Friendship Park (and a note on politics)

(NOTE: What follows is an endorsement of legislation in the US Congress. That would make this a political endorsement, although that a political statement is not my intent. We haven't really discussed immigration yet, and I realize there are diverse and strongly-held views as to what is the most just immigration policy. If you think I've unwisely given cover to a destructive and unjust approach, I'll give rebuttals their own post. If at any time, you feel that this blog or our book club is being unduly influenced by prevailing political winds, rather than creating them, please speak up and voice your displeasure. I've always hated any appearance of church sanction for political parties or politicians. At the same time, I the issues we are discussing in these books, the conclusions we will draw, and (I pray) the actions we will take are going to strike many observers as sideways politics. If they don't, there's a good chance we've missed something. I highly recommend these two messages on Jesus and politics, and this one on immigration, from previous Tough Questions series at Coast.)

Last Sunday, Kristine said that, although Friendship Park has been shut down, that increasing pressure might force the Border Patrol to rescind its decision and reopen the park. At this point, much of it has been torn up, so it might take some money. Just today, then, I was pleased to read that Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona has introduced legislation that would

1. Require the Department of Homeland Security to consult with federal land managers and state, local, and tribal governments in creating a Border Protection Strategy that supports border security efforts while also protecting federal and tribal lands.

2. Provide for flexibility, rather than a “one size fits all” approach, to border security by allowing experts at DHS to decide upon best strategies for border security.

3. Allow land managers, local officials, and local communities to have a say in border security decisions, requiring full public notice and participation.

4. Ensure that laws intended to protect air, water, wildlife, culture, and health and safety are fully upheld. "

While Friendship Park is not specifically mentioned, it could be if our elected representatives hear enough about it. Write your representative and urge them to legislate the reopening of Friendship Park. Post your drop in the bucket in the comments!

2nd Meeting Recap

Our next meeting will be a movie night on Saturday, May 9th, location TBA. I will let you know which book we are reading next when I send out the email for that event. For those of you who missed our last meeting, we reflected on the passage from pages 243-244 that I posted earlier, and discussed how we might apply some of the ideas from MBM. We raised the possibility of getting involved in some sort of service work together, whether through ministries already in place at Coast or through NGOs in the community. If you'd be interested in doing this, and you weren't there on Sunday, let me know.

Also, a lot of people mentioned events and organizations others might be interested in. Kristine urged us to write letters to reverse the DHS decision to close Friendship Park. More information is available at the Friends of Friendship Park website. Becky invited us all to the Cultivating Food Justice conference to be held here on May 1st and 2nd. Jess digs Chicano Park Day, and thinks you should check it out this weekend. She is also friends with the founder of Hope Through Health, who provide health care to Togolese regardless of their ability to pay, along the lines of the PIH model. If you didn't get to give on Sunday and would like to, consider HTH!

Finally, for those with an inkling to work internationally, I'd like to pass along a link to Chris Blattman's blog. Check out the 'Advice' links on the left sidebar.

The Life You Can Save

Alright, just one last Peter Singer reference! In this Bloggingheads, George Mason economist Tyler Cowen grills Peter Singer on what the best way might be to improve the lives of the poor. For those of you in the original Lazarus group, you already know Peter Singer's line of argument. Two things that especially jumped out at me: 1) at around 3:15, you'll notice Cowen completely stumps singer on question on immigration and development. What in one experts opinion is the best way to combat poverty isn't even on the others radar! 2) Cowen (I forget where) suggests simply wiring money to poor people we've met on our travels. It's strange, because its just not something I would have given myself permission to do before. This is a bit of a sore spot for me (I have a tremendous story of being ripped off in my first four days in Egypt), since it really reminds me of how easy it is for me to get around, and how easy it is for me to "extract" things from other places without meaning to. It's kind of stunning how I often think of the international poor as billions of people who just want to send me a fraudulent email. Anyway, hopefully more comments on this later.

If Paul is the model, we're golden...

In case you missed it, on page 244. I think this also dovetails nicely with Michelle's comment:

... This was a direct quote from Jim, a characteristically emphatic phrase, which sounded harsher than it was. Jim meant it as a warning to the many young PIH-ers who imagined, as many had and many would, that the right thing to do with their lives was to imitate Paul. To Jim, attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself. "It's not about the quest for personal efficacy," as Paul himself liked to say. Besides, frank imitations would fail. What PIH-ers should take from Paul wasn't a manual fro their own lives but the proofs he'd created that seemingly intractable problems could be solved. "Paul has created technical solutions to help the rest of us get to decency, a road map to decency that we can all follow without trying to imitate him," Jim told me, explaining the message on the wall. "Paul is a model of what should be done. He's not a model for how it has to be done. Let's celebrate him. Let's make sure people are inspired by him. But we can't say anybody should or could be just like him." He added, "Because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally f---ed."

