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Now
On the bright Sunday, that was International
Human Rights Day, December 10th, tourists and shoppers line up
like any other day. Hundreds at a time stretched down Broadway
and around the corner waiting for their chance to "ooooh"
and "aaahh" at the famous Macy's Christmas window displays.
Piped in Christmas carols greeted the throngs as they streamed
by with children on their shoulders, shopping bags in hand, and
money to spend. Necks craned to catch a glimpse of the fancily
wrapped gifts and twirling bespeckled tree in the window display.
Inevitably, inadvertently the
shoppers' eyes would drift from the display windows and catch
hold of us. Across the sidewalk, a dozen of us crouched beneath
black hoods. Bright orange jumpsuits, the trademark uniform
of Guantanamo, set us apart from the crowd. Our hands were gripped
behind our backs, as if cuffed. Unbeknownst to them, from behind
the hoods that concealed our faces, we were watching their expressions
change.
A young white woman's face
tightened as she grabbed for her boyfriend's arm. "Wow,"
she murmured, "that's intense." A group of immigrant
friends slowed their Spanish and then stopped altogether, their
conversation losing its relevance. Children cast their gaze
upwards to parents for explanation but how do you explain
to a child the living image of endless anguish and torture that
is taking place in your name as you shop?
You do it like this: "Never
mind them honey. They don't like our President."
Or like this: "They're showing something that shouldn't
be happening. It's good what they're doing."
Or like this, belted out by
a young Black woman pushing a stroller for everyone to hear:
"That's right! We need to get his Bush's stinkin' ass out
of there!!"
But no matter how it was explained,
the children kept looking even as their parents tugged
them away.
They weren't the only ones.
Many stood and stared back and forth between the two displays
the one in the windows a shimmering alter to consumerism
and the holiday spirit, those of us under the hoods a living
replica of the human spirits being consumed by American inaction
and acquiescence.
We were all told by George
Bush that, "they hate us for our freedoms." We were
all told to go shopping, lest the "terrorists win."
It was remembering this while listening to the harrowing story
of Khaled El-Masri on Democracy Now last week that sparked
the idea of bringing the faceless hoods of American torture victims
into the heart of New York's holiday shopping, the home of the
Miracle on 34th Street.
El-Masri, a German citizen,
was rendered and tortured by the U.S. government at a secret
C.I.A. prison. He was beaten, kicked and force-fed for months
but told of even worse treatment for his fellow detainees: being
hung from ceilings for days in extreme cold, simulated drowning,
and having one's limbs and teeth broken. He had received no
hearing, no legal recourse, and even since his release the government
has provided no reason for his detention or his release.
Judging by the faces which
were transforming in front of us from holiday cheer, to double-take-confusion,
to stern disturbance, while many have learned to push this out
of their minds, it is not yet something they are at ease with.
But, as it says in the Call
for the World Can't Wait, "That which you will not resist
and mobilize to stop, you will learn or be forced
to accept."
And there are those who have
not only learned to accept, but to celebrate the barbarity of
torture. These were the ones who yelled out, "If you hate
America then you deserve it!" Or, "We're gonna be
there for four more years!!"
It would be nice to be able
to dismiss this as the backwards howls of some beyond-the-pale
fools, but it is this spirit and level of discourse that occupies
much of the airwaves and halls of state power. It was the Vice
President who called water-boarding a "dip" and a "no
brainer." It was in a public debate that John Yoo,
the architect of George Bush's torture programs, insisted that
the President had the right to torture someone, "including
by crushing the testicles of the person's child." It was
the Commander-In-Chief who, when arguing for the passage of the
Military Commissions act that disregards the Geneva Conventions,
asked incredulously, "What does that mean, 'outrages upon
human dignity'?"
But the ugly hostility of the
men who cursed and condemned us only turned more of the faces
our way, stirring others from their preferred indifference.
Out came the cell-phone cameras and pocket-size video cams.
Mouths formed the words on our signs, "Drive Out the Bush
Regime," and many nodded.
Over to my right, a voice pierced
the din of traffic, cell phones, and banter. A young Middle
Eastern man is flailed his arms and spoke bitterness, "I
hate this President! I hate what he is doing! Look at this!
Look what he is doing!" His two friends looked on in semi-amazement
at the depth of his emotions; one was Latino, the other white.
As he gestured, a larger knot of people stopped. Hands grabbed
up the flyers we were distributing and hushed conversations broke
out among families and friends.
I was not surprised by the
depth of his emotions, but impressed by his courage to speak
so boldly. There is nothing that could stop the government from
grabbing him. Consider Dilawar, only 22-years-old and believed
innocent by most of the U.S. military personnel who grabbed him
as he drove his cab past their base in Bagram, Afghanistan.
He weighed just 122 pounds, but was chained to the ceiling.
Guards took turns striking his legs more than 100 times with
such force that they would no longer bend, joking that each time
they did because he would scream, "Allah." After four
days, still chained to the ceiling, he died. His autopsy described
his trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus.
As we continued to crouch,
our knees and backs began to ache and the people continued to
stream by. There was recognition in the crowd and intensity
even in the reaction of those who do not stop. We had no doubt
that over dinner and coffee, over telephone lines and email messages,
a conversation had been provoked that will travel home with the
tourists and recur every time they open the newspaper to read
another account, see another detainee in shackles, hear another
rationalization about the necessities of torture.
Somewhere I heard the name
Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen held for more than three years
as an "enemy combatant" without charges. Recent footage
of his captivity showed him shackled at the feet and the wrists
and forced to wear sensory depriving goggles and earmuffs to
prevent him from having any orientation or human interaction
before he could be taken to the dentist. The punitive and premeditated
nature of his torment precise enough to have impressed Heinrich
Himmler. Already, our presence was bringing these horrors more
to life for those around us.
As we were getting ready to
wind down for the day, a woman dressed in all pink and white
makes her way towards me. Her hair was feathered on top and
she looks like the middle of America: mega-church, soccer-mom,
mall-walker, you-name-it. She took me by the arms and cast her
gaze where she suspected my eyes must've been and said, "I
am from Houston and I am so proud of you. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you for doing this."
She, like the Dixie Chicks,
was ashamed that the President is from her home state. Her arms
were still filled with Macy's bags, her young ones still expecting
gifts under the tree, but her soul was stirred and she listened
and nodded as we insisted that there will be no end to the torture
and immoral wars unless the regime responsible is driven from
office. She gave her email and phone number and, grabbing my
arms one more time before moving on, she said, "I don't
want to have to tell my kids I just let all this go on."
As the torture continues, silence
is complicity. It is not just the regime that must be challenged,
but the people who dislike what is being done, but who are learning
to live with it. There is still time to reach them, but not
a lot of time. It is only us out here, who still have
the ability to shop and to talk, to voluntarily hood ourselves
or act in other ways who can challenge others to wake up
and act in our millions to bring this to a halt.
As Ariel Dorfman wrote in the Washington Post as the Military
Commissions Act was making torture the law of the lands, "Can't
the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured
by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator
who are corrupted, not only the 'intelligence' that is contaminated,
but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know,
everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could
sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march
in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever
suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our
day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?"
CounterPunch
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