MLK Jr., Ethiopia, and protest politics

It ain’t easy being black in America. Racism’s sinewy tentacles have touched almost every Ethiopian that has migrated to America since the mid-1970s and we have learned to deal with it on a daily basis at the workplace, in private and public facilities, educational institutions, and even in places of worship. Ethiopians have been harassed, attacked, beaten, and in one case, murdered by xenophobic white Americans.

Unfortunately, We have not been immune from the racist aspects of the criminal justice system either. Like most dark-skinned people in America, we are targeted on highways by bigoted cops, subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures, and serve disproportionate prison sentences in the hands of ignorant judges and all-white jurors.

Ethiopian immigrants refuse to buckle under the weight of such challenges in the land of the free. To many African immigrants, American racism pales in comparison to the hellhole their leaders have turned their countries into. For Ethiopians, racism and prejudice are particularly difficult pills to swallow. Our forefathers and foremothers prevented Ethiopia from being ruled by Ottoman sultanates and European powers and saved their descendants the attendant vestiges of subjugation that were sure to follow. Their tenacious defense of their nation produced a proud people inherently unable to bow down to anyone who claims superiority over them.

I want to be careful to not overemphasize the importance of pride in the Ethiopian makeup. By itself, pride doesn’t seem to be a very good thing - at least the nationalistic type, a precursor for the development of arrogance and extremism, to war to conflict. However, the Ethiopian type, injected with a heavy dose of humility, somehow enables its people to deal with racist cultures with patience, courage, and resilience.

Our unique blend of pride and humility is not what ultimately allows us to maintain our sanity in the face of American racism. What has enabled Ethiopians to not only survive but thrive in America is the sacrifice paid by African-Americans who made their country live up to its promises of democracy. Ethiopians and other African immigrants owe a huge debt of gratitude to African-Americans who have struggled (and continue to do so) to make America's constitutional freedoms accessible to African-Americans and to every minority group that has arrived at its shores.

Our ability to send our children to decent schools, purchase homes in good neighborhoods, obtain bank loans for our businesses, study in colleges of our choosing, compete for decent jobs, fight housing and workplace discrimination, vote in elections, and yes, benefit from Affirmative Action, was made possible by the blood sacrifice paid by the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and thousands of nameless African-Americans who have died to make their society equal since the first slave ships arrived in America. Freedom was never given to our black brothers and sisters: they wrangled it from the deathly grips of America’s three braches of government.

Notwithstanding its harsh realities (and there are many), America remains an awe-inspiring nation. Last week’s senate confirmation hearings of soon-to-be Justice Alito reconfirmed the enduring Madisonian conviction that government, if not checked, cannot be trusted; that the rule of law is perfected by constant friction between the government and individuals. In my opinion, William Jefferson Clinton has defined America better that anyone: “there is nothing wrong in America that cannot be fixed with what is right in America.” It is this built-in self-correcting mechanism that makes America the most incredible nation-state since the Peace of Westphalia.

We Ethiopians who have interlocked our fate with that of America’s understand that democracy is an arduous work in progress. Our contributions are important to not only the ongoing American democratic experiment but to that of Ethiopia’s as well. What is preternaturally disturbing about the EPRDF is not just its point-blank shooting of underage protesters and criminal indictment of political leaders. It is its belief that democracy in Ethiopia is a fait accompli and that only its prescription for democracy is reasonable. The greatest irony is that a party with roots deep in protest politics should have internalized the notion that governance without protest is an exercise in tyranny; that government by its very nature must be contained, limited, and constantly checked. Time after time, the EPRDF has shown a brutal willingness to sacrifice its own constitutional protections on the altar of political survival.

Today, we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a brave American warrior whose life was cut short at the tender age of 39 but whose words and actions have deeply impacted this nation that has given thousands of Ethiopians a home away from home. We celebrate the life of a young man whose tireless work and dream has allowed us and our children to enjoy America in all its forms.

In honoring MLK we also celebrate the rights to assemble, petition, and to protest, rights so vital for a democracy yet rendered criminal liabilities by a government that defines itself as “revolutionary” and “democratic.”

LBJ signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Our Revanchist Hearts

I stood under the old pine trees and stared at the kill-zone through the green bars of the school’s fence. It was lunchtime and the high green-coated fence provided an artificial enclosure from the killing fields Addis Ababa had become. To those looking into the school, they saw a nappy dark-skinned kid with a thousand-mile stare. I was just a keremt away from turning ten, lived for football, kung-fu flicks, marbles, and dreaming about Tigist, the thumb-sucking little teacher’s pet that sat in the front of the class and who occasionally stole glances at me through her long, curly-eyelashes. But on that day, I needed to ponder my father's comments from the night before.

