Recently, it was publicised that a Year 3 boy from a local government school was receiving daily detentions because he had a rat’s tail (slang for a plait in Australia) that he refused to cut off. The school’s reasoning being he has to conform to the school’s dress code. No individualism allowed and I must add that the hair style is definitely not gang related. Although I agree that all students should wear a school uniform as it prevents children from lower economic backgrounds facing discrimination because they don’t have the latest Nike clothes etc., I think the school’s reaction is over the top and irresponsible.

Why do people get so upset about hair? For some reason the growing, cutting, styling and covering of this matter results in judgement and discrimination. Hair has to be controlled!

Imagine six different head shots of myself:

1. As I am – shoulder length blonde hair
2. Hair covered with a hoodie
3.  Hair dyed black
4. Hair covered by hijab (face not covered).
5. Hair spiked in punk style with political slogans stuck to each spike
6. Head shaved.

How would you react to each shot? From my own personal experience these are the general reactions I have encountered to each persona.

Photo 1: I am barely noticed. I blend in.

Photo 2: I’m obviously a thief. In my local suburb the hoodie is banned because of the assumption that all hoodie wearers are thieves. No joke! In fact, I have innocent, non-threatening reasons for wearing a hood so don’t be scared of me. I have no intention of robbing the local store. I love my hoodie because I love hip-hop and it’s part of the culture. I also wear it to avoid ear infections in winter.

Photo 3: the average person perceives me as unapproachable and weird. I’m a depressed emo who cuts my wrists regularly. Actually I just got bored with being blonde and wanted a change.

Photo 4: any women that wears a hijab must be oppressed, right? If I dressed as a nun wearing a habit you would respect me and believe I had made a personal choice. I would just be considered devout. I would not feel any hatred or discrimination. So why the different treatment? Why is it assumed that one woman is free to make the choice and the other not?

Photo 5: Joe Bloggs is scared of me and thinks I’m aggressive. From experience he’d cross the street then yell abuse at me and see if I’d react. I like punk music and I am intelligent enough to care about politics. It’s fun to gel the hair up and feels theatrical. I am not looking for a fight.

Photo 6: it’s assumed that I’m an aggressive, gay skinhead – but in the reality my head has been shaved to raise money for the cancer charity “Shave for a Cure.” I also look awesome with really short hair. It accentuates my eyes.

Every head shot is the same person. Why does society judge me so differently because of my hair? Why is it wrong to be individualistic? Why is it wrong to express one’s self through one’s hair? Why must everyone conform rather than be creative? If a Muslim woman didn’t cover her hair would she be more acceptable to non-Muslims?

I want to take this a step further. Imagine there is a 7th head shot where I have darkened skin. Now what do you see? Am I educated? Do you assume I’m guilty rather than innocent? Can I run through the streets because I’m late for an appointment or will you think I’ve just rob someone? Can I buy sweets from a shop wearing a hoodie? I’m still the same person. Now think about Trayvon Martin.

Now it’s your turn. Imagine you are going to a fancy dress party and you choose to dress as one of these personas. On the way to the party you first have to buy something for the local shopping centre then have dinner with your folks at a local restaurant. People don’t realise you are in fancy dress. They assume this is the way you always look. Now visualise how they will react to you. You are the same person – just your presentation has changed. You will be treated differently.

So, to all those people who have stressed out about my appearance or that of my friends my advice would be – judge people by their hearts, their words, and their actions. Let people express themselves, be creative and individualistic without being persecuted. Try to understand the reasons for their appearance rather than fear their appearance. Let the black child have a white child’s life. Treat others how you would like to be treated.

To the local school I would like to say – you are teaching children how to persecute, discriminate, control and judge by appearance. You are teaching that it is wrong to be expressive and individualistic. Is this really what education should be about?

Image Credits

“Hair” @ jamendo.com

Guest Author Bio

Amanda Makrides
Mother of two beautiful sons. Aspiring writer and poet. I like to write provocatively with a tongue in cheek style. Political and human rights activist. Lover of music, the arts and square pegs that don’t fit into round holes.

The Wind In My Hair – Or Is It A Hurricane? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Whether you want to admit it or not, charitable giving is probably not one of your highest priorities. You have bills to pay, food to buy, and a social life to fund, or worse, children to raise. Throwing two-dollars into the tin shaken at the traffic lights doesn’t count, not really. When it comes to charitable giving, we humans aren’t the most charitable of creatures.

