Third World America

by Arianna Huffington

  This is what the soldiers Junger wrote about were missing when they left the battlefield. And we can create it in our own lives … if we choose to. We must, because it’s difficult to face the perils of our new economic landscape alone. Those of us who are under less of a threat need to reach out to those who have already been ensnared. When soldiers talk about being in a foxhole, it’s always about who they are in the foxhole with—it’s not a place you want to be by yourself. There’s not just strength in numbers—there’s purpose and meaning if we reach out and connect.

  As Pablo Neruda said, “To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.124 But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”

  THOMAS JEFFERSON WASN’T SUGGESTING WE PURSUE HAPPY HOURS OR HAPPY MEALS

  From the beginning, America has been dedicated to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But the signers of the Declaration of Independence assumed that some truths did not have to be proven; they were, to borrow a phrase, self-evident. It was self-evident, for example, that the happiness that was to be pursued was not the buzz of a shopping spree high. It was the happiness of the book of Proverbs: “Happy is he that has mercy on the poor.”125 It was the happiness that comes from feeling good by doing good.

  But, in a spiritual fire sale, too often over the past fifty years, happiness has been reduced to instant gratification. We search for “happy hours” that leave us stumbling through life; we devour “Happy Meals” that barely nourish the body. We buy into ads that tell us that there is a pill for every ill and that happiness is just a tablet away.

  Faced with hard times, more and more Americans are now choosing to redefine the pursuit of happiness in ways much closer to the original Jeffersonian concept. The widening holes in America’s social safety net make a commitment to service even more urgent. We’ve seen the American people rise to the call of service time and again in times of national tragedy—witness the outpouring of money and volunteerism in the wake of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, or the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, Americans showed they were eager to work for the common good, to be called to that higher purpose. It was the best of times amid the worst of times.

  President Obama doesn’t need to convince the American people of the value of service; his challenge is finding a way to direct that national impulse into an ongoing effort to deal with the dark days we find ourselves in. He’s got the right words: “When you serve,” he said during a commencement speech at Notre Dame, “it doesn’t just improve your community, it makes you a part of your community.126 It breaks down walls. It fosters cooperation. And when that happens—when people set aside their differences, even for a moment, to work in common effort toward a common goal; when they struggle together, and sacrifice together, and learn from one another—then all things are possible.”

  But it is going to take more than soaring rhetoric. Every president pays lip service to service. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush declared, “We have much to do, and much to ask of the American people.”127 A month later he echoed that theme, saying simply: “America is sacrifice.”128 Of course, the sum total of his idea of sacrifice turned out to be shopping, going to Disney World, and offering tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.129

  And President Obama has yet to turn his words into action and follow through on his promise to emulate FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, JFK’s Peace Corps, and LBJ’s Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). The role that service can—and must—play in addressing the urgent needs our country faces is all the more important among the nation’s young people who were so galvanized by the ’08 campaign, but who will now find it increasingly hard to get a job or to afford to stay in school.

  And the demand among young people is growing. In 2009, for example, Teach for America received 35,000 applications for 4,100 positions.130 In 2008, 75,000 AmeriCorps members mobilized and led 2.2 million community volunteers.131 The Serve America Act, introduced by Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, will increase the number of full-time service positions (based on the AmeriCorps model) from 75,000 to 250,000.132 These jobs can have an exponential impact on the recruitment of volunteers.

  Among our senior citizens, the payoff from service has also been remarkable. Approximately 280,000 special needs children were mentored by 30,000 Senior Corps “Foster Grandparents” in 2007.133 Eighty-one percent of the children helped by the Foster Grandparents program showed improved academic performance, 90 percent showed improved self-image, and 59 percent reported a reduction in risky behavior.134 And students working with an Experience Corps tutor showed a 60 percent improvement in reading skills over students who were not in the program.135 These volunteers use their skills to help others even while they’re dealing with their own harsh economic realities.

  “FIND YOUR OWN CALCUTTA”

  When people used to offer to join Mother Teresa in her “wonderful work in Calcutta,” she would often respond: “Find your own Calcutta.”136 That is, care for those in need where you are. Thousands are doing this—finding their own Calcuttas—all across America.

  Geoffrey Canada provides a template of how to do it.137 Ever since he returned to Harlem with a master’s from Harvard and a third-degree black belt, he’s been fighting a block-by-block and child-by-child battle against poverty, drugs, gangs, and indifference. Through the Harlem Children’s Zone, he’s turned around lives while reminding America that we have, in too many ways, and in too many places, failed our children.

