New Zealand’s “Headscarf for Harmony” Effort

Women wear headscarves to stand in solidarity with New Zealand Muslim community.

Photo of headscarves by 𝚂𝚒𝚘𝚛𝚊 𝙿𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢 on Unsplash

This week, women in New Zealand are wearing hijabs to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community following the shooting of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch.

The effort, called “Headscarf for Harmony”, was created by Auckland doctor Thaya Ashman. After hearing a Muslim woman say that she was afraid to leave her house wearing a hijab, Ashman wanted a way to show her support and solidarity. “I wanted to say: We are with you, we want you to feel at home on your own streets, we love, support and respect you,” she told Reuters.

Ashman spoke with the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand and the Muslim Association of New Zealand before putting the effort into action. She told the New Zealand Herald that she used the word headscarf instead of hijab to recognize the cultural difference present for non-Muslims.

The Headscarf for Harmony hashtag continues to spread across social media. where New Zealanders are posting pictures of themselves in headscarves accompanied by captions offering their support for the Muslim community.

"These people are New Zealanders, just like I am,” twenty four-year-old Cherie Hailwood told CNN. “I understand that one day is very different to wearing it all the time, but I am honored to be given the permission of the Muslim community to walk in their shoes. Even just for a day.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wore a black headscarf when meeting with members of the Muslim community. Even news anchors and reporters joined the effort, wearing headscarves on live television. At an open prayer at the Al Noor mosque where the attack had taken place, New Zealand women wore head scarves as a gesture of respect and solidarity.

“Being a Muslim, I’m overwhelmed,” one man tweeted, “I have never seen this kind of solidarity in my entire life—the vigils, the Haka performances, the scarves. It’s just amazing and heartwarming.”

Not all supported the effort. On Stuff.co.nz a Muslim woman published an unsigned article saying that while the movement may mean well, it is no more than “cheap tokenism”.

She wrote that the effort, “stinks of white savior mentality, where Muslim women need to be rescued by (largely) white folk. This type of ideology plays a part in the pyramid of white supremacy and must be acknowledged so people can stop virtue signaling and understand the impact of their actions.”

She went on to say that the attack, “was not just about Muslims, it was against any person of colour in a 'white' country so this focus on hijabs is derailing the examination of white supremacy, systematic racism, orientalism and bigotry. We don't want to be turned into a caricature.”

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While not writing she explores the nearest museums, reads poetry, and takes classes at her local dance studio. She is passionate about sustainable travel and can't wait to see where life will take her.

America’s Public Schools Seldom Bring Rich and Poor Together – and MLK Would Disapprove

Five decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many carry on his legacy through the struggle for racially integrated schools. Yet as King put it in a 1968 speech, the deeper struggle was “for genuine equality, which means economic equality.” Justice in education would demand not just racially integrated schools, but also economically integrated schools.

The fight for racial integration meant overturning state laws and a century of history – it was an uphill battle from the start. But economic integration should have been easier. In the mid-18th century, when education reformers first made the case for inclusive and taxpayer-supported education, they argued that “common schools” would ease the class differences between children from different backgrounds.

As Horace Mann, the most prominent of these reformers, argued in 1848, such schools would serve to counter the “domination of capital and the servility of labor.” Learning together on common ground, rich and poor would see themselves in common cause – a necessity for the survival of the republic.

More than 150 years later, the nation has yet to realize this vision. In fact, it has been largely forgotten. Modern Americans regularly scrutinize the aims and intentions of the Founding Fathers; but the early designs for public education – outlined by Mann, the first secretary of education in Massachusetts, as well as by leaders like Henry Barnard, Thaddeus Stevens, and Caleb Mills – are mostly overlooked. Today, the average low-income student in the U.S. attends a school where two-thirds of students are poor. Nearly half of low-income students attend schools with poverty rates of 75 percent or higher.

Education historians, like myself, have generally focused their research and attention on racial segregation, rather than on economic segregation. But as income inequality continues to deepen, the aim of economically integrated schools has never been more relevant. If we are concerned with justice, we must revitalize this original vision of public education.

Shared community

Early advocates of taxpayer-supported common schools argued that public education would promote integration across social classes. They thought it would instill a spirit of shared community and open what Horace Mann called “a wider area over which the social feelings will expand.”

Horace Mann (1796-1859) was an early advocate of public education in the U.S. Fotolia/AP

And, generally speaking, it worked. The ultra-rich mostly continued to send their children to private academies. But many middle- and upper-income households began to send their children to public schools. As historians have shown, economically segregated schools did not systematically emerge until the mid-20th century, as a product of exclusionary zoning and discriminatory housing policies. Schools weren’t perfectly integrated by any means, particularly with regard to race. They were, however, vital sites of cross-class interaction.

Many prominent Americans – including U.S. presidents – were products of the public schools. Commonly, they sat side by side in classrooms with people from different walks of life.

But over the past half-century, students have been increasingly likely to go to school with students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Since 1970, residential segregation has increased sharply, with twice as many families now living in either rich or poor neighborhoods – a trend that has been particularly acute in urban areas. And segregation by income is most extreme among families with school-age children. Poor children are increasingly likely to go to school with poor children. Similar economic isolation is true of the middle and affluent classes.

Contemporary Americans commonly accept that their schools will be segregated by social class. Yet the architects of American public education would have viewed such an outcome as a catastrophe. In fact, they might attribute growing economic inequality to the systematic separation of rich and poor. As Horace Mann argued, it was the core mission of public schools to bring different young people together – to consider not just “what one individual or family needs,” but rather “what the whole community needs.”

Many parents do continue seek out diverse schools. A number of school districts have worked to devise student assignment plans that advance the aim of integration. And some charter schools are reaching this market by pursuing what has been called a “diverse-by-design” strategy. As demonstrated by research, diverse schools can and often do improve achievement across a range of social and cognitive outcomes, such as critical thinking, empathy and open-mindedness.

Largely overlooked, however, has been the political benefit of integrated schools. One rarely encounters the once-common argument that the health of American democracy depends on rich and poor attending school together. This is particularly surprising in an age of tremendous disparities in wealth and power. Members of Congress, on average, are 12 times wealthier than the typical American. Moreover, lawmakers are increasingly responsive to the privileged, even at the expense of middle-class voters.

If elites are isolated from their lower- and middle-income peers, they may be less likely to see a relationship of mutual commitment and responsibility to those of lesser means. As scholars Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon have argued, “If socioeconomic segregation means that more advantaged families do not share social environments and public institutions such as schools, public services, and parks with low-income families, advantaged families may hold back their support for investments in shared resources.”

What can be done?