As a Christian, this has taken on another level of guilt for me, as I am ‘commanded’ to put aside a certain amount of money for the ‘work of the Lord’, a very religious sounding way of saying charitable giving.

At least, that’s how I have interpreted it.

Some people assume that Christian giving – tithing – is automatically intended for the church. Well, sure, there are some who might want to give to the church, but I sure as hell don’t. I want my money going somewhere where it is actually needed.

And one need only look for a few minutes in the New Testament of the Bible for examples of Jesus giving to the poor or doing something for the needy.

But still, giving is a difficult thing to do. Seeing a portion of your income disappear so regularly is – for some – too hard. This is especially the case in times when finances are tight and there isn’t a lot of money coming in to begin with.

All of these things led me to devise my own method of giving charitably. Because, in the end, not only did I feel a faith-related call to do so, but I could see that it was a necessary part of my being human; I am better off than others, and therefore I want to give.

So what do I do?

I buy myself clothes.

You see, I need clothes. Whether it’s a T-Shirt or a hoodie, clothing my body is a necessity, and something that I have the funds to manage.

These days you are paying $20 to $30 for a good T-Shirt (I’m in Australia) that won’t disintegrate the moment it is pulled over your head. So I ask myself two questions; why not buy a good one, and why not buy one that supports a charity.

My favourite example of this is the website Sevenly.

According to their website, their mission is:

to harness the power of art and community to build sustainable awareness and funding movements that support charities in their efforts to change the world

Their purpose:

we believe in the value of the human being, and that there is no greater calling than to provide, heal, rescue, and serve others

and their vision is:

to be the world’s most effective cause activation platform leading a generation toward intentional generosity and love for others.

And they do all of this by providing for purchase a new T-Shirt or hoodie each week, from which $7 will go to the designated charity being highlighted that week. Seven dollars from every T-Shirt, and a new T-Shirt every seven days. Sevenly.

Over the past few months they have donated tens of thousands of dollars to a variety of charities: Clothes4Souls, Autism Speaks, Somaly Mam Foundation, Pencils in Promise, and many more. Since their start in June of 2011, Sevenly has raised a total of over $320,000, a number that just keeps growing with each week and charity that passes. I’ve never yet seen them miss a target.

And there are more organisations out there. Another favourite of mine is the Yellow Bird Project, which combines the hip and cool bands from the indie/alternative band scene with charitable giving.

Giving can be hard, and turning it into a chance to get something may sound selfish, but when your purchase goes to provide a child in Africa with mosquito netting, or provides a kid in Bolivia with clothing … well, do you think those kids are asking how?

Image Credit

“People Matter” from Sevenly

Making Charitable Giving More Palatable is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I am trained as a research scientist, with a doctorate in Biology from Cornell University and a long list of publications in refereed journals in my specialty, the classification of fungi. I do not wave these credentials in order to claim expertise in any or all aspects of science, but rather to establish that I am accustomed to modern Western habits of scientific thought and capable of bringing them to bear in other aspects of human intellectual activity.

A key aspect of any scientific inquiry is the null hypothesis: that is, the mirror image of the model/generalization, the value of which the research scientist is attempting to demonstrate, either through actual experiment or through systematic observation in systems such as the Solar System that do not lend themselves to experimental manipulation. Rigorous scientific proof requires demonstrating that the null hypothesis is extremely unlikely.

A well-designed experiment ought to simultaneously produce evidence concerning a hypothesis and its alternative, and be objective in data collection. Poor science that translates into poor policy decisions results when an investigator selectively collects and considers data likely to support the original hypothesis, ignoring evidence to the contrary. That political ideologies and the corporate bottom line both influence what questions scientists explore, how they conduct research, and how the results are disseminated, is scarcely to be doubted.

Having seen firsthand what goes into the sausage that the media markets to the public as proven scientific fact, I entertain a healthy skepticism when some bit of science becomes the object of evangelical zeal, and its proponents demonize all opposition, ridiculing the null hypothesis as unworthy of a second thought.

This skepticism was recently activated by a post on a social networking site concerning a recent law passed in Tennessee, which states, among other things, “”The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to…respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.” Two issues, specifically alluded to, were the chemical origins of life and global warming, and the reposted feed characterized this as a corporate conspiracy to require the teaching of climate change denial in Tennessee schools.

