The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Lisa Derrick: Gods Bless America! Queens NY GOP Won't Dump Pagan Candidate
- Cameron Sinclair: We're Hiring: Finding Talent in a Down Economy
- Byron Williams: Trip to Washington Always Stir Deep Feelings
- James Warren: The Week in Magazines: Obama the "Self-Entangling Giant" and How to Have Sex During Dinner at a Restaurant
- Johann Hari: The Savior of Africa - and the Environment? An Interview With Nobel Prize-winner Wangari Maathai
| Lisa Derrick: Gods Bless America! Queens NY GOP Won't Dump Pagan Candidate | Top |
| In a stunning show of tolerance that defies theocon C-Streetism, the GOP in Queens, NY will not replace Pagan high priest Dan Halloran as their candidate for District 19 city council in the November 3 election. Considering George Bush administration officials objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because the Harry Potter books "encouraged witchcraft," that's a very open-minded stance. Halloran is First Atheling or king in his faith, Theodism, a cultural, religious, and martial organization; dedicated to reviving the folkways of the Norman peoples of Northern Europe... Theodism is basically a reconstructed/revisionist form of pre-Christian Northern European polytheism, which differs doctrinally from the similarly Norse-based Astaru and the more familiar Celtic based-based Wicca; though they share some of the same holidays, based on solar and lunar cycles. In Theodism, kings are also the high priests; the gods Tyr, Odin and Thor offer their blessings in the form of luck on the priest-king and thus down through the people. Halloran-- an attorney and partner in the firm Palmieri, Castiglione & Halloran , served as legal counsel and incorporating attorney for the New York City Pagan Pride Project , and the chairman of the state Republican Liberty Caucus--has been endorsed by the Queens County Republican Party. Phyllis Curott , a New York-based attorney, author, activist and Wiccan high priestess doesn't know Halloran, but isn't surprised to find a Pagan running for office, though the party affiliation was a little eye-opening. She told La Figa exclusively: Pagans are everywhere, I've been saying it for years. Doctors, soldiers, bankers, lawyers with all sorts of political views. But an official Republican Party candidate! Move over Christian right, here come the Pagans. I certainly disagree with his politics, but it's great that he's running. Queens GOP Chairman Phil Ragusa and the GOP executive committee were aware of Halloran's religious beliefs when he announced his candidacy; and Halloran was the odds on favorite to win the city council seat in Queens against newcomer Kevin Kim until the Queens Tribune ran a story about Halloran's faith. Turns out the article was far from objective, because, as reports the Village Voice: a Kim campaign consultant also happens to be the VP of the Queens Tribune, and because Queens congressman Gary Ackerman, who founded the paper and still holds a chunk of it, used to be Kim's boss and who urged his old employee to make the race... After the Tribune article hit, it looked like the local GOP honchos were going to replace Halloran on the ticket with a conservative Democrat and slip Halloran into State Supreme Court post--except that Halloran, admitted into the bar in 2003, lacks the required 10 years as an attorney to take the judgeship. But on Thursday, the Republicans stood by their man. Queens County GOP Vice Chairman Vince Tabone, who is also the spokesman for Halloran's campaign, told local reporters : I think it's particularly repugnant to have a religious test. We saw people trying to do that with [President Barack] Obama and Mitt Romney. Flushing is a birthplace of religious freedom. It's part of Queens' heritage. It's a community where Protestants and Catholics and Sikhs live side by side. Attoney Curott--who is High Priestess of the Temple of Ara, along with being an Ambassador to the Parliament of World's Religions--optimistically sees this as an opportunity for greater acceptance of pagan faiths, especially in Republican politics: Attitudes have certainly changed--the Republican Party apparently already knew he was Pagan! They're defending his religious freedom, advocating religious tolerance and condemning a religious test for office as repugnant. Marvelous. Quite a change from Jesse Helm's introducing legislation to take away the tax-exempt status of Wiccan religious institutions. Or Bob Barr's condemnation of religious observances by Wiccan soldiers on military bases, or President Bush's remarks that he didn't think Wicca was a religion so he "hoped the military take another look at it." Let's hope it's change we can believe in. And Halloran himself says: I don't think any of this is really relevant to the City Council race. It's like talking about what church you pray at. That you understand the divine is the most important part...As long as we proceed in our civic lives with dignity and honor, that's what matters. For a more in depth version, click here | |
| Cameron Sinclair: We're Hiring: Finding Talent in a Down Economy | Top |
