A Civilised People? I Think Not.
This year’s much-hyped Black Friday led to the death of a temporary, part-time Wal-Mart employee. Since Wal-Mart doesn’t have unions, no one will be fighting in the name of Jdimytai Damour, 34, Jamaica, Queens.
By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.
Doesn’t Jdimytai deserve our respect? Doesn’t he deserve the same treatment we would want for anyone of our loved one’s? After all, he wasn’t working at Wal-Mart on the year’s biggest shopping day for fun.
Some workers who saw what was happening fought their way through the surge to get to Mr. Damour, but he had been fatally injured, the police said. Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.
Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.
It’s in these moments that I grow indescribably bored/tired/frustrated by America’s promises of a civilisation more advanced than anywhere else in the world.
Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
If the Nassau County police department has a sliver of a conscience, they will charge every shopper (find by receipt, surveillance cameras, etc) in the death of Jdimytai and lest we forget, the architects of “spending is patriotic” George W. Bush and his administration. Of course, it won’t happen but the ones who have told us we need 50″ plasma televisions and the latest video games rather than healthy, nutritious foods and proper healthcare are complicit in this death, both of a person and of a society.
On Being Blue
America, 2008, after America, 2004
I’ve been quite a bit optimistic lately. It’s a strange feeling after being cynical and pessimistic and cautious and hopeless for so long. Thanks, Barack Obama and America (for finally waking up).
Sunday Sun
A Thrilling Review: CLIF Bar
Cool Mint Chocolate
CLIF bar
The high energy products currently saturating our markets have never interested me much. Caffeine means nothing to me whether coffee or soda. Red Bull smells and tastes like something I’d rather not consume. In fact, the CLIF bar is so good, I didn’t even realise its purpose to serve as an energy food until I decided to review it.
My favourite flavours include the Cool Mint Chocolate (pictured) and the seasonal Iced Gingerbread. The Cool Mint Chocolate is a great day-to-day flavour though some might disagree while the Iced Gingerbread better serves as a dessert-type snack. I’m currently searching for the Banana Nut Bread.
With 18 flavours in the CLIF bar line, there’s something suitable for everyone’s taste whether it’s to satisfy a sweet tooth or a more modest fruit flavour.
I got a 12-pack for $11.98 at my local Trader Joe’s.
Balance
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
My mind is heavy with sorrow for I have heard rather bad news tonight. Just a few days ago, I found my faith. Tomorrow, two friends will join in a lifetime of love. Tonight, I’m thinking of an old friend and looking for the right words to offer in time of need.
A New Hope
Rosa Parks sat in 1955 so
Martin Luther King Jr. could walk in 1963.Martin Luther King Jr. walked in 1963 so
Barack Obama could run in 2008.Barack Obama ran in 2008 so
we could fly.
Obama made a simple bet . . .
and stuck to it.
If you trusted in the fundamental decency, civility and good sense of the American people, even at the end of a season of fear and loss, you could forge a new politics and win the day.
Me in front of a new America
My family packed our lives and made a trans-Atlantic journey on the eve of Christmas in 1994. I was nine years old. Shortly after arriving in America, my parents and younger brother moved to the Dominican Republic (I joined them for a brief period) while I lived with my uncle’s family, whom I barely knew, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
I began elementary school, where my growth was stifled as I was forced two grades back because in America your grade is decided by your age and not by your merit. For the child who tested into school two years before her peers, this was a tough pill to swallow. I bothered my parents day in and day out for home work, insisting I should be allowed to attend school shortly after my third birthday. They finally relented. School officials concerned about my adjustment allowed me to begin primary school. I loved it.
With that determination, I spent my life in Arkansas looking for a more stimulating challenge. Here I am starting my sixth year in New York City, the place I moved to for college. I have completed college and am preparing for graduate school. I could be any of you. In fact, I am one of you.
See, the only real difference between my life and most of my friends’ lives is that they were born here and I wasn’t. I live here as if it were my country and I also live here as a foreigner, an alien.
It was with equal pride that I celebrated Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday, 04 November. It was my victory, too. The people won. We can all believe in the possibilities of ourselves again.
Some have taken offense to my statement: “For the first time in my American life, I am proud and happy to be where I am.” They have suggested I should’ve left this country if I was so unsatisfied. They are unaware of my past, oblivious to the fact that I am here no more of my free will than they are of the country of their birth.
We moved here for the American dream. In George W. Bush’s America, that was a dream of greed and war mongering. I remember feeling deflated when Cowboy Bush stole the election from Gore. And being devastated when America said yes to him a second time. In the days following I forgot who I was, forgot my purpose, and my ambition. I have been a zombie for the last four years. I have been a cynic in spite of my natural idealism and optimism.
Don’t get me wrong. We haven’t flipped a switch. There is a lot of work to do and I plan to do my share.
But for the first time in my American life, I can be who I am. I am happy that it’s here. I’m sad that it took so long. I’m relieved that my parents’ efforts of disrupting our fulfilling lives and putting the distance of two continents and an ocean between my family in Pakistan was not in vain. I feel inspired and empowered that we can achieve what we want if we can put aside our differences to rally around a common good, a common hope, a common dream. It is ours to realise.
I’m not sure I’ll apply for citizenship when I receive my Green Card next summer but I’m a lot more interested now than I was last week.
An idea has power.
This is what I’ll be working to accomplish:
- Climate change must be addressed in a multi-disciplinary approach that leads to better information sharing with scientific support regarding the issue of climate change, green-collar jobs, access to chemical/pesticide-free food, alternative energy sources, caps on carbon emissions, and, most importantly, a strong commitment in turning against the explosive materialist nature of the West by remembering “reduce, re-use, recycle.”
- End the war in Iraq. Re-evalute course of action in Afghanistan. And, in the future, real diplomacy first.
- Education must become a high priority. Investing in the future is the fundamental structure of success. In this moment in American history, where the tides are turning, we must put intelligence above someone “we’d like to have a beer with.”
- Massive re-organization of the U.S. healthcare system with an increase in preventive care and strict limits on the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on medical care providers.
America can mean what it says. It can respect its friends and probe its enemies before it tries to shock and awe them. It can listen. It can rediscover the commonwealth beyond the frenzied individualism that took down Wall Street.
Tell Barack Obama what’s important to you and tell me, too. This victory belongs to us all and thus it’s fruits are ours to share and its burden ours to bear. We have different values and priorities but there are basics we can all agree upon: freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You can’t proclaim freedom as you torture. You can’t promote democracy as you disappear people. You can’t stand for the rule of law and strip prisoners of basic rights. You can’t dispense with the transparency and regulation essential to modern capital markets and hope still to be the beacon of free enterprise.
04 November was just the beginning. I’ll be there when President Elect Barack Obama is sworn into office in Washington, D.C. on 20 January. I plan to be far more politically active than I already am. A new dawn has come and I can let down the walls I have so assiduously built in the last eight years.
All quotes are from Roger Cohen’s Perfecting the Union [via NYTimes]
All photographs belong to their respective photographers. None are mine except for the one of myself. I do not take any ownership. If you want me to remove them, please contact me via e-mail.
YES WE DID
04 November 2008
1. Not available, 2. Harlem, Nov 5, 2008, 3. IMG_4513.JPG, 4. Harlem, Nov 4, 2008, 5. Harlem, Nov 5, 2008, 6. IMG_4684.JPG, 7. Harlem, Nov 4, 2008, 8. IMG_4975.JPG, 9. IMG_4907.JPG, 10. IMG_4815.JPG, 11. IMG_4723.JPG, 12. IMG_4513.JPG, 13. Harlem, Nov 4, 200814. Not available15. Not available16. Not available
The Sounds of Silence
The last time I heard such deafening silence was on Wednesday, November 3, when I found Ohio had been called for Bush.
The tension is maddening. I have never felt as anxious as I do right now.
On the 3 train to Harlem, a mother and daughter talk of the election.
The mother asks if her daughter voted on PBS kids.
The daughter replies, “Yes,” asking “Mom, are you worried?
The mother sighs: “I just want to get home and turn on the news.”