Climate change is real. That global temperatures have been rising in recent decades is an incontrovertible fact. The correlation between temperature rise and increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, whose principal source is burning fossil fuels, is also not controversial. However, the cry of climate change is being used to sell products and policies that are not necessarily in the public interest and some of the charge of “climate change denial” targets legitimate questions. Recently a political candidate in my home town tried to convince me that because I was concerned about global warming (which I am) I should naturally support not only public transportation (which in general I do) but a specific costly project that no-one has demonstrated will either improve the overall convenience and attractiveness of the local bus system or result in net energy savings.

Failing to respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinions about controversial scientific issues is bad pedagogy, and presuming that no legitimate controversy can exist, simply because the preponderance of evidence now at our disposal favors a particular theory, is bad science. How many theories, espoused within the last hundred years with as much fervor as those mentioned in the Tennessee statute, are now wholly or in part discredited? No one would now, for example, presume to teach science from A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White (1898) – though I have seen it quoted as a justification for allowing attacks on religion in school classrooms. White’s fellow faculty member, zoology professor Burt Green Wilder, assembled a collection of over 600 pickled human brains in the belief that investigation of the minutiae of their construction could be correlated with all manner of individual character traits. A fair chunk of what I learned in high school biology in 1962 is now dated and doubted.

Without understanding the essential difference between a theory (however robust and well-demonstrated), which is always open to question, and a well-documented concrete data point, a person is never going to really understand the scientific method. 

Photo Credit

American Phrenology Journal – Public Domain

A Scientist Thinks Outside the Box: The Null Hypothesis is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A friend of mine recently got a DWI and I asked him what is the difference between that and a DUI. He stated that DUI designates driving under the influence, while DWI refers to driving while intoxicated. Either way you look at them, drunk driving is either DUI or DWI. But there really is a difference between DUI and DWI. Both DUI and DWI refer to the illegal act of driving a vehicle while impaired by alcohol and/or drugs. While they may sound identical on the surface, some states actually categorize them as separate crimes.

For example, if you live in a state that classifies them separately, DUI is the lesser charge. A DUI charge denotes a lesser degree of impairment than a DWI for a driver charged with drinking and driving. Level of impairment is determined by the driver’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of arrest. Further complicating matters, other states use the terms of DUI and DWI to signify whether drugs impaired a driver – or alcohol impaired a driver. The term DUI is used if a person is under the influence of drugs.

There are some states in the U.S. that have created a zero tolerance policy. These states do not make a distinction between a DUI and DWI and mandate that any BAC over the legal limit is a crime. And no matter where you live, drunk driving is a serious and carries hefty penalties that will impact your life for a long time – possibly as long as you live. The punishment for a DUI or DWI varies depending on the state, jurisdiction, or county. Typically, the penalties may include jail time, probation, community services, fines, and loss of driving privileges.

For a first DUI or DWI offense, can include mandatory attendance at a drug and alcohol education program. In some states, multiple offenders may even have their vehicle impounded or be ordered to have an ignition interlock device (breathalyzer) installed in their vehicle after their release (my friend currently pays $80 month to have the device in his car). Mandatory attendance at AA meetings may also be required.

There are certain factors that may trigger additional penalties in a DUI or DWI case. And though factors vary from state to state, these are the most common: transporting a child while under the influence, having a BAC of .20 percent or greater, speeding above a certain limit, refusing to take a chemical test (blood, breath, or urine) to determine BAC, causing an accident, injury, or property damage. If the person who is driving under the influence is under 21, or the driver has prior DUI or DWI convictions, this will also trigger additional penalties.

In some cases, the state may agree to a plea bargain, reducing a more serious charge of DWI to DUI. There are certain conditions that must be met in order to reduce a DWI charge to a DUI. For example, it must be a first offense and the driver’s BAC may not be excessively over the state’s legal limit.

And to add to this, many countries classify certain crimes as a reason to refuse (or limit) entry into their country. The Canadian Government has determined certain individuals are not allowed to enter Canada or to remain inside the Canadian borders if they have committed certain crimes including a DWI or DUI offense.

Photo Credit

DWI Saturation Patrol in Fairfax County © Some rights reserved by fairfaxcounty on Flickr

The Ramifications of Driving Under the Influence of While Intoxicated is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

These are challenging times economically. With official unemployment rates hovering around 8% in both the U.S. and Canada, and millions more either unaccounted for, or severely underemployed, struggling to make ends meet is becoming more the norm. More and more, the promise of getting a college education and then moving up the corporate ladder is disappearing. Not only is it so much less possible in this age of de-unionization and regular corporate layoffs, but for many people, myself including, it’s simply not the story of a fulfilling life.

