Ordinary Hero: Abigail Borah, her COP 17 plea heard round the world

Screen shot of Abigail Borah speaking out at COP 17
Democracy Now! video

This week in Durban, South Africa, the United Nations concluded its seventeenth conference on climate change. Abigail Borah, a Middlebury College Student, flew to Copenhagen to attend the talks, along with many other youth concerned about their future.

Disturbed by the failure of the United States and other nations to address the immediacy of the situation, Abigail penned a short statement, stood up, and "with trembling hands," read it to the assembly.

2020 is too late to wait

The conference chair told her "No one is listening to you." Todd Stern, the United States delegate about to address the assembly waited with rather a condescending pose. (I want to believe he was secretly glad for her stand.) Abigail, an ordinary person who could not and would not be afforded an officially sanctioned microphone at these talks, persevered, determined to be heard. Here is her statement.

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty. You must take responsibility to act now, or you will threaten the lives of youth and the world's most vulnerable. You must set aside partisan politics and let science dictate decisions. You must pledge ambitious targets to lower emissions, not expectations. 2020 is too late to wait.

Why I stood up and spoke out

Despite the ultimate failure of the talks to take action now, it gives me some small ray of hope that the audience applauded Abigail as she was led from the hall.

Immediately after Abigail's impromptu speech, Todd Stern hastened to call a press conference, where he refuted Abigail's assertions regarding the US do-nothing approach.  In this Democracy Now! video titled, "I'm Scared For My Future": Student Disrupts Speech By US Climate Envoy Todd Stern in Durban" (7.3 minutes), watch and hear Abigail read her statement, followed by an excerpt from Stern's press conference.



It is important to note that one day following Stern's assertion that the United States was not standing in the way of a legally binding agreement, the State Department issued a statement saying otherwise.

You can read the whole story, in Abigail's eloquent words, here, in Why I stood up and spoke out.

Ordinary Heroes Award
© L Kathryn Grace

Abigail Borah, in speaking out as you did, you risked arrest, potentially putting your reputation and your future in jeopardy, yet you acted. Rather than become immobilized by fear, you used your fear to take a dramatic stand and to power your voice--a voice literally heard round the world.

For your courage, for your commitment to making change, for speaking for millions who feel as you do, for being one of the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands working to create a better world, a good world, you are an Ordinary Hero and my hero. I bow to you in deepest gratitude.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Good News Friday: The Economics of Happiness

Having shared so much last week of a country--ours--gone obscenely wrong, I focused this week on making peace. All the while, more and more examples of injustice and horror played out daily across our land and around the world. At times, I lay down and wept. Then I saw Ordinary Hero Helena Norberg-Hodge speaking in this TED Talk video on The Economics of Happiness.

With the experience of one working on the ground for many years with the problems--hunger, violence, waste, poverty, unprecedented disease and illness, environmental degradation--created by corporate greed and globalization, Norberg-Hodge capsulizes much that is wrong with our world and offers proven solutions to fix it.

How she can do this in eighteen minutes should be no surprise in a TED Talk, but Norberg-Hodges' message, despite her uncharacteristic case of nerves, is captivating. May you take as much hope and heart from this video as I.



While we're on the subject of economics and happiness, you may enjoy this less than two minute Agenda Project video, Patriotric Millionaire's Message to Congress.



The good news is, we, meaning the world, already have systems in place that can grow a healthy, sustainable economy with plenty for all. What's more, there are among us many conscientious millionaires who are willing to pay their fair share in taxes and help us right here, in the former land of the free, do the right thing.

We don't need to live in a greed economy. We can build an economics of happiness.

Help me spread the word, will you? Tweet this, post it on your Facebook account, write your senators and representatives. I know. I know. That last can feel like tilting at windmills. If you've ever worked in politics, you know that every letter, email, every phone call is a tick mark in either one column or the other. Tick marks count more than you know.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Ordinary Hero: Teen Emma Sullivan who stood up for her right to free speech

Image credit: Olivia Sullivan

Google "Emma Sullivan" and you'll get pages of articles on her story. She's the eighteen year old high school senior who sent an unflattering tweet about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback a couple of weeks ago.

According to Think Progress, Brownback's staff fired off a complaint to Sullivan's principal, who then ordered Sullivan to apologize to the governor. She refused.

The other day, in an email exchange, I asked Sullivan about her stand. My first question, how long did it take her to make such a potentially far-reaching decision? Here's what she said.

It took a couple of days, I at first was going to write it [the apology] because I didn't want to get in trouble, but with the support of others and my family, I realized that I didn't have to write it and that I shouldn't write things [that] are insincere.

Don't you love it? Imagine a world in which our politicians resisted the urge to make insincere apologies, or worse, lie about their activities and intentions. Where might we be today?

I also asked Sullivan her reasons for choosing not to write the apology and what consequences she feared. Again, in her own words:

I was hoping there would be no consequences because if the school would have punished me then the media would have made it an even bigger deal. I didn't want to write it because I don't feel like I did anything wrong and I strongly believe in my rights to tweet what I want. I also thought it would be a lose lose situation if I wrote the letter, the public would have scrutinized it, people would have told me I caved into the governor's pressure. When you agree to apologize because someone has asked you to, then you have lost the power of your words. 

Wisdom from the heart and mouth of one so young, I must repeat it.

When you agree to apologize because someone has asked you to,
then you have lost the power of your words.

It takes courage to stand your ground in the middle of a fray. So often we are told to "calm down," "back down," "let it go," "it's not that important." Emma Sullivan newly adult in age, still a teenager, understands the power of her words.

My last question to Emma was this: What advice would you give to others about censoring ourselves before writing what we see as the truth online? She wrote her response in a larger font and bold type.

If you want to say it then say it. Just stand by what you said, no matter what the wording is or what it is about. 

Ordinary Heroes Award
© L Kathryn Grace

Emma Sullivan, for speaking your truth and sticking to it when challenged, for holding our public officials accountable, for standing up for your Constitutional right to free speech, for caring enough to make a decision that potentially packed a lot of heat and being willing to take it, and for being unafraid to let your wisdom shine, you are my Ordinary Hero. I bow in gratitude and with hope for the future. With youth of your caliber coming up to replace us, we who have all too often felt we were tilting at windmills take heart.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Ordinary Hero: Dorli Rainey, 84, pepper-sprayed at Occupy Seattle

Ordinary Heroes Award
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

You've probably seen the image: A tiny woman, face and hair dripping with pepper spray, held upright by two young men. She's lifelong activist Dorli Rainey. On Tuesday, in a police action against a peaceful assembly of Occupy Seattle protesters, 84 year old Rainey was pepper sprayed by, as she calls them, Seattle's Finest.

Rainey grew up in Germany and remembers the rise of the Third Reich. She also remembers the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement. She remembers them because she was there, on the ground, working to gain opportunities for Black people and for women in America.

Last month she was in Washington, D.C., participating in the October 2011 actions there. On Tuesday, back in Seattle, Rainey was about to switch buses on her way to a "boring transportation meeting" when she took a detour. Thinking rightly, as it turned out, that the flock of police helicopters overhead were observing an Occupy Seattle action, she followed the choppers to lend her support.

There she found a number of her friends. They had, she says, decided to leave, something she says the police knew. They never got the chance. In this video (just under ten minutes), Keith Olbermann of Current TV gives an entire segment to Rainey, listening with little comment.

You know when a commentator shuts up and listens, the speaker has got to be good. She is. Afterward, Olbermann tells Rainey she is his personal hero. Indeed. She is mine as well.

To Ordinary Hero Dorli Rainey

For remembering Goebbels; for remembering what happens when media is coerced, bullied, and bought into silence and worse, promulgating propaganda; for heeding--and sharing--the advice of your activist friend Jackie Hudson, "Whatever you do, take one more step out of your comfort zone;" for being an example to us all and reminding us there can be no such thing as retirement while injustice reigns; I bow in deepest gratitude, and count you, Dorli Rainey, among my Ordinary Heroes.

Whatever you do, take one more step out of your comfort zone.

Activist Jackie Hudson, as quoted by
Dorli Rainey in Keith Olbermann video above

From Rainey, the last word: "And that is what I do, I take a step out of my comfort zone. ... Somebody's got to keep them awake and let them know what is really going on in this world."

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Making peace in the face of unspeakable violence

© L Kathryn Grace

Please bear with me. This, my first post of the year, begins with tragedy and ends with faint rays of hope, rays of hope I pray will brighten and grow into a steady, unending glow that permeates every heart and soul on Earth.

What is

Yesterday I learned that a woman I admire and who has been wonderfully supportive of this blog, had lost two family members to violence within a few very short weeks of each other.

These separate, enormous tragedies are horrendous in themselves. While they preceded the Tucson shootings last Saturday, I learned of them after the fact, while still weeping for the families of the dead and injured there, where a young man carried a gun to a supermarket and killed six people, injured fourteen others. One eye witness reported that the man, before being hauled away in cuffs, smiled with apparent satisfaction as he viewed the carnage around him. Sadly, this scene is far too familiar. Here in the United States, pick any impoverished neighborhood, and likely there has been a shooting or stabbing death in the last week. In some cities, such deaths occur almost daily; and for some of our young people, killing another human being is a rite of passage; the tell-tale tattoos they sport, badges of honor.