Today more than 100 school districts or charter school chains work to integrate schools economically. Cambridge, Massachusetts, for instance, has four decades of experience balancing enrollments by social class, seeking to match the diversity of the city as a whole in each school.

This, of course, is only possible in a diverse place. Median family income in Cambridge is roughly US$100,000, while 15 percent of city residents live below the poverty line. It is also made possible through heavy investments in public education in the city. After all, it is far easier to convince middle-class and affluent parents to send their children to the public schools when per-pupil expenditures rival the highest-spending suburbs, as they do in Cambridge.

But not every district has Cambridge’s advantages. Nor does every district have similar political will.

The latter of those two constraints, however, may soon begin to change. Faced with a growing divide between rich and poor, Americans may begin to demand schools that not only serve young people equally from a funding standpoint, but also educate them together in the same classrooms.

Common schools by themselves are not enough to solve the problem of economic inequality. Yet if Americans seek to create a society in which the rich and the poor see themselves in common cause, common schools may be a necessary – and long overdue – step. We must come to see, in the words of Martin Luther King, that, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

---

Jack Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Female Saudi Arabian Activist on Death Row for Peaceful Protest

On August 21, 2018, Saudi Arabian public prosecutors announced that they were considering the death penalty for five Saudi Shia activists. One of the five is Israa al-Ghomgham, a female activist who could become the first woman sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia. Ghomgham, along with four other Saudi Shia activists including her husband, engaged in peaceful demonstrations for Shia rights beginning in 2011 during the rise of the Arab Spring, which led to their 2015 arrests.

Saudi Arabian Flag. Iqbal Osman. Wikimedia Commons

“Any execution is appalling, but seeking the death penalty for activists like Israa al-Ghomgham, who are not even accused of violent behavior, is monstrous,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, who directs the Middle East sector of Human Rights Watch. “Every day, the Saudi monarchy’s unrestrained despotism makes it harder for its public relations teams to spin the fairy tale of ‘reform’ to allies and international business.”

Responding to peaceful protests with the death penalty is compromising both to proponents of human decency and order, and these actions are symptomatic of a larger illness. If Saudi Arabia is to continue to suppress and murder its own citizens, its actions could lead to its internal combustion. To preserve its tenuous position of prosperity, the Saudi Arabian government must honor the voices of its insurgents—or at least allow them to live.

Saudi Arabia, a desert country in the Middle East said to be the birthplace of Islam, holds a complex position at the pinnacle of capital and culture. It has the world’s third highest national total estimated value of natural resources. It is home to the world’s largest oil company, and it has been the proponent of various reform agendas, significant amount of money invested in solar energy. It is also ruled by the ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement, which is part of Sunni Islam.

It has shown support for counterterrorism and revolutionary liberal and Arab Spring ideals and has supported rebel forces in Syria and Yemen, but internally it has been a breeding ground for violent forms of radical Islam, placing it at a crux between the most progressive and oppressive sides of the ideological spectrum. The nation’s 32-year-old king, Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing to modernize his country, opening movie theatres and allowing women to drive for the first time—but his actions towards protestors despite his presentation of liberalism rings eerily close to the actions of Bashar al Assad, Syrian president who also began his reign by encouraging Westernization in Syria before cracking down on protestors and unleashing a bloody civil war. Under Salman, critics of the Saudi Arabian regime have been arrested in scores, and 58 people are currently on death row. Many of these prisoners are women, often arrested for protesting the country’s guardianship system, which places Saudi Arabian men in almost complete control of their daughters’ or wives’ lives.

Israa al-Ghomgham and her husband were arrested on December 5, 2015, and are on trial at the Specialized Criminal Court, which Saudi Arabia installed in 2008 and which has drawn expense criticism from human rights activists, sentencing eight protestors to death in 2014 and 14 in 2016. Currently human rights campaigners are working to secure her freedom and life.

EDEN ARIELLE GORDON is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

Literacy… for Whom?

The significance of the Gary B. v. Snyder lawsuit dismissal.

Detroit students opened up the conversation on who has the right to education (Source: Steve Neavling).

On June 29, 2018 US District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III dismissed a federal class-action lawsuit, Gary B. v. Snyder. The lawsuit, filed in 2016 by Public Counsel and Sidley Austin LLP on behalf of a class of students, claimed the plaintiffs were deprived of the right to literacy. The decision will be appealed at the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Although Judge Murphy agreed a degree of literacy is important for such matters as voting and job searching, he did not say it was fundamental: constitutional.  The central reasoning for the dismissal of the case was the suit failed to show overt racial discrimination by the defendants in charge of the Detroit Public Schools: the state of Michigan. The other reasoning Judge Murphy provided was that the 14th amendment’s due process clause does not require Michigan provide “minimally adequate education.”

Meanwhile the case brings up an important question its initial filing gave rise to: is literacy a constitutional right? One could argue the importance of literacy goes back to Reconstruction. According to Professor Derek Black, Southern states had to rewrite their constitutions with an education guarantee in addition to passing the 14th amendment before they could be readmitted into the US. Black states “the explicit right of citizenship in the 14th  Amendment included an implicit right to education.”

The theme of education and citizenship is a central component to the complaint’s argument for literacy as a fundamental right. It appeared in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case too, which emphasized that education was “the very foundation of good citizenship.” The complaint drew on this citizenship theme to argue the importance of establishing elementary literacy tools—about the equivalent of a 3rd grade reading level. These can then develop into adolescent literacy skills, which allow an individual to comprehend and engage with words. Such engagement is what democratic citizens need when they are making decisions on who to vote; even more importantly, literacy is essential to understanding the often complex ballots voting requires. Further, literacy allows one to take part in political conversations.

The schools in question also “serve more than 97% children of color,” according to the complaint. Many of these students also come from low income families. On the 2017 Nation’s Report Card the average score out of 500 for reading was 182 for Detroit 4th graders, compared to the national average of 213 in other large city school districts. If the 1982 Pyler v. Doe case argued children could not be denied free public education that is offered to other children within the same state—in line with the 14th amendment—then why the disparity in scores?

The plaintiffs believe the disparity lies in deeply rooted issues in the Detroit Public Schools. They argue literacy tools that are first taught in elementary school are not only unavailable to them but that their schools are also not adequate environments for fostering education.The complaint mentions unsanitary conditions, extreme classroom temperatures, and overcrowded classrooms as environmental stressors. They also mention inadequate classroom materials as well as outdated and overused textbooks.

Worn history textbook from 1998 (source: Public Counsel).

