Humanize the Earth!

Ted visited by FBI

August 30, 2004 at 10:13 pm | In Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Yes, that’s right. The FBI came a-calling this evening. They asked for me. They asked if I remembered the anthrax investigation from 2001. I asked, “In Washington?” They answered affirmatively. They then produced a photo copy of an envelope with my return address sticker in the corner and addressed to George W. Bush, Murder-in-Chief etc, etc in my handwriting. They didn’t mention what the address or letter said but then asked me a series of innane questions about pre-franked envelopes (the kind where the stamp is pre-printed, which this was). They asked me where I bought it and if it came in a package and of how many and if I buy that type of envelope often. I didn’t remember even buying that one, let alone any like it before or since. They asked if I had any from that batch left in my house. I said I couldn’t ever even remember seeing one like that so I highly doubted it. That was it. No pressure. No intimidation. They seemed rather incompetent to me, actually.

tip jar for shovels, wheelbarrows and the like

August 25, 2004 at 8:32 pm | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

This is a test of the dropcash method of providing a tip jar where anyone can give any amount they like and we call can see the progress toward the fundraising goal. In this case, the goal is $US250. If you’d prefer to write me a check, then paypal won’t get their cut. I’d also really like to hear your feedback about this whole concept of fundraising this way. Does it make you more curious about what I’m doing in Africa? Does it make you less likely to read my blog because I’m hitting you up for cash?

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In the Budaburam (Ghana) Refugee Camp for Liberians, many people have started working together as volunteers in a Humanist Movement campaign for Non-violence and Fight Against Malaria. Part of the campaign is to clean up the environment so as to eliminate breeding grounds for mosquitos. They’ve got plenty of volunteers, but need shovels, rakes, gloves, wheelbarrow and other similar equipment to do this clean-up work. Thanks much!

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Progress

Amount collected:	$155.00
Campaign goal:	$250.00

You can make a contribution to this campaign via PayPal. Your donation will go to Ted Ernst (paypal@chicagohumanist.org).

true wisdom is personal

August 25, 2004 at 10:42 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

Following up on the previous post, in the first sentence of the 1969 Healing of Suffering speech, Silo says,

… true wisdom is not communicated through books or speeches—true wisdom is found in the depths of your consciousness, just as true love is found in the depths of your heart.

This to me is another way of saying what the Dalai Lama recently said (”The threshold between right and wrong is pain.”).

“Should” = Suffering

August 25, 2004 at 10:12 am | In Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Chris gives us this gem from The Dalai Lama:

The threshold between right and wrong is pain.

Chris goes on to say:

It amazes me how much pain we humans can create for ourselves through judgment and longing. Anytime I find myself using ’should’ I look at it as a trigger for a question. ‘Should’ is a sign that we need to inquire into the nature of our expectations about things. From there we can create strategy for either changing the world to bring it in line with our vision, or changing ourselves to recognize reality and alleviate our own suffering.

In his 1969 speech, The Healing of Suffering, that marks the beginning of the Humanist Movement, Silo talks ties suffering to desire:

There is yet another kind of suffering that does not recede even with the advance of science or with the advance of justice. This type of suffering, which belongs strictly to your mind, retreats before faith, before joy in life, before love. You must understand that this suffering is always rooted in the violence that exists in your own consciousness. You suffer because you fear losing what you have, or because of what you have already lost, or because of what you desperately long to reach. You suffer because of what you lack, or because you fear in general.

These, then, are the great enemies of humanity: fear of sickness, fear of poverty, fear of death, fear of loneliness. All these forms of suffering pertain to your mind, and all of them reveal your inner violence, the violence that is in your mind. Notice how that violence always stems from desire. The more violent a person is, the more gross are that person’s desires.

I definitely feel that the Dalai Lama, Chris and Silo have it right when it comes to my life.