  The nonprofit serves a ninety-seven-block section of Harlem, providing the guidance and personal support that the children there have been missing. Visiting his projects is like going from one healing outpost to another, including a baby college (where the parents of infants are taught the value of reading to their children and of avoiding corporal punishment), a technology center, and an employment center.

  A front-line soldier in the battle to save our children, Canada says, “The problem cannot be solved from afar with a media campaign or other safe solutions operating from a distance. The only way we’re going to make a difference is placing well-trained and caring adults in the middle of what can only be called free-fire zones in our poorest communities.”

  In 2004, he launched the Promise Academy, the Children’s Zone’s own charter school. As reported by Metro, “In 2008, 97 percent of its eighth-graders scored at or above grade level, compared to only 46 percent of students in area public schools.”138

  Canada summed up his “If not us, who? If not now, when?” approach in a poem he wrote in response to Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on the failure of America’s schools. He titled it “Waiting for Whom?”:139

  If you asked me where it all went wrong,

  And why we find today

  That certain children’s lives are ruined,

  Broken dreams just tossed away,

  I would tell you a tale so sad to hear

  You might not believe it’s true.

  It’s true, it’s sad, and terribly bad.

  The question is: what will you do?

  It seems that it is not a crime,

  And not against the law,

  To miseducate millions of children

  As long as they are poor.

  You can fail them year after year,

  And no one will give a damn.

  That is, no one except you and me,

  But we’re quiet and injustice stands.

  In fact, adults seem to have the right

  To get paid while doing harm.

  Even if they have slapped and cursed,

  And pinched those little arms.

  And some do worse, lest we forget,

  Those who punch, d
emean, molest,

  And they get to stay, can’t be sent away.

  Who supports this system anyway?

  I ask who created this broken system,

  Where for decades poor children have failed?

  And why can’t we change such dysfunction

  Where for most, failed schools lead to jail?

  And who in the hell defends such a thing,

  Where the evidence is clear and true?

  I, for one, have said enough is enough,

  I hope I can count on you too.

  Our children are waiting for someone,

  A hero who’s ready to fight.

  To end decades of injustice,

  To know and to do what is right.

  And what I am saying is shocking,

  But what I am saying is true.

  The hero children are waiting for,

  That hero, it’s me and it’s you.

  Susie Buffett offers another shining example of finding your own Calcutta.140 Operating in her own backyard of Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Warren Buffett has dedicated her Sherwood Foundation—named after the forest of Robin Hood folklore—to caring for those in need in her hometown. Working out of the same building that has housed her father’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, for more than forty years, Susie Buffett has launched multiple initiatives that have had a profound impact on the community. Among them are: neighborhood redevelopment, after-school programming, financial literacy, and a gang-violence intervention program that brings former gang members back to the street to talk to current gang members. It also works with schools to prevent and address school-based violence and gang recruitment.

  Susie Buffett started working in her own community as a young girl. “My mother and I,” she remembers, “were stopped by the police more than once for ‘driving while white’ in the housing projects. I was a Head Start volunteer in the sixties (my mother started Head Start in Omaha in our living room—it was the second site in the country), and I taught sewing in the housing projects when I was in high school.”

  Buffett’s foundation is also working closely with Omaha’s public schools: updating book collections and improving online databases at every school library in the district; keeping school libraries open during the summer; providing grants for students in grades seven to nine to enroll in summer school; and making it possible for many math and English teachers to augment their teaching skills at conferences and summer seminars.

  The Buffett Early Childhood Fund focuses on ensuring “a more level playing field for all children as they enter kindergarten” with the goal of redefining education in America to encompass the first five years of life. “When my parents set up the three foundations for my brothers and me in late 1999, I decided that I wanted to work with the Omaha Public Schools,” Buffett told me. “I went to see Dr. Mackiel, the superintendent, and told him that I had this money and wanted him to think about what we could do with it. He said, ‘Don’t give it to me. Figure out who is doing the best work in early childhood and do something for the poorest kids so that they enter kindergarten prepared.’ ” The result, Building Bright Futures, is a nonprofit seeking to “improve academic performance, raise graduation rates, increase civic and community responsibility and ensure that all students are prepared for post-secondary education by developing partnerships with existing providers and creating new evidence-based programs to develop a comprehensive, community-based network of services.”141

  As we struggle to return our economy to full capacity, we also need to make sure that our communities are operating at full capacity: Our full capacity of giving. Our full capacity of service. Our full capacity of compassion.