Not only is the school environment not conducive to learning for these students but their teachers are often not the proper facilitators for learning. The complaint mention such issues as high teacher turnover, frequent teacher absences, lack of short term substitute teachers, inadequate teacher training, and allowance of non-certified individuals.  The complaint also states students at these schools may also have unaddressed issues related to trauma teachers are not trained for.

And the solution to these discrepancies could very well be what the plaintiffs are arguing for: make literacy, education, a fundamental right. In a 2012 Pearson study on global education systems, the US was number 17. All the countries ahead of the US had either a constitutional guarantee of education or a statue acknowledging the role of education. According to Stephen Lurie, this creates a baseline ruling of what education entails: a culture of education around which laws can form.

Such a baseline ensures education is not a question of privilege. Indeed such conditions as the complaint mentions, as lawyer Mark Rosenbaum stated, would be “unthinkable in schools serving predominantly white, affluent student populations.”  What Gary B. v. Sanders is asking for is a safe school environment, trained teachers, and basic instructional materials. It is asking that Detroit students are guaranteed a minimum of education that will at least give them the chance other students in Michigan have at becoming informed citizens and adults.

---

Teresa Nolwalk

Teresa Nolwalk is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

What Does the #MeToo Movement Look Like in France?

The sexual assault debate in the City of Love.

From the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral. By Pedro Szekely. April 28, 2018.

Last October in the US, a media firestorm erupted in response to many prominent actresses coming forward to accuse producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. In the days after the story broke, women across the world were invited to share their stories of sexual assault and harassment using the hashtag #MeToo. In the safety of numbers, inumerable women came forward to share their experiences, exposing their bosses, CEO’s, and elite, powerful men to the scrutiny of society. But this is all old news. While the movement has had incredible success in America, it has had a different reception in other cultural climates, namely, France.

The French have historically taken a different perspective on sexual allegations than Americans. Take, for instance, the shock and horror Americans expressed when news of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke, versus the “c’est la vie” air expressed by the French in response to President Mitterand's affair with actress Julie Gayet.

In early January, French actress Catherine Deneuve joined 99 other well-known French women in an open letter to the #MeToo movement. The letter posed a critique of #MeToo, comparing it to a Stalinist “thought police,” and arguing that “what began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate people into speaking ‘correctly’, shut down those who don’t fall into line, and those women who refused to bend [to the new realities] are regarded as complicit and traitors.” To the crafters of the letter, #MeToo represents a “hatred of men and sexuality,” an American brand of anti-feminine, anti-male feminism. The letter also included an unfortunate phrase regarding men’s right to “pester women.” To some in France, the #MeToo movement seems like little more than a wave of American puritanism, an encore to the McCarthy era witch hunts.

Not surprisingly, the letter exploded on social media where it was condemned as an example of internalized misogyny or, more extremely, rape-apology. Devenue and other signers were largely viewed as out of touch with reality, as glamorous older women whose privilege allows them to forget the fraught workplaces of millenials, or the students who walk home alone at night.

While the writer’s statements do pose a kind of reality check to the #MeToo movement, their statements on men’s so-called right to “pester women” and emphasis on men's role as the seducer, emphasize their experience of an older culture in which male subjectivity was a natural right. While the writers paint a rosy picture of sexual freedom apart from what they see as an American-inspired wave of “puritanism,” the emphasis on female objectivity and passivity, of being pursued, has no point of reference in the worlds of ordinary French women. Sure, women enjoy to flirt and be flirted with (as do men), but to claim a grey line between this and assault smacks of the predatory sexism that sparked the #MeToo movement in the first place. “If that’s your fetish, if that turns you on, there’s a problem," Rania Sendid, a medical student at Sorbonne University told NBC. "She doesn’t speak for me.”

Nevertheless, according to feminist and historian Michelle Perrot, the writers, “are triumphant free women who show a certain lack of solidarity with the #MeToo victims … But they say what they think, and many people share their point of view. The debate is real and must be recognised.” Despite being hailed as outdated or out of touch, the Devenue letter was signed by many millenials. Thus, the divide seems as much ideological as generational.

While the letter was perhaps poorly expressed, it did draw on the fear of many French women that #MeToo represents a brand of moralist, antisexual thinking that is more oppressive than freeing. In some eyes, the movement seems to have morphed from assault victims seeking justice into a culture of revisionism. In an interview with the Atlantic, 55 year old event organizer Jean-Julien Pascalet said that, “we suffered for a long time from religion, which imposed a moral order — saying, 'that’s good, that’s bad.' If we go back to that … it would be terrible, it would be an Orwellian society.” Others object to the trial-via-media occuring in America, saying that disagreements belong in court, not a public blacklist.

In opposition to these points of view are those who recognize that the media blitz of #MeToo was a last resort for women. Due to the statute of limitations, threats, or simply a lack of resources, it is incredibly difficult to even get a rape or sexual harassment case before a court, let alone receive a favorable verdict. Activist Rebecca Amsellem told NBC that the writers of the letter, “don’t represent all women in France,” saying that, “the problem is that the legal system has failed women and has failed victims.” Pauline Verduzier, a French journalist specializing in gender issues, told NBC that, “The statement said if men don’t have the right to be pushy or flirty without asking, without making sure that it’s OK, it’s the end of seduction because seduction is based on men conquering women," she said. "This is not the future; this is the past. This is wrong. Everything in this statement is not for freedom, it’s the opposite.”

The often-overlooked initiator of the public letter, Abnousse Shalmani, is a 41 year old French-Iranian who grew up in Tehran until her parents were forced to immigrate to Paris in the mid 80’s. She is also a rape survivor. In the midst of the uproar over the letter, Shalmani appeared on radio to say that, “we do not dismiss the many women who had the courage to speak up against Weinstein. We do not dismiss either the legitimacy of their fight. We do, however, add our voice, a different voice, to the debate.”

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. She has worked as a volunteer in Guatemala City and is passionate about travel and social justice. She plans to continue traveling wherever life may take her.

Tagging Germany with Love

For the past three decades, Irmela Mensah-Schramm has made it her mission to eradicate hate in the world. Armed with a spray can, a scraper and a bottle of nail polish remover, the 71-year-old activist takes to the streets of Berlin to remove and cover up Nazi imagery and racist graffiti. After visiting a concentration camp for the first time, Schramm was moved to do her part to build a better future. Today, she’s removed over 77,500 neo-Nazi stickers all over Germany, and she has no intentions of stopping. Wherever there is hate in the world, Schramm will be there, can in hand.

INDONESIA: The Kingdom of Bantar Gebang

“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” — Mahatma Gandhi

On the Indonesian island of Java, twenty kilometres from the fast-growing capital city Jakarta, is a malodorous, contaminated world with towering hills of half-decomposed waste, that stretches as far as the eye can see. This monstrosity is Bantar Gebang, the largest uncovered landfill site in Southeast Asia. It is also home to over 3,000 families, many with young children, who make a living amongst the garbage, scavenging what they can.

