Conversations with Alice - or in Denial?

Why? Why? Why do they do this?

This is the question I had when I awoke this morning. Notably it was not "Why Democracy?" nor "Why the hell am I thinking about writing this blog post before I am officially awake and in the line of duty, equipped with caffeine running through my veins to make up for less than 5 hours sleep -- again.".

Words and pictures are stuck in my head: Why do these people stand up? Why do they try, why do they fight a hopeless war just to lose? Why are they so irrationally passionate about their subject that they stand up to organise themselves and to protest loudly, to get engaged in a war they are very unlikely to win, because the opposite side is so powerful, seems so all powerful from their perspective, is so E V E R Y W H E R E. Is their backbone stronger than yours?

Why do women with a good life and armed with not much more than a wired office, their cameras, computers and voices create Shayfeen.com and open up to our documentary filmmakers Leila Menjou and Sherief Elkatsha to show what should be hidden? Why do they expose themselves so easily, becoming nothing more than a moving target for a well trained sniper? It would take so little to make their voices die and even today they can be shot down so fast that no one ever would hear them again. Why do they -- happily and willingly, it seems to me -- endanger their families and beloved ones, their friends and co-workers, to fight? Not enough fighting in their own country, they do not exactly work from the underground: Having a camera and a film maker following them on their journey.

Whether the film is about introducing a totally new subject to 9-year-olds in an elementary school environment or whether they try to document their own government officials keeping them from voting: At the end of the shoot, the tapes and recorded material had to be smuggled out of their countries, leaving the contributors, filmmakers and their families behind as a subject of interest for their own government. The focus changes and within days the observer becomes the observed.

Why do peaceful monks in Burma care enough, why do they gather in order to protest, to die? Why are bloggers and citizen journalists who never had an official story before taking their digital cameras, going out there and documenting what happens to the human rights activists -- whatever it takes? Why is it not enough that people already died for what they believed in? How can one side of the argument be so democratic (monks and demonstrators, peacefully united in their protests) while the other side is so willing, so comfortable -- it seems -- with taking fatal actions against their own citizens? Democracy is no one way street, it can't be!

Why does a documentary filmmaker, living a relatively free and happy life in New York City pick up one of the most personal topics -- his own identity -- and works over more than five years to create a movie he knew from the very beginning, would heat up a controversy that is not only linked to him being Muslim and gay, but to a war that started six years ago? Why does he do this -- fraternizing with people he did not know then, people who share maybe not more than sexual orientation and religious beliefs with him? Why is he willing to face all the threats he knew could arise from this work?

I do not know what answers all those questions for all those wonderful and incredibly brave people, full of integrity and belief in their mission, positive about their impact and the outcome of their efforts. Truth is always a matter of perspective. In cultural debates there is no such thing as an objective truth, a real history.

Is it that these people trust in some form of democracy, of participation, that one can actually have an impact that made them come so far? On the news page of a idealistic project, engaging a huge part of the global community in a debate about what democracy means to them? Is it to awaken people in their comfortable living rooms, in front of their big TV screens, to prove that it takes nothing more than a voice, a strong backbone to actually change things? To questioning your own limits and inspire others to do the same? Not taking action because you are one person, insignificant -- this is a common belief -- can only do so much.

Even though us democrats here in the Democracy House in Cape Town are not exactly working at the front line of it, in the masses of India or Bolivia, facing and questioning religious and political leaders in person -- we all grew during this project with our concept of democracy. These days democracy is not as certain as we, coming from more or less democratic countries all over the world, maybe thought it was. We should not forget that today's democratic countries did not evolve peacefully. They also had to fight their wars for it.

But is seems like as soon as you get involved and engaged in a subject so much bigger than you, it makes things less scary: As soon as you reveal a subject that really matters to you and your co-activists, as soon as you find your own loud voice, an alternative perspective arises: Things start to seem possible. Things start to take shape in front of your closed eyes, lying in your bed, after five hours of sleep. Things you are passionate about. It is an enlightening and empowering process at the same time: As soon as Alice confronted the Wonderland with her own voice she was less scared and the nightmare ended -- leaving her within another world, a new environment, a room full of new chances.

And this is how the Democracy Crew basically ended volunteering a summer in Cape Town: It cost us a summer, a couple of tickets, a lot of sleep. But what did we gain in one small wired house in Cape Town! Friends and a new focus on subjects and food and life. A greater understanding of passion and what it really means to be committed, to stick to an idea or story you think it's worth to be told, no matter what.

A couple of years ago people in pretty safe jobs and offices, spread around the world, decided to take a risk. People who could have been a lot less stressed out in the last years if it wasn't for that decision. Brave people who first had not the means but the agenda to empower others, to create a global forum for debate and to make an extraordinary contribution to this world -- and they made it happen.

Why? There is no correct universal answer for all these questions. All the creative protesters, brave documentarists and artists out there have a personal motivation and that is what makes these issues so diverse and so accessible for a global audience at the same time.

Why? For me the answer is simple and I know it for all the things I am really passionate about: Why? Because some things are worth fighting for.

/Amy

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.