My entire adult life has been dedicated to being a community leader through grassroots service, activism, and organizational development. When given the choice between just making more money and potentially making the world a better place, I always have chosen the latter. I live my life by the motto “Serve locally; transform the world!,” believing that it is both easier to have a deep impact in one’s own community, but also that those benefits have ripple effects across the planet.

While it may seem like things are dire, the current economic crisis is also an amazing opportunity to reassess how it is that we work and live together. To challenge the stories we have about what is valuable and what isn’t. And to learn to come together in renewed, more interconnected ways.

About a year and a half ago, I left the career I had been developing as an adult ESL teacher. I loved my students, but everything else about my work felt limiting. Getting a decent, steady paycheck, for example, was often both a blessing and a curse. Over and over again, I watched co-workers (and sometimes myself) making decisions primarily based on personal job retention and/or maintaining the reputation of the organization we worked for. Too often, the need to challenge the larger systems our programs functioned within was either squashed, or marginalized in favor of maintaining the safety of the status quo. In the end, all of us – students and teachers alike – suffered as a result.

Here are a few other conclusions about our society in general that have come to me since leaving my teaching position.

1. The dominant paradigm tells us that we have to choose between taking care of ourselves financially and serving our communities.

2. The ways in which most jobs are structured make it difficult for the average person to place service and social activism work at the center of their lives. In other words, what drives our hearts is too often marginalized by trying to take care of basic needs.

3. There is a strong storyline that says “you must be self-sufficient, and that any form of asking for financial support from others means you’ve failed.”

4. The majority of paid work is underwritten by a single employer, or a small number of people donating money or paying for goods and services.

While I have not had a steady full time or part time job over the past sixteen months, I have been very active in my community. From volunteering my time to help develop a small non-profit to being part of the visioning team for an urban, eco-centric village project, my life has been rich with wonderful people, amazing ideas, and loads of generosity. More and more, I have been asking myself: “What would it look like if this were the norm? What if more of us didn’t have to choose between taking care of our financial needs and serving others?”

And so, I have started an experiment in generosity. There are basically three ideas behind the community change maker campaign.

1. First off, I want to spark conversations about what we value as work, and what we collectively support financially as work. Specifically, I’m hoping to inspire more people to re-center serving and giving back in the communities we live in. And that we need to find creative ways to help each other be able to afford to serve more, as opposed to treating service, volunteering, and the like as something “extra” people do when they can. Or as something only the financially privileged are able to do.
2. The campaign is raising funds to support my work in three community groups here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The idea behind this is that there are different kinds of generosity that mutually support each other. I can give much more of my time and skills because others have given money, well wishes, and written support.
3. When the campaign is finished towards the end of April, I hope to be able to share my experiences and learnings with others (online and in person) who are actively serving and giving in their community, but who are also living on the edge financially. Too often, basic financial needs prevent people from doing more in their communities, and I’d like to be a part of changing that, through offering a different approach to dealing with those financial needs.

Although it’s designed to support my current work, I want others to do something similar. Indeed, I’d like to spark a community change maker revolution.

In this age of high unemployment and crumbling economies, we need to create ways to re-center service, while also shifting how we think about supporting each other financially. Instead of considering community as the place where we go home to after long, stressful work commutes, let’s come together to make our communities the lifeblood of our existence. Places where joy, service, and sharing spontaneously arise on a daily basis.

I view this project as an inspirational prototype. Not only for folks like myself who are taking a deep (risky) plunge, but also for anyone who wants to keep their day jobs, but perhaps could shave some hours off of their regular schedules to do more volunteering and activist work.

It’s already happening. What I’m doing is not brand new, but maybe the way I’m framing it is. Regardless, the world is calling us to think anew how we work, come together, and live. Come join me and be part of the change maker revolution.

Photo Credits

Photo courtesy of Nathanserves

The Community Change Maker Revolution is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I recently read an article in the National Catholic Reporter that resonated with something I have been thinking about for a few years now. The article, written by regular NCR columnist Jamie L Manson, tells the story of the community of Spiritus Christi, or Spirit of Christ, in Rochester, New York.

