Don't ask "How can I help?" while your foot is planted on my neck

An Iraqi woman, a scientist or administrator, educated, "westernized," came to America a few months ago. She came to raise the consciousness of the most powerful people on the planet about the conditions facing her people--the unrest, the civilian deaths, the disruption of every possible aspect of a human's life, the fear, the anger. Instead, she found the most powerful people on Earth looking at her bewilderedly, hands out, asking, "How can I help?" After she told them, and they kept asking "How can I help?" she realized she wasn't exactly getting through to these powerful people. In part it was because they didn't realize they were the most powerful people on Earth.

She quoted W.E.B. DuBois, or perhaps it was Ralph Ellison, who said something to the effect of 'If you ask me, How can I help you? And I tell you 'get your foot off my neck' but you still don't get your foot off my neck, then you're not helping, you're part of the problem.'

I wanted to know how I could help. Help stop the war. Help ease global warming. Help stop the destruction of the environment and of human health. Help stop the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Help powerless and oppressed women and minorities. Help heal our country from the insane emphasis on acquiring and destroying. I certainly wasn't doing that while painting my amateurish, yet exuberant paintings; nor while writing my well-written but unpublished fiction; nor while raising three boys and helping to support my family. But it seemed if I wanted to do more, I had to face people I didn't like, loud, opinionated people who'd as soon try to dismiss my values and beliefs as something dirty, something "liberal"; people who would wrap themselves in the flag and insinuate that they were better than me in all respects because they could see the world in black and white and their god in masculine and punitive and exclusive terms. I didn't want to stand on corners shouting back at these people. I didn't want to post in forums and watch them try to twist all that was wholesome and questioning and good into knee-jerk fascism. So what could a quietly passionate person do?