  EMPATHY FOR THE (BE)DEVIL(ED)

  In The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin describes empathy as “the willingness of an observer to become part of another’s experience, to share the feeling of that experience.”

  Unlike sympathy, which is passive, empathy is active, engaged, and dynamic. New scientific data tells us that empathy is not a quaint behavior trotted out during intermittent visits to a food bank or during a heart-tugging telethon.142 Instead, it lies at the very core of human existence.

  Since the economic crisis, the role empathy plays in our lives has only grown more important. In fact, in this time of economic hardship, political instability, and rapid technological change, empathy is the one quality we most need if we’re going to flourish in the twenty-first century. “An individual,” said Martin Luther King, “has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his own individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”143

  In the fall of 2009, the Huffington Post published a story about Monique Zimmerman-Stein, a mother who suffers from Stickler syndrome, a rare genetic condition that leads to blindness. Though almost completely blind, she abandoned the treatments that might have saved her eyesight so that she and her husband could afford medical care for their two daughters, who were also diagnosed with the disorder.144 The regular injections Monique needed cost $380 each, even after the family’s insurance paid its share, and she and her husband were already drowning in medical debt. Sacrificing her own treatment, she said, was “a choice any mom would make.”

  The Stein family’s story struck a chord with readers, many of whom wrote asking how they could help.145 In response, we designed a fund-raising widget, providing readers who wanted to contribute to the Steins a quick and easy way to give. Within a week, we had raised more than $30,000 to help the family pay down its medical bills. “I was flabbergasted, overwhelmed, overcome,” Monique said of the donations. “So many people are having a hard time. The fact that they would give something to us is an amazing gift.” Gary, Monique’s husband, echoed her gratitude. “We’ll do whatever we can to pay it forward,” he said.

  “We are on the cusp of an epic shift,” writes Jeremy Rifkin.146 “The Age of Reason is being eclipsed by the Age of Empathy.” He makes the case that as technology is increasingly connecting us to one another, we need to understand what the goal of all this connectivity is. “Seven billion individual connections,” he says, “absent any overall unifying purpose, seem a colossal waste of human energy.”147

  That sense of purpose, which must include expanding the narrow confines of our own concerns, can have powerful social implications. Dr. King showed that for a social movement to become broad-based enough to produce real change, it must be fueled by empathy.

  In his 1963 work “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King lamented the failure of “the white moderate” to “understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.”148

  King understood that he needed to tap into the empathy of whole constituencies that would not themselves be the direct beneficiaries of the civil rights movement. He set about making a compelling moral case by forcing many in white America to see for the first time that millions of their fellow citizens were effectively living in a different world—a different America—than they were. He created pathways for empathy and then used them to create a better country for everybody.

  Conservative commentator Tony Blankley once remarked—only half-seriously—that “evolution, cruel as it is, determined that empathy is not a survival trait.” If you’ve been paying attention to the actions of many of our CEOs—from those running big banks to those running Massey Energy and BP—you would be inclined to agree.149 But if we are to continue as a thriving democratic society, we will need all the empathy we can get. Without it, we’ll never be able to create the kind of national consensus required to tackle the enormous problems that face us, rescue the middle class, and stop our descent into Third World America.

  As America’s Misery Index soars, so must our Empathy Index.150

  THE EMPATHY INDEX: FROM THE LOCAL TO THE VIRTUAL


  “We have to lean on one another and look out for one another and love one another and pray for one another,” Barack Obama said when he delivered the eulogy for the fallen West Virginia miners in April 2010.151 This is a call that transcends left and right political divisions.

  David Brooks has written about the need to replace our “atomized, segmented society” with a society “oriented around relationships and associations”—an approach advocated by conservative British writer Phillip Blond in his book Red Tory.152 “Volunteering, especially among professional classes and the young,” Blond wrote, “has doubled in recent months”—proof, he suggests, that “the wish to make a difference is a common and rising aspiration.”153

  Those who are working to address the devastation in their own communities are willing to experiment, try many things, fail, and try again, the way you do when you really care. And there is extraordinary creativity in local philanthropy.

  In 2002 in San Francisco’s Mission district, author Dave Eggers and teacher Nínive Calegari opened 826 Valencia, a writing lab that provides free tutoring to local kids and has attracted hundreds of skilled volunteer instructors.154 Offering drop-in, one-on-one instruction with a focus on the creative and fun aspects of writing, as well as other learning programs including field trips and in-class learning, 826 Valencia has since fanned out across the country, opening chapters—and enlisting volunteer tutors—in Los Angeles, New York City, Michigan, Seattle, Chicago, and Boston.