Jakarta, home to over 10 million people, produces more than 7,000 square metres of garbage per day — a figure that is still growing — and every year hundreds of thousands of tons of trash are indiscriminately dumped here, in the nearby district of Bekasi, at the massive Bantar Gebang landfill.

For the few outsiders who come to experience this place first-hand, it is a shocking wake-up call for the consequences of our over-consumption of the planet’s resources and the desperate need for better waste management. In a society enamoured with all things disposable, we are constantly having to find somewhere to put our rubbish. As general rule, far out of our sight.
 

On the road towards Bantar Gebang, what hits you first is the smell. Even before you arrive at the site, an overpowering stench of decomposing organic matter steadily invades the atmosphere. Next, the buzzing clouds of flies appear, and finally, the first mountains of waste come distantly into view. Many workers who move here say that when they first arrive they cannot eat, and that the smell makes them vomit constantly for the first few weeks.
 

Working day in, day out at the landfill, handling the rotting, decomposing rubbish with little to no protection takes a serious toll on the basic health of all the inhabitants here.

Yet, Bantar Gebang has become the poorest people’s El Dorado, a lucrative and chaotic place of individual enterprise where hundreds of families come to salvage what can be resold or eaten. Alongside the stray cats, goats, and cockroaches, they wade knee-deep through decomposing vegetables, soiled clothes, broken furniture, and festering waste of every kind, loading their baskets with glass bottles, tins, and plastics. Business here is booming, and the scavengers, some of them children as young as five, make around 30,000 rupiah (£2.20) a day. For many, this is as good a wage as they will find.

Every day new trucks arrive with more than 8,000 tones of rubbish from Jakarta, depositing their load anywhere they can find space, while bulldozers giant mechanical arms shift and mould the ever-growing mountains of waste.
 

Many families are accompanied by their young children, who live in the most insanitary conditions imaginable, in this breeding ground for germs and disease. You often see them padding about, barefoot in the rubbish, looking for something which could be used as a toy. Some children slip and injure themselves, and when wounds become infected, there is no medical service available on-site to help them. Many also suffer from suffer skin infections, bronchial problems, and intestinal worms from working on the landfill.
 

Amir, whose home is amongst these mounds of rubbish, waits for his mum who is working behind him. His favourite toy? A digger.

Some of these children were born here, brought into the world amongst the towering mounds of rotting waste that dominate the horizon. Every day, while parents are retrieving what they can resell or eat, these young children wait patiently for the next meal they will share as a family. This meal is often consumed directly off the ground, amidst the flies, foul odours, and trash.
 

The Bantar Gebang landfill was built on rice paddy fields in the district of Bekasi in 1989, and for some here, this is all they have ever known. Many are unskilled workers who have been scavenging in streets and rubbish bins their whole lives. Others, who once made their living digging the earth, are the former rice farmers whose land has been swallowed up by the relentless tide of garbage. Today, they all make a living by digging the ever-expanding “mountains” of Bantar Gebang, searching for their own personal treasure.
 

In this filthy and chaotic universe, I begin to understand how one man’s trash becomes another man’s means of survival.

Here, everything old finds a new purpose. Abandoned sofas and tables are often huddled together in impromptu ‘cafes’ where workers will pause to share a cigarette or have a cold drink, while ... You will also hear the call of Bantar Gebang’s resident imams wafting out over the landscapes of trash, but despite a strong sense of community at the landfill, many workers say that they are stigmatised and avoided if they ever cross its boundaries.
 

Today, the landfill is home to an estimated 3,000 families, and as Jakarta’s waste keeps growing, so does its population. Almost all residents live in makeshift shelters built from tarpaulins and scraps of metal as protection against the sun and rain. Those who have been there longer have fashioned huts from pieces of scrap wood, cardboard, old rugs, plastic advertisements, and nails rummaged from the landfill. During the rainy season, flood water rises and seeps into these dwellings. The water that is used to fulfill their daily needs is drawn from groundwater infected by leakages and sewage.

During the days I spend documenting life at Bantar Gebang, I do my best to show humanity, to take an interest in those living here, to simply be myself, and to convey that I consider those living and working here my equals.

Yet the foul smell is inescapable, the heat suffocating, and whenever I move I sweat, though I make no effort. When you find yourself in conditions like these, in an environment rife with the evidence of inequality, the only thing you feel is an overwhelming sense of gratefulness to have been able to satisfy your basic needs and a burning desire to do something to help. With my foreigner’s gaze, I cannot help but compare my everyday life to that of the men, women and children whose photographs I take. Some of them simply have no point of comparison, and live in acceptance of their condition.
 

Nila, one of the children who is growing up at the Bantar Gebang landfill, bathes her little brother in their family’s shelter.

Following the day-to-day existence of the people who call Bantar Gebang their home was also a lesson in the incredible strength and resilience of the human spirit. In the midst of these challenging conditions, people of all ages proved to me that love and joy will always exist even in the worst of places.
 

Andi, only a few years old, plays amongst the mounds of rubbish as his mother sifts through to salvage what she can.Andi, only a few years old, plays amongst the mounds of rubbish as his mother sifts through to salvage what she can.

On this occasion, I had travelled to Bantar Gebang to learn how I could assist the remarkable Resa Boenard. Brought to the area by her parents when she was just ten months old, Resa grew up one of Bantar Gebang’s children, surrounded by these vast, decaying mountains. At first her parent’s home was among rice fields, today, fifty metres of trash tower outside her windows.

Unlike so many others who live and work here, Resa had the chance to attend secondary school and to complete her studies, experiencing life outside this place, despite frequent bullying by her classmates for living on a landfill. Later, unable to afford the fees to attend university or to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, Resa felt compelled to move back to Bantar Gebang, deciding that she would dedicate her time to helping the people here.
 

“Just because we are born among rubbish, doesn’t mean we are rubbish. My commitment to the people and young people here, it is still big in my heart. I have to do it.”  — Resa, founder of BGBJ

Determined to give other children living on the landfill the same opportunity she had, Resa has re-named the landfill ‘The Kingdom of Bantar Gebang’ and started an organisation called BGBJ, which stands for ‘the seeds of Bantar Gebang’, along with her British friend and co-founder John Devlin. Resa believes that the children at the landfill are like seeds, and when nurtured and supported, they will be able to gain an education and to see that they can become something else. At first, with no funding or other support, Resa simply opened her home to the children living on the dumpsite, and began.

Today, with both a hostel and community hub on the landfill, BGBJ aims to develop a healthy and sustainable way out of poverty for the children and families who live and work here, through education and employment. Since 2014, volunteers and travellers have been helping Resa to expand her work and to turn her neighbourhood into what she calls, “the best dump ever”. 

Here you can watch a short video interview I made with Resa during my time there. The positive spirit in Reza’s home and at BGBJ is simply amazing.
 

Sita, one of the young children whose families call the landfill their home, searches for toys amongst the rubbish.

Last year, waste management in Jakarta underwent a major shake-up, with multiple blockades and protests preventing trucks from entering the landfill, after disputes erupted between the Jakarta administration and their Bekasi counterparts. Angry at the stench of the never-ending stream of passing garbage trucks hauling waste to the landfill, which were now violating working hours and using a prohibited road, the protesters nearly paralysed Jakarta’s waste management during early November. The disputes were finally resolved when the city’s acting governor visited Bantar Gebang and promised to double the compensation provided for households located near the landfill to Rp 600,000 (around USD $45) every three months.
 

Ina, one of the luckier Bantar Gebang children, whose family have a small home with some concrete walls.

Though officials have admitted that Jakarta may need at least ten years to start fully addressing its significant waste management issues, some things look set to change. Recent initiatives to trap methane produced by the landfill and build on-site recycling facilities have eased Bantar Gebang’s pollution, and in 2016 a landmark agreement was made with Finnish energy company Fortum to develop an intermediate treatment facility (ITF) in the capital. 

Despite expert concerns that the incinerator at this new ITF may emit hazardous substances if plastic waste is not properly removed, it is expected to process 2,000 to 2,200 tonnes of waste per day, and is intended to help reduce the city’s long-term dependency on the Bantar Gebang landfill. Three more bids are currently being conducted for further ITFs in the city.
 

For now, however, life remains the same for the families and children of the Kingdom of Bantar Gebang, where Resa is affectionately called the ‘queen’. 

Taking things one day, and one project, at a time, BGBJ is not waiting for the government to take action and has ambitious plans for improving the lives of the children and families living at Bantar Gebang, such as a new school, a workshop, a tool shed, improved sanitation, and a computer lab. For the past year, they have also been hosting backpackers and travellers, who come to offer English lessons and to go on jalan-jalan or walkabout around the dumpsite. Providing an amazing opportunity for eco-tourism and cultural exchange these events have been a wonderful success with the kids.
 

So far, BGBJ has been completely independent, funding improvements with their own personal savings, with money generated from the day trips and overnight stays, and with donations from individuals and groups.

Today, they are raising USD $5,000 in seed funds for a workshop that will enable BGBJ to establish a sustainable social enterprise, called ‘BGBJ Style’. With the goal of producing a range of merchandise and upcycled products from the landfill, they have already begun by developing and producing their own natural insect repellant, balms, and candles. Offering alternative employment to some of the parents of BGBJ kids, this enterprise will generate an income so that BGBJ can continue to pay for and improve its services.
 

Nila, who lives with her family in a homemade shelter at the Bantar Gebang landfill, peeps out from behind a makeshift curtain.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” and it is up to all of us to do our bit. For my part, I have been inspired to do everything I can to help support Resa’s work. I hope you will join me.

Resa Boenard, the inspiring founder of BGBJ, with some the kids growing up at Bantar Gebang landfill.

Please help me support this amazing local organisation through their current GoFundMe campaign, where you will find more stories and details. More information can also be found about their work through the BGBJ website.
 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA.

ALEXANDRE SATTLER

Alexandre Sattler is a photographer, traveler, and producer of audio documentaries on our planet's diverse cultures, our shared humanity, and the environment.

When should one boycott a country?

WHEN I WAS A SOPHOMORE in college, I went on Semester at Sea. It was a 4-month study abroad program that sailed around the world. Shortly after I was accepted into the program, I was sent an email with two pretty big surprises in it: first, Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu would be sailing with us for the entire voyage. Second, as a precondition of Tutu joining us, we would now be skipping our planned stop in Burma and would be going to Malaysia instead.

Tutu had insisted on this change because his friend, Burmese leader (and fellow Nobel Peace Laureate) Aung San Suu Kyi had called for a tourism boycott to Burma. Tutu had cut his teeth in the South African anti-apartheid movement, which conducted a similar international boycott over the course of several decades. The international solidarity, Tutu claimed, was essential for bringing apartheid to an end.

This led to a huge debate on the ship: a lot of people really wanted to go to Burma, and argued that the cultural exchange was valuable and worthwhile. They also argued that we could visit Burma in a way that wouldn’t be supportive of the oppressive military regime that Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy were fighting against. We could, they argued, make sure our money would go to the right places.

In the end, we didn’t go to Burma. Several years later, Suu Kyi and her NLD lifted their call for a tourism boycott as the country started to transition towards democracy. But since then, I’ve heard a lot of calls for tourism boycotts to certain countries. It’s a question worth examining: when is it right to boycott a country? When is it wrong? When is it just pointless?

When are boycotts pointless?

During the Bush years, I heard conservative friends and family members say more than once, “I’ll never visit France after how they bailed on us in Iraq.” It was usually uttered by people who were using patriotic fervor as an excuse to skip a country they were never planning on going to in the first place, but sometimes, conservatives who might otherwise have enjoyed a trip to Paris decided that they needed to make a moral stand. No France for them. That’d teach France to bail on America, “and after we did so much for them in World War II.”

The correct response to this type of crap is “ugh,” but lefties and liberals shouldn’t get too smug: I’ve heard plenty of my activist friends suggest they were boycotting a country as well, whether it was of Japan (because of their treatment of dolphins and whales), of Thailand (because of their Tiger Temple), or of Russia (because of the Russian government’s oppression of journalists).

Boycotts can be well-meaning and still be useless. The one case in which they are always useless is in the case of the personal boycott. If you are boycotting a country for moral reasons, that’s just fine, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re making any sort of difference. Boycotts are an expression of political (and sometimes economic) power. By saying, “I refuse to engage with you,” you are basically saying you don’t think that country is legitimate, and that it does not deserve your support.

The truth is that, unless you are a very high-profile person, a single person boycott of a country is meaningless. It’s just not a large enough expression of power to make a noticeable difference and to affect any change. Had Rosa Parks been the only person to boycott the Montgomery, Alabama bus system, the gesture would have been noble but totally futile. It was when hundreds of people (including high-profile leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.) joined that the boycott really did what it was meant to do. A boycott, to be done effectively, must be done collectively.

When is a travel boycott effective?

I’ve developed three tentative rules to when you should consider a travel boycott.

