Flotsam, Jetsam, Liam - Issue #9
“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”
Originally published on Revue - August 21, 2020
When Courage Gets Tokenized
When asked to think of someone courageous, who comes to mind?
2020 continues to rub salt in the wound after humbling lessons about the consequences of inaction. Meanwhile, a maelstrom of social unrest bubbling to the surface has brought us to a fateful referendum on what courage looks like.
To varying degrees, we have witnessed the self-induced buckling of three traditional American courage archetypes:
Two forever wars - one built on especially dubious pretenses - with few clearly discernible gains have stripped some luster off the deference given to servicemen and women.
Evolving, more equitable consciousness around criminality and justice plus a checks-and-balances system exposed as devoid of proper accountability has drained the deep reserves of goodwill built up for the police over the years from the plethora of dramas on every major TV network painting cops in a valorous light (I will still always love the Hawaii Five-O theme song).
Thirdly, business leaders are spamming our inboxes, waxing poetic about company values and a commitment to doing right by their people, yet few public companies have reduced executive pay packages. The chief executives at The Walt Disney Company, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Marriott International have all taken less than 10% reductions to date despite widespread lays offs and/or furloughs.
Framing courage so prominently through these lenses has always been too narrow and exclusionary, but a shift our understanding could have come about without so much suffering.
Then, as if to drive the point home that courage feels like a relic from a previous era, its epitome, Congressman John Lewis – arrested 45 times for never backing down from the fight for justice – passed away while leading the charge against voter suppression. The posthumous dilution of his outrage was all too predictable.
And yet, in spite of all that, I don’t actually think courage is in short supply. At an individual level, extraordinary ingenuity, resourcefulness and vulnerability, all emblematic of courage, has been on display amidst this crisis, and these people deserve to be recognized and celebrated.
However, something I heard Wes Moore, CEO of poverty fighting nonprofit the Robin Hood Foundation, say on Andrew Yang’s podcast last week unnerved me:
“We are so quick as a society to either congratulate or castigate without being willing to understand systems.”
When acts of courage capture the public imagination, our coverage and analysis serves up praise without indicting the power structures in play. Allow me to demonstrate.
Zach Mote, co-founder and head brewer at Water’s End Brewery in Woodbridge, VA, was forced to close his taproom when COVID hit. His instinctive response? Support healthcare workers.
Through a collaboration with another local brewer, Beltway Brewing, he created “PPE Beer”, with $6 per six pack sold going to Inova’s COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness Fund. They expect to reach $27,000 in funds raised for Inova once their second batch sells out. Zach Mote is a prime example of the Kennedy mantra that “one man can make a difference and every man should try”.
What the articles from the clippings above neglect to mention is that Inova is one of the nation’s wealthiest hospital systems. Their 2019 financials showed a $1 billion profit at year end and $3.1 billion in investments that could be liquidated within three days, enough money to operate for at least 21 months. Yet as of early June, Inova had called upon 3,300 donors to raise $4.3 million for its Emergency Preparedness Fund.
I’m sympathetic to the fact that the bizarre way our health system is constructed means that the procedures that generate revenue are incongruous with the triage of a pandemic, heightening financial anxieties. And while I work in healthcare, I won’t pretend I know the first thing about how to allocate and manage hospital finances. I do think though that I am justified in my deep concern that a hospital with billions on its books is reliant on individual philanthropic contributions and the goodwill of local brewers to gear up for emergencies. We let the powers that be at Inova off the hook if we only speak of Zach Mote’s quick thinking and generosity.
Or what about the case of Spanish celebrity chef José Andrés? The affable culinary artist has racked up a host of awards from operating a sizable portfolio of fast casual to high end restaurants across the United States, but it’s his humanitarianism that deserves even more plaudits.
A trip to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake exposed him to how haphazardly food gets distributed in disaster relief efforts and inspired him to found World Central Kitchen. Audacious enough to believe that bureaucracy is an unacceptable excuse for not providing meals to hungry, desperate people, Andrés and his WCK team have served more than 40 million freshly made, nutritious meals to survivors of natural disasters and other crises around the world. As I write, Andrés is cooking in Lebanon and WCK is on the scene in Iowa and Northern California feeding those in need.
