Most of us have a fundamental belief that in our hour of pain, aid will come. The child with an earache cries for mama; the wounded soldier calls for a medic. Help me.
We want to respond; it’s basic to our humanity — to help, to heal, to feed, to comfort. To do what we can, whether by bringing water to the thirsty, cleaning wounds, giving blood or writing checks. Disasters large and small can bring out the best in us — we rise to individual acts of heroism and collective acts of charity when we heed that call to service.
This Martin Luther King Day I have three things on my mind: the genius of the great Dr. King, the disaster in Haiti, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I’m wishing right now we had a Martin Luther King, Jr. for this millennium — someone whose words and courage could inspire, persuade and uplift. We‘ll always need that.
The disaster in Haiti is a nightmare of violent death, entrapment, and grievous injury, all exacerbated by an infrastructure that is missing, crushed, or carried away. And because of that, medical care on the island has been jerked rudely backward to the time of the Civil War and before. People are dying of sepsis and dehydration; bloated corpses are putrefying in the heat. Can this really be 2010? Paul Farmer’s organization, Partners in Health will be the lifeline here, with their deep connections in Haiti and excellent command of the best ways to deliver lifesaving medical aid in resource-poor settings.
In the footage and photos from Port-au-Prince, we see and hear the echoes of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. There are many parallels, the heartbreaking images of suffering people being only one of them. Lest we forget: Katrina’s fifth anniversary is this coming summer. Let’ s not be guilty of a short attention span. The “crisis du jour” mentality of charitable giving is powerfully reinforced by on-again/off-again TV coverage, and we need to remember that even as Haiti is in ruins and desperately needs our help, distress did not disappear in New Orleans when the news photographers went home. There’s pluck and hard work afoot in NOLA, but help of many kinds is still needed quite urgently.
The girls’ schools represented by NCGS have made a commitment to the St. Bernard Project. We’ll work together to raise money to build a house for a displaced family, and we’ll do it in time for our annual conference in June, this year in New Orleans at Louise McGehee School. As part of our plan, we want to get every single person who reads this blog to vote for St. Bernard in the Chase Community Giving challenge on Facebook, and to spread the word. Wouldn’t it inspire a great feeling of hope to see the St. Bernard project be awarded a million dollars? It would please the likes of Dr. King. So as we celebrate his birthday, let’s keep his dream alive. We have the power to help make it happen. If you are on Facebook you can vote for five charities. Please use your power to vote for the St. Bernard Project.
Consider how recently it was that New Orleans was getting the hand-wringing news coverage, and think about the courageous and hardworking people who are still in the trenches in the absence of much recognition or praise. Think of them as you read this stanza of Marge Piercy’s poem To Be of Use—
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
And certainly the great Dr. King would agree. In his own words — “Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone.” Please, we only have through Friday, January 22nd to vote for St. Bernard on Facebook. Do it now while it’s on your mind.
(read the whole poem here)
