Bayard Rustin: it’s a name that is not particularly well-known to most of us. His contribution to the United States civil rights movement usually receives only surface recognition: “Bayard Rustin was a civil rights activist best known for organizing the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.” Yet, it is probably accurate to say that without Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr. may not have become a fierce proponent of nonviolent tactics, and without Rustin, the civil rights movement - though certainly still a powerful force - would not have changed the course of American history as it did.

The example of Rustin - one of the most influential, but least-known civil rights leaders - begs the question: for those of us in this generation looking to ‘be the change’ where does our own commitment really lie? It seems that though we may commit ourselves to working in NGOs, as social entrepreneurs or in social businesses we are often more concerned with our personal experiences and advancement than building a more just world; we struggle between our own ambitions and the selfless objectivity needed to bring about meaningful change. Not everyone could play the role of Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks or John Lewis in the civil rights movement. Many more had to be just as committed to the movement knowing that they may never receive the same positions of leadership or “personal success” that those individuals did. Yet, their contributions were as important (and in some instances, even more important) as those leaders to building a better world.

Bayard Rustin spent a good part of his younger years as a pacifist activist, and traveled to India to learn from Gandhian disciples. In 1956, following Rosa Parks courageous refusal to surrender her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a series of boycotts erupted. Rustin traveled to Montgomery to help infuse the core ideals of non-violence into these efforts. A story from the book “Lost Prophet,” illustrates how essential Rustin’s presence was:

There were guns lying all about King’s house, and Rustin often recounted a humorous incident with himself and Bill Worty. As Worthy…prepared to sit on one of the chairs in King’s living room, Rustin called out to him, “Bill wait, wait. Couple of guns in that chair. You don’t want to shoot yourself!”

The idea of Martin Luther King having guns around his house may seem to be an oxymoron, but it also highlights just how important Rustin’s guidance were in those early periods of civil rights efforts in building a nonviolent movement. Today, Rustin’s name may not be familiar, but his impact - from non-violent protest as a key tactic, to the formation of the SCLC, to the March on Washington, to the linkages of the civil rights efforts to broader economic and social justice efforts - reverberates throughout the United States and many parts of the world.

Martin Luther King Jr. has many well-known speeches and sermons. One that is slightly less known is his “Drum-Major Instinct” speech. The “Instinct” that he refers to is the “desire in all of us to be first.” It seems that our generation needs to be able reach beyond this “Drum-Major Instinct” to dedicate ourselves to a broader cause. Just as Bayard Rustin was able to bring about tremendous change in a selfless manner, what our generation needs is continual discernment of the motivations that drive our actions while maintaining a commitment to bringing about great change.

The Author

Ankur is a rising senior at Northwestern University majoring in biomedical engineering. He is currently taking a year off from school to work full-time for GlobeMed, a network of students advancing the movement for health equity. Working with communities in rural Panama on various engineering projects, and having a summer internship at Global Health Delivery Online has heavily influenced Ankur’s thoughts about issues of poverty, structural violence, and development. Ankur is originally from the small town of Menomonie in Wisconsin, believes that Taco Bell is infinitely more satisfying than Chipotle, and enjoys a competitive game of Super Smash Brothers anytime. He also blogs at Students for Global Health Equity.

I know — this post is coming really late in the day (it’s 7:30 pm!). I haven’t had a free moment all day, in between assignments, classes and activities. But seeing as how this blog is all about contributing to a brighter world…I felt it would be a travesty if I didn’t sit down and write something for Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change. So, better late than never. Right?

I used to be a huge environmentalist in high school. Somehow that passion died down a bit as I became more interested in…people. People are easier to relate to than something “abstract” like the environment and biological conservation. Global warming is such a HUGE problem. But because it’s so huge, it’s very abstract. It’s very hard to grasp how switching off the light, using less water, turning down the heat, and taking public transport to work is going to help in the grand scheme of things. I try my best to be environment friendly, but I’ll admit — it isn’t easy to make such habits part of your daily routine when you don’t see much of an end result from your actions. It’s difficult to quantify the exact effects of global warming on people’s lives. So, I think this leads some people to give up on trying. Or to forget about these little things on a regular basis.

Part of the challenge is putting a “human face” on global warming, and that’s the next step we need to take. Thinking of global warming as an abstract problem that will affect us only years from now is misleading. Global warming DOES have a human face, and it’s destroying people’s lives at this moment — not sometime in the far off future.

And it’s developing countries and poor people that are hit the worst. In fact, an estimated 150,000 people die every year due to climate change. And the worst thing is that the poor - who individually contribute less to climate change than we in the developed world do - are hurt the most by it. They are more vulnerable to natural disasters due to poor housing and health conditions. Global warming increases the likelihood of contracting life-threatening diseases - especially as warmer weather allows malaria-bearing mosquitoes to survive in a wider range of areas. By 2030, climate change might result in 90 million more people exposed to malaria in Africa! Meningitis, dengue fever and diarrhea all might increase due to global warming.

And that’s not all. Poor countries are more prone to flooding. And global warming dries out farmland- a severe problem in Africa since 2/3 of the continent is composed of desert or dry climate. There is also more unpredictability in weather patterns overall, with more severe and frequent floods and droughts. Agriculture is one of the main means of livelihood for people in developing countries, and it is severely affected by climate change.

I know this is all very depressing. But the good news is that the environmental movement has exploded in recent times. A few decades ago, no one was talking about it — now, everyone and their mother wants to “go green.” Good for us. But now, it’s up to us to ensure that “going green” isn’t just another short-term fad — we have to keep the movement going until we make significant progress on climate change.