What Andrés was able to accomplish in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria though stands as his magnum opus, cataloged in the excellent book We Fed An Island. By trusting partners, working connections, galvanizing volunteers, and staying resolute, WCK served over 3.7 million meals (typically sandwiches or paella) across the island with the help of over 20,000 volunteers between September 2017 and June 2018. He only wishes they could have done more.
As Andrés worked day in, day out demonstrating proof of concept on the ground, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) repeatedly played hardball with him, unwilling to commit to long term contracts that would provide enough capital to meaningfully ramp up operations and haggling over every million.
At that same time, Tribute Contracting LLC, a one woman operation in Atlanta with government contracting savvy, secured an $156 million deal to deliver 18.5 million meals to Puerto Rico. By the due date, only 50,000 meals in the form of freeze dried soup had reached the island, and even those did not meet the stipulation that the food on offer be self-heating.
The federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was absolutely shambolic and would never have been allowed to pass in a US state with true representation in our democracy. Book deals, biopics, and brownie points are insufficient trading currencies up against inert, inept institutions.
The last example I’ll leave you with of an individual’s courage being tokenized is human win machine Maya Moore:
The UConn starlet turned Minnesota Lynx & Team USA phenom was in the prime of her career and showing no signs of slowing down when she decided to sit out the 2019 WNBA season and work to exonerate an incarcerated acquaintance, Jeremy Irons, who in 1998 at 18 years old was sentenced to 50 years in prison without any physical evidence linking him to the crime. I cannot think of anyone else who, having reached such sensational heights, was willing to trade it all away in the pursuit of social justice.
Moore’s godfather, Reggie Williams, was granted power of attorney by Irons in 2005 and his discovery of a fingerprint report the defense attorney had not been privy to during the original hearing was the legal breakthrough needed to overturn the conviction. But that discovery was back in 2007. Only through Moore’s support and advocacy work was Irons able to get the legal counsel he needed. On July 1st, 2020, 17 months after Moore announced she was walking away from basketball, Irons walked out of a Missouri penitentiary as a free man.
It’s a beautiful story, but should never have needed to happen. Irons does not get those 22 years back and hoping superstar athletes leave their jobs and become legal advocates is ludicrous. Furthermore, dig deeper and you’ll discover how wickedly twisted Missouri’s legal system is:
“Legal precedent in the state holds that unless a prisoner is on death row, proven innocence is not reason enough to be set free. Petitioners must prove that they have been denied a constitutionally adequate trial.”
In what world is that okay?! Particularly when research shows that 3-6% of convictions are wrongful and 375 people (of whom 225 are black) have been exonerated thanks to updated DNA testing since 1989.
Maya Moore elected to again sit out the 2020 WNBA season – currently being played out in a bubble in Bradenton, FL – and continue applying her winning habits to the social justice fight. We cheapen her immense sacrifice if we treat Jeremy Irons’ case as an isolated incident within an untouchable legal system.
If you’re still with me to this point, you might still be trying to visualize what “institutional courage” would actually look like. Let me take you into the arena I know best, the sleazy world of global soccer.
Just weeks ago, activists let out a sigh of relief after a Saudi-led £300 million takeover bid of Newcastle United, one of England’s most successful and passionately supported clubs, fell through. Sadly though, the deal’s collapse was not on human rights grounds, despite pleas from Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Rather, it was the Premier League’s exasperation over Saudi Arabia’s blocking of legal action against companies streaming games illegally that did the deal in.
But what if global soccer could be the trailblazer in taking a seismic stand? What if enough pressure was applied on FIFA that they had to move the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar, awarded the right to host through rampant corruption and cruelly exploiting and abusing migrant laborers to build stadiums? And crucially, what if that pressure came from corporations and governments so that players and coaches never have to contemplate what career sacrifices they’d be making if they chose to boycott?
I nominate Budweiser to get the ball rolling, as their loyalty is being tested anyway (see below). All Day I Dream About Shaking things up…
