Could it happen without democracy? - Charlotte's trip to New York

Last week I went to New York and as usual I didn’t get to see the Statue of Liberty or go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, I did get to go to Columbia University only three days before Mahmoud Ahmedinejad came to speak to the faculty and students.

I was having coffee with my friend Pablo, when a friend of his, Aries, came by. Aries is the spokesperson is the Queer Alliance at Columbia, he had just been invited to the O’Reilly Factor, hosted by the conservative Bill O’Reilly at Fox News, to give his opinion about Ahmadinjad’s visit. The news had taken an interest, because the Queer Alliance has banned military recruiters from campus because they discriminate against gay people, but yet they allow Ahmadinejad to come and speak, even though he openly denies that there are gay people in Iran. Aries didn’t think he would go on the O’Reilly Factor.

“To be honest what would I say?” he argued and articulately trash-talked the show.

That same night I met up with a bunch of friends, incidentally we all ended up at a Gay bar. One of my friends have just returned from 18 months in Afghanistan. He came a long, even though he is actually not gay. At the entrance he flashed his military ID and was rewarded a free drink. After we left, he related that he had found the entire experience of being at the gay bar very uncomfortable and that he now finally understood what going out was like for women.

The next day I met up with another friend who had just returned from India where she had been working with women on issues of family planning. She was very adamant that it is important to educate and empower the women, because that way you see real change in society.

Sunday I met up with a group of people for brunch. The group was divided between strange-internationals like myself, Jewish Columbia University Graduates and well our soldier friend. Conversation went around the table and eventually ended up on the war. Or the wars. One of the Columbia grads asked what our soldier friend thought about it? He shrugged.

“To be quiet honest” he said “it doesn’t really matter what I think.” He is doing a job.

So Monday I spent the evening watching stand-up comedy. Unfortunately it wasn’t political. It was all about American celebrities. At one point someone made a joke about Oprah, then exclaimed:
“Look at you! You are actually nervous that I’m making fun of Oprah!” Oprah was voted ‘Celebrity most wanted to be President” by the readers of Harpers Bazar’s.

Tuesday Mette Hoffmann and Nick Fraser arrived from Europe, with news that a spread about Why Democracy? would be featured in the Observer the following Sunday and that a small uproar had occurred in Denmark, because the Danish Prime Minister have come forth and said that he would start a revolution if he lived under a dictator.

Wednesday we had the Why Democracy? launched in New York. The screening itself went very well. Nick Fraser and Mette Hoffmann answered questions about the project and I even got to go up on stage at the end and tell everyone to visit the website.

That night I also met Gregory Fitzgerald who is using our outreach as part of a case study for the Center for Social Media at American University and an unidentified flamboyant male did coke behind my back in a restaurant, while assuring my friends and I that he was straight and had more African-American gay friends that any of us.

Thursday, brought me from Manhattan, through Brooklyn and Queens, with a very nice cap driver who let me borrow his cell phone, for the entire 90 minutes I was in his car. I ended up at the John F. Kennedy Airport slightly rushed, with Amazon.com books for John, which had been picked up at the UPS storage in Queens, where according to the employees it is not safe to stand on the street corner.

Then I was back home faster than fast, after about 10 hours of sleep, only interrupted by the fact that someone did not get off the plane when we had our stop over in Dhaka.

Finally I came back to the House. Back to Cape Town. The weather here as in New York is lovely and Sunday we went to a beautiful funeral in one of the Townships. Our wonderful house keeper Tamara’s husband unfortunately passed away last Thursday. The funeral was held in a tent attached to a small house. It was filled to the brim with friends from his church and his family from Malawi who had come down from all over South Africa. During the funeral a small crowd of people also stacked up outside to get a look of us white people.

The last day of this very long week I was standing on the Cape flats under the hot South African sun watching his coffin, decorated with plastic flowers, being lowered into the ground.