A father weeps

So prevalent is the violence in this country that one father, Van Jones--whom you may remember as the short-lived Green Jobs Czar of the Obama administration, and before that, one of my Ordinary Heroes--breaks down in this audio recording of a 2005 talk with The Peace Alliance. He is speaking of his then seven-month-old son and his son's chances to reach old age intact, well-educated, and free of incarceration. You've seen the statistics on young, Black male survival rates to adulthood, right? How many of them die through violence, how many of them end up in prison?

Addicted to violence

© L Kathryn Grace

Should we be surprised? Under the guise of patriotism, we as a nation extol the virtues of combat. We celebrate the most horrific acts as entertainment. Heck, when Van Jones was growing up, our president glowingly glorified the fictional Rambo as his personal hero.

That's not all. Our country is constantly in a state of war somewhere in the world, has been almost continuously throughout my lifetime. Many in our country consider unpatriotic those who oppose these wars.

Given the hero worship we give to perpetrators of violence, fictional and real, why shouldn't young men of color, disenfranchised at every turn, not emulate the terrible scenes they grow up watching on television and in the movies? Those who want out of their gang-infested neighborhoods have few avenues of egress. One of the most open to them: War, sponsored by our government.

Exploiting, degrading, defiling and destroying human life

Then there are the underground, unofficial wars. Under siege from the drug cartels, Mexico reels from day to day, counting the bodies and burying the dead. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Taliban and Al-Qaeda bomb children in schools because they believe girls should not be taught to read and write and spell their own name, let alone learn about the world. Here in San Francisco, our police department periodically raids one "home" or another where children and women have been held in sexual slavery--in residential neighborhoods. Do you know your neighbor? They pull out not just one or two, but dozens of victims, usually brought into this country illegally, and often as not, quickly deported upon being "freed" to bear their shame and find a way to seek their living in a country that no longer wants them. San Francisco is just one small piece of that ugly puzzle.The list of human-on-human degradation and violence is unending. Or is it?

Dare we hope?

Image courtesy
The Peace Alliance (pdf file)

In the face of deep and unrelenting sorrow, dare we hope?

It may not be much. It may be the start of something big, possibly world changing. Tonight, I'm giving myself a big dose of hope, because tonight, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, and fully conscious of all the individual tragedies people face around the country, The Peace Alliance is hosting a national conference call. The call will be facilitated by John B. Kinyon, a trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. They call it a national soul searching moment. Here's what Aaron Voldman, director of the Student Peace Alliance, has to say about it in an email I received this morning:

This attack [the Tucson shootings] is a wake-up call for America, challenging us to step into our potential for compassion, for right relationships, and for a far more healthy political discourse. ... Now, more than ever, we must ask the questions that will stir each others' souls, and listen attentively to what emerges. Our role, as peacemakers, is a crucial one.

Dialing in is better than sitting on my puhtoodie

I'll be on this call. I need to join with others round the country to discuss ways to bring peace to our hearts, to our country and to our world. If you would like to lend your voice and your thoughts, join us at 9 pm Eastern, 6 pm Pacific. The presenters strongly recommend that you pre-register for the call, which is free, apart from any telephone charges you may incur. After you register to join the national conference call, you will be sent a phone number and unique access pin. If you can’t register, join the call at 916.235.1003, Code: 590543, again at 9 pm Eastern, 6 pm Pacific.

It's still up to us

Peace bed
© L Kathryn Grace

Neither you nor I can control what another human being chooses to do, but we do have the power to make peace an active force in our lives and in our nation. If you join the call tonight, I'd like to know what you think of it. This is one way we can stand for peace today.

__
 

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Joy in giving: Ordinary Hero Narayanan Krishnan

Give. I know, I know. Tis the season. What else does one do this time of year? Look. Listen.

The food will give them physical nutrition. The love and affection that you show will give them mental nutrition. ... What is the ultimate purpose of life? It is to give. Start giving! See the joy of giving.

Narayanan Krishnan
from the video

What is your purpose?

Have you found your purpose in life? How do you feel in this moment? What does Krishnan's story evoke in you? What, if anything, will you change from this moment going forward?

It's only fair, if I ask those questions, that I answer them myself. My purpose is to do all I can to create the world of Ordinary now, and to build on the vision, that future generations might have a chance to live in a more fair, more just, more sustainable, more beautiful, more loving, more compassionate world than we create now.

In this moment, having just watched the video again, I feel joy at the thought of this man, like so many others round the world, seeing a need in his community and filling it. Doing what he can. This evokes in me a deep desire to continue with my efforts to give of my best skills and talents to change the world, in the ways that I know, in ways I have yet to discover.