| For the past nine months we've been facing an odd predicament, hiring in a down market . Since the beginning of 2009 we've been taking on about one person a month and are still looking to fill eight more positions. You read that right, eight. I know that will hardly do a dent in the current unemployment rates but it means that by year end my organization would have doubled in size. It's pretty daunting dealing with expansion and developing a sustainable model while thinking about a possible contraction. I'm assuming that even though 2008 was good to non profits there will be no real 'giving season' at the end of this year. Do Gooders Need Not Apply We've been getting lots of resumes but what is making things difficult is that a number of folks that are applying that think working in the non profit world means 'an easier gig' than their last corporate job. While there is no need for suit and tie this doesn't mean that the charitable sector does not require equal standards of professionalism. Our work revolves around providing pro bono or at cost professional design and construction services to communities in need. Whether it is a building an orphanage in India or elder housing on reservations the need for a licensed architect is a requirement on all jobs. At the same time, while we are a 501c3, we run our books like any construction project. Keeping budgets tight means that our staff can make a bigger impact and running jobs efficiently means that communities do not lose faith in the long process of building. So while we respect your decade of work at 'one of the big banks' or your desire to 'do good' - we need folks that can utilize their talents to create, support or empower change on a local level. It doesn't need to be a career but it does need to be your passion. Someone Unlock the Doors On the flip side that passion is out there. We've found an incredible number of recent graduates and mid career professionals willing to go and do 'tour of duty' out in communities around the world. Young professionals honing their architectural skills while seeking the betterment of others. They are on the gulf coast of the United States; in rural Kenya to the informal settlements of urban India. In the last year we've had the honor to work with American, Canadian, Romanian, South African and Ugandan designers - all sharing a common interest, using innovative design to make a difference. So our office might seem quaint next to your previous zen cool space but if your still passionate - we're hiring full time positions (3) and taking on some global design fellows (5). Here is a little primer on our group if you are thinking of applying: | |
| Byron Williams: Trip to Washington Always Stir Deep Feelings | Top |
| Whenever I come the Washington, D.C. I always take time to make certain pilgrim journeys. I enjoy sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the place where Martin Luther King electrified the nation with his "I Have a Dream" speech. I try to imagine the hope that permeated the crowd on that sweltering August day in 1963. I also go to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the grave of NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi, Medgar Evers, one of the early martyrs within the civil rights movement. His assassination occurred in arguably the most chaotic 24 hours in American history. June 11, 1963, began with the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon. Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood symbolically in front of the University of Alabama to prohibit two Negro students from registering for classes. President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation that evening elevating the cause of civil rights to a moral issue. These events occurred before Byron De La Beckwith hid in the bushes and cowardly shot Evers in the back as he returned to his Jackson, Miss. home. Though tragic, Evers death also symbolizes the hope during a very hostile time in 1963. But 46 years later, in many ways, America is a very different place. Hard to imagine two years ago Rep. Barbara Lee, president of the Congressional Black Caucus would have the honor of introducing an African American commander in chief, as she did at the annual CBC conference dinner. Many attending the conference see racism still at work. They view many of the protests against President Barack Obama as nothing more than thinly veiled racism. And some would conclude that "thinly veiled" is giving the behavior the benefit of doubt. From the street corner where I stand, signs that refer to the president as "primate in chief" or the American taxpayers are the "Jews for Obama's oven," reflect overt racism and hatred of the highest order. When South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson called the president a liar before a joint session of Congress, how would reasonable people define that one? Wilson's defenders point to the vitriol leveled toward former President George W. Bush by liberals during his eight years in the White House. But no one on the left felt the former president's actions justified publicly disrespecting the office of president of the United States or the House chamber. Was it Obama's policy on health care or the percentage of melanin in his skin that led to Wilson's uncontrollable urge to forget the setting by calling the president on his alleged mendacity? Wilson's political background, which includes favoring keeping the Confederate flag flying