CRIMSON

The young man had a huge afro which bounced with every step he made in his pointed high-heeled shoes that barely peaked through his bellbottoms. He looked incredibly cool. I made a point to ask my parents to buy me the same studded jean jacket he wore. Uncontrollable anger swelled in me at Emaye who had cut my own six-month-old mighty mane barely a week ago. “Afros are passé” she had declared as she snipped away. I sat through the ordeal with the fattest of lips in Arada.

Traumatic images come in tiny morsels, usually in unclear order and sequence. Events that take a few seconds play out in slow motion. The human brain is a time-freezer; it disentangles grainy kaleidoscopic streams into distinct and separate moments that can be paused, panned, rewound, and played in slow-motion.

I witnessed it from the passenger seat of my father’s rusted Bolsbagen as we sat at a traffic light not far from my school. The young man must have known death was upon him. His terrified eyes barely turned around toward the flash and the bang. Or the bang and the flash. Then a handgun—I think, a revolver type, was pointed down at the afro lying lifeless on the ground and producing a halo of bright red blood. Another flash/bang and the man with the black leather jacket fired another round at the afro now turning a brackish crimson. And just like that, the strutting young man was axed down right before my eyes.

ORANGE

At sunrise, Qwami-teTeri pick-up trucks with their mounted high-caliber machine guns roamed Addis Ababa’s thoroughfares and back roads to collect the slain from the streets. With the dawn came the merdo, and with it, the sharp wails of mothers screaming in agony. Their wails rose higher than the beautiful bright orange Addis Ababa sunrise and the celestial Qidase of the morning Kahenat. Oh yes, the setting Ethiopian sun killed the youth; the dawn brought hell at our mothers’ doorsteps.

My father and I knelt for my bedtime prayer. He delivered Abatachin Hoy slowly that night, sighing deeply at every canto, beseeching the Lord and Mariam for mercy. Over dinner, my parents had speculated who the killer might have been--for the first time, I heard all sorts of acronyms of political parties, no longer associated with the ideals they held, but with killing—either as victims, or agents of it. Before he tucked me in, I asked, “Ababiye, it was the Derg that did it, right?” I searched his eyes to find meaning to the cryptic discussion over dinner but the man with the answer to all things mysterious never looked this lost. He finally answered, but it would take me years to understand what he said to me that night: “We just don’t like each other very much.”

My parents' generation lived through one of the worst periods in Ethiopia's history. The Derg was unrivaled in its ability to exterminate: in 1977, "[o]ver 10,000 political assassinations [were] estimated to have taken place in the capital alone;" and in 1978, a "third wave of killing . . . was aimed at high school students, 5000 of whom were killed in a single week." Patrick Devenny, Frontpagemag.com (Nov. 28, 2005). Devenny describes the Derg's grizzly modus operandi:

Witnesses spoke of unimaginable scenes of horror. A Swedish observer reported witnessing hundreds of dead children--killed by Mengistu's secret police--dumped alongside the roads of the capital of Addis Ababa. Their bodies soon attracted packs of ravenous hyenas. Decapitated heads were swept into gutters. In the countryside, mass graves were being filled with the bodies of thousands of supposed "counter-revolutionaries," while hundreds of similarly accused individuals were imprisoned in dungeons or outdoor concentration camps.

In addition to the firing squads, security forces used other, more gruesome tactics to suppress opposition. One tool was a nylon rope, or "Mengistu necktie," used to slowly strangle prisoners or torture them into revealing acquaintances or plots. Other officers were fond of using the bastinado, which was used to brace the feet before smashing them into stumps. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians were permanently crippled in this manner.

ORANGE RELOADED

Pop’s comment continues to haunt me. It is foolish to believe Mengistu did it alone: we virtually slaughtered each other--lists were drafted, names forwarded, even by family members who identified the "adhari" in their family. But here we are again, dealing with a government that kills children in broad daylight, allowing, once again, the screams of wailing mothers to rise with the morning sun. The irony is not lost on anyone when the same government that wants Ethiopians to be thankful to it for overthrowing the Derg shoots its own citizens in the forehead for merely throwing rocks. Regardless of the results of the investigations of the June and November 2005 killings, the EPRDF will forever be associated with the grizzly images of the dead, maimed, and wailing. And these are only images that have been caught on camera--God only knows what happens in the countryside and in the detention centers. Meles Zenawi's interview with Inigo Gilmore of Channel4 News was frightening at best: when asked if allegations of vile human rights abuses and death in detention centers was true, the prime minster's response should have been something like "if those rumors are substantiated, I will personally and immediately see to it that those who are committing those violations will be punished," and not, "I will not take [the allegations] at face value until they are investigated." The reporter did not accuse him of anything--he just asked him about the fate of poor Ethiopian kids. Can't he even pretend to care?