Liberian refugee camp in Ghana

August 25, 2004 at 5:42 am | In Uncategorized | 17 Comments

This article is about the refugee camp in Ghana where I have been organizing my team in the Humanist Movement. I’ve been to the camp 6 times and will return before the end of this year. Here are my reports.
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Distributed by Friends of Liberia (FOL) & the Liberian Collections Project (LCP) at Indiana University
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HEADLINE: ‘WE AREN’T HOOKED ON HANDOUTS’ CHALLENGE LIBERIAN REFUGEES
BYLINE: Ajoa Yeboah-Afari
DATE: 17 August 2004
SOURCE: All Africa (c) 2004 AllAfrica, All Rights Reserved

At the Kaneshie market bus station in the Ghanaian capital Accra, conductors’ cries of “Liberia town! This way for Liberia!” mingle with calls for other destinations. No one asks why there should be a place called Liberia in Ghana.

The presence of some 45,000 Liberians in Ghana is now an accepted fact - it is 13 years since Ghana provided a safe haven for people fleeing Liberia’s bitter civil war that erupted in 1989.

Their haven, formerly the little-known hamlet of Buduburam some 35 kilometres from Accra, is a refugee camp with a difference.

There are no barbed wire fences and its inhabitants can come and go freely. In fact - but for the haphazard layout and cramped appearance that suggest hurried construction - it could pass for a normal Ghanaian town.

And Buduburam positively bustles with business: table-top soft drink bars jostle with eateries, beauty salons, dressmaking and shoemaking shops, telephone and Internet cafes. Some refugees even grow crops for the settlement’s new market - run jointly by refugees and locals.

“Here in Ghana we have learned to be self-employed,” says John Connell, chairperson of the Liberian Welfare Council, which represents the refugees. “In Liberia if you were not employed by the government, then you were not working.”

Connell, who was an insurance claims manager at home, has completed a family planning course at Buduburam and is now a distributor of family planning products.

Life in Buduburam has also given many women their first opportunity to get educated and learn business skills. “After 13 years here, when we return home the question will be: ‘What did you do during your years in exile?’” says Irene Jayee, 42, president of the Liberian Refugee Women’s Organisation. “So we decided to put our skills in order.”

Shelly Dick, a researcher who carried out a field study of Buduburam refugee camp in 2000 and now works at the US government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement in Washington, says Buduburam “dispels a common myth (held by governments, donors and the media) that refugees are dependent and hooked on handouts in camps.”

“This myth is perpetuated by the common UN agency response to dealing with a refugee crisis - which is to put them in camps.”

“While dependency is a myth, need is not - needs are very real and pressing,” she adds. But instead of giving people handouts, refugees should be allowed to contribute economically, intellectually and artistically: “Don’t create a situation where refugees are reduced to beggars.”

When Liberians refugees began arriving in 1990, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provided tents, blankets, food and medicine and, later, skills training in carpentry, masonry, soap-making and tie-dye.

It helped 3,000 refugees return in 1997 when a fragile peace was brokered, but most chose to remain in Ghana. Believing that Liberia was now safe, the UNHCR stopped giving material assistance to individual refugees in 2000. But instead of encouraging refugees to return home, the move helped galvanise them into self-sufficiency.

The refugees took over the community school and clinic, built their own houses and started their own businesses. “When the UNHCR left, we tried to shoulder our own responsibilities because we could not sit here supinely,” says Connell.

Capital for some of the ventures was raised through loans, remittances from families abroad and credit from Ghanaian suppliers in Accra.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR was forced to re-establish its presence at Buduburam in April 2002, when the conflict intensified in Liberia and thousands more fled to Ghana.

David Kamphuis, UNHCR protection officer for Ghana, says Buduburam is a success because - unlike most refugee camps - it does not isolate refugees from locals.

But the picture is not all rosy. Some are unemployed, some cannot even afford to buy bread. “Although they have managed very well, it’s clear some people fell through the cracks,” says Kamphuis.

“The assistance we now provide is not so much to individuals. We help the schools with books, benches, building a new school block,” says Kamphuis.