at the South Carolina statehouse, robs him of portraying himself of a populist swept up in the moment -- at least from my perspective. I agree with former President Jimmy Carter who recently stated: "When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds," We have certainly witnessed an unhinged element of the country that few would conclude were not racist. But should we make the nuts emblematic of the whole? If the fringe were remotely close to a majority, there is no way Barack Hussein Obama would be the 44th President of the United States. I find the subtext to most discussions on racism depend greatly on who decides what's racist, is it the perceived victim or victimizer? Those accused of racism talk about their intentions, while those feeling the pain of racism talk about their experience. This makes racism in the public conversation the elephant in the room -- an emotion-based conversation with each side feeling right rest solely with their perspective. Moreover, any discussion on the impact of racism that does not include poverty is, in my opinion, useless. I suspect that we will continue to discuss poverty long after the need to discuss racism has diminished. But racism cannot and should not be ignored. I would certainly welcome the day when racism is truly behind us, confined to the ash pile of irrelevance along with the fringe groups who seek to keep its flickering embers alive. Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist and blog-talk radio host. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his Web site: byronspeaks.com | |
| James Warren: The Week in Magazines: Obama the "Self-Entangling Giant" and How to Have Sex During Dinner at a Restaurant | Top |
| No matter how much he might disdain the George W. Bush presidency, especially when it comes to misuse of executive branch power, Barack Obama may be a "self-entangling giant" who is going down the same perilous path argues no less an initial Obama sympathizer than journalist-historian Garry Wills in the Oct. 8 New York Review of Books . Wills, a Northwestern University historian emeritus, argues in " Entangled Giant " that Bush left office unpopular and disgraced, with Obama set on ending illegal acts like torture and indefinite detentions, denial and legal representation to detainees, and nullification of laws by signing statements, among others. But he then contends that, "The momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked or even slowed." Our entire post-World War 2 history "caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch," replete with a de facto monopoly on nuclear power, a vast worldwide network of military bases, the systems of classification and clearance, the "war on terror" and what Wills calls the "cult of the commander in chief." And while Obama has taken certain steps, like announcing the future closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, there are other actions and statements that give pause: the CIA asserting that it may retain the practice of sending prisoners to foreign nations; the Justice Department decision to abort a trial by invoking "state secrets"; refusing to release photographs of "enhanced interrogation"; the release of gay personnel from the U.S. military at rates equivalent to the Bush years; and what Wills deems Obama's defiance of the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, mandating states to recognize laws passed by other states, via Obama's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing states to refuse to recognize other states' approval of gay marriages. Most of his case involves national defense and he concedes, "It should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task." In sum, he argues that Obama will become a prisoner of the national security prison we've built over decades; an empire of military bases and imperial dealings largely unknown to the average citizen. "He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command," writes Wills. "Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments. He becomes the prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the bomb, a modern president cannot not use the huge powers at his disposal. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant." ---Remember the passions elicited by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services' decision last year to remove 437 children from a fundamentalist Mormon compound in Eldorado, Texas? In " With God on Their Side ," October's Texas Monthly returns to the scene of some initially alleged crimes after all the charges have been settled and nearly every child is back exactly where they were originally, and wonders whether justice was truly served. Katy Vine does a very fine job taking one through the history of the dispute, the seeming mix of Texas politics and bureaucratic spinelessness, and strongly suggests that the Mormons got off very easy. In particular, there is rather strong testimony from a respected family law expert who briefly worked for the clearly disorganized state on the case overseeing its legal strategy and urged strong action in some individual cases, including terminating parents' rights in some instances as a result of seeming underage marriages and child abuse. But he was rebuffed, in the process coming to believe that key players simply did not understand the breadth of incriminating evidence, and quit. Even acknowledging that putting some children up for adoption would have been traumatic, the family law expert is left wondering if it was truly better "to return girls to families in which underage marriages had occurred and might occur again? 