The community grew out of the Roman Catholic parish of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ). “Led by Father Jim Callan, a charismatic priest with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized, the church was known for taking risks.” One of these risks was allowing Mary Ramerman, “the parish’s lay associate pastor,” a significant level of participation in the celebration of the liturgy — the Mass. Ramerman preached homilies and was even invited “to raise the chalice during the consecration,” a liturgical act which may only be performed by a priest.

When the diocese got wind of what was going on, Callan was moved to another parish and Ramerman was fired. Ramerman formed a new community to which a significant portion of the Corpus Christi congregation gravitated and which Callan himself soon joined. In 2001 Ramerman was ordained a priest and is now the pastoral administrator of Spiritus Christi; Callan is associate pastor. The community celebrates Mass in non-Catholic churches and has continued to develop the ministries and outreach programs that characterized Corpus Christi’s mission during Callan’s term as pastor. Spiritus Christi is an inclusive parish, with a “spirit of mutual trust and the commitment to creating a loving, supportive environment.”

Naturally there is no connection, official or unofficial, between Spiritus Christi and the diocese of Rochester. The reaction of the diocese to the goings-on at Corpus Christi reflects a sad truth of Christianity today: much of it appears to be a large arena in which countless conflicts — over who is right and who is wrong, who is moral and who is immoral, who knows what God wants and who doesn’t — are playing themselves out in an endless loop of YouTube clips, opinion articles, blog postings, and reader comments. Meanwhile, the fundamental teachings of the Rabbi whose brief life and cruel death inspired a movement that spread to every corner of the earth have been largely forgotten in the heat of a war that can never be won.

Spiritus Christi is a small corner of peace in that noisy arena, an alternative to the culture of Christian conflict.

Did Jesus fight? Of course he did. Did he criticize? Without question. In fact, he directed his anger and his scorn at the very behaviour that so characterizes religious life today. But the purpose of his ministry was not to condemn the thinking or the behaviour or the character of those with whom he disagreed; Jesus did not devote his energy to preserving a tradition of orthodoxy or promoting a cause in which his ego was deeply invested. His mission was much simpler but at the same time far more challenging; it was embodied in the new commandment he issued to his apostles: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

The great conflict in the Catholic Church is between the preservers of tradition — who happen to be “in power” — and the so-called progressives. I am certain that this conflict dominates the conversation in many other Christian denominations as well. Because they have not only been excluded from power but have also been subject to the decisions of those in authority — that women may not be priests, that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” that the Vatican and only the Vatican will determine which translation of the Roman missal is valid — many Catholic progressives have adopted a kind of victim mentality. The more vocal and articulate of these people have become spokespersons for their cause. The Catholic blogosphere is rife with article after article, posting after posting, pointing out the hypocrisy of church leaders, the injustice of curial decisions and policies, and the right of this group or that group to be fully included in the life of the institutional Church.

I count myself among the progressives and take the progressive position in all the major issues that make up the greater conflict within the Church. I am often angered or disgusted by what I see as deliberate ignorance, self-righteousness, and mean-spiritedness in my local Catholic press, for example, and I sometimes feel the urge to write a rebuttal condemning the medieval mindset of the writer and the paper.

Yet I have grown weary of the constant sniping — however articulate, however witty, however justified — that is a staple of the progressive Catholic blogosphere. I know that the bloggers are fighting for recognition and full granting of our rights as gay Catholics or divorced Catholics or Catholic women, but I have come more and more to believe that if Jesus were in this world in the flesh today, he would not be engaged in any of these battles. He would be living the new commandment.

Which is exactly what the community of Spiritus Christi is doing. Mary Ramerman says that it has been “immensely freeing to not have to hang on to that mode of thinking that says, ‘We are Catholic, you are not Catholic.’” Once it became evident that the diocese was not going to welcome Spiritus Christ back into the fold, they “realized that they had a newfound freedom to create the church for which they had longed.” The church the community had dreamed of now includes “a mental health center; two rehabilitation houses for formerly incarcerated women and men; a safe home for men recovering from drug and alcohol addiction; an active prison ministry; and outreach centers in Borgne, Haiti, and Chiapas, Mexico. Construction is currently under way on their latest endeavor, a supportive housing apartment building with 37 units.”

Spiritus Christi has opted out of the conflict. Instead they have chosen to follow the new commandment. The community has a (married) woman priest, it performs gay marriages, and it allows lay persons to “take over all the liturgies” when the pastoral team is away, so there really isn’t any reason to fight with the establishment. “They don’t think much about Rome or the hierarchy of the diocese of Rochester anymore.” Which means they have energy to direct towards loving one another other and to loving and serving those in need, just as a certain Jewish prophet did two thousand years ago.

