Bisan is an orphan who survived recent bombing in the Idlib province of Syria. COURTESY SYRIAN EMERGENCY TASK FORCE
The daily blast of President Donald Trump’s inarticulate verbal violence makes me long for an orator who uses words to unite, rather than divide, who awakens our moral responsibility to stand for each other.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s gifts as an orator moved millions to join the movement for civil rights. Martin Luther King Day is a reminder that his words live on as a vehicle to fuel resistance against evil. They provide us with a moral compass to help guide our actions, when we become immobilized in the face of so much injustice in our world.
In addition to his tireless efforts for civil rights, King also preached about the interdependence of all human beings and the importance of caring for one another. When speaking to an audience in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1957, he stated, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ”
His words echoed in my head recently, when I received a text from my friend, Mouaz, who directs the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He was describing the recent bombings in Syria’s Idlib province. “One of our students, Bisan, she survived. Her uncle and three year old brother didn’t. They are targeting now the women’s center and the school.” The text included a photo of 5-year-old, now homeless, Bisan, covered with blankets, her head wrapped in bandages. I remembered seeing a video of Bisan several weeks ago, reciting a poem, entitled, “I am human.”
The school is Wisdom House, for young children, many of whom are orphans, in Idlib, built by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and adopted by several communities in the U.S., who provide funding. Bisan recently graduated from the Wisdom House kindergarten.
The Valley Syrian Relief Committee organized two local programs last March to give western Massachusetts the opportunity to learn about Wisdom House, as well as write dozens of letters of hope to be delivered to the children and other residents in Idlib. I remember seeing a video of these children at those events, watching the audience warm to their smiling faces.
Less than a year later, beginning on Christmas Day, Idlib has been bombarded by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The school has closed, and residents, including Wisdom House’s teachers and staff, are fleeing for their lives.
“He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it,” King said. The media largely has been silent about Assad’s violence against the civilian population of Idlib, the last bastion of rebel-held territory in northern Syria.
Admittedly, it’s easier to act on issues that are in our own realm of experience, like sexual harassment. At the same time, all of us who have been involved with the Valley Syrian Relief Committee have brought these schoolchildren into our universe, giving us a moral obligation to help.
I am once again guided by King’s words. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
King teaches that when we are oblivious to violence against others, we are committing a kind of violence against ourselves. “Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”
Every day we are forced to bear witness to human suffering, as well as human cruelty. Whether walking past a homeless person on the streets of Northampton, seeing images of skeletal children suffering from malnutrition and diphtheria in Yemen, or being confronted with a daily batch of email requests for donations to charities, we all make choices about whether and how to respond to the pain and violence in our world.
I was in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art, beginning a weekend of celebrations with family and friends, when I saw Mouaz’s text. Part of me wished I hadn’t read it when I did. I had the luxury of escape. Bisan and her classmates in Idlib did not.
That night in my hotel room, I searched the internet for King’s guidance. “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.”
If we let ourselves become numb to human suffering then we are as good as dead. The Valley Syrian Relief Committee has decided to reach out to our community to donate funds for humanitarian assistance and to ask local residents to tell their legislators in Congress to condemn the violence in Idlib. We are acting not only for Bisan and her neighbors, but also to preserve that which makes us human.
If we keep his words alive — “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” — the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will enable us to carry on that vision.
Sara Weinberger, of Easthampton, is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.
