For any who might be interested in an example of the off-the-cuff, freewheeling type of writing that goes into a blog versus that which is constrained by necessities of a newspaper column, here is a second version of earlier commentary. The constraints are more in the nature of space and a general audience. The advantage of writing to fit a space is that working the writing probably improves it. However, my daughter Laurel said of the blog that it was nice to read my writing that was more conversational than usual.
Sometimes a single, extraordinary experience gives us a new lens through which to view the realities of our lives.
On a recent trip to Haiti, our lenses captured life in cities built to contain a tenth of the population they now hold. Day and night people crowded onto narrow streets, mostly dirt, few named or addressed. Joining pedestrians were scooters and small motorcycles with whole families aboard, bicycles, delivery trucks, buses and tap-taps filled to overflowing with people and livestock covering the roofs, cars, trucks, pickups and UN military vehicles.
Roadsides brought more culture shock. Trash piled in every space between houses. People combed through the mess, looking for bits of metal to turn into art for the now infrequent tourists. Atop mounds of trash, tethered pigs and chickens picked at bits of food and I shudder to imagine what else. Beside the streets, between houses, ran concrete gutters or dirt trenches. They flowed into the bays or just disappeared into the streets. This, I realized, was the sewer “system.” Running water connected to wealthy homes and some businesses. Even in those places, we could not drink the water or bathe with mouth or eyes open.
In every possible space, men and women crouch beside tiny markets selling items like fake Crocs, stale cheese and crackers, cookies and water packets. Some set up little shops to crack open motors, extract the tiniest pieces of wire. Others spend the day hammering out bent bicycle rims and chains and selling them. Haitians personify industriousness; movement everywhere; use, reuse everything.
Traffic kicks dust into houses built right up to the edges of streets. Women fight an endless battle of sweeping it back into the street. Many have precious little than roof and broom, and we heard true horror stories behind the snapshots of life we could see.
The dust that came off the tires of trucks, off the feet of livestock living on trash heaps, mixed with soot from charcoal fires and the overflowing sewers became “food” for human beings. Kneaded with sugar and oil and baked, dust became cookies to staunch the burning hunger in their children’s bellies.
As the images settled into my brain, I realized I was looking at a preview of our future if we don’t make big changes fast. Two qualities missing from Haiti are rapidly declining here: Infrastructure and a middle class. And the reasons for the destruction in Haiti and the decline here are the same: United States’ policy and the homage it pays to the interests of mega corporations.
Fifty or more years of meddling in Haitian politics and imposing our markets on them have made them dependent on others for almost everything. Once cheap American food came into their country, farmers could not compete. They left their farms for the city where they found no work. Now there are not enough farmers left to feed the people of Haiti.
A small island, Haiti doesn’t have raw materials to produce consumer goods. European colonials clear-cut Haiti’s great mahogany forests. Having no fossil fuels on the island, Haitians have nearly completed the deforestation to make charcoal for their traditional cook stoves.
Corrupt governments have left streets, water and sewer treatment to fall into ruin. Each failing resource makes recovery from another less likely.
They must import everything. Thus, as soon as world fuel prices soared, the cost of almost everything zoomed out of Haitians’ reach. Even the wealthy found depleted choices because retailers couldn’t afford to restock.
Isn’t that a complete metaphor for the position we find ourselves in today? We no longer make things, we import them. Subsidized industrial giants have forced out family farmers and replaced food crops with fuel crops. We are spoiling our environment to cook our food and heat our homes. Our infrastructure is falling into ruin — bridges, roads, levees, rail beds no longer are serviceable. Our people, no longer employed to make things, fall ever more often into low-paying service and retail work.
Our common investment through tax dollars does not address these issues. So far, the political conversations only graze issues of the urgent need to strengthen the middle class and the infrastructure that made this country the mightiest on earth. Our so-called solutions are pitifully shallow, narrow, short-ranged and insufficient.
In the upcoming elections, we should demand candidates at all levels detail plans to solve complex problems. We should let them know we will not vote for anyone who cannot articulate a plan for alternative transportation, not just alternative energy. We must require plans to put Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure; developing green technology; making things ourselves.
We must challenge the notion that public works projects are welfare. And we must reject as ridiculous the idea that tax cuts are patriotic, realistic or acceptable. The next few years will bring gigantic economic and social challenges and we are trillions of dollars in debt.
We must elect and then support people at all levels of government willing to make hard and necessary choices. We must get beyond the reality game show we have made of politics, and seriously assess how we direct common resources for the common good. Otherwise, we will live as Haitians, struggling to stay alive.
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