I know I am not the person to feed, clothe, and bathe the hungry and the homeless, not yet anyway. Going forward, I will keep Narayanan Krisnan in my heart and this video in the side bar of my blog until I no longer need to be reminded every morning to stay on track, to do what I can, to increase the "what I can" as much as possible, and never to doubt that one person's actions, one person's gifts from her heart, from his heart, are enough.

Dear Mr. Narayanan Krishnan

Thank you for the love in your heart. Thank you for your willingness to touch and heal and feed and groom and hug and love. You are my personal hero today and every day. I pray that you have everything you need to continue your work, and that your body, heart and mind continue to be nourished in full measure.

Ordinary Heroes Award
© L Kathryn Grace

All rights reserved

With deepest gratitude to my good blogger friend Wanda for introducing me to to Narayanan Krishnan and his work on her always inspirational, frequently funny and ever life-affirming blog, What would Wanda do?.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Senator Bernie Sanders: One Ordinary hero

On this day, when the nation observes the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, one man, born in that same year, is using the last years of his life to protect Americans from another kind of war, a war that threatens us every bit as deeply as the so-called Last Great War. That man is Senator Bernard (Bernie) Sanders. A few days ago, Senator Sanders went on record in the U.S. Senate on behalf of you and me. He told the truth. It's important. If you can, I encourage you to spare thirteen minutes to listen to this elder statesman giving breath in passionate urgency on our behalf.




If you'd like more background on Senator Sander's speech, he discusses it in his Week in Review.

You probably know that yesterday President Obama was strong-armed into agreeing to continue these outrageous tax breaks, averaging $100,000 a year, to wealthy Americans while you and I struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. That was the cost the Republicans exacted to continue much more marginal tax breaks for the rest of us. Oh yes, and to extend unemployment benefits a while longer for those shut out in the cold during the downturn. Who caused the downturn? The richest in our country, the men and women benefiting from this enormous tax break in their pursuit of ever greater wealth and power. May they hang their heads in shame and give it all back.


I feel enormous gratitude to Senator Sanders for standing up for us. I'm writing to thank him for going on record in his attempt to protect us. If you would like to do the same, you can write to him using his Contact form.

Ordinary Heroes Award

To the Honorable Senator Sanders: You're my hero today, Senator. Thank you for working so hard to protect ordinary Americans from the rampant greed of the wealthy few. Thank you for using the power of your voice and your office to advocate for us. Thank you for your energy and love and deep concern for our welfare. Thank you for speaking out about "a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country." May you be blessed beyond your wildest imagining.

Ordinary Heroes Award
© L Kathryn Grace

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Learning mean, teaching grace

Pál Balkay (1785–1846)
Image via Wikipedia

A little girl watches a show about little girls and learns that girls are mean. She decides that to be authentic, she has to practice being mean, so she rubs mud all over her little brother's face. Her mother sees it all. Her mother, a wise woman, counsels the child.

We talked and talked about how anyone who is feeling connected with their Source would never be mean to anyone.

Michelle O'Neil
Full Soul Ahead

Afterward, Mom says the child seems relieved, "because this mean thing? She really doesn’t have it in her."

Don't you love this? What a fabulous mom, not overreacting, but learning what was behind the dirty deed (pun, yes) and discovering the child was confused by our culture into thinking she had to be something she did not want to be.

Thank goodness for thoughtful moms--and dads--who take the time to listen to their children and find out what is on their minds instead of lashing out with a punishment. That's how we build Ordinary, and is one more reason why Michelle O'Neil is one of my Ordinary Heroes. Sadly, Michelle says she may give up blogging soon to devote time to other pursuits. I have learned so much from her and will deeply miss her enchanting, funny, sometimes incredibly sad, frequently moving, stories of life with a husband she adores and two beautiful children, one of whom is learning to navigate the world, with valor and love, through the difficult prism of autism.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Ordinary Heroes

They are everywhere. In corporate high-rises and in remote villages miles from cell phone towers. They're sitting next to you on the bus. They're building schools in Africa. They're pounding the marble halls of Congress, seeking protection for our children, our health, our food, water, air and planet.

They save heirloom seeds, plant organic gardens, teach the rest of us how to adopt sustainable lifestyles in our throw-away, buy-more culture. They save the forests, rivers and oceans without which we cannot survive.
Their work brings the vision of the Village of Ordinary a little closer to reality every day. They show us how wonderfully possible it is to live in a world much like the Village right now. They are our Ordinary Heroes. If you are reading this, very likely, you are among them. I tell their stories, your stories, on this blog frequently, because it is people like them, people like you, who are building Ordinary.

Who are the heroes honored so far? This first batch is from the Realizing Ordinary blog. These are the latest on Building Ordinary.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.