The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (26 page)

"Of course," she would add when describing the small business, "everyone needs a hand to get started. There is no embarrassment in using grants to train people and even to put the initial investment into these neighborhood businesses. Just give people a way to walk so that eventually they can run, and then you'll see them dance. Some of them will even fly."

When the group of 24 Next Generation Leadership (NGL) fellows visited South Africa, Rita met a group of very poor farmers who could barely afford the feed they needed for their pigs. Moved equally by their plight and their ambition, she pledged a sum of money to help, explaining in a matter-of-fact way that she would skip lunch twice a week and give the money slowly. "I've never felt as rich as I do right now after seeing what poverty really looks like," she continued, conveying with her eyes her deep and firsthand knowledge of how much crueler the poverty of a broken spirit can be than the poverty of income alone.

In spite of the privilege I found in knowing and working with the wise Rita Brights of the world, I still made every mistake in the book. In the first year I allowed NGL's group of 24 fellows to be held hostage in their discussions by a small group of activists who verbally attacked any thoughts with which they disagreed. Though extremely talented in their fields, those individuals rarely offered constructive solutions to problems and, ironically, represented exactly what we were trying to avoid in the program: leaders who were more comfortable flinging opinions than basing arguments on principles and facts.

My biggest flaw was that I was not being true to myself. In that first year, a young African American man intimidated me in front of the fellows by claiming I could never lead the group properly because I was white, privileged, and connected to the Rockefeller establishment, which he believed had done great damage to the world. Instead of confronting him directly, I stared like a deer caught in the headlights and tried defending myself as someone who had worked hard to cover university tuition and make my way in the world. I could almost feel the 24 fellows sink into themselves as I absorbed the young man's verbal blows without setting an example for both giving and insisting on respect.

It took months for me to understand that my biggest error had been trying to defend an implausible position. In a way, the young man was right -I was privileged. I'd been to some of the best schools on the planet and was raised by a loving family, and my white skin offered me significant access. The question wasn't whether I was privileged, but whether that privilege disqualified me from effectively running the program. I had responded to the wrong attack-and had done so lamely, at that.

Instead, I should have asked the young man why he chose to stay in a program when he disdained its host, the Rockefeller Foundation. He sounded like a trust-fund kid who spends the day badmouthing his parents while eagerly accepting their money. Indeed, the affiliation with Rockefeller provided him not only with instant credibility, but also gave him networks and contacts that afforded him significant access. In not confronting him, I let down the program and myself.

Though I was no longer the young woman staring at two champagne bottles and wondering what to do in the face of inequity, this question of navigating privilege in its many manifestations would continue to present increasingly nuanced questions. I'd learned that individuals gain privilege by their upbringing, beauty, athletic ability, or education, not simply from where they come or to whom they are born. My first-grade nun had instructed me that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. I was learning that this lesson had to be combined with Shakespeare's wisdom that one must "to thine own self be true." Add to this humility, empathy, a sense of curiosity, courage, and plain old hard work, and I was finally seeing the real path to leadership. Of course, humor is always a plus.

Among the Rockefeller program's fellows, I met several remarkable leaders, young and old, including a woman named Ingrid Washinawatok, a member of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, the wife of a Palestinian, and a voice for indigenous peoples across the world. Strong in body and spirit, Ingrid had a round, wide face, wore jeans most of the time, and loved sharing Native American legends and the philosophies of great Indian chiefs. We started a yearlong conversation about the role of the marketplace for tribal peoples who feel so far behind the economic mainstream.

I could listen to Ingrid tell stories for hours, but we never got to finish our conversation. While our second group was preparing to go to South Africa, Ingrid was working with the U'wa community in Colombia along with two colleagues-Lahe'ena'e Gay of Hawaii and environmentalist Terence Freitas. The three were helping an indigenous community threatened by US oil companies start a school system. On their way to the airport to leave, their car was stopped by rebels, and all three were tortured and murdered.

I thought of being jumped in Tanzania, about how Ingrid also must have been thinking it was a perfect day the moment before it suddenly wasn't. I thought about the adolescent boys of the rebel group who had no idea who she was or what she represented. The Next Generation Leadership group was in South Africa when we heard the news. A few days later, we met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to discuss the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He told us, "We are all children of God. You must remember that people want to be good, even if sometimes they are not. Ingrid's spirit lives inside of you now, and you must carry on her work. That is life and that is love." From then on, we would leave an empty chair when we met as a group to honor the memory of our greatly admired friend.

Hearing Bishop Tutu's words and thinking about Ingrid and the work of other leaders I'd known reaffirmed my own commitment to finding that place of common humanity. But NGL had taught me that just bringing diverse people together is not enough to foster productive dialogue. More powerful is enabling groups of people to work on a common venture, a common problem. And increasingly, the problems in the world are shared. Here was a Native American woman killed by Colombian rebels for doing work with an indigenous group that had been marginalized by an international oil company. Her life and death gave me a legacy to uphold, one of recognizing that all people, rich and poor, from all nations, religions, and backgrounds, are our sisters and brothers. From this place, everything else must flow.

Of all the people I miss from that era, Lisa Sullivan stands out. During the early days of building the Next Generation Leadership program, Lisa and I decided to take a trip to the Mississippi Delta, for we would later be taking the fellows there. We hardly knew one another then, and Lisa had let me know she wasn't sure about having me as a traveling partner in the real American South, a place she considered to be the home of her people, but I promised to behave myself. I arrived at the Jackson Airport on a cool fall day in a pleated skirt and heels. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a baseball cap. Perfect.