'They think they're going to wind up happily holding hands in heaven,' he said. 'That doesn't make it something we can tolerate in a decent society.'" ---The Sept. 26 Economist offers a knockout, 14-page report on " Mobile Marvels ," or how, "Once the toys of rich yuppies, mobile phones have evolved in a few short years to become tools of economic empowerment for the world's poorest people. These phones compensate for inadequate infrastructure, such as bad roads and slow postal services, allowing information to move more freely, making markets more efficient and unleashing entrepreneurship." This focuses on three trends: the spread of mobile phones in developing countries and the accompanying rise in home-grown mobile operators that exceed the heretofore Western incumbent firms; the rise of China's two leading telecoms-equipment makers from low-cost, low-quality operators to high-quality and innovative powers; and development of a raft of new phone-based services in the developing world, which go far beyond text messages and phone calls, with new data services including agricultural advice, health care and financial transfers. And whereas government-run phone monopolies do remain in places like Ethiopia, they are being dwarfed in impact and innovation by the real competition one finds in spots like war-ravaged Somalia, a poor nation with no real government where a dozen mobile operators seek market share and explain a far greater "mobile teledensity" (how many phones one finds per 100 people) than Ethiopia. As telling are the many ways in which it's now apparent that the spread of phones promotes economic development, especially money transfers or mobile banking, which derives from the custom in the developing world of using prepaid calling credit as an informal currency far more efficient than physically sending it from one place to another. "In the grand scheme of telecoms history, mobile phones have made a bigger difference to the lives of more people, more quickly, than any previous technology. They have spread the fastest and proved the easiest and cheapest to develop. It is now clear that the long process of connecting everyone on Earth to a global telecommunications network, which began with the invention of the telegraph in 1791, is on the verge of being completed. Mobile phones will have done more than anything else to advance the democratization of telecoms, and all the advantages that come with it." ---The Oct. 5 issue of Business Week (which may, sadly, be a dead man walking among long-proud weeklies) inspects " Europe's New McCafe Culture ," namely McDonald's' attempt to upend Starbucks as Europe's top coffee chain by opening coffee shops in existing franchises. Starbucks has about 1,200 stores in Europe, with McDonald's planning to have 1,300 by the end of 2010 and to try to undercut Starbucks on price. Can it do so, surmount its inherent double-edge sword of a fast-food image and succeed? Well, then, the comments from one Parisian quoted here best not be duplicated continent-wide: "I don't care how good their coffee is. The smell when you walk into a McDonald's is so greasy, it's nauseating." ---The Sept. 28 Sports Illustrated offers a hard-to-ignore headline: "At age 17, Bonnie Richardson won the Texas state track team championship all by herself. Then she did it again." Gary Smith does a typically lovely job profiling Richardson, one of three members of her high school track team and the only one to qualify for the state championship (in her division, namely the 380 high schools with enrollments of fewer than 200). Needless to say, to win the team title with just one person is, ah, difficult. And high rise dweller, please note: she can nail an eight-point buck with one clean shot from a bow and arrow (the head is stuffed and mounted on the family's living room wall). ---Finally, we have "Bad Girl Sex" from October's Cosmopolitan , or what is ever so delicately phrased as "Get Naughty Tonight" in a piece with a list of "12 taboo moves [that] should really drive him loco with lust." This highly empirical analysis includes the general topic ("Try a bit of bondage") and both a "naughty move" and an "even naughtier move." Thus, with bondage, there's either tying your hands together and "let him devour you" in bed or "have him tie your hands with a scarf and hang them on a hook on his door before he tantalizes you with oral." This also includes beckoning your male friend from a restaurant table by telling him you forgot something in the car, then texting him that you need his help and, when he arrives, going at it hot and heavy in a presumably less-public area of the parking lot. It's unclear whether you're supposed to place your food order before or after the text message. More on Magazines | |
| Johann Hari: The Savior of Africa - and the Environment? An Interview With Nobel Prize-winner Wangari Maathai | Top |
