While getting some work done on my car, I found myself parked in the waiting room at the dealership watching CNN for an hour. I thought it was interesting that they had to state they will only tune the TV to CNN because of the potentially offensive and inappropriate programming on other stations. Nonetheless, I welcomed the opportunity to catch up on world affairs while the car got fixed. One story has particularly stuck with me, and I really can't even conceptualize that it is real. Maybe you caught wind of this last week: women in Saudi Arabia are using social networking sites like Facebook to organize a protest of the law forbidding women from driving a car. What?! Here's the story from the NY Times. I just can't believe it. I mean, I guess I already knew this was a law, and am familiar with the laws forbidding women from publicly mixing with men, etc. But really if you think about it, it's mind-boggling to imagine a society where that really happens. I was sharing my dis-belief over cocktails with some of my girlfriends last night. Here we were, walking down Main Street, stopping in a couple bars to enjoy happy hour specials, freely talking about whatever we wanted, to whomever we wanted. We didn't have to worry about getting arrested or escorted home for wearing a short dress, fitted jeans or speaking openly to a man. And that is just something that never crosses my mind in terms of being afraid of getting arrested. Once in awhile my heart races as I roll through a stop sign and see a police car coming in the opposite direction, but that's about as close to facing the law that I come on a daily basis. As a woman, but more importantly, as a human being, I want to feel more outrage and transform that emotion into action... so that no human beings have to live under such inhumane and unjust conditions. I guess my bigger question is, why aren't we more outraged as a world? How can some countries, such as Kenya and Uganda, consider making homosexuality punishable by death? This makes me think of the movie Hotel Rwanda, which documented the genocide in 1994 that saw the mass murder of the Tutsi minority (estimates say 800,000 people were killed, with focus on women and children as an attempt to ensure there was not another generation of Tutsis) in under 100 days. It's a great move if you've never seen it (obviously not a light-hearted flick) that tells the story of a hotel manager who used his connections and passion to turn the hotel into a refugee camp, thus saving almost 1,200 Tutsis from the slaughter. I am thinking of that movie, not because it has the obvious connection of a story of inhumanity on the continent of Africa (we certainly have enough inhumanity in the US, too...) but because of a particularly poignant scene about the international world's reaction (or lack thereof) to the genocide. Paul, the hotel manager, is talking to a journalist who was able to leave the safety of the hotel grounds to get some video footage of the horrendous slaughter, and it is going to be the lead story on the national news in the US that evening. Paul says: "I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene." The journalist, Jack, responds: "Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?" And Paul is totally aghast: "How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?" but I think Jack might be right: "I think if people see this footage they'll say, "oh my God that's horrible," and then go on eating their dinners."
It's a lot easier to sit here in the comfort, ease and security of my living room and write this critique of the inaction of the international community in Rwanda, or in Saudi Arabia. The challenge is, what do I do? Do I change the channel because it's too depressing to hear the stories on the news of injustice and suffering? If I do stay on the channel and hear the story, but do nothing, which is worse?! This is a perennial question for me, and as a social justice teacher, I often grapple with these questions with my students. But I think for awhile, I've kept a distance from getting as personally involved or concerned. And now it seems I can't do that anymore, even if I want to because it's just bothering me too much. Maybe part of what I can do is to keep educating myself, discuss and learn in community, and work on softening my heart to the suffering of others. Dorothy Day said it best:
"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?"
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