetan and the proposed Uyghur PEN Center will translate into Uyghur. Finally August 6-8 the poem will arrive in Beijing where it will be read in Mandarin. There are 39 writers silenced in prison in China. Here is the voice of one of them carried around the globe by fellow writers. For more information on all of the Chinese writers in prison and campaigns on their behalf, you can visit International PEN’s China Campaign and the We Are Ready for Free Expression Campaign. To honor the international spirit of the Olympics, the dedication of individuals performing at their highest levels, and the aspiration towards a world where freedom of expression includes both body and mind, this poem is being carried one writer, one reader, one click of the computer at a time around the globe. Its journey is on behalf of all the Chinese writers currently in prison with the hope that they will someday have the same freedom. This particular torch burns digitally, kept alive in the thoughts and languages of a world community.]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.4 2008-04-01T05:35:40Z 2008-10-02T15:27:10Z

I’m driving into Los Angeles from the airport thinking about unity of opposites. I haven’t been back to LA in several years. I used to live here. Every time I return, I fall back in love with the city, with...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ I’m driving into Los Angeles from the airport thinking about unity of opposites. I haven’t been back to LA in several years. I used to live here. Every time I return, I fall back in love with the city, with the sun and the blue skies and the bougainvillea and other flowers, the palm trees and the ocean in the distance. I can’t see the ocean from the 405 freeway, but I know it’s there. I raised my children here until they were 9 and 11 when we moved to London, England. In the beginning, however, when I first moved to LA reluctantly from New York City, I looked for and found all the stereotypes I brought with me. We landed in our New York suits and jackets and went straight from the airport to Venice beach, where adults were roller skating by the ocean in the middle of a work day. “How can we live here?” I asked my husband, “It’s not serious enough.” assassination 40 years ago of Dr. Martin Luther King and the beginning of a tumultuous spring and summer in 1968 when our nation struggled with its unities. Forty years later we are witnessing the fruition and also the complexities of that struggle to realize a “more perfect union.” In Los Angeles I learned to set aside a whole briefcase of preconceptions and limitations. As I turn off the freeway towards the ocean, I am hoping, actually counting on, the resolution of our national drama to yield transformation and not tragedy. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.2 2008-03-04T21:09:42Z 2008-10-02T15:26:27Z

I’m writing this, my second blog, on the birthday of my oldest son and a day when much of the U.S. is watching presidential primary results. I find myself thinking about words, action and change—three concepts that have been...

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ I’m writing this, my second blog, on the birthday of my oldest son and a day when much of the U.S. is watching presidential primary results. I find myself thinking about words, action and change—three concepts that have been debated relentlessly on the airwaves in this U.S. primary season. How do words link to actions that bring about change? Let me start with my son who spends his days in abstract thought. He is a mathematician, a logician, whose thoughts and work are understood by only a very small number of people around the world. He teaches more accessible math at a university, but his research time is spent thinking and then writing in words and symbols which only a few understand. When I asked him once how his ideas might be applied a hundred years from now, he smiled his patient smile and asked, “Mom, do I ask you how your literature applies?” All right, I get that. I understand the value of pure ideas, ideas for their own sake. I understand the need to think and to add to the universe of thought even if one doesn’t know the value the thoughts may have and even if they are shared with only a few. It is a way of ordering, discovering and revealing the harmony of the universe. Charter of International PEN and the second is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . PEN’s Charter was 22 years in the making, and its articles were said to have been consulted by those working on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. International PEN’s first president John Galsworthy wrote the first three articles in 1926 after an argumentative gathering of writers from the East and West in the first international meeting held in Berlin after World War I. The articles he drafted were approved and served as “a touchstone of P.E.N. action.” Eventually they became part of the P.E.N. Charter, which affirms among other ideas that literature should “remain common currency between nations” and works of art “should be left untouched by national or political passion” and members of PEN should use their influence “in favor of good understanding and respect between nations.” The fourth article of the Charter which dealt with censorship was developed after the Second World War. This Charter in its entirety was approved at the Copenhagen Congress of P.E.N. in 1948 shortly before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came into being. Both documents were framed in an idealism that confronted the nihilism of the Second World War. The one document was developed by writers, who are suspected of idealsm anyway; the other was drafted by experienced politicians, who labored to articulate ideals to which the world should strive. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights pledges nations to “promote universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It was ratified by 48 members of the United Nations with no votes against and eight abstentions. The Declaration is the most translated document in the world today. It is fair to question whether the words in these documents have led to actions that have brought about sufficient change in the world. I’m sure the conclusion would be that they have not. Yet it is worth pausing to ask where we would be without the articulation of these ideals. In this sixtieth anniversary year of both documents, I want to pause and acknowledge and celebrate in my small way the value of words. ]]> tag:www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com,2008:/blog//1.1 2008-02-04T20:30:35Z 2008-10-02T15:25:05Z

In the last week of August I learned to scull—to row in a boat with very long oars balanced on a tiny hull that skims along on top of the water, an aerodynamic that results in speed but uncertain equilibrium....

http://www.joanneleedom-ackerman.com/ In the last week of August I learned to scull—to row in a boat with very long oars balanced on a tiny hull that skims along on top of the water, an aerodynamic that results in speed but uncertain equilibrium. Most days I go down to the public boat house at sunrise or sunset to exercise but mostly to experience the quiet in the middle of the river as life hums all around the edges. For me that river is the Potomac in Washington D.C. (The Charles River in Boston, featured on the homepage of this site, has also been central in my life, but that is another story.) Every day in the skies above the Potomac helicopters hurry off from the White House to somewhere, maybe the Pentagon or from the Pentagon to the White House; airplanes sweep in and out of Reagan National Airport nearby; many are shuttle flights to and from New York and Boston; next to the river hidden by trees, cars rush into and out of Washington on the George Washington Parkway. I hear all these sounds dimly, but I am on the river with its silences and with the ducks swimming along beside me. I am gliding in a single white scull with my back to the direction I’m going, glancing over my shoulder so I don’t run into anyone, feeling the fragile fulcrum of the boat, rather like riding down the river on a pencil. With time I’ve learned to settle the scull under me and learned to guide it with the oars and to balance it also with the oars. A crucial and comforting piece of information I was given early is that if one returns the oars to starting position, lying flat on the water, the scull will regain its equilibrium, and it won’t tip over. Advocacy page a list of organizations whose work I’ve been involved with over the years. I’m not listing all the organizations, but those on the front lines of human rights and freedom of expression worldwide. Freedom of expression is important to all writers, whether or not a writer works directly on the issues or just writes, for a writer can open the space of imagination and extend the territory of thought. By the time this site launches, winter will be setting in, and the boat house will close, and I will have to get off the river, but I’ll be waiting for spring and in the meantime writing each day. Please enjoy this website and the books and this new form—the blog. I’m still getting used to writing in a form that is both noun and verb, but learning something new…well, that is also what sculling on the river is about. ]]>