Eyes On The Prize

Some of you know that I spent a year in Cairo, where I took a class from Barbara Harrell-Bond, a dedicated advocate for refugees with a skeptical attitude on the efficacy of UNHCR and other large aid organizations. Just a few days ago, William Dowell of the Global Post wrote on UNHCR's continuing troubles, including this bit:

In a landmark study of the UNHCR’s organizational culture released shortly after Guterres became High Commissioner in 2005, an external consultant, Barbara Wigley, notes that the UNHCR has two basic objectives: the protection of refugees, and the protection of its own existence. It follows that as money becomes tighter and staffers face uncertainty about their own future; the instinct for self-preservation becomes more intense.

Two points on this. First, stuff like this is why criticisms of aid have some traction and why we need to be responsible with who we give to. In this article, we learn, for example, that UNHCR is paying $30 million a year to "staff in between assignments"—basically dead weight that bureaucratic rules prevent them from firing. Second, it is always good to remember that no organization, no church, is immune to the tendency toward an introverted inertia. Of PIH, we learn that as it grew, it "was trying to accommodate newcomers, trying ... to 'normalize' the experience ... it was okay to have children, to go home some days at five o'clock, to take a vacation" (p. 243). One of the things I love about Mountains, though, is that it reminds me that monomaniacal pursuit is a frequently developed theme in the Bible. Self-preservation, on the other hand, does not get such a ringing endorsement. I do not know at what point Jesus' exhortations to his followers become unworkable at a systemic scale, so I'm not sure this is really good operating advice for an international bureaucracy.

Anyway, I guess my next point will be on hypocrisy and unironic bluster. What say you?

All of These Words

St. Nicholas Kristof reports on an NGO called SOIL turns human waste into fertilizer in Port-au-Prince. Kristof writes, "Frankly, I was taken aback when, 10 minutes after they had met me, they pulled out a Ziploc bag and proudly declared that it was compost made from their own toilet." Beauty from ashes?

Margaret sent me a link to this MSNBC article that reports being a mother in Haiti is dangerous business. This reminded me that although Mountains focuses mainly on delivering health care to the poor, there are other professions and skilled intimately involved in promoting justice. Female literacy, for example is a key factor (more so than male literacy) in improving the quality of life of women and their families.

Finally, a more recent article focusing on the work PIH is doing in Rwanda, and a few bits about Farmer's family life, which may or may not placate some of your concerns.

Efficiency and Compassion

The first time I read Mountains, I was so overwhelmed by Paul Farmer's biography that I just couldn't imagine any other way to work for the global poor other than being a jet-setting, Ivy-League-trained doctor-anthropologist. My mind was thrilled at the idea of a person operating at maximum efficiency, getting, as it were, as many lives-saved-per-minute as his machine could possibly handle. When I evaluated my own my life in those terms, it felt pretty suboptimal. But upon rereading the book, I see that not everyone agreed with my overawed assessment of Farmer's time management. One of his academic overseer thought Paul Farmer was wasting time by treating individual patients instead of focusing systemic problems:

Farmer, [Harvard Professor Howard] Hiatt seemed to say, should be solely engaged in the battle against those scourges, and at a level commensurate with their size. 'The six months a year that Paul's looking after patients one-on-one in Haiti, if that time were converted to a major program for treating prisoners with TB in Russia and other easter European countries or malaria around the world, or AIDS in southern Africa—it doesn't matter where or what because you know he'll do important things. Because look at what he's done with only part of his time on MDR. Look what he's done with his skills and political acumen!' (181)

But what Professor Hiatt saw as a tragic inefficiency ("if that time time were converted," as if our lives were simple arithmetic), Farmer regards as the lynchpin of his work (see his list of priorities in the second paragraph of p. 182). Had I been in Hiatt's position, I would have made the same criticism. Had I been in Judas' position, I also would have demanded to know why Mary had wasted such a fortune in an ostentatious emotional display. And had I been at that meeting of top TB policy makers, I would have probably nodded my headed and smirked smugly when a Russian TB director insisted, "I only have six million dollars" to implement this program (p. 161). One of the most astonishing takeaways from Mountains for me, then, is to see the way that a certain compassion for the people and situation immediately before you yields long-term results. This kind of compassion is repeated not just by Paul Farmer but throughout PIH (in Jim Kim's refusal to give up on MDR-TB patients, and the astonishing story of John, the Haitian boy nasopharyngal carcinoma, and Serena, in Chapter 25). I have often questioned the church's seemingly imprudent affection for "small" problems that I felt promoted more egoism than compassion. But here are a group of people admire, at a "secular" organization, doing exactly as Jesus did, for the reason he did it, in the way he did it: addressing people's immediate needs, in a rash of compassion, inadvisedly. It echoes Mother Teresa's maxim about "small acts of great love," an impulse I've always struggled to effect.