If we as progressive Christians spent as much time reflecting upon the life and teachings of Christ as we did on trying to change the institutional Church, an entity that is in many ways dying and is certainly not the Church we loved as naïve children, we might begin to consider the wisdom and the value of creating communities like Spiritus Christi, where action, in the spirit of the new commandment, rather than reaction, is the charism of the day.

Photo Credits

All photos courtesy Rev. Mary Ramerman of Spiritus Christi.

Rev. Mary Ramerman

Community Activism

Spiritus Christi Service

Opting out of Conflict to Follow the New Commandment is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

What could be more human than our universal need for clean drinking water?

Recently, I met the CEO and founder of Charity:Water, Scott Harrison, at an international conference on fundraising.  Scott delivered an impassioned and inspiring talk about his non profit.  Charity:Water brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries.  In six years, they have funded 6,185 projects in 19 countries.  The result?  2,525,000 people now have clean drinking water.  His model is brilliant.  Charity:Water operates on the premise of accountability.  This happens on two levels.  One, the organization has two pots of money – one for operations and one for donations and never have the two met.  The staff work with major donors and partners who have invested in the mission to fill the ‘well’ so that all operational costs are covered.  What does this do?  It means that people like myself and many of my friends can be assured that 100% of our contribution to clean water projects will be used for that very purpose.  It brings people back to the table of philanthropy.  Another level of accountability  shows itself in Charity:Water’s stewardship of its donors.   They show donors through video footage, photos and stories where their money went and how it has impacted the lives of others.  Their tag line?  Water changes everything.

Diseases that live in dirty water collected by nearly one billion people in the world including Canada and the US, but particularly in developing areas of Sub Saharan Africa, Southeast Asian and Latin America, are the cause of many health related problems.  Every 19 seconds a mother loses a child to a water related illness and many children do not make it to their 5th birthday.  30,000 people will die this week alone because they do not have clean drinking water.  But, the crisis extends to quality of life in other ways.  People, primarily women and children, spend nearly three hours a day walking to swamps, ponds and rivers that contain dirty water.  The time that is spent collecting water means that children are not learning to read and write and women are not earning an income.  Education, health and poverty are issues that could be vastly improved buy access to clean water.  The solution?  $20 can bring clean water to one person.  Charity:Water takes the money donated by people like me and puts it into projects that create water filtration systems and drilled or hand-dug wells.  The results are amazing.  Now, people have a clean water point that is close to their home.  This creates opportunity.  Children are able to go to school and women are able to stay at market longer, earning more money for their families. If communities had local, clean water points, Africa alone could save 40 billion hours each year. This number equates to the entire annual work force of France.

But, these are just statistics, right?  Right.  What really spoke to me was the story Scott told us about a woman named Helen Apio.  She, like me and so many mothers I know, always puts everyone else’s needs ahead of her own.  She would wake before dawn to walk nearly a mile to the nearest water point where she would wait with hundreds of other women who were also walking a great distance to the only clean water point.  She spent most of her day walking and waiting.  And then she would bring the water home and have to make decisions on how to use it.  Would she water her garden? wash her children’s school uniforms? cook a meal? or drink the water?  With the limitation on how much she could carry, difficult decisions had to be made and she always came last.  And now with a clean water point in her community, she is “happy now…I have time to eat, my children can go to school. And I can even work in my garden, take a shower and then come back for more water if I want! I am bathing so well.”   She said, “I am beautiful.”

Water restores dignity.  Water changes everything.

Hearing Scott speak transformed my world view, inspired me as a philanthropist and as a fundraiser.  I listened to another mind blowing talk at this same conference where fundraising professional Tony Myers said that philanthropy does not belong to us.  It does not belong to the Brits or the Canadians or even the Americans.  It belongs to the world.  It is part of the human experience to give and to receive.  We should know how to do both.

I’m an Aries.  In fact, it’s my birthday today.  Usually, I ask my friends and family for diamonds, rubies, sapphires and spa appointments.  But, today, on my 41st birthday, I am taking Scott Harrison’s challenge and am giving up my birthday.  All I’m asking for this year is water because water changes everything.