Allison Hughes, a refugee and physics lecturer at the University of Ghana, believes the UN should study Buduburam and use it as a model: “If we were able to survive, they should find out at what point aid should be cut off so that people’s initiative will grow.”

But Delphine Marie, UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva, says “withdrawal of aid doesn’t necessarily lead to self-sufficiency”. Negotiation with the host government to allow refugees freedom to leave the camps, settle in local communities, sell goods and find jobs is also important - as are skills training programmes.

Despite the success of Buduburam, many Ghanaians have mixed feelings towards the refugees, often perpetuated by the media. They reflect the usual stereotypes: some mistakenly believe the government in this heavily indebted poor country is spending its overstretched resources on the refugees. Others fear Liberians are involved in crime.

“The biggest problem dealing with refugees is ignorance,” says Mumuni Bawumia, secretary of the government’s Refugee Board. “We’ve been trying to educate people that they’re just like us, that they’re no different.” Connell is convinced that most refugees in Ghana will return home if peace is fully restored - taking their newfound skills with them.

Buduburam’s refugee women have already taken a visible role in the Liberian peace talks in Accra. On 22 July, they hit international headlines when they threatened to strip naked if the three fighting factions refused to reach a compromise.

Says Jayee of the Refugee Women’s Organisation: “We’ll be going back to build a new Liberia. And who are the new Liberians? It’s we, those now in exile.”

Get your war on

August 23, 2004 at 12:36 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

Thanks to Mark Dilley for this link:

AKMA: So Weirdly Wrong

August 23, 2004 at 12:21 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

AKMA writes:

A few minutes ago, a police officer passed the bench where I was sitting outside the Athenaeum, enjoying the mild temperature and the wifi signal, and he said, “Sir, you can’t use the Internet outside the library.”

I said, “What?” (I’m pretty clever under pressure.)

The officer in question (whose conduct was entirely professional, firm, and calm behind those mirrored shades) solemnly assured me that in order to use the library’s open wireless signal, I had to be seated within the library. The officer then wandered on back to the nearby police station.

read the rest at AKMA’s blog

philanthropy is overrated

August 21, 2004 at 2:04 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

From Nipun Mehta comes this comment:

Ultimately, though, I feel that philanthropy is overrated. It presupposes a problem and creates unnecessary distinction between the giver and receiver.

which brings to mind a conversation from the Giving Conference back in June.

7. The Principle of Immediate Action

August 20, 2004 at 11:58 pm | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

At last night’s weekly meeting of the Humanist Movement at my house, we looked at one of the Principles of Valid Action:

“If you pursue an end you enchain yourself. If everything you do is realised as though it were an end in itself, you liberate yourself.”

We had a couple of examples of this enchainment by pursuing an end. For example, spending 8 hours in front of the computer without eating or drinking or stretching, just to solve a particular problem. The problem itself takes way more resources than are appropriate and we end up hurting our physical bodies through this action. Suffering.

We also had an example of pursuing the end of the optimal choice given 19 possible actions. When I spin my wheels pursuing this end, I end up suffering for the choice and not accomplishing anything, whereas if I just choose one action that seems to be in the top half of my priorities, for example, that sense of accomplishment is a liberation and can free more energy that can be used for another item on the list, or something even more important.

Open Space On Open Space In US

August 19, 2004 at 9:32 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

Please join us for OpenSpaceOnOpenSpaceInUS (Nov 7-8, 2004 Chicago)

…for managers, facilitators and other business and community leaders interested in a deeper exploration of the issues and opportunities related to using Open Space Technology (OST) in organizations and living in a chaotic, self-organizing, Open Space world.

Open Space Technology: What has it been? What is it now? And where can it lead us next? What have we learned? And what is now possible? Can it work with your people, in your organization? Can it help address your most important strategic and operating issues? These are just some of the questions that come to mind as we consider all of the Issues and Opportunities for Opening Space in American organizations and communities. Please join us with your own specific questions, issues and ideas!

read more