Anyhow, we’re doing our best to share it all, and we should be able to get caught up on a few past events over the next few days. We’ve been diligently photographing things, and you should all know that even when we don’t get things posted right away- we definitely have you all and the blog in our minds!
Sam and Jon recently met with the Vice Chancellor of Independent University Bangladesh (IUB), which is the university Sam is affiliated with here, and we will both be doing some guest lectures this semester and will likely be teaching some courses over the summer (and possibly beyond - but that’s still very up in the air). Another really big thing that happened this past week is that Jon organized a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event here in Dhaka with the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF). Jon has been working with some anti-sweatshop activists back in the US and with the garment workers union here. We decided that we wanted to share Dr. King’s legacy with the garment workers in hopes of open up a cultural dialogue. We invited the Human Rights officer from the US embassy to come peak at the event, which we thought would be an important symbol.
We also thought that it would be nice to have some quotes and slogans in both English and Bangla at the event, but since we are procrastinators, of course we were making these all the night before and the day of the event. Jon enlisted the help of his Bangla teacher to translate some things, but there was some problem with him even understanding th english version of what we needed to translate, because it isn’t the type of thing he had ever really learned in English (this is specialized lefty stuff!) but Sam also busted out the dictionaries and figured out how to translate some of the more difficult words and ideas. Dr. King’s speeches are quite poetic and full of metaphors that are difficult to translate, so it was a challenge but quite satisfying in the end.
Here are some shots of us making the posters (Atticus was the photographer that night) and the posters themselves.
Jon went down to the event early to get set up. Since his CNG driver was a total maniac who could not stand to slow down or be stuck in traffic, he would find his way through even the tightest squeezes and he got there earlier than he expected. In fact, Jon really liked this guy – so much that he paid almost triple the usual fare as a tip (still only 300 taka total, or less than 4 dollars) just in appreciation! Since he arrived so early, Jon spent the extra time trying to communicate with the NGWF folks and getting things all set up. They were all very impressed that we had translated the posters into Bangla and because Bangladeshis love to share compliments, all commented on how beautiful the handwriting was.Meanwhile, back at the house, Sam mobilized Atticus and Taborok into a CNG (he was not coming as a driver today- just as a friend to support Jon at his event) and headed down a little later. Sam had to warn Taborok ahead of time that he couldn’t get too upset at the crazy high price the CNG would charge (because foreigners always pay much more) and even though it was clearly difficult for him to let Sam negotiate the fare, he kept quiet and let it go. It was sort of sweet watching how much care he showed to Atticus, and when we were walking on a crowded street he even reached for Atticus’ hand. Of course some of this is the reflex to grab a kid’s hand that any parent has when it is crowded, but it also shows how much he has really become Atticus’ cha-cha (uncle). Also, on the way down, in a crazy example of how small this city of millions can be, Sam ran into someone she knew over 2 years ago here – he saw her in the CNG and ran over. He’s here doing research too, and actually only lives about a kilometer from our house, but they ran into each other clear on the other side of town. Crazy stuff!
Anyway, the event was a great success. It was a true cultural dialogue. The message of Dr. King’s struggle for equality, justice and peace was received with great enthusiasm by the garment workers and organizers. Similarly, the stories of his struggles and his use of non-violent direct action were also an inspiration to workers and many parallels between King’s work and the ongoing struggle here were clearly present and felt by everyone in the room.
It was a little funny because after we got there, Atticus really wanted to be up front with Jon on the panel, and since the embassy guy was late (and since everyone in Bangladesh is head-over-heels in love with Atticus) he ended up sitting at the table in front of the audience for the whole presentation. He was really good though, and spent the time drawing on little slips of paper. First he drew a picture of the Industrial Workers of the World Poster next to him, and even copied the Bangla! Here is a photo – it almost made Sam cry (and it looked like Taborok was a little teary eyed too!) when he showed it to her. Here is a photo of it.
The theme of the night was to show connections. As Dr. King himself said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We expressed these connections in our words, with visual displays of the global connections of various leaders for change, and by our physical presence.
Jon spoke about who Dr. King was and the work he did, drawing many parallels to the current situation in Bangladesh, such as the fact that Rosa Parks was herself a seamstress. He also discussed what King’s legacy meant and why his legacy was important to workers in Bangladesh. Part of the way into the program, a massive contingent of garment workers showed up for a leadership training that was to be held later in the evening. The room was already fairly packed with about forty or fifty people, and as about fifty more garment workers arrived it was standing room only and bursting out the back door.
As a closing to the program, Jon reminded folks that King had spoken of having a dream, and encouraged people to share their dreams. People were encouraged to write their dreams (or even just their names) on a poster board which said in both English and Bangla “I have a dream.” One NGWF organizer excitedly grabbed the pen and asked people to share their dreams as she wrote. It was a nice scene of people shouting out their dreams as she wrote them on the poster.
Here are some shots of the event, and the crowd.
After the program, we came back home and Atticus was all fired up and excited, so while Sam, Jon, and Taborok decompressed with a few drinks, Atticus created his own poster. We were pleased with the level of radical-ness Atticus presented in the poster. He had really listened to the program, and had really learned the lessons of the connections we talked about. He said, several times, to Sam that he really liked Jon’s speech, and it was clear in the poster that he was convinced of the need for solidarity and direct action in the case of the garment workers. Some of the things he drew were the IWW logo, a string (remembering the thread of destiny quote form King) connecting all the IWW’s in the world, the anarcho-syndicalist red and black flag, the worker’s power symbol of the arm holding the hammer, a woman sewing t-shirts at a sewing machine, a cobra that represents the bosses and a regular snake representing the workers (we don’t really understand it, but that’s what he said) and several representations of his desire to either abolish money (as shown in the no-taka, no-dollar, no-euro drawings) and/or his simultaneous desire for the garment workers to have more money. His economic philosophy is still developing, but he’s on a good path, so we’ll let him work the details out later. On the back of the poster he continued the same theme, but this time we got a better picture of a sewing machine and a representation of the boss, which looks very much like the devil. The coolest thing about all of this, is that he was on his own over in the living room, while we were at the dining room table and all of it comes straight from his own little noggin. He is freaking amazing, even if we say so ourselves! Here’s a photo of the front and back (heck yeah, we took a photo of it!):
So, that covers the NGWF event, one of many things this month. This has been a really long post, but we hope it has given a glimpse into a part of our life that has not really been shown on the blog yet. More on our busy month to come…
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