One Can Make a Difference (23 page)

Almost at once, I saw blue sky, and I was on the surface of the water again. I managed to reach a tree and cling there for almost eight hours. Around me, I could hear children screaming, adults crying out. After about thirty minutes, the children couldn't hang on, they were not strong enough, and the screaming died down as they drowned. The worst thing was that I couldn't go and help them because my broken pelvis didn't allow me to move. The wonderful thing was that all around me strangers were working hard to save everyone. Even though they knew that another wave might come in, that didn't stop them trying to rescue people they didn't know, had never met. There were so many helpers, reaching out to others at the risk of their own lives.

In those long hours in the tree, I worried about Simon, whether I would ever see him again. He was so gentle and kind and always laughing and helping others laugh. I clung there, sending out energy, prayers, and good thoughts to all the people in difficulty. I wasn't angry at Nature, but I knew this was a very big event. Of course, I only found out later just how big it was.

From what I have heard, it takes most people at least two years to heal from the kind of injuries I had. But I took three and a half months because of the energy work I did and my strength of mind. The mind is a very powerful tool, and you can easily enter a downward spiral of depression and negative thoughts. I wanted to get stronger, not weaker, to heal emotionally and physically, so I did not allow it to look at the minuses, only the plusses. It is always a choice, and I chose to concentrate on getting stronger, on appreciating all I have. I still had loved ones, I had my sister, my mother; I could breathe, I could feed myself, eventually I could walk. I was very lucky, and all I wanted to do was get well enough to go back and help others. You can die any time. Poof, you are gone. So, if you are alive, I think it's best to make the most of it. We all have to go through hardships, maybe not a tsunami but something else devastating to us, and there will always be something good that comes from it, whether 50 percent or 1 percent.You can concentrate on that good bit. In the tsunami, I remember all the unconditional love that flowed from it, all those who helped each other because of it, the amazing and spontaneous unity we saw in its aftermath. That is very powerful.

The heart is the key to everything good. I began Happy Hearts Foundation to help children who have suffered loss or hardship as a result of natural, economic, or health-related disasters in many different countries, not just Thailand. It not only makes them happier but makes me very happy, too. I think the world would be a very different place if we didn't think of me, me, me and thought of we, we, we. It would make us less likely to take and take and take and more likely to give and give and give. If I could be granted one wish, it would be to convert “me” into “we.”That way, we could fill our hearts with love and kindness and there would be no room left for fear or hate.

WADE RATHKE

Powerful Communities from
Little ACORNs Grow

Wade Rathke is chief organizer and founder of ACORN, the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now, a grassroots group that has a
long history of lifting up the working poor. Wade calls me “Sister Newkirk,”
a reminder that he has been a workers' organizer almost all his life! I admire
Wade because he has devoted decades to working for the underdog, even when
quaking in his boots and doubting his own ability to succeed. Wade's underdogs
are people who need help in pulling themselves up out of poverty. He has made
a crucial difference to millions by organizing whole neighborhoods to lobby, vote,
and protest; he's helped them unite to secure a living wage, protect workers from
environmental hazards, disrupt professional loan sharking, even to get a traffic
light installed at a dangerous intersection.

Years ago, Wade helped create the “People's Platform,” to lobby for fair
treatment for the poor, capturing the support of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Marching onto national park land, he established tent cities for the homeless
that no politician could ignore, then marched on Washington with thousands of
people whose basic needs were being ignored even as military and other spending
increased overseas. Starting from scratch, but drawing around him a legion
of “sisters and brothers,”Wade has secured the rights of the often disenfranchised
and forgotten underclass of, first, the United States, and now other countries too.
I'm including him because his story can empower us all.

I
was born in Laramie, Wyoming, but my dad worked for the California Company (now Chevron) and was transferred frequently, so I spent my childhood more or less on the road from Colorado to Montana to New Mexico to Kansas. We finally settled in New Orleans, but that sense of rootlessness had a big influence in my life, as did the public high school I attended. My class was the first to be integrated outside of the elementary grades in New Orleans because under “separate but equal” there were no equivalent African-American high schools. Most high school teams would not play our high school in sports after integration. This and the time spent in Mississippi watching the impact of what was happening in the Delta where my grandmother and cousins lived and where race was a big issue, forced me to have to think about where I stood and what I thought about issues like human equality.

This was in the mid-1960s, and civil rights and the Vietnam War were all that anyone talked about. After high school, I worked one summer offshore of Louisiana. Late at night, I would get into vigorous debates with some of the guys who worked with me, and many of them, twice my age, would look at me at the end of the debates, nod their heads in agreement and say that they would never let their kids go to Vietnam. All of this got me thinking, and it seemed that I either needed to do something about all of this or just bust wide open!

I attended the Spring Mobilization in 1967 in New York and heard Martin Luther King and others speak, and I was one of the thousands who marched to the Pentagon in early 1968.

I wanted to make a difference somehow, but I didn't know how. I dropped out of college, was trained briefly by the Boston Draft Resistance Group, and went back to New Orleans to see if I could organize working people like us to understand their rights in dealing with the war. It was a hard time for six months, because I didn't really know what I was doing and had to take a clerk and lift-truck-driver job at a coffee plant to make ends meet. After six months, I gave it up, got married, and headed for California, where we camped along the coast for a few months. I was filled with rage over injustice, but didn't have a place to plant it. Then, that summer, a woman tracked me down to ask if I would be an organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). I grabbed the opportunity and never looked back.

I founded ACORN in June 1970 in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a special, experimental project of NWRO, but within six months ACORN and the NWRO parted ways over our different priorities, leaving us without even two cents to rub together, no office, no salaries, and for the most part a staff cobbled together from volunteers. I started the membership dues system with ACORN, simply telling everyone the truth: if our members didn't pay dues, the organization would go under. The notion of poor, working families paying dues was heresy in those days, but it was either that or close up shop. And it worked. People paid dues so that ACORN would survive, and that's been the basis of the organization ever since that time.

If anyone thinks all this just happens effortlessly, let me say there is never a day when I am not plagued with worries and doubts! In Springfield, when I was first beginning to build NWRO, I had migraines so bad that I was convinced I had a brain tumor and actually walked into a free clinic in the River-view Gardens public housing project and asked the nurse what the symptoms for such a tumor might be. In Little Rock and a thousand other times when everything seemed to be on the line, I had a pit in my stomach as large as a grapefruit. I have found no cure for such fear when the weight of responsibility is on you and it matters to thousands whether the organization wins or loses, whether your quest and theirs succeeds or fails. You simply have to gut it out and work right through it to the other side.

Is it worth it? Definitely. Recently, an outside researcher assessed ten years of ACORN's major victories from 1995 to 2004 as having delivered $15 billion worth of benefits to low- and moderate-income families and neighborhoods. In the November 2006 election we won minimum-wage increases that we had brought to the ballot in initiatives in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, and Colorado, which delivered raises to 4.5 million low-wage workers worth over $6 billion. Whether winning better drainage, new parks, stopping loose dogs, compelling banks to invest in low-income neighborhoods, improving schools, or 1,000 other things, each of these accomplishments has meant the world to some of our members. This work has given my life purpose and meaning, and I am so happy to have had the opportunity and ability to start and stay with one organization for the last thirty-seven years! I now serve more than 250,000 family members.

The motto for ACORN is borrowed from the state motto of Arkansas: The People Shall Rule! That has always sounded just right to me. There's another motto on my desk that essentially says: work hard and organize. And at the end of my blog it says, “You take it from here to there.” All of these things seem right to me. I have tremendous belief in and respect for the value and ability of the “uncommon common people” that make up the low- and moderate-income constituency and ACORN's membership.

ACORN's first president, Steve McDonald, used to constantly advise us as we were growing “not to get the big head,” which was pretty sound advice. Social change is about sweat. It's constant perspiration rather than sudden inspiration that wins victories and builds organization. I believe the day we lose ground is the day we don't go to work, and that as long as we're fighting and struggling to win every day, we have a chance. My best advice to anyone who wants to be an organizer is to always be ready for hard work, expect no thanks and no quarter, and make sure that every day adds up to some kind of progress, so that in putting it all together we collectively have the opportunity to win.

DORIS RICHARDS

Fighting for a Dog Park

Doris Richards's name may not be a “household” term, but a lot of people—
and a lot of dogs—owe her a debt of gratitude because the term
dog park
is
one. The concept of a dog park is relatively recent, and “Doris's dog park” was
the first of its kind, though I'm happy to report there are now thousands upon
thousands of them across the country. Its proper name is the Ohlone Dog Park,
located in Berkeley, California, where Doris has always lived, sometimes with
dogs, sometimes without. Doris's idea to create this special place was not an
instant smash hit. Although Doris lives in such a dog-friendly community that
in some churches dogs are not only welcomed but even take communion, there
was opposition to her idea. From nervous neighbors to financial interests who
didn't want dogs digging in the land they wanted to buy or sell, some folks were
determined there would never be a dog park in Berkeley. But Doris is the sort of
woman who doesn't go away, tail between her legs. In fact, she's a bit like a dog
herself; like one who can almost taste that cookie you have all to yourself and
therefore plants himself right there, looking pointedly from the cookie to you,
you to the cookie, until you give in and share. Apart from the fact that I believe
dogs need parks as much as bees need flowers, Doris's tenacity and willingness
to make her dream into reality is why I chose her for this book.

A
couple of decades ago, there weren't any dog parks in San Francisco. In fact, there weren't any dog parks anywhere. If you were near the Golden Gate Park, where I live, and you shared your life with a dog, there were a couple of dog “runs,” that's all. It was a matter of “go potty and go home.”

One day, the city decided to tear out blocks of houses. They were going to build a rapid transit station or parking lot there or something. I don't think they had decided exactly what to do with that land. But, as soon as they filled it in with dirt, people started to flock there, and many of them brought their dogs.The area takes up about half a city block and is far enough off the road, so it was a great place to let the dogs loose and know they could run safely. And, of course, everyone started chatting, and all the people with dogs got to know each other. It was very friendly.

We were experiencing troubled times back then, with the police clamping down on free speech in Berkeley. A group called “People's Park Annex” would hang out in the empty area, having picnics and—whenever someone was arrested for protesting against the war—collecting bail money. The police didn't like this, so they put fences up around the park. But the “radicals” cut the fences in strategic spots. It was also discovered that if enough people leaned against the fence at once, it fell over and the park was opened up again. In went people with their dogs! All day long, there must have been twenty to twenty-five dogs coming and going from that place at a clip.

Of course, we all wanted to save that land from being developed and to keep it a place where the dogs would be able to be themselves once in a while. So there was a panic when, one day, we heard they were going to take it all away. There was some plan to build a community college, although no one in the area wanted all the traffic that would come with it. We decided to petition the city to turn that land into a dog park. No one had heard the term before. They kept saying “a run”? “No,” we'd say,“a park. For dogs.”