| When does planting a tree become a revolutionary act -- and unleash an army of gunmen who want to shoot you dead? The answer to this question lies in the unlikely story of Wangari Maathai. She was born on the floor of a mud hut with no water or electricity in the middle of rural Kenya, in the place where human beings took their first steps. There was no money, but there was at least lush, green rainforest and cool, clear drinking water. But Maathai watched as the life-preserving landscape of her childhood was hacked down. The forests were felled, the soils dried up, and the rivers died so that a corrupt and distant clique could profit. She started a movement to begin to make the land green again -- and in the process she went to prison, nearly died, toppled a dictator, transformed how African women saw themselves, and won a Nobel Prize. Now Maathai is traveling the world with a warning. As she told the United Nations climate summit last Tuesday, it is not just her beloved rainforest that is threatened now, but all rainforests. "As human beings, we are attacking our own life-support system," she says. "And if we carry on like this, we are digging our own grave." Her story begins with one particular tree in the heart of Africa. In 1940, Maathai became the third of six children born to illiterate peasant farmers. Her father worked as a "glorified slave" for the British settlers who occupied Kenya. He was forced to do what he was told on their farms, and forbidden -- like all black people -- from growing his own food and selling it. The nearby town of Nakuru was strictly segregated, with Africans banned from the "European areas." As a child, Maathai escaped into the natural landscape. She studied the forests: how they absorbed water and turned them into streams, and how they were filled with life. She would sit for hours under one particular fig tree, which her mother told her was sacred and life-giving and should never be damaged. "That tree inspired awe. It was protected. It was the place of God. But in the Sixties, after I had gone far away, I went back to where I grew up," she says, "and I found God had been relocated to a little stone building called a church. The tree was no longer sacred. It had been cut down. I mourned for that tree. And I knew the trees had to live. They have to live so we can live." I. A Daughter of the Soil I am meeting Maathai in a busy hotel in London. She approaches me in the lobby -- a tall, broad woman with a bright blue headdress and a slight limp -- looking frazzled. "I have a flight in a few hours and I have packed nothing! Ah, you know how it is," she says. "Let's have coffee." As soon as we sit, she begins to talk about the trees, and a calm settles over her unlined 69-year-old face. "I am a daughter of the soil, and trees have been my life," she says. She begins to talk reverentially about how trees store carbon, regulate rainfall, hold soil in place, and provide food. "I can't live without the green trees, and nor can you. I'm humbled by the understanding that they could get along without me, though! They sustain us, not the other way round. We don't really know where we came from, where we are going, and what the purpose of all this is. But we can look at the trees and the animals and each other, and realize we are part of a web we can't really control." She was only able to learn the hard science of the forests because her parents made a bold decision. At a time when girls were not often educated, her mother resolved to send her girl to school, and give her all the opportunities she had never had. The British settler her father worked for was furious: who was going to pick his pyrethrum? But her mother insisted -- a rare and risky act of defiance. Maathai soon shot to the top of the class, and was offered a place at a Catholic boarding school run by Irish nuns. When she was 13, in her first year away at school, the rebellion against the British occupation broke out. The Mau Mau guerrilla fighters took on the British occupiers to drive them away, killing around 100 people. The British fought back with astonishing ferocity, killing around 100,000 Kenyans. "The Home Guards had a reputation for extreme cruelty and all manner of terror," she says. Her mother was forced out of her home at gunpoint and ordered to live in an "emergency village" -- a glorified camp surrounded by trenches. Men were not allowed in. "My mother and father didn't see each other for seven years," she says. "I carried messages between them. That's how I ended up imprisoned for the first time." When she was 16, she was caught by British soldiers, and thrown into a detention camp. "The conditions were horrible -- designed to break people's spirits and self-confidence and instill sufficient fear that they would abandon their struggle." It stank. She slept on the floor and wept. After two days, she was released. She adds: "I will never forget the misery in that camp. There is terrible trauma for everyone from those times." What does she think of the British historians who lyrically laud the British Empire, and say what happened in Kenya was merely a blip? "Well, that is the propaganda we all give to our subjects! They have to do that for them to support these terrible crimes." It was not only humans who were being cut down. Her forests began to be slashed by the British and replaced with vast commercial plantations growing tea for export. These plantations couldn't absorb and store water in the same way, so the groundwater levels fell to almost nothing, and the local streams dried up. After independence, Kenya's corrupt new ruling class continued the same policies, treating the forests as their private property to be pillaged. But Maathai was offered a way out, to a place where she could ignore all this. After scoring extremely highly on the national exams, she was granted a place at an American university. It would be fully paid-for by the US government, as part of a policy introduced by John Kennedy. She was one of thousands of young Africans -- including Barack Obama, Sr -- who became part of "the Kennedy airlift" to study there. At first, "I felt like I had landed on the moon." She remembers getting into her first elevator: "I thought I was going to be pulled apart!" She was shocked to see men and women dancing pressed up against each other and women with relative freedom. She stayed for four years, majoring in biology in Kansas, and, "America changed me in every way. I saw the civil rights movement. It changed what I knew about how to be a citizen, how to be a woman, how to live. But I always knew I would go back." Her forests were calling. When she arrived back in Kenya, she soon became the first woman ever to get a PhD in East or Central Africa. She was a professor by her mid-20s. But she was paid far less than men in the same position, and the entirely male student body at first refused to take lessons from her in anatomy. "But I showed them who was boss. A failing grade from me counted as much as from any man! That was a language they understood." She met a young Kenyan politician called Mwangi Maathai and adored him. She became swept up in his campaign to gain a seat in parliament, and quickly married him -- but it soon started to go bad. "When Mwangi won the election, I was so happy for him. I said -- what are we going to do now to get jobs for all the people we promised help for? He just said -- oh, that was the campaign." She pauses, disgusted still. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He didn't intend to do anything." She joined a group called the National Council of Women of Kenya, determined to give other people the opportunities she had been given. "Many of the girls I was at school with were back working in the fields and living in huts, and I wanted to help them," she says. When she went out into their areas, she saw the forests had been razed and malnutrition was rife. She felt helpless and wondered what she could do. "Then it just came to me -- why not plant trees? The trees would provide a supply of wood that would enable women to cook nutritious foods. They would also have wood for fencing and fodder for cattle and goats. The trees would offer shade for humans and animals, protect watersheds and bind the soil, and if they were fruit trees, provide food. They would also heal the land by bringing back birds and small animals and regenerate the vitality of the earth." She managed to persuade international aid organizations to pay women a very small sum -- around 2p -- for successfully planting each tree. At first, local men scoffed. What could women do? How could they make trees grow? How did this belong in our traditions? But women were soon organizing themselves from village to village into independent committees. "We started by planting trees, but soon we were planting ideas! We were showing women could be an independent force. That they were strong." But a scandal was waiting that threatened to leave Maathai broken -- and broke. II. Too strong Mwangi Maathai was jealous of his wife's intellect and expected her to be submissive and obedient. "He wanted me to fake failure and deny my God-given talents. But I wouldn't do it," she says. One morning, he announced he was divorcing her -- and it became a national news story. Divorce was, at that time, a huge scandal -- and the woman was always blamed. When the case came to open court, it was filled with journalists eager to report on Mwangi's charges that she was an adulterous witch who had caused his high blood pressure and refused to submit to his will. She was, he announced, "Too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn, and too hard to control." The men in the courtroom cheered. "With every court proceeding, I felt stripped naked before my children, my family and friends. It was a cruel, cruel punishment," Maathai wrote in her autobiography, Unbowed . She adds: "I was being turned into a sacrificial lamb. Anybody who had a grudge against modern, educated and independent women was being given an opportunity to spit on me. I decided to hold my head high, put my shoulders back, and suffer with dignity: I would give every woman and girl reasons to be proud and never regret being educated, successful, and talented." The judge found in her husband's favor, saying she had been a disgrace as a wife and deserved nothing. A few days later, she criticized the judge in an interview for his sexism -- and he ordered she be tossed into prison for contempt of court. "So not only had I lost my husband but I lost my freedom," she says. The other women prisoners were very kind to her: they let her sleep in the middle of the huddle, so she wouldn't be so