I couldn't pronounce the name. I turned the page.
I browsed into another paragraph and another. I kept thinking about the picture. I'm haunted by it.Twelve year-old Atahurahman, crammed in a boat for 3½ months with 400 people, had to sit with knees bent, hugging his knees, as they ran out of food and people started drinking their own urine.
He's a Rohingya. no country accepts them... It's a horrendous story of slow genocide, and the world looks away.
We are more than halfway into the new year with politics, business, gossip, and entertainment based on unsolvable things like climate change and people plotting to destroy us.
This morning, as the kitchen TV displayed a murder, my husband said, "The world has gotten to be a terrible place..." Are our daily woes more woeful than ever before? We have much more news than ever before. Back when noisy, expensive, horseless carriages were taking over our streets, didn't people feel the world was getting to be terrible place?
Figuring if I feel this way, others feel this way about this too, I tried to get through four pages in Newsweek about displaced people.
Do you stop what you're doing and become a doer, fixer, an occupy Wall Streeter?
I can only answer for me. I have to go on doing my work, a job that has evolved from my life experiences, the job I do well. I am not a fund-raiser for any of the many major or relatively minor world woes. I do my work -- write-talking, communicating with real feeling as well as facts -- reminding you to keep a place in your mind and heart for the displaced people, especially the children. Inspiring YOU to share, or do a little or a lot of whatever you can do for your concerns about the world.
A little here and there becomes a lot.
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5 comments:
It's a sad, sad situation. We can do nothing but hope...No human should feel such oppression and hopelessness. Good article Em...thanks
I'll admit, Em, when I see refugees floating in boats from nowhere to nowhere I see them as canaries in the coal mine of overpopulation, which is the greatest culprit in global warming. I fear that this is where humanity is heading if we keep going the direction we are going: world food shortages, severe weather, lack of clean water. Yes, it is worse than before because the population is exponentially larger than ever and we are engaged in a wildly uncontrolled experiment of turning our entire planet into a greenhouse. What can I do? What you do, Em: I try to do the right thing for the next person in my path, try not to waste carbon-based energy, try to write about important things I witness, and keep faith in human creativity and the possibility of solutions. As long as there is life and love somewhere, there is hope. Thank you for all that you post.
We can donate money to international organizations that we support.
It is a sad situation and one without any easy repairs. Europe cannot afford to take in every refugee from Africa. The fiscal burden on governments will crash the economy. The US has its own problems with illegal immigration that has resulted in huge numbers of unemployeed Americans, particularly young people who have never held jobs because there are none available because they've been taken by illegal immigrants. You see boats and you feel compassion for desperate people, but then there's reality. There are consequences for compassion. The lifestyle we enjoy in Europe and the United States can quickly be degraded if we add millions of low-skilled people to our populations. That's higher taxes, a less robust economy and, eventually, economic destruction. What's the solution? I don't know. Don't encourage the Arab Spring ... but our president already did that, so ....
I cannot add a single word that has not already been written so eloquently by you, Em, and Cara Lopez Lee. What I can do is share this all over social media to help raise consciousness about this horrible situation.
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