TEDxRamallah - Alice Walker آليس ووكر - How I Learned to Grow a Global Heart

thank you so much for this very warm welcome I'm very happy to see you you are a very difficult people to get to we left on the 12th we flew into Frankfurt then to Amman had a few nights a few hours rest and guidon gonna taxi went to this incredible King Hussein bridge where everything just came to a very slow molasses-like crawl we went through six checkpoints and then we actually got to what I said I never actually saw any water I never saw a river is there river there I barely saw a bridge they took us in well they took me in finally after sitting for many hours and you all know I'm sure of the rudeness and the disrespect that one encounters in this place on that bridge eventually I was taken in to be interrogated I had never been interrogated the car yeah it was really quite a surprise and it was a young man and I actually ended up speaking to him as if I were speaking to my own son because I was saying to him do you really understand that what you're doing is really wrong it's just wrong and it's not good for you he had many questions about what I was going to be doing here and who I was going to see and I had some how as soon as I got to am on my laptop had disappeared and all of my material was on my laptop and you know can you lose your laptop or your computer it really is as if you lose your mind so I was completely unclear and also jet-lagged but we managed to have a really good discussion and I thought I would just tell you a little bit about it because one of the things that became very clear he was saying to me well I never heard of you and I said fine and he said well what what have you written and I said well probably nothing you've read and he said well try me and I said well you probably haven't read anything but how about the Steven Spielberg movie the color purple which he said he also had not seen and I had thrown in the Spielberg part just to remind him that where I come from we have some different relationships with people so he kept asking me about you know my work and my writing and all of those things and I was surprised to see that he could pull everything up instantly on the computer so there he had he found me on the computer he said you said right here see you said right here that you would never then you were boycotting Israel and that you would never come to Israel and I said what am I in Israel the dog signals actually to tell you the truth I was not ever coming to Israel I was always coming to you I was coming to Palestine and I have a little story that I want to tell about you know other displaced people in Australia long time ago I went to Australia among other things the grant the aboriginal grandmother's they're taught me in a hunt so if you and I are ever some wearing there hungry and we can't find food I know how just get me a crowbar but we were in Alice Springs and I was with a friend and we were sitting hoping that some of the native people the indigenous people would come by and we could say hello and you know we're with you solidarity forever and just just be with them thank you so we we went to a little coffee shop and we sat there and we listened this was I don't know 20 years ago or 25 years ago and actually on the outskirts of the town the missionaries had put boxes of clothing because they wanted to be sure that the Aboriginal people when they came through Alice Springs which is of course settler town they would have clothing they would be fully clothed so but they have original people didn't really care much for you know the the white clothing so they would just take the clothes out of the box and they would just fling them at themselves so that you would see a man walking along the street wearing a hat down here or a blouse thrown over his head you know so we were trying to attract them and you know figure out well what this is you know this is a way of rejecting being ruled and abused so we we decided that if they wouldn't talk to us and we couldn't figure out why why won't they talk to us why don't they even see us but what we didn't realize was that these people had been on that one and for forty thousand years forty thousand years they didn't have to see us they did not and so we finally said well you know maybe it has to do with sitting in chairs maybe if we just get off these chairs and go sit on the ground maybe they'll see us so we went and we sat on the ground and within minutes we had friends come over and sit with us because they could see us now and they knew that we were not the people of the chairs the recent people so this is to say that you have been here maybe not 40,000 years but you've been here a very long time and that this matters a great deal I was recently in South Africa and I was there to tell them that I had been coming to see them since I was five years old and I was coming to see them since I was five years old because my sister when I was five taught me their freedom song in Kosice lele Africa and I feel in a way that coming to see you is similar because even though I don't know your songs and I'm sure you have a wonderful song that has kept you going all of these years I realize that there is something of the spirit of resistance the spirit of resilience and the spirit of suffering that I knew from hearing this song in Kosice lele Africa so so there I was in the interrogation area and you know really after about three hours I was getting very tired and finally I said you know I'm not only tired on Thursday I'm hungry and I don't know where my suitcase is and he said well your suitcase is safe you know and we continued with this this discussion and so one of the things we talked about because he was you know busily pulling up everything I had ever said about Palestine was whether or not Israelis and Palestinians could ever live together now my view is that if South Africans could live together eventually why can't you live together and like with you see this silence for a moment he was just silent and then he said there's just too much hatred there was just too much hatred we'll never be able to do it and I was very glad to hear his honesty but this is a very interesting and something really needing to be discussed a lot and I I don't know whether you're doing this I mean I I read Ali Abunimah and sorry Makdessi and so I know that this is in the air that people understand that if you have what they call the two-state solution what you will eventually have is just what they tried to have in South Africa a lot of Bantu stands and I don't think we you want to do inventive stands and why should you it's your country so in a way like the Aboriginal people in no recent Australia because the DM Australia is recent when I look at these walls when I look at the barriers that are put up I almost always just think about how to take them down I think the ways you know to to demolish them you know how will that happen I don't think if it will happen I think how will it be done because it is not sustainable this system is not sustainable now as some of you know I'm a writer and I have been writing since I was crawling according to my mother who said that when she would look for me I would be found crawling behind our shack in the deep south completely segregated complete apartheid I would be there crawling in the dirt with my twig I would have found a twig and I would be using a twig that makes me think that for me writing was almost and probably was a past life activity that I came here to do the work that I do and what is the work that I do what is the work that I do is true that I you know some people when you say that you're a writer they just think in terms of well how many books have you written you know how many this and how many that's but for me writing has always been about freedom it has been about seeing the possibility for people to outgrow whatever is keeping them down and whatever is stunting them and whatever is making them smaller and meaner and crazier than they need to be and all of you here know this so well that this system is nuts it is absolutely crazy and how to even survive in it I mean just listening to the last presentation of all the permits and all of the denied entry entries and all of the you know the the horrible condescension and when I was at the crossing at Allenby bridge what struck me really deeply because as I say I'm from the South in the United States and we are used to elders being treated with with respect you just don't abuse elders and you don't abuse children and you don't insult people who are obviously ill and I saw all of this all of this at the crossing people as you know and I I know you know this so well because you endure it you know I mean I I was there nine hours but for people in this audience I'm sure there are many people who've been there longer and still were not permitted to come into this country into Palestine so seeing this behavior was so distressing because it actually means and and we have you know this problem happening a lot in our country too but when the elders are abused and and and held in contempt and the children are ignored as being children and their needs are ignored we're seeing the ending of society and all the power you know in the world is not going to help and in fact I said to this young man I said you know I don't know if you know this but we're running out of money in America we can't afford this we can't afford to keep giving you money and that our resources are finite and we've used them up in the parts that we did not use up Wall Street stole from us so we're in we're really in bad shape we cannot keep up Israel we can't afford it we have given Israel a trillion dollars trillion that now I have no idea how much that is but it is a lot it is a lot a lot a lot because you know just in a regular year is three billion and then you add on to that all the billions for armaments I mean as if the world needs any more arms now do you think the world needs any more arms I mean really I mean who needs more weapons I think war is you know in Mexico I lived in Mexico part of the time in Mexico the most harsh thing you can say to someone is that you're stupid that's that's you know and I I'm always learning Spanish but I'm afraid to ask them why is that so what what makes the word stupid tanto so awful because I just feel like it's going to be just you know profane and dreadful and everything but war is all of that war is all of that buying weapons spending money on weapons is so incredibly stupid we're smarter than that aren't we I mean just as human beings aren't we smarter than just to spend all of this money on weapons and then to leave people to have nothing to have people sick and dying the children crying you know the mothers crawling around trying to find food afraid you know living in houses that these giant bulldozers come and smash I think that the first time I was pulled into the Palestinian story was I think around 1967 maybe the war that war and I was so appalled that they took the that Israel took the land and didn't plan to give it back and I said to someone well they have to give it back you don't just go in and take people's land and never give it back I mean they said oh this happened to be someone who was Pro pro the war in pro Israel he said oh no they need that land you know they need that land because otherwise they'll be able especially the Golan Heights which I believe belonged to Syria they need that land because otherwise the people will throw bombs you know but actually that was one of the the periods when I really felt very close but the other time and there are many times I mean I we don't have long enough time here to talk about all the times but because as a person growing up poor in the south sharecropper parents being forced to move every year and living in terrible housing the first time I saw the demolition of a house that somebody was living in I almost could not bear it I don't see how the world bears this how can we bear this you know as a planet how can we bear watching people in these giant caterpillars you know and and hopefully the boycott will help take care of caterpillar but how can we bear to watch this you know to watch people just destroy something so incredibly precious you know and in fact last in 2009 we were in Gaza who went that's sort of a long story but my sister had died and I learned that that in one bombing five children girls had been killed and their mother was unconscious and it clicked for me just how precious anybody's life is doesn't matter you know whether you know them whether you don't so we went to Gaza and we found there just exactly what I was afraid of which is that the hatred that has been permitted partly by my governments to grow to fester has blossomed a malevolent blossom into this incredible destruction now I have only a few minutes more and briefly I want to say to you what I actually came here to tell you which is that the suffering and all of us have suffered so much my country your country you know decades and centuries but actually suffering does have a purpose and the purpose of it one of them is that it helps you connect it opens you in a way to the suffering of other people and that it is when we gather together that we know our strengths I mean remember that seeing entire square where the people surrounded the tanks so much that the tanks could move that's what it is is beginning to know that we are one and we are us and not any separation at all we are one one expression of humanity and that we must so I I am just delighted to be here and is one of the great joys of my life to spend that time in detention because I know that that is what it means to love humanity it means to show up when we need each other to show up just be there you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 34,390

Rating: 4.7915964 out of 5

Keywords: Husseiny Bridge, westbank, aboriginal, Alice Walker, ted talks, Australia, israel, check points, English, west bank, ted x, Walker, ted talk, solidarity, ted, interrogation, Bethlehem, Husseini Bridge, Huseini Bridge, Palestine, natives, tedx talk, TEDxRamallah, displaced, tedx, south africa, checkpoints, Nkosi Sikeleli Africa, native, tedx talks, Alice

Id: v4FW2XvLdp8

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2011