I’ll leave you with an inspirational project that I have written about before, and think is a superb idea. Face the Change, which is aiming to highlight the human face of climate change:

The goal of Face the Change is to mobilize support to tackle climate change by highlighting its social impacts. By putting a human face on global warming, we aim to elevate the current debate on science and energy policy to one that includes key human rights issues of natural disasters and forced migration. The web-based platform will primarily use video and other multimedia to document the current and future impacts and facilitate a global dialogue with the intention of shaping policy. To reach communities without widespread access to the Internet, we will run a pilot project using cell phone Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to raise awareness, rally and gather feedback from impoverished communities whose homes and livelihoods will be directly threatened by rising seas, drought and other climate change related effects. Cell phones are the windows to the world for many in developing countries, but their potential as a medium that informs under-represented people and allows them to participate in debates is far from realized.

Just like Face the Change, there are tons of other groups and organizations working on climate change issues - from the grassroots level to the international policy level. We just have to do our part to contribute to the movement and ensure it doesn’t fade out — and I think there is hope for future generations.

Here’s the second installment of Feature Friday this week: Beyond Good Intentions.

Beyond Good Intentions is a wonderful ten-part film series investigating the effectiveness of international aid. According to the website:

The Beyond Good Intentions film series follows the round-the-world journey of first-time filmmaker, Tori Hogan, as she investigates how international aid can be more effective. Shot on location in eight different countries, the ten-episode series takes viewers along for the ride as Tori meets with countless aid workers and recipients to uncover more innovative approaches to helping communities in need.

The film series is great because it brings to light a lot of the criticisms of international aid that are often unknown to the general public. People assume volunteering abroad is great — but perhaps it’s not truly sustainable. People assume the Peace Corps is wonderful — but is the program really effective? With the advent of Muhammad Yunus’ innovative approach to ‘banking for the poor,’ microfinance has almost universally began to be viewed as a panacea to the world’s poverty…but is it really delivering for the world’s poorest communities?

Tori explores these, and many more important, controversial, challenging questions. What’s more, she presents the information in a series of engaging and enjoyable short films which are accessible to the general public. These films don’t use grandiose rhetoric or useless jargon…which is what is usually employed in these debates, often put forth by academics. Tori makes these issues interesting and easily understandable, thus reaching a large proportion of the population and drawing in young people.

Check out the clip below, where Tori investigates the practices of Kiva and microlending. Click here to access their YouTube channel and watch the rest of the videos.

So, Refugees International beat me to this topic, but I’ll put my opinion out there anyway, because I believe it’s incredibly important to understand.

Recently, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the pirate situation off the coast of Somalia. Currently, 15 ships and 300 crew members are being held hostage by Somali pirates. On April 8, a group of Somali teenage “pirates” kidnapped and held for ransom the captain of an American container vessel. In a “successful mission,” the pirates were shot dead by U.S. Navy Seals. More recently, a Russian cruiser stopped three pirate ships off the coast of Somalia and detained 10 pirates. Yesterday, a teenage Somali pirate captured by U.S. forces and brought to New York for trial was ordered to face the court as an adult on piracy charges; he could be jailed for life.

True, people need to be held accountable for their actions. But the focus on punishing the pirates is wrong: political leaders, the international community, and the news media need to focus on addressing the underlying causes of piracy instead. These pirates were driven to engage in criminal behavior because of the poverty, lack of opportunity, and chaos in Somalia. What about the more important story: Somalia’s history, and it’s dire situation?

The media frenzy is wrongly focused on the issue of piracy because it’s sensational, news-worthy. What about everything else going on in Somalia? I don’t know if you’ve realized, but Somalia is a country. With a history, a long legacy. There’s a lot more to Somalia than just pirates. Somalia is a failed state, a humanitarian crisis - and piracy is just a symptom of this. In 1991, a civil war destroyed Somalia’s government, and since then the country has suffered famine and utter chaos. Somalia has split into several mini-states and does not even have a central government. The country is also being exploited by Ethiopia; since Ethiopia, backed by the US, overthrew Somalia’s government, the country has been consumed in anarchy. Somalia’s situation is even worse than that in Darfur. One third of its people are currently refugees. More than 3 million are dependent on external assistance. Piracy is a result of this horrible situation; people are driven to desperate measures in order to survive. In spite of this ongoing crisis, the entire media is focused on the few pirates who have been caught - not the millions dying of violence and poverty. Where are our priorities?

The severe international response to punishing the pirates is also unfair since it’s largely a reaction to the decades of exploitation Somalia has undergone at the hands of more powerful nations. For decades, the country’s long coastline has been pillaged by foreign vessels. Fishing fleets from around the world have long plundered Somalia’s rich waters; trawlers from places like South Korea, Japan, and Spain have fished illegally on the Somali coast. This has forced the country’s own poor fishermen out. Impoverished Somali fishermen lacked the advanced boats and technologies of their competitors, and were sometimes even shot at by foreign fishermen. Somalia - with all its chaos - has no way of monitoring its coastlines; it has no navy or coast guard. “According to another U.N. report, an estimated $300 million worth of seafood is stolen from the country’s coastline each year.” As a response, poor Somalis living by the ocean were forced to start defending their own fishing expeditions; the first pirate gangs emerged simply as a method of self-defense. They simply had no option if they were to survive.

The international community needs to understand that the problem of piracy isn’t something that can be solved by punishment or even worse, violence and war. If we want to end piracy, we have to attack the root cause of the problem - which is the overwhelming poverty and anarchy of the country. If we help the Somali people to establish a stable government, as well as help improve the overall quality of life in the country, perhaps they wouldn’t have to resort to desperate measures like piracy. And we need to shift media focus away from the pirates and onto the humanitarian crisis occurring in the state: there’s more to Somalia than pirates, and it’s time people realized this.