Click here if you want to be part of a movement that can change everything…

Photo Credits:

©Charity:Water

Giving up My Birthday for Water is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Recently my personal cyberspace has been inundated with blurbs about the so-called Republican “War on Women,” mostly having to do with a conservative-led challenge to a national mandate that employers with religious objections to contraception and abortion be required to pay for insurance coverage for these services. It’s a genuine Constitutional issue. Freedom of conscience is an important safeguard against steamroller tactics propelling a society towards an enticing but ultimately disastrous trajectory. But somehow the messages that appear on bulletin boards assume that women have a right to compel others to pay for a particular form of contraception, and that this overrides the personal moral qualms of a nontrivial proportion of the population.

I’m skeptical about national grassroots movements. I’m skeptical about the seemingly spontaneous eruptions of political sentiment that occur in blogging networks and social media sites. Most of the people with whom I am connected are educated individuals with relatively high personal ethical standards, but they are not critical enough when it comes to forwarding socio-political messages whose ultimate source is unknown, and they sometimes inadvertently propagate misrepresentations that serve aims and entities far removed from the apparent goals of the campaign.

The issue in the contraceptive insurance debate is not whether women will have access to chemical birth control, but who is going to foot the bill. When chemical contraception first became available, it was generally an out of pocket expense, but in recent years more insurance plans have provided coverage and government subsidies have been available for low income women.

There remains, however, a large population for which contraception is still an out of pocket expense, and this limits what pharmaceutical companies can charge for the product. Jack the price of something up too high, and people will stop buying it – unless there is a pressing need for it and no comparable substitute, or they are addicted to it, or it is paid for by a third party.

The first two conditions clearly do not apply. While no over the counter or behavioral method of birth control entirely matches the convenience and effectiveness of the Pill, some come close. Women do not experience withdrawal symptoms or physical craving when they stop taking hormonal birth control. Consequently, if the pharmaceutical industry is to maximize its profits on what is already a lucrative product line, they need to push the third party angle, lobbying for mandatory insurance coverage for the working population and government subsidies for those in the social welfare system.

There have been a number of instances recently where pharmaceutical companies have manipulated the FDA drug approval process to remove long-established generic drugs from the market, resulting in an order of magnitude increase in the cost of critical medications. Adding drug coverage to Medicare is at least correlated with this trend. The influence of major pharmaceutical companies in the FDA is immense; the public certainly cannot count on the Federal Government to be a neutral party when balancing the overall good against the corporate bottom line.

What is to stop the same thing happening with hormonal birth control? Not Planned Parenthood, which acts as Big Pharma’s chief salesman. Not the medical research community, which is funded by the pharmaceutical companies and the Federal Government and can easily come up with a study demonstrating that a long-established generic product is unsafe compared to a newly patented variant whose clinical history is unknown. To date, efforts through legislation to control medical costs have been woefully ineffective. There is no gatekeeper here.

Further Reading:

Birth Control Subsidies Slashed:  Will Big Pharma Take a Hit?

The Real Cost of Birth Control According to Planned Parenthood hormonal contraception costs between 5 and 60 dollars a month depending on the brand and type of insurance. This is the cost to consumer not the overall cost obviously. Figures in the article do not include the cost of a doctor’s visit required to obtain pills.

A Giant Pain in the Wallet How drug companies are making crucial, common drugs up to 100 times more expensive.

Photo Credit

Progestin pills – King County Health Services

The Contraception Debate in Cyberspace is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Over and over again, in nearly all facets of my life, I am being called to reclaim that power, which is our birthright as humans. It’s a power beyond gender, beyond social structures, and beyond appearances.

But as a white man living in a society that has been dominated by white supremacist patriarchy, locating and embodying that power amongst the layers and levels of oppressive falsehoods is quite a challenging task. It’s a different challenge from that experienced by women, transgendered folks, and people of color, but the reality is that that we are all harmed, and we all are called, in our own ways, to be healed and become whole and liberated.

Somewhere early on in life, a seed was planted within me that something was deeply wrong with how we have arranged ourselves. It didn’t make sense to me, for example, that women were rarely considered leaders, and that many women lived in fear of violence from men. Images of destroyed buildings and dead bodies in Lebanon and other places were seared into my young brain, forever rendering warfare an idiotic affair driven by male hubris and greed.

During high school, I found myself careening between the aggression of raging hormones, and a deep fear of hurting anyone. I played multiple sports, excelling at soccer, and yet often fled to reading and writing for general solace. I recall a time when I flipped a teammate on his back during a soccer practice, and after a fierce chewing out from the others on the team I spent weeks feeling guilty for having been so careless with someone who was my friend.