1. You must have power over whomever you’re boycotting.

You can’t boycott something you don’t have any power over. This is why, for instance, it would be impossible for Americans to arrange a travel boycott of North Korea (1): we simply don’t go there enough for the withdrawal of our tourist dollars to make any difference. It’s only countries that we have a healthy relationship that we can effectively boycott.

A boycott is effectively saying is, “You’re not playing by rules that we accept, so we refuse to play with you.” You can’t threaten to walk off when you weren’t playing in the first place.

2. Money isn’t enough: You must have the ear of the media.

The economic results of boycotts are tough to gauge. The Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) (2) movement against Israel has been going for over 10 years, but hasn’t necessarily resulted any tangible economic loss for Israel (3). The boycott of South Africa, on the other hand, is widely considered to have been a success in economic terms.

But ultimately, whether the BDS movement or the cultural boycott of South Africa had any real economic effect isn’t the point. The point is in getting enough media coverage to draw attention to the injustice and, presumably, to shame the perpetrators. As I write, this is happening in North Carolina, where a recent anti-LGBTQ law has resulted in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo boycotting travel to the state on official business, in Paypal pulling jobs from the state economy, and in rocker Bruce Springsteen canceling a NC concert (which, for me personally, is literally the worst punishment I could imagine).

Yes, these moves may cost North Carolina money here and there, but more importantly, they build a political and social momentum behind the movements they support. It was not, in the end, economics that ended apartheid. It was external pressure worldwide (pressure which had to come from the grassroots, as leaders like Ronald Reagan supported apartheid), and volatile internal politics which brought about the end of that regime. Boycotts can be a powerful symbol that raise awareness of an issue and turn public opinion. If they succeed in this regard, whether or not they’re effective economically is beside the point.

3. Boycotts have to have an internal element.

Boycotts have more moral clout when they’re done in solidarity with people from within the place you’re boycotting. In other words, if local people say, “don’t boycott us,” then don’t (4). So when the ANC and leaders like Desmond Tutu called for the rest of the world to boycott South Africa, it gave the boycott legitimacy. When Aung San Suu Kyi called for tourists to not visit Burma, it gave the boycott legitimacy. When Palestinians or liberal Israelis support the BDS movement, it gives the movement legitimacy.

Boycotts that are done entirely externally — as in you and your friends unilaterally deciding to boycott France because reasons — aren’t effective, and can be perceived as bullying, because you’re attempting to impose your morality on another country. If you don’t agree with someone’s morals, it’s usually better to talk to them and try and find common ground than it is to simply shut them out. But if you and your allies within that country are within agreement, and your allies think a boycott’s a good idea, then it may be worth giving a try.

So should I participate in travel boycotts?

The answer to this, I’m sorry to say, is annoyingly ambivalent: Sure. If you want. In some rare cases. Boycotts just too rarely achieve that rare combination of effectiveness and legitimacy to be worthwhile (5). Philosopher Peter Singer told Traveller.com.au of travel boycotts:

“A boycott may be one way of getting some leverage on [political issues] when nothing else seems to work. But I don’t think that there is a general obligation to boycott all countries that are doing something unethical.”

The reason, he said, is because boycotts are only really effective when they’re accompanied by a public campaign. And it’s worth noting that there’s no such thing as a totally ethical country. You should definitely not boycott a country that there’s not already an organized boycott against unless you want to undertake the gigantic effort of organizing the boycott yourself. And in all honesty, there may well be much better ways of pushing your agenda politically than through a boycott: frequently, you may be able to push your government to act instead.

Boycotts really only make sense when they’re an attempt to undermine your government’s action: in South Africa and Israel, the US Government has acted in response to perceived geopolitical interests rather than in response to human rights standards, so those places make sense to organize boycotts around. In North Carolina, Indiana, and other states that have enacted anti-LGBT laws, the boycotts are in response to actions by the government itself. In these cases, participating in boycotts may be the just and right thing to do.

That said, there are totally legitimate arguments for not participating in boycotts, from supporting locals who may be unfairly harmed by a boycott, to simply pursuing other forms of protest and resistance that you believe would be more effective. Paul Simon’s breach of the UN-approved cultural boycott of South Africa during the making of his album Graceland was extremely controversial, but in the end, he used the breach to give an international platform to black South African musicians like Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba. While it may not personally have been my choice — and indeed was not the choice of many activist musicians, from Springsteen to Bono to Queen — it is conceivably justifiable.

It’s worth noting, though, that Paul Simon’s breach was at least thought-out and intentional. He didn’t simply ignore the cultural boycott for personal profit: he attempted to make things better for South African musicians. So if there’s a movement that you find yourself aligned with, and they are calling for a travel boycott to a country you want to visit, you certainly may decide to go anyway, but going will only really be justified if you engage in some other political act.

In the end, the only real sin, if you believe something wrong is being done, is silence. If you feel your voice is best heard through a boycott, go for it. If you feel you can speak out in a better way, feel free to do that instead. Just don’t do nothing.

Footnotes

1. Americans shouldn’t travel to North Korea anyway: they frequently charge American visitors with barely-supported crimes and then hold them as bargaining chips.

2. Something quick I should mention: the BDS movement hasn’t really singled out travel as a priority in their boycott movement. They’ve focused more broadly on academic boycotts, culture boycotts, divestment, and the boycotting of certain Israeli businesses. I mention them here because it’s the highest-profile active boycott movement.

3. This is totally debatable, but the lack of consensus on whether or not the boycott has worked kinda proves my point.

4. This gets tricky, of course, when you have multiple groups saying different things. At that point, you have to listen to arguments and side with the group you agree with the most.

5. Excellent ethical travel sites like Responsible Travel don’t advocate travel boycotts except in rare exceptions like Burma.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON DON'T BE A DICK TRAVEL.

MATT HERSHBERGER

Matt Hershberger is a writer and blogger who focuses on travel, culture, politics, and global citizenship. His hobbies include scotch consumption, profanity, and human rights activism. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and his Kindle. You can check out his work at the Matador Network, or over at his website.

VIDEO: Age Demands Action

An estimated 100 million older people are living on less than $1 a day. Older people are among the poorest and most marginalized in many countries. Older people, especially older women, play key roles as caretakers in support of people with HIV/AIDS and orphaned grandchildren. The nonprofit HelpAge is a network of organizations promoting the right of all older people to lead dignified, healthy and secure lives.
 

I Was Called The N Word in The Philippines

It was only my second day in the Philippines and my Couchsurfing host invited me to watch a basketball game that he was playing in. Granted, the Philippines was a completely new country to me. I never thought that 2017 would bring me to Southeast Asia, but it has. In the Philippines, the heat makes you sweat relentlessly and you have to take numerous showers a day. Stray dogs and cats search for food in the streets, and trees are a beautiful invasion in the cities I’ve visited thus far. So much of it reminds me of my childhood visits to see family in Jamaica.

I head to the game around six pm and sit with my Couchsurfing host’s friend. It is only day two, but I’ve already become accustomed to one thing  here. People stare at me. A lot. I know it’s because I’m black and traveling. The questions are always the same when I meet a new person here.

Do you play basketball? Do you know Lebron James? Is your father tall, just like you? Do you have a girlfriend? 

Although traveling is about leaving your comfort zone, there is something to be said about how the identities that we are given in this world will affect us when abroad. I would never wish that I were white so that I could travel and feel more comfortable in this sense. I simply wish my representation in the media wasn’t controlled by people like who me and not white CEO’s.

The game starts and I notice little children gathering near me. They stare, whisper to one another and giggle before running away. After a few minutes, one little boy comes up to me and smiles.

“What’s your name?” he shouts.

I smile and tell him, “My name is Ryant. How old are you?”

He holds up seven fingers and then runs off. His friends greet him with an explosion of laughter. I am sure he will get the award for Bravest Boy in the Neighborhood later. Soon all of the kids are surrounding me, climbing onto my lap and asking questions. I’m invigorated by all of the energy, but I can’t help, but feel like a weird toy that one of them found and can’t wait to show off. More questions are fired off, an auction of how much information I can spit out. Then it happens.

“You’re a n----!”

My Couchsurfing host’s friend is sitting nearby and doesn’t bat any eyelash. On the outside, I nod awkwardly, but on the inside, I don’t quite know what to think. Since starting and graduating college, I’ve filled my mind with the words of many famous black freedom fighters. Angela Davis, a famous black activist born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944 and who later faced an unfair trial for crimes she didn’t commit, wrote about the children she met while in Cuba:

Despite the language barrier, the children accepted us as members of the family. They helped me with my Spanish lessons each day. I was extremely embarrassed that I had not learned a little Spanish before the trip, for it is an affront to a people to visit them before having attempted to learn their language. Because I spoke Spanish so poorly, never having studied it, I felt less inhibited with the children. They were patient, corrected me and helped me find words when no dictionary was available. 

It was a sad day indeed when we had to pack up our things and board the bus, ready to move on to the next stage of our journey. All of us cried — men and women alike, in our delegation as well as on the Cuban side. The hardest part for me was saying good-bye to the children. A young boy of about nine or ten, who had always been the toughest one of his group, seemed reluctant to come up and say good-bye. I thought that it was his natural shyness. Just before I got into the bus, I went over to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He tore away from me and ran as fast as he could. But once in the bus, I saw him standing behind a tree, trying to conceal himself as his body shook with sobs. The tears that had been flooding my own eyes slid down my face. 

I think of her often when I can’t immediately find the words to respond to an ignorant comment from an acquaintance or when I need a push to live out my ideals for social justice. I’m looking at the faces of these cute Filipino kids and wondering how I can possibly unravel to them my life, my pain, and what it takes for a twenty two year old gay, Caribbean American boy to uproot his life and buy a one way ticket to Southeast Asia. 

I realize it’s impossible.

“You shouldn’t say that word,” I tell them. “In the United States, it’s very bad.”

Immediately the kids start to frown and look at each other in confusion.

“Why?” the first boy who ran up to me asks.

I tell them the basics. In the United States, black and brown people have been treated badly for a long time. That word was used by white people to make people that look like me feel bad.

“Oh… That word means gangster fighter in Tagalog.” the kid replies.

I laugh as the coach in the game blows the whistle on a foul. The serious part of me doesn’t want to laugh, but I can’t help it. One problem leads to another of a different shade I suppose. I can’t break down racial stereotypes to a group of elementary aged children just yet.

“Teach me some Tagalog.” I request.

They all giggle and teach me phrases. When the game is over, they pull me onto the court and beg me to shoot a basket. Inside I’m rolling my eyes and wishing this wasn’t happening this way, but my heart is still melting. They run around me, teach me how to dribble and all jump in excitement when I shoot a basket after a million tries.

On my walk home, they all ask to add me on Facebook and I am laughing more. I’ve accepted that these moments may be a reality wherever I go, but acceptance does not mean I won’t struggle towards a more loving way of life. Travel opens the eyelids, pumps blood into the heart and fills the body with moments of awe. I felt that awe as those kids stared at me with their curious eyes and interacted with me so openly. I knew that I could strive to do the same in return and attempt to shed light on confusing, yet present truths as well.

Yes, I was called the n-word in the Philippines, but I do not define myself by the rules that society sets for a black person, a traveler, or 22 year old who is just trying make sense of a messy world. Instead, I keep going forward with conviction, sure that I’ll speak up whenever is necessary along the way.

RYANT TAYLOR

Ryant Taylor is a writer and activist from Cleveland, Ohio. He has participated in protests in France, Ferguson, and Standing Rock. He is the creator of Decolonize The Mind, a travel blog, and is currently freelance writing in the Philippines. 

A Criminal State of Affairs

THERE ARE ENOUGH LAWS TO TACKLE IT.

THEN WHY IS UNTOUCHABILITY STILL PERPETUATED?

Ten Years ago, I started on a journey to document practices of untouchability across several states and religions of India. 25,000 kilometres, 9,000 minutes of footage and four years later, I put together a documentary called India Untouched. The main reason for making this film was to challenge the belief of most Indians that untouchability is a thing of the past.

In the years since the making of that film, little has changed. We still receive reports of barber shops refusing to shave Dalits. Homeowners unwilling to rent their houses to Dalits. Children segregated and discriminated in schools, women not allowed to draw water from wells, families pushed out of temples. Segregated mosques, churches, even crematoriums. Pervasive violence aimed at those who challenge caste discrimination. Social and economic boycotts for those who dare to transgress caste boundaries. Newly-weds chased and killed because they chose to marry outside their own caste. Rapes. Acid attacks. The list goes on shamelessly.

What is more shameful is that these practices are manifestations of a belief that views certain castes as nothing but an impure sect, which should remain servile and accepting of its lesser status. Our failure is to see this belief as endorsing of and perpetuating criminal behaviour.

Article 17 of the Indian Constitution states that “Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of untouchability shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” However, society continues to look at untouchability as a social given, grounded in ‘tradition’. Instead, we should see such practices for what they are: criminal acts. If your house were burgled, you would expect the case to be treated as a criminal act/offence. Such a luxury is not afforded, however, to Dalits facing discrimination and persecution. The laws in place to address the scourge of caste-based discrimination may be progressive, but the mechanisms that exist to enforce legislation are regressive.

A large part of the problem is that law enforcement agencies operate in a reactive rather than a proactive manner. Despite the prevalence of caste-based behaviour leading to untouchability (criminal offences) these agencies wait for an aggrieved party to file a complaint — and report violation of Article 17 — rather than do their job in enforcing the law. How else does one explain the fact that police stations and courts have not taken any suo moto cognizance of these everyday events? How else can we understand that there are no public or government campaigns to remind citizens that untouchability has been abolished, and that those practicing it will be treated as criminals? In order to fall in line with the shifted morality and ethics of our time, we need a strong and proactive law enforcement mechanism. We do not have this in India.

On 14 April 2012, we launched a campaign at Video Volunteers (a media and human rights organisation) to draw attention to the issue of untouchability. To date, we have collated 30 videos that document breaches of Article 17. Together with the videos, we collected 2,800 signatures that were sent to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) with an appeal that the videos be taken as evidences of offences, and that those involved be prosecuted. Despite submitting the petition and video evidence twice over, we have not received any sort of acknowledgement — let alone action — from the NCSC. We have now sought answers with an application under the RTI Act. It’s a sign of the times when one needs to file an RTI with the institution responsible for protecting the rights of Scheduled Castes, just to find out what is going on.

As a society, when we hear about untouchability practices, we should feel outraged, as we would with other criminal acts like murder and rape. It’s time we accepted that the practice of untouchability is not the vestigial remains of some backward, social phenomenon or tradition: it’s a criminal offence. Let’s start calling it what it is.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN TEHELKA.COM

Stalin K. 

@stalink 

Stalin is the Managing Trustee of Video Volunteers India. He is a leading voice in the community media movement in India (including as co-drafter of the government’s recent community radio policy), a human rights activist focused on issues of caste and communal violence, an award-winning filmmaker (screened at Hamptons and winner of the Mumbai International Film Festival and Indo-american Arts Council Film Fest in NY, Earth VIsion Film Festival, Tokyo), and a sought after trainer and guest lecturer in media and human rights at universities around the world. He has produced 25 films on development issues, set up two community radio stations, designed a dozen rights-based campaigns, and conducted over 300 training workshops. Stalin has worked with more than 100 NGOs and regularly distributes his films to over 1000 groups, placing him at the heart of India’s NGO networks.

Anything is Possible: Removing 'NO' from your Vocabulary

When I think about what it takes to change the world, I think that the most important thing is being able to ignore the word no. You’ll be hit with no all the time as a shameless idealist, and each time you dust it off, you get one step closer to making the difference that you want to make. People will say that you aren’t old enough, don’t have enough money, there aren’t enough of you, there is too much to be done, that you won’t reach your goals, that your contribution isn’t going to make an impact. You’ll hear doors slam, people will walk right past you, some will even laugh at you. In their own way, each of these people will be saying no to your vision — your dream for a better world.

Don’t listen to them.

When I was in high school, I saw the first Invisible Children DVD a couple weeks after it was released. As the credits rolled, I knew that my life would be forever changed by what I had just become a witness to. I started spreading the word around, but raising awareness amongst the people I knew just wasn’t enough — I wanted to contribute, to do something for those kids that I now felt I knew.

I wrangled two of my friends into helping me with a half-baked idea, and soon, we had turned a room in my house into a home-base of sorts, with maps of Uganda, Invisible Children swag, posters, pamphlets and a mini fridge. From there, we decided we wanted to throw a benefit concert to raise money and awareness for “The Rescue”, Invisible Children’s campaign to rescue child soldiers from Joseph Kony.  This is when we began to hear the word no.

We went to our principal with a pitch – she told us that we were too young, too inexperienced, and that there weren’t enough of us to run a concert. She suggested a bake sale. I sat on the steps in front of my school and cried, in despair that I would never be old enough or important enough to make the difference I wanted to make, the one I knew I could make if I was given a shot. However, in what I now look back on as the most defining moment of my short life, I decided that her no was not going to stop me. We would have our benefit concert, and she would see what kids can do when they put their hearts and minds to it.

Three months later, I was standing on stage behind City Hall, shaking hands with the Mayor, who had given us the space for free, watching 50 Starbucks volunteers hand out coffee, proceeds from which would join their $2000 donation and the donations of the many attendees and other sponsors. Bands were backstage, getting ready to perform, and my friends and I had just finished a front-page interview for the local paper.  At the end of the night, I handed Invisible Children’s representatives a cheque for $9,452 dollars. Months after that, we ran a full day festival on Victoria Day, raising even more for the incredible cause. My principal attended the concert.

Years later, with new challenges and new nos coming at me every day, I always remember that day — the day I decided that I would never let anyone else, or their opinions of what I am capable of, define me. World changers for centuries have come to the same conclusions – Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison, denying the word no, inspiring the world as he sought freedom and equality as South Africa’s first black President. Amelia Earhart shook off the word no and became the first female pilot. Gandhi ignored no and led his country out of oppression with non-violent protest. Jane Goodall ignored no and faced countless danger to follow her passion. Everyday, world changers shake up their communities and the global landscape by striding past every no, with their heads high, and doing what others believe cannot be done. So if anyone out there tells you that you can’t do something — you can’t win that race, you’re not smart enough to be a lawyer, you can’t raise enough money, you can’t make an impact, you’re not strong enough to change the world — deny them the power of defining what you choose to try. Do what everyone thinks you can’t, and show them that you can. 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CHANGE HEROES BLOG

NATASHA BEITMAN

@NatashaBeitman

Natasha Beitman is a fourth year International Development Studies major at York University. She aspires to attend law school in the fall, to pursue a career in criminal law. She is passionate about philanthropy and issues of global development and environmental sustainability, and strives to be a positive role model and mentor to high school student and university freshmen. She is also currently involved as Co-President of the Mosaic Institutes 2013-2014 Dialogue Series, which aims to create peaceful relationships between historically opposed groups on Toronto campuses. She is an avid foodie who enjoys old vinyl records, good books, and wrestling with her Doberman, Gracie.

VIDEO: Change Heroes and Free The Children Help the World in 3 Hours

Watch what 22-year-old Evan Mula, from Boston, did with just a bit of time. He and 32 of his friends raised $10,000 in three hours to build a school in Kenya through Change Heroes and Free The Children. This is his trip to see that vision emerge in reality. Evan is able to demonstrate that anyone can change the world with just a bit of hard work. He now sets a standard for activists who work in Kenya.

LEARN MORE AT CHANGE HEROES