It is too easy to blame Ethiopia's leaders for the country's ills. Indeed, Ethiopian empires and governments have risen and fallen, constitutions drafted and redrafted, and political parties formed, dissolved, or eradicated. However, what has remained constant throughout the centuries is our inability to peacefully resolve our political differences. One would think 3,000 years of civilization would provide Ethiopians sufficient training in that area.

Ethiopians have become deeply divided along every line imaginable and the Diaspora is no exception. At the dawn of the Ethiopian millenium, in some U.S. cities, we have even stopped worshipping together our ancient monotheistic Coptic God. One married couple I know who find themselves at opposite ends of the political spectrum no longer attend family functions together.

Both sides are drafting lists of names of individuals--the government's and its cadres' far more sinister and lethal, given their ability to incarcerate, repress, and pass judicial and extra-judicial death sentences. The actions by radical followers of the opposition is also disturbing: they engage in slander, defamation, and publicly accuse private citizens of treachery for ridiculous things such as traveling to Ethiopia to visit friends and family. I have heard people are entering Ethiopian Airlines flights in Washington decked out in baseball hats, scarves, and shades for fear of being recognized by someone who knows a rabid radical. One must wonder what these radicals would do if they were the ones in power.

Rabid partisans from both sides have framed the political discourse and as a consequence, we live in a time when intellectual independence will guarantee an Ethiopian the enmity of most social, and even, religious organizations. Reason, once again, has been suspended in this tradition we consider the paragon of all traditions.

Speaking of families, with a few exceptions, most Ethiopian families I know have deep feuds that have kept aunts, uncles, and siblings from speaking to each other for years. Most often than not, the source of these feuds is pride, arrogance, and inability to accept our mistakes. If our families cannot get along, how can we, as a people? We speak of democracy yet the notion of agreeing to disagree and being able to peacefully coexist while holding diametrically opposing political views is as alien to us as love is to a hyena.

For Uncle SHA. Thanks for the late-night talks, bottomless parables and Yeunglings, and LIFE LESSON 495. Thanks for always being there.

ewnetem tarik tessera

LITTLE ETHIOPIA New Year’s Eve 6:00 p.m.

It was strange to see my bride gushing at another man. It was also strange I felt okay about it. Hey, it was Teddy, okay, the man responsible for the best thing that has happened to Ethiopian music since Muluken "hodenew Telatish” Melese!

Polite to the hilt Tewodros Kassahun interrupted his conversation with friends at a restaurant near Little Ethiopia, stood up, and allowed this otherwise reserved and thousand times better half of mine to give him a hug. When my turn came, I was at a loss for words. What do you say to a man whose music we’ve played all summer and laughed our heads off as our tiny off-springs neigh whenever Balderasu (altegeram wey feresu?) comes on?

“Teddy . . . um, um, um, um, beTam beTam gobez neh . . . jegna, jegna, gobez neh!”

He flashed a smile that apparently came easy and brought me in for the shoulder hug. I was surprised by how short he was. “BeTam amesegenalu” were his only words and bowed low to send us back to our table. Kelik yalefe tehutenet.

I mumbled something like, “see you all in a few hours” and headed to the Tibs that waited for us at our table. Barely a make-up gursha down, one of his retinue came to me and said that the concert was cancelled that night. “It was on the DC radio, haven’t you heard? Where have you been?” He almost sneered. Damn. What DC radio?

Too much had been invested in this trip. We could barely afford another night at the Crystal City hotel with our meager state government incomes. We had no alternative but to stay another night for the Tarik Tessera concert.

POPSICLE TOES New Year’s Day 7:00 p.m.

I told her to wear something warm but she opted for the sexaay. I worried about her bare toes that peeked unprotected through those things she called shoes. She would soon regret her decision.

A mob scene awaited us at the Hyatt. Arlington County police were screaming into their bullhorns threatening to arrest hundreds of Ethiops (and I understand Eritreans) of all ages and skin color. We must be the most law abiding immigrants in America: within minutes hundreds of ticket carrying folk found the sidewalk 20ft from the hotel. Some had traveled from as far as California. Others had bought scalper tickets minutes before Virginia’s finest were dispatched. A couple clutched each other and their prized “VIP” tickets, presumably to watch Teddy up close and personal at “Uliena Arina.” (Yep, stupid me should've looked that up before buying the tickets (just google it).