I was timid with girls, partly our of fear, but partly out of respect. When I listened to my neighborhood friends talking about “getting a piece of ass” and chasing “bitches,” I nodded silently while inwardly cringing at the dehumanization of it all. My first girlfriend most likely dumped me because I wasn’t bold enough, didn’t take charge enough in certain situations, sexual and otherwise.

There was a battle in my sixteen-year-old mind between a man not yet born and a boy who wanted to be good and respectful. In some ways, this battle has continued to this very day.

During college, I started working hard to break down whatever sexism I inherited as a man in this culture. I voraciously read feminist literature, was active in women’s rights events like Take Back the Night, and eventually dated a woman whose life was – at that time – immersed in trying to untangle the knots of patriarchy she saw around her.

The unlearning of believing that what was always had been was all around me. I was also becoming a campus leader, starting organizations, serving on the student senate, and learning how to talk with elected officials in an assertive manner. All of this brought me face to face with power – my own and the collective powers we share (which really are from the same source).

What I saw around me, I mostly didn’t like. Young men, and some women, engaging in the kinds of coercive and manipulative games that are driving the halls of Congress, and the boardrooms of multinational corporations, schools, and nearly every major institution in our society. I recall conspiring with a friend and another member of the university student senate to upend some project the senate leadership was attempting to push through. Although I think we were “in the right,” I also felt somewhat off about how we were going about everything behind their backs. In addition, the way in which personalized attacks on them glued us together later became something I have noted is an attribute of power-over sickness.

When dehumanization in any form is at the center of any action, political or otherwise, we have stepped out of our true power, and into the land of domination and oppression.

But I hadn’t made that leap of understanding yet. I mostly recognized that something was off, and responded by trying to suppress anything that remotely felt like those oppressive forces.

When I learned that my then girlfriend had been raped twice as a teenager, I took a similar course around much of my sexuality, enhancing the “good” and “respectful” aspects that I’d developed during high school.

I didn’t want to be anything like “those guys.” Not in my relationships, nor in how I worked and led in the world.

There was nothing wrong with this, but now I am recognizing that this was only a step towards liberation.

——–

And what’s calling now is the marrow of our long lost ancestors whose feet were deeply rooted on the ground.

Those whose arms could stretch all the way to the stars, and whose hearts’ beat with the tides, and lifted with the limbs of the oaks.

That being a man does not mean being forced to choose between domination and forms of quiet resignation.

That being a man need not be limited to anything we have associated with men throughout history.

That being a man need not be defined in opposition to that which I loathe.

That I am so much more than any gender could contain.

That only I can expel the animal of patriarchy -

and reclaim the animal
of humanity
inside.

Photo Credit

Thumbnail, Patriarch – Wikimedia Public Domain

Patriarchy Stole My Power. Now I’m Gonna Take it Back! is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Greg Smith, now a former Goldman Sachs executive director, made a very public resignation in the New York Times that raises the question: Is there a right and wrong way to resign from a position?

We can all probably agree that with a few minor changes to the text, this letter could be used by many employees engaged in ethical activities for companies who appear to have a clear mission, yet practice unconscionable methods.

But, once you make up your mind to leave an organization, the first question is when and how you will leave. If you’re in the middle of your own Greg Smith situation, you need to move on as soon as possible and do it in a less public manner than Mr. Smith. Your ethics are important and personal to you and only you. Quitting means you have chosen the option best for you but should not include blasting your employer. You have to suppress valid concerns but ultimately achieve the goal…resignation from a job by just using a generic resignation that simply states you are resigning from Company XYZ and what will be your last day of employment. Explanation of the reason for resignation need not be explained, but you can close the letter by expression for the appreciation of the opportunities the role has provided you.

When addressing if this voluntary public resignation helps or hinders Smith, one must first understand where Smith is personally and financially. Some of us are willing to stand up to the conflicting morals and values even in the face of economic hardship. Albeit Greg Smith will also have to face possible moral attacks by Goldman Sachs, he also faces being shunned by his colleagues and personal friends.

The fallout for Goldman Sachs could be in several forms. For example, they are now subject to loss of goodwill in the financial community, and unyielding attempts by regulators and criminal authorities seeking validation to the accusations, either voluntary or through compulsory subpoenas. In either case, both parties will face a grueling road ahead.

Photo Credit

Resignation © Some rights reserved by timsnell on Flickr

The Right or Wrong Way to Resign? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN