It feels like being in the ring, in a corner, on the rope. You don't know what to do. Punches are landing on you, fast and furious. And Muhammad Ali isn't coming to instruct you on what to do.
I'm a left-wing "lunatic", according to president 47. I want to see a future world in which there's an absence of inequality, poverty, homelessness, hunger. There's an absence of oligarchs. An absence of capitalism. There's an absence of a government anywhere in the world that capitulates to the 1% and not to the rest of us. The absence of even the possibility of any American citizen voting for someone like Donald J. Trump!
I want to see the rest of us think and, not in turn, as historian Timothy Snyder advises, "obey in advance".
A month after I was denied the tenure-track position this local University of Wisconsin dean told my chair at Loyola University Chicago would follow the two years of a visiting professorship, I called the number listed on the ad I kept pinned to my bulletin board at home.
It was 2002. Spring. I heard of Rev. Leon Sullivan. As a former Youth Division member of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, I was familiar with the commitment of this man. I hadn't heard of the International Foundation for Educational Self-Help (IFESH), however.
From that June or July, I had a lot of work to do. I never had a passport; I had to have the appropriate shots. But I also had to reach out to professors and receive letters of recommendation. A long application process with a lengthy application. To be expected. This was an application for a fellowship to commit to teaching in Africa for a school year at the college level.
I remember a phone introduction/interview, with another in Washington D. C. But by August, we candidates received plane tickets in the mail to attend a mandatory orientation in Phoenix, Arizona. At this two-week orientation, I met the people who would be paying my stipend for teaching in Africa. Ethiopia.
USAID.
The atmosphere was tense. When I thought about it that first night back in my hotel room, I recognized that USAID wasn't exactly where I was on the political spectrum. The USAID officials were professional, pros at orienting a new group of teachers and business fellows to do our thing in Africa. By our thing, I mean that I didn't perceive the USAID officials as, 47 does now as "radical lunatics". I didn't see myself that way either. And still don't. But I believed, and still do, for example, in reparations. I still believe that capitalism isn't compatible with democracy. Of course, that's what the oligarchs think too; but the oligarchs and me aren't on the same page.
Recently, the oligarchs (Elon Musk, in particular) spotted the purpose of USAID!
This was the third opportunity to back out, pack up, and return home. It was a tense 2-week orientation to shake out the ones who might think think this fellow was offer a free trip to Africa. On the contrary, it was clear that this was work. The orientations were conducted as if we were at work! The work of USAID. The work of IFESH. We were preparing to offer our best to those who deserved our best. This was a year commitment to work for something.
I'm not declaring USAID a perfect agency, but "'left'" and "'Marxist'"? I studied a few of Marx's works, and I don't recall holding conversations with anyone who referred to Marx. Yet, Musk is allowed to label USAID's work as "criminal". It needs to die! The work of USAID is pitted against the work of the oligarchs positioning for power, instilling fear of helping the economically poor!
According to a report from Reuters, as the largest donor to the world, USAID "disbursed $72 billion in assistance in the fiscal year 2023". The work of USAID included "work on disaster relief, medical services, clean water, and energy security". But it seems that this work, undermines the two presidents, 47 and Musk's, foreign policy. What might that policy be? To crush democracy abroad as the minions of 47 succeed in destroying democracy at home?
Along with the opportunity to teach English 101 along the eastern coast, Ethiopian/Somalian border, I taught African and African American and Caribbean literature at Addis Ababa University to graduate students. Thanks to USAID! I met two of the three female students in that literature course. One is an immigrant lawyer in Australia and the other is a diversity, equity, and inclusion director in Canada. I've been in touch at least once or twice a year with the friend in Canada.
I met like-minded people. Committed people. I guess, "lunatics".
And that was the goal of Rev. Sullivan: to bring Africans and African Americans together!
At the time I was a teacher for IFESH, Rev. Sullivan's daughter was CEO. During one of the days of that Phoenix orientation, we ended up in the restroom in the hall near a conference room. I remember hesitating to look up into the mirror. But I did when I heard her say, you are brave. I don't recall saying anything back. Too nervous. I had seen her speak and could recognize the responsibility she had decided to undertake in order to see her father's mission continue.
Her father, Rev. Sullivan, was a Baptist minister, civil and social rights activist. Born in Charleston, West Virginia, he worked as an assistant to Rev. Adam Clayton Powell at Abyssinian Baptist Church. Trevor Goodloe in 2008, writes in BlackPast that IFESH was an "ambitious project" for Sullivan. And yet, Sullivan, determined to work on the right side of history, went forward.
"IFESH had provided books and school supplies for the African continent, distributed medicines to prevent river-blindness and helped combat the spread of HIV/AIDS."
Similar to USAID, right? Not so "radical" to help others, is it?
He died April 24, 2001, from leukemia in Scottsdale, Arizona.
From what I witnessed, a comment from Solomon's Porch is right: Sullivan created IFESH "to foster cultural, social, and economic relations between Americans and Africans, particularly those Americans who are of African descent".
Ah, that's the rub?
Bringing black people together to help themselves!
For Musk, the agency is "beyond repair". Imagine that! Who elected Musk? Not one American citizen! His parents left South Africa when Musk was 17 years old. It's no accident that 47 is planning to cut off aid to South Africa, "over what he called a human rights violation, a move that reflects Elon Musk's repeated and false claims over the years that authorities in his country of birth are anti-white and even encourage the killing of white people", according to an AP report.
USAID is "run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, then we'll make a decision".
That's the current president.
And does anyone remember President John F. Kennedy?
I couldn't vote for him, but I'm old enough to remember his inaugural. The day JFK was assassinated.
I was in class when the first announcement came across the intercom. Mother Superior. The president has been shot. Everything became dead as if we children had a premonition. Silently, we stared at the intercom. Waiting. And then Mother Superior again. No one had to tell us what to do. We got up, still silent. We gathered our things, coats and hats and gloves. Home.
The next few days were dark and dreary. At least it seemed that way. I watched the television more than I had ever had before. The rocker sitting idle in the rain. Oswald grabbing his stomach. A line of Kennedys. Jackie, Robert Sr., Teddy, and others walking behind the horse-drawn casket of JFK.
USAID is Kennedy's legacy!
I wanted to join the Peace Corps but couldn't make the financial leap in 1972. I went on to college and that in and of itself was a challenge as the first in the family. And a female! And black! No DEI then. No Affirmative Action.
But when I stared at the add for IFESH on my bulletin board, I was in my late forties. It was possible.
The definition of freedom doesn't include democracy, writes Quinn Slobodian in Crack-Up Capitalism. "Democracy was a moot point" in a model corporate city such as Hong Kong. There "monetary stability was paramount, and any expansion of social services meant a fall in the rankings" of corporations and the oligarchs, who, as Slobodian explains, declare the "'right' to food, clothing medical services, housing" and the right to "a minimal income level" are an example of lunacy-- to use 47's words.
Our backs are against the ropes, and no, no one can save us but ourselves. It's us, standing for democracy and these truly lunatics, standing for fascism-- the union of government and corporations, ruled by oligarchs.
Remember Rev. Leon Sullivan's legacy of serving for good! Serving people and not the Market!
We fight back! Together!
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