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Trauma and Healing

Posted on January 20, 2025 | Leave a comment

Southern California at the start to 2025 has been the site of extensive trauma. Multiple wildfires are burning large areas around Los Angeles, abetted by fierce Santa Ana winds and a winter drought. Still not fully contained, the fires have killed dozens, forced mass evacuations, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses.

People elsewhere haven’t been immune, either. Even if we’ve tried to shield ourselves from too much media exposure, we probably have heard about the New Year’s Day killing of New Orleans revelers by a disturbed military veteran who rammed his truck into a crowd. It’s hard to remain entirely oblivious to ongoing warfare and carnage in Ukraine, in Sudan, or in Gaza, where a limited ceasefire seems finally to be taking hold.

As someone who came of age at the height of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960’s, I’ve had long, indirect exposure to that war’s trauma. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in Washington, D.C. in 1982, is inscribed with the names of the over 58,000 American soldiers who lost their lives in that war. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese deaths in the period 1965-1975 range from about 750,000 to over 3 million, including both soldiers and civilians. Somewhere around a million Vietnamese survivors became “boat people,” making perilous sea journeys that eventually led many to settle in the U.S.

The more people I get to know, the more history I learn, the more I become aware of traumas that have impacted millions of Americans. The past fifty years or so have uncovered more of the pain and dislocation of the chattel slavery practiced from about 1650 until the 1865 end of the American Civil War in the territory of the U.S. Even after the legal abolition of slavery, discriminatory practices and intimidation continued to severely circumscribe the lives of many former slaves. “Generational trauma” can persist, perpetuated by the lack of respect or opportunity accorded many African-Americans for centuries.

Not all who are traumatized are black. More and more accounts are surfacing of gender-based violence, of violence in families, of mental illness or suicidal tendencies among those exposed to extended trauma. No amount of wealth, privilege, or fame seems sufficient to make one immune.

Today we celebrate a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., considered by many to be one of the most effective civil rights leaders during the 1950’s and 1960’s. King’s life began in racially segregated Atlanta, Georgia in January, 1929. Despite the constrictions of segregation, King excelled in his studies, attended Morehouse College, and later Boston University, where he completed his doctorate in 1955. Beginning in 1954, King also served as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December, 1955, King was tapped to be the public face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, started when Rosa Parks, a black woman, declined to give up her bus seat to a white passenger who boarded the bus at a later stop. King’s oratory and his negotiating skills were important in bringing the boycott to a successful conclusion after over a year.

King became known for his espousal of nonviolence, based partly on the practices of Indian independence pioneer Mahatma Gandhi. In some of his writings, King gave six principles of non-violence:

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering for a just cause can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

King’s dedication to nonviolence was tested early during the bus boycott, when in January, 1956, his house was firebombed while he was away giving a speech at a nearby church. His wife and infant daughter were inside–fortunately they were not hurt. A mob of armed supporters later assembled bent on retribution, but King persuaded them to go home and lay down their weapons. Later, when on a book tour about the bus boycott in 1958, King was stabbed in the chest by a deranged woman. King was successfully operated on, recovered, and went on to lead further nonviolent protests. For years, he was hounded and wiretapped by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. He was jailed nearly thirty times, often on trumped up charges. If anyone should have become embittered or violent as a result of continued and multiple traumas, you’d think it might be MLK.

Instead, as long as he was alive, he continued to work nonviolently for social change. He was not perfect, but his example of transcending trauma through the healing power of nonviolence is one we need to remember, especially now.

Children’s Crusades and Adult Enablers

Posted on September 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

Children’s Crusades and Adult Enablers —by Jinny Batterson

Early in the 13th century, during the summer of 1212, a pilgrimage known as the “Childrens’ Crusade” headed for the Holy Land. Many details about the crusade are disputed. It seems likely that few, if any, of the participants reached Jerusalem or anywhere close. According to information in the lead paragraph of the relevant Wikipedia article:

“The traditional narrative is likely conflated from some factual and mythical events which include the visions by a French boy and a German boy, an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery. Many children were tricked by merchants and sailed over to what they thought were the holy lands but, in reality, were slave markets.”

(reference the year 1212 to clarify your search at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade)

Estimates of the number of participants are in the tens of thousands. It’s not clear what roles adults at the time may have played in assisting the young crusaders.

A more recent “childrens’ crusade” took place in Birmingham, Alabama during May, 1963, when over a thousand students trained in non-violent protest techniques left their schools and marched toward downtown Birmingham to protest Jim Crow laws and ongoing racial discrimination. Their actions and the vicious responses of Birmingham’s law enforcement officials “went viral” over 1960’s-era media, prompting outrage that helped prepare the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In the past year or so, we’ve seen the birth of two modern youth crusades: one concerning the U.S. epidemic of gun violence, the other spreading awareness of the need for concerted action in the face of the worsening global impacts of climate change.

After a mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2018, survivors and their families held a candlelight vigil. Several students then sat up for most of the night hatching a social media campaign to help reduce gun violence. Their efforts coalesced around the hashtag #NeverAgain, which has morphed into a national movement advocating for changes in gun laws to help reduce the American gun violence epidemic. In March, 2018, over a million people showed up at events nationwide during a “March for Our Lives.” Lobbying and activism continue. Though legislation at the national level remains stalled, since the Parkland shooting over twenty states and the District of Columbia have strengthened gun violence prevention measures: “red flag laws” to temporarily remove guns from the hands of individuals in crisis, enhanced background checks, waiting periods for gun purchases.

In August, 2018, teenager Greta Thunberg began sitting outside the Swedish Parliament building holding a sign that said “Skolstrejk för climate” (“School strike for climate”). Over time, her actions drew attention and followers. On March 15, 2019, school strikes, urging adults to take responsibility and reduce climate change, took place in over 2,000 cities worldwide. An estimated 1.4 million pupils from around the world participated. On September 20, 2019, the school strike again went global, with an estimated 4 million children and adults participating in events just before the start of a U.N. Climate Summit in New York City.

In my youth, crusades centered around bringing an end to a war in Vietnam that caused huge human and environmental devastation. Controversy also surrounded the investigation into the actions of a sitting U.S. President who had attempted to “stack the deck” in the 1972 presidential election. Both issues were polarizing and sparked big protests. Afterwards, many of us got off the streets, took jobs, raised families, and left national and global issues mostly to those in positions of putative power. Yet we did not abandon our ideals or our activism, though its form may have changed. We passed on a sense of fairness, of respect for the planet, to our children and grandchildren. We continued to lobby our elected representatives on issues of concern. We changed our personal habits to be more responsible global citizens.

Those of us who are elders now can take heart from examples of elders and adults who were not the visible images of youth crusades, but who nonetheless furthered efforts toward human rights and planetary citizenship. One elder I hold up is Juanita Abernathy, a civil rights pioneer. Along with other brave African-Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, Ms. Abernathy played a behind-the-scenes role in organizing and furthering a 1955-56 bus boycott to get respectful treatment for the black ridership that provided most of the profits to the then-segregated bus system. She used a typewriter and carbon copies to spread initial word about the boycott in a pre-internet age. As the boycott continued, she helped organize carpools and alternative transportation to get workers to their jobs and householders to needed shopping. For decades, she worked quietly to advance civil rights. She recently died at age 88. Another (s)hero is Rachel Carson, who died much too soon—a little shy of her 57th birthday. She battled the pesticide establishment of her day along with metastatic cancer to produce her signature work, environmental blockbuster Silent Spring, published on this day in 1962.