Lend a Hand

I think often these days of how the Guatemalan genocide survivors I lived with as a human rights accompanier would thank us for walking with them. I think about Palestinian survivors thanking the young people living in encampments, demanding their Universities stop investing in genocide. And I think about a kind of loneliness that comes when help doesn’t, when good people let the worst things happen. When six million people (Jewish, Roma, sick, disabled, and queer people) are killed before people step in to stop it, as with the Nazi Holocaust. When most of us in the U.S. do nothing for 36 years while our taxes helped pay for the murder of 200,000 people in Guatemala. When so many of us have done so little for 8 months as Israel has killed 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Stefanie Fox, director ofJewish Voice for Peace, said “The number one lesson of the holocaust is that the people did nothing.”

It is a kind of loneliness I cannot easily articulate, the closest concept I have is a hole. An actual hole that existed (for all I know, still does). Guatemalan soldiers dropped Don Tito inside it after torturing him. He survived to tell me this story. The first time I met Don Tito (not his real name), he’d recently had a stroke likely because of the permanent damage from the torture. As he talked, a little drool escaped his lips. The hole he was kept in was not endless. It wasn’t even very deep. Which is what makes it stick to the idea I have of this depth of loneliness. Because while the hole where those soldiers left Don Tito was deeper than his arms could reach, it was not deeper than two arms could reach. Someone outside that pit could have reached an arm down to grab hold of his.

When NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala) asked me once again to be a peer-to-peer fundraiser, it was a relief to say yes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love asking people for money. But humans are inherently so connected to each other, that in general we feel terrible if someone else is suffering while we stand by. We can’t stand it; we have to either deny it (deny they are human, deny their suffering is really that bad; deny we have the power or the time to do anything about it) or…we have to help. I invite you to help me raise $1,200 for NISGUA by the end of May. It doesn’t have to be a lot. $10, $20, $100. Whatever you can. Lend a hand.

With great love,

Chris