cold. "Far from beating me down, I felt stronger. I knew I'd done nothing wrong." When she was released, she decided to run for parliament herself, to demand rights for women. She resigned from the university and announced her candidacy -- only for another judge to declare she was ineligible to stand on the false grounds that she hadn't placed herself on the electoral register. The university -- also under political pressure -- refused to take her back. Suddenly, "I was 41 years old and I had no job, no money, and I was about to be evicted from my house. I didn't have enough money to feed my children. I remember them wanting chips, and I just couldn't afford it. You never forget the sound of your child crying with hunger." She rubs her head-dress softly and says: "I thought about my mother. She had survived everything life put at her. She had been kept apart from my father for seven years in an emergency village. She always survived." It was at this personal midnight that she returned to the small seeds she had begun to plant years before. She decided to urge women to plant whole forests. She wanted to see an entire new green belt across Kenya nurtured by women. A grant by the UN Development Programme and the Norwegian government spurred it on, and she felt herself awakening again -- along with the greening land. Then one day she read about a threat to some of the country's most precious trees. Daniel Arap Moi, the thuggish dictator of Kenya, decided to build over Uhuru Park, the only green space in the capital of Nairobi. He wanted to replace it with a giant skyscraper, some luxury apartments, and a huge golden statue of himself. So she decided to do something you weren't supposed to do in Moi's Kenya: protest. She led large marches to the park, and wrote to the project's international funders, asking if they would happily pay to concrete over Hyde Park or Central Park. "People said it would make no difference -- that you can't make a dictator hear you, he's too strong," she says. "But I was in Japan a few years ago and I heard a story about a hummingbird. There's a huge fire in the forest and all the animals run out to escape. But the hummingbird stays, flying to and from a nearby river carrying water in its beak to put on the fire. The animals laugh and mock this little hummingbird. They say -- the fire is so big, you can't do anything. But the hummingbird replies -- I'm doing what I can. There is always something we can do. You can always carry a little water in your beak." But the initial reaction to her protests was frightening. She began to receive anonymous phone calls telling her should shut up or face death. Moi called her a "madwoman," and announced: "According to African traditions, women should respect their men! She has crossed the line!" When she carried on, she was charged with treason -- a crime which carried the death penalty -- and was slammed away in prison. She had arthritis, and she says: "In that cold, wet cell my joints ached so much I thought I would die." But she would not apologize or give in. "What other people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see the danger. If you only look at the solution, you can defy anyone and appear strong and fearless." It was only after international protests began to gather -- led by then-Senator Al Gore -- that an embarrassed Moi had to let her go. She immediately started protesting again. After three years of campaigning against the developers and relentless death-threats, Moi finally relented. He dropped the project. The park was saved. A dictator defeated by a woman? Nothing like it had happened in Kenya before. It was the moment the Moi regime began to die. She says: "People began to think -- if one little woman of no significance except her stubbornness can do this, surely the government can be changed." A great green wave of trees was starting to grow across the country: some 35 million have been planted by her Green Belt Movement. But her confrontation with Moi was not over. As a symbol of resistance, Maathai was contacted by a group of mothers whose sons had disappeared into the prison system, simply for democratically opposing the regime. They believed their sons were being tortured. They were frantic with fear and grief. Maathai realized she could not refuse them. She told them to gather up blanket and mattresses, because they were going to go to Central Nairobi, plant themselves in Moi's vision, and refuse to leave until he released their sons. On the first night, the police watched anxiously, unsure what to do. Hundreds of people gathered in solidarity. By the third day, there were thousands -- and men started to publicly describe how they had been tortured by the police, and weep. "Nothing like it had happened in our country's history before," she says. But then the police swooped in with tear gas and batons. They beat the women hard, and Maathai hardest of all. She was carried away bleeding. When she had to sign her name at the police station, she dipped her finger in her own blood, pouring from a crack in her head, and scrawled her name with it. The next morning, all the women went back. Maathai was there too, in a neck brace and bandages, insisting she would not be intimidated. For a second | |
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