For a week, Lisa and I visited educators and church leaders, policymakers, prisoners, and businessmen. I showed my surprise at finding that 95 percent of public schools were black, while 95 percent of private schools were white-and my lack of awareness angered Lisa. I found her ideas on business to be knee-jerk liberalism and told her so. It took the extraordinary Unita Blackwell, the first black woman mayor in Mississippi (but unrelated to Angela), to remind us of how much we needed one another. Lisa could organize people like no one I'd known, and I knew how to build organizations. We shared a woridview, one in which all people had a chance to fulfill their highest purpose.

"Leading," Mayor Blackwell told us, "is a lifelong proposition-and the people who seem least like you are usually the people you need most."

Lisa and I were most devastated by the gambling industry's impact on low-income people. In 1990, Mississippi was the first southern state to legalize gambling, justifying the casinos as sources of jobs and tax revenue for the state. But the wages paid were low, while the toll gambling took on local communities was immense. In the Tupelo casino, Lisa and I saw mostly low-income people sitting in front of machines literally throwing away their meager earnings. And we saw this again and again in every casino we visited across the state.

At the catfish factories, we saw firsthand what an unfettered private sector can do to poor people in the name of job creation: All but one of the 400 catfish processing factories in the Mississippi Delta were owned by white men, and 99 percent of the workers were black women. The women earned minimum wage and typically stood in ice-cold, bloody water for hours cutting fillets of catfish, with few breaks for lunch or the bathroom. Until the late 1980s, workers were commonly maimed or killed by slipping inside ice-chopping machines. Many had to leave the job because of severe carpal tunnel syndrome.

As we approached a giant factory, Lisa pushed me to register with the guard at the metal gate. "Tell him you're a student," she whispered. "Otherwise, he'll think you're a spy. Tell them you're a student working on a paper about catfish."

"You've got to be kidding me," I replied.

When the guard sternly asked what I was there for, I nonetheless responded obediently, "Student"

On a quiet late afternoon, we walked into the front offices, where a uniformed, overweight woman in a white cap approached. "We are studying the catfish industry," Lisa told her when she offered to help. "We want to know how conditions have changed in the past year or so and take a look at the factory itself." She never asked the woman's name, and it wasn't offered.

When the woman asked if we had permission to visit the line, Lisa shook her head. The woman silently motioned for us to follow. Inside the factory, where the workers on the line sliced fish at rapid-fire pace, the din was fearsome. Though we wore rubber boots, sloshing through the freezing red water made me want to vomit.

Back in the front offices, the woman invited us to sit down at a white Formica table. Still, she didn't give us her name. Her massive hands were folded in front of her, and her lips stayed pursed together. Lisa told her stories of organizing in the Delta with the Children's Defense Fund, talked about her favorite foods and why she loved Mississippi. Finally, the woman began to soften.

"Things are a lot better now," she told us after a minute or two of silence.

"Why?" Lisa asked.

"The line is safer now, we can take breaks, and our hours are not as bad as they used to be. People aren't getting hurt as much."

"What happened?" Lisa pushed.

Leaning over the table, she looked at us and with her index finger traced a big, invisible U for "union." In whispers, she talked about how young Easterners had come down to Mississippi to discuss the power of unions.

The workers had risked everything, she said. "Some of us were fired and, you know, we didn't have no cushion to keep us eating. But we helped each other, and we kept at it, and we made it."

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the country. At least one in three black men in his twenties at that time was under some sort of criminal supervision. The graduation rate for black male high school students was abysmally low, and the public health system was in shambles. This was another side of America, one that took Hurricane Katrina for the rest of the country to begin to see.

The Delta also reminded me of how easily capitalism can be manipulated to oppress the most vulnerable. Good public policy must accompany market-oriented solutions that are undergirded with an imperative of moral leadership. We need to ask more questions about who is awarded public contracts, who gains, who loses, and whether or not our public funds are doing the most possible for the most people rather than benefiting just a few. The premise of the Next Generation Leadership program was one that made me proud, but how could we extend the principles to a much larger group of leaders?

After running NGL for 2 years, Lisa and I both went on to build new organizations, mine focused on global issues, hers, on young people in Washington, DC. During late-night calls from our offices, we would commiserate about the long hours and loneliness. When we talked about the personal price we sometimes pay for trying to change the world, Lisa would remind me of one of her favorite songs by Sweet Honey in the Rock: "We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For."

"We can't wait around for someone else to change things," she would say. A week after I advised her to take it easy, to take time to relax and regenerate, she died of an asthma attack. Lisa was taken too early from a world in desperate need of individuals with such courage, heart, intellect, and stamina, the ones who carry wisdom the way Maha Ghosananda had taught.

Knowing Lisa and visiting South Africa and Mississippi with NGL made me think about Rwanda and inspired me to return. If leadership was about having vision and the moral imagination to put oneself in another's shoes, then I had to try and understand what had happened in a place where I'd lived and worked, but might never fully know. I had to return and see what had happened to the women I knew. In 1997, I returned to Kigali, where I had learned firsthand the difficulties of navigating across difference. When all was said and done, here was a country destroyed because people feared one another.

When I boarded the plane at JFK, I expected to see the trees in Kigali weeping and the flowers all dead. I had an image of postgenocide Rwanda as a place that would seem perennially gray and depressed. After all, 800,000 people had died on its rich soil in a 3-month period.

But I was mistaken. Mother Nature had left nary a dent: The physical world was unchanged. Though memories would linger in the very air the people breathed, earth itself forgot the mass destruction in an instant. Of course, man-made structures suffered-churches and houses across the country had been destroyed. Buildings were riddled with bullet holes, and uniformed boys with machine guns stood at every corner. Barbed wire was wound atop high brick walls where wooden fences used to suffice, sometimes wrapped almost metaphorically by pastel morning glories slinking around sharp metal. And the light-filled sky was as blue as it had ever been.