Hundreds waited outside hoping desperately against hope. But all we got were mi esposa’s frozen toes.

Eventually somone close to the promoters came out to speak with the crowd that refused to thin. A pissed off nerdy looking fellow turned warrior (what do you expect, he was a fellow Nueva Yorkian) began yelling almost uncontrollably at the people who apparently sold thousands of tickets for the Uliena venue without obtaining requisite fire department clearance in DC. The following summarizes their conversation sans expletives:

"You guys are a bunch of incompetents, you can’t even get a fire department permit before organizing a concert for someone as big as Teddy?”

"Hey, hey, hey, teregaga! Why don’t you first ask what happened before yelling at me?”

“Oh, Ok. What happened?”

“Look, this is something that will soon come out. Something, someone is behind this shit. YeIhadeg ij alebet, eshi?”

"Oh, Puhlease!"

It would've been nice to watch and hear Teddy singing addis negus enji lewt mech meTa. It wasn't meant to be. But I wonder, when will we ever learn to own up to our mistakes?

A cherished collection. Grateful to len'Abegazu for Muluken's volume 1, eagerly awaiting 2 (krestian mechem tesfa ayQortem).

Tension

I just returned from Addis where I attended a friend’s serg. I’m still digesting what I saw and experienced in the nation’s capital in the past two weeks and I hope to write about my impressions in subsequent postings. The words negeroch teregagtewal, oft repeated by Addis Ababans these days only describe a meregagat of the security situation in the city and not the utter disgust with events taking place at Sidist Kilo. A sense of doom pervades in the city—smiles are rare and even the goofy guards at the Hilton have lost their arm-trembling salutes. Carter’s trip in May was a harbinger of the malaise that has gripped Addis Ababa since the ex-prez’ blunder-filled jaunt in Ethiopia and his neither-here-nor-there observations of the 2005 elections.

One thing that has quadrupled since my last visit to the city a little bit more than a year ago is the sheer amount of the homeless and yene biTe on the streets. For the love of God, Ihadegoch, can't you, at the very, very, least, get rid of leprosy!? How's that for a freakin' slogan? Am I the only one tired of seeing our leprosy-ridden Ethiopian brothers and sisters living such horrid existence? Lord Almighty!

Dr. Berhanu Nega and his colleagues have now been imprisoned for exactly 61 days. I heard the government’s charges against the detained CUDites and others at a café not too far from the Posta Bet area where I had ventured to buy a couple of last minute gifts. The ETV report caught me offguard but it suddenly made sense why all the chairs faced the television set. The hush that settled in the smoky joint after the charges were read spoke volumes of the stress Addis Ababans are under.

Genocide? I haven’t analyzed this issue but doesn’t that require at least one dead body? I thought the only people who died were kids shot point-blank by the federal police? Addis Ababans are bracing for the AV, documentary, and testimonial evidence Meles claims will hoist the now-accused by their own petards. These are extremelly troubling times for the country. I stopped by a couple of internet “cafés” on Bole Road and managed to place a comment on Redeem Ethiopia, one of my favorite Ethio blogs. Yagerlig, I probably visited every bookstore in Addis but was not able to get my hands on a copy of Ambassador Zewde’s Teferi Mekonen. If you're still not having luck getting your hands on a copy, check this link at ethiopians.com. Mega's demise leaves a huge void and I hope someone fills it quickly. I took a couple of books for the Addis trip but only read one. The Texture of Dreams by Fasil Yitbarek provided much needed levity when none was available in the city, and through Fasil’s dreams, experienced fleeting hope for what Ethiopia can and should be—a nation of hope, peace, and tranquility amidst a sea of adversities. Inspired by Redeem Ethiopia (Dec. 17, 2005 post) and hoping to start the year with an uplifting word on things Ethiopian, the post below is a short comment on what I think is the best piece of Ethiopian creative writing in 2005.

This is not a comprehensive review—Professors Tecola Hagos, Ayele Bekrie, and Richard Pankhurst have provided excellent commentaries although I recommend reading the novel before engaging Professor Hagos’ impressive literary review.

To the family and friends of Workineh Yemesgen, no words could express my sadness when I heard of his passing last week. Workineh died an untimely death (he was 35) in Addis Ababa as a result of a tragic accident. I met him only once but was struck by his kindness and love for his family. He is survived by his wife, two very young sons, a mother, and several siblings. Egzyabher bertatun yesTachuh.