When I think of peace, I think of different moments. At my daughters’ pre-school, the children were taught to use “words” instead of hurting each other. I taught there for one summer and remember hearing tiny voices in that sunny one room school in the Richmond District of San Francisco, upset over who could claim possession to a red truck, be told to put the truck down and speak to each other: “I had it first and I’m mad you took it from me.
“But I wanted it. You had it so long.” At the end of the conversation, mediated by a teacher from the sidelines, a truce was formed, the truck was transferred for a few minutes to the little boy who wanted it and then politely given back. Voila. A war was stopped!
I also think of 1968 at the University of Wisconsin. I was protesting the Dow Chemical Company who was then making napalm, burning the skin even of innocent children in Vietnam. I sat in the Commerce Building, scrunched in with hundreds of others and suddenly got claustrophobic. I also felt something really bad was going to happen and I quickly excused myself and ran out of the building and stood in my long black coat on top of a grassy knoll again with hundreds of others. A few minutes later, police officers stormed the building, beating students and dragging them out. There was screaming and crying and blood. Outside, young men, the same as age we were—19, in the National Guard came towards us with pointed rifles and then tear gas appeared like rain. I had something in my eye or just wanted to be blinded from seeing friends put into ambulances and I ran down toward Lake Mendota with my friend Joanne. I found a water fountain and put water in my eyes. That night we all gathered together, found out about who was hurt and who was recovering and I aged considerably from a middle-class college student to a protestor who had been tear gassed and seen friends hurt for wanting an end to war. We chose to speak in one voice and there were a lot of us. We took the consequences, some much more serious consequences than others. Ultimately, we wanted peace in the whole world.
I also think of “fighting” for a Black Studies Department(as it was called back then) at the University of Wisconsin and picketing classrooms for two days. It seems absurd now as many Universities have African American Studies Departments that students take for granted. It was winter and well below freezing. I had a huge pink scarf from India wrapped around my whole face so only the slits of my eyes showed. People alternately made coffee and donut runs and we marched for hours. I also remember that there was no violence, and that we were successful. I’m not sure when or how, but our efforts were part of the success of the program.
I also remember last semester at City College of San Francisco where I teach—in my class Trauma and the Arts, I assigned an “anti-war poster” after students studied Picasso's Guernica and the Spanish Civil War. A few of my very vocal students said they’d prefer to do a “pro-peace” poster and we discussed the linguistic difference and all decided on pro-peace. Thought the posters had some scenes of war, what I remember are fields of flowers, deer running through tall trees, and the guns and the violence just a whisper, slowly disappearing from the foreground to the background. So that’s what I would like: that negotiations prevent war; that people stand up for human rights; that schools are built before bombs are dropped and that somehow, some way we can put an end to wars.
Louise Nayer is the author of Burned: A Memoir to be published in April 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment