Islamic schools - Breeding ground for terrorism???

About a five-minute walk away from Mansfield station in Massachusetts lies an old structure. It is a church, at least on the outside. The cross on the top looks dismembered with just one beam pointing upwards, the horizontal shaft is missing. But the cross at the back is still intact. A small board on the wall identifies it as Al-Noor Academy. A tiny green-colored flag with Arabic letters on it peeps out of one of the windows on the side of the building. A crescent moon, which looks out of place and context, stands at the top of the entrance. There are no minarets, no pronounced external symbols. There is nothing that can tell a passerby that this is an Islamic school.
I came to this small town in New England looking for terrorism. I stand outside, stare at the simple red-brick building, circle the structure, alert, looking for something, trying to hear something that will show me if terrorism is indeed being taught here. The idea itself is elusive. It is anything, a sound, a map where Israel does not exist, or a phrase in a textbook calling for Jihad. May be it is formless, just an idea that echoes within the school’s walls.
Inside the building it is different. On the cream-colored walls hang numerous posters, frames and drawings. There is a consistency in this variety, something that ties it all. One idea that casts its hue on the blue, green and red of the drawings, most of which have been done by students. All have Arabic letters on them. They are there on the blue sky with a silver moon, shining down on a navy river. They squeeze themselves in the concentric rings of a multi-colored chakra, a Buddhist symbol. The kaba or the black stone of Mecca in rich velvet hangs at the end of the corridor. It is difficult to not see it.
Girls hurry to their classes in their navy blue long-flowing gowns, the mandatory uniform. Their heads are covered. They chat, crack jokes, and discuss basketball. Boys are already in their classes. They wear trousers and sweaters and are clean-shaven. No mixing of students here.
This is far removed from the madrasa in Old Delhi, near Jama Masjid, where children wearing their pathani kurtas, skull caps and pyjamas, carrying the books under their arms, walk toward an old building where in one of the numerous alleys the old bearded teacher waits for them. Or in Patna, my hometown, where I saw teenage boys with beards, sitting against the crumbling walls of an old dome-shaped building, a madrasa, reflecting. These are places where a student learns religion only excluding all else that matters in the world. Religion is a responsibility of these madrasas in Asia and Middle East, to pass it on to children so that they live it, feel it, and promote it.
Madrasa is an Urdu term for school. These have existed since the 11th century when Nizamiyah, a learning center, was established in Baghdad. Mostly residential and providing free food and lodging to students, these essentially taught religion and prepared scholars to interpret the Shariat, the law, and Hadith, a secondary source of religious codes for Muslims. Students learned through recitation. Koran was memorized, which is a way of preserving the original text. Translations are not considered sacred, and if one has to pray, one has to do it in Arabic, the language of Muhammad.
There are more than 234 Islamic schools in United States and the numbers have increased post 9/11 because of negative stereotype of Muslims that they are terrorists and out if concern to practice and understand their religion, and so has the interest in them. Islam is the fastest growing religion in United States and it is estimated that there are more than 6 million Muslims in America.
The madrasas in South Asia, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan have come under a lot of fire from the media for promoting terrorism. Mullah Mohammed Omar, a student of a Pakistani madrasa called Darul Uloom Haqqania led the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1960s. Since then terrorism, fanaticism and madarasas have been linked and so have been identities.
Once inside the school, I pull my head scarf lower to cover any strands of hair on my face. As I sit outside the office of the principal, Robert Mond, I flip through the pages of Islamic Horizons. I come across Hadia Mubarak’s piece. She writes in ‘Living as a Muslim American’ how being American and a Muslim at the same time is an oxymoron, like the idea of the moon and the sun appearing in the sky at the same time. How the faith and nationality have come to mean parallel lines that never meet, casting a doubt on Muslim-American’s loyalties. She wonders how their identity has come to mean fanatics through books like American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, a book by Steven Emerson that says militants are living in America, or films like Dateline showing honor killings of seven women.
The first female president of the group, Muslim Students Association, Mubarak is born to immigrants. Her mother is from Jordan, while her father from Syria. She writes, “I am a child of two cultures with a tongue of two languages and a belief that is universal. My roots belong somewhere in the vast Atlantic Ocean, linking a world my parents left behind with the world into which I arrive…I am neither Jordanian nor Syrian, for tradition rules that you belong to the soil that testifies to your birth and childhood.”
The connections or the desire thereof to keep the links intact have given rise to many Islamic schools in the west. And though some of such madrasas have been promoting extremist attitudes, the branding of all such institutions is unjustified and ignores the cause, the need for preservation of identity.
When Mond comes in, he asks if I want to attend a class. The social science class is just starting. The 10th grade girls in this class seem curious about me. I open my notebook and fidget with the recorder.
They are doing presentations on Japan today. One girl starts the presentation and after the lights are dimmed, I look around. The word ‘Geisha’ catches everyone's attention. The girls stop talking and stare at the pretty Japanese woman on the screen. I try to look at the map on the wall, trying to see if Israel is part of their world. The cover of Gossip Girl, a novel by Cecily Von Ziegesar, on a girl’s lap distracts me. The cover has a scantily clad woman’s bust on it. I look at the teacher. She looks away.
The girls are American. They talk about fashion, dating and proms. It is only the hijab that sets them apart from others.
The girls want to talk to me too. So, after class we go to sit in an empty classroom. They sit around me, three of them. There are hardcover Arabic books on the desks. Perhaps this is where they have their Arabic class.
The girls are skipping their class because they have the principal’s permission or so it seems. Sono Ghori, Zainab Mehtar and Fatimah Mahdee are all too eager to talk, sometimes cutting the other one off. They love their hijab, their religion and America too. This is where they were born. Ghori took up the hijab when she was very young. Her mother doesn’t wear it. But she does not stop her daughter from wearing it.
Ghori, 14, has big eyes, which light up when she speaks. Covered from head to toe in a blue gown with a matching hijab, she is born to Pakistani immigrants. She tells me how she wants to be a lawyer and change the politics of America, her country. She is upset when she sees Iraqi children orphaned by the war, she is disturbed about the Israel-Palestine conflict. And yes she knows Israel exists.
“I love America but there are certain things…,” she says, her voice fading off.
Zainab Mehtar, 14, wants to be a journalist, to write the truth, she says. Unlike Ghori, Mehtar is reserved. Both her parents are from Burma. Mehtar tells me how Sunday schools at the mosque are not enough to learn or connect with their faith. Her father taught them at home too. But in schools like these, she has come to learn more and freely practice her faith. She says she is shocked when I mention about the reports and how Islamic schools promoting terrorism.
But she has an idea. Everyone must come to these schools to see what exactly is going on. When the bell rings, she rushes out to perform afternoon prayers, her blue gown trailing behind her.
The third girl, Mahdee, is less talkative. Her parents converted to Islam before she was born. Though she was born into the faith, some of her siblings were not. They still live different lives. They party, go out and do other things that she would never do. But she says she understands. It is America and life is like this here.
Mahdee, 15, wants to be a cardiologist and work for the black community, her community.
None of them wants to be terrorists. And nothing seems unusual except the hijab and the Arabic letters on posters on the walls.
All the girls were born here or have been here for the major part of their lives. America is their home. Even though fitting in is difficult. Ghori has been called names at times. “Are you Osama’s daughter or wife?...they say,” she says.
They go on. Ghori thinks if she had gone to a public school, she would have been influenced, had gone out partying with guys, if she had been surrounded by non-Muslims, she would have done things that are against the religion and would have offended her parents, which is a sin in Islam. They say the paradise is at your mother’s feet.
What about the war? War is Haram for us. When The Koran says kill them, it does not mean kill them physically, but kill the faith in their hearts, kill the influence in their hearts, they explain. Islam is peace for them, literally and otherwise.
Normal conversations, normal choices, normal girls.
I first came across the dilemma of Muslim parents at the Sunday school at the local mosque here. The parents, who came and settled, are worried about the moral corruption of their children. And perhaps the fear has led them to enforce religion in their lives in a way that the west views as isolation and extremist. A Muslim child is expected to start praying from the age of seven. So, he is expected to learn the basic suras or prayers by heart. And then learn the language, Arabic, itself to understand the Koran, Mir Hussaini, the secretary of Islamic Society of Central New York says. In South Asia or Islamic countries in the Middle East, parents teach their children the basic tenets of Islam. But in America both parents are working and have very little time so the mosques have started these schools to pass on the religion to the children, Hussaini explains.
“They are necessary for the same reason that Catholic schools are. We want to teach them our religion,” says Karen Keyworth, director of League of Islamic Schools of America.
But many others do not think these schools are just trying to offer a protective environment or teach their values and religion.
Stephen Schwartz writes in his ‘What are they teaching in these Saudi-financed Schools’ that most of these Islamic academies are teaching the Muslim children to hate Christians and Jews. He uses Islamic Saudi Academy as an example. Keyworth says, “That (Islamic Saudi Academy) is the embassy school, it is for the embassy officials,” she says over the phone.
Many such schools run on donations or tuition money. Sometimes, they have fund-raising events in order to keep running. Al-Noor is also a non-profit organization. “My school does not get even $1 from outside the country,” says Dr. Saeed Shahzad, who is also one of the founders of the school and on the board of the Islamic Society of New England.
I also attended the Sunday school at the local mosque at Islamic Society of Central New York, which has around 120 students. Because the mosque is small, classes are now held in the basement. Earlier, the classes were held at Levy Middle School and the mosque used to pay the school $200 a day for the use of its classrooms on Sundays. When the new school superintendent came, the school raised the fee to $1,600, which the mosque could not afford.
It is definitely small. There are too many people. During the break at 11:15 a.m., the children ran around, chatted and ate their lunch. While the younger ones played, the slightly older ones like Anika Azad, 13, sat quietly on the stone steps and waited for the class to resume.
I sat with a group of girls in the Musallah, the first floor, marked for women, while Samina Masood, a volunteer, tried to teach them the Five Pillars of Islam. The girls, who are in hijab, did not seem convinced of Allah’s benevolence and one asks Masood why her wish was not granted, even after praying.
Masood, who is from Pakistan, tells me how difficult it is to preserve the religion in United States and Sunday schools at the mosques are trying to instill the values of Islam in children, who go to public schools and live in a world that is different from where their parents come from. “We can only try,” she tells me.
For one, the hijab, the modest dressing, doesn’t stick out at these schools. Little girls at Sunday school told me how they did not wear the hijab in their schools because they look different. The child is often living two lives in two different worlds. The weekdays are spent in public schools, in a secular world. The Sundays are spent trying to connect with their faith. The girls wear the hijab on Sundays.
“I wore it to my regular school one day and everybody stared at me. I felt weird,” said Samila Alemic, a student at the Sunday school.
Islam requires its followers to follow a code of conduct. That knowledge and practice is essential to being a Muslim. In India and Pakistan or Iran, Islam has been a religion for many centuries. The culture itself, the sound of the muezzin five times a day, the commonness of hijab and burqa and community prayers on Fridays on the roadside or wherever the Muslims can spread a carpet and others will understand, is defined by it. Talk about any town or city in India, a mention of an Islamic monument or food will come up. Personal laws exist for religious groups in terms of marriage, divorce and inheritance laws.
But it is different here in America. Though immigration of Muslims began in 1600s, it was not until the 1960s when immigration rules changed and many people from Asian countries starting coming in that the community really grew in terms of establishing their institutions. A mosque is the first to be established. A religious school next. Most mosques have the Sunday schools that impart the basic religious education. But these schools can’t fill in for culture or environment that is missing here.
All her life, Salma Kazmi, assistant director of Islamic Society of Boston, went to a public school. One of her friends forced her to eat when she was fasting during Ramadan. “You have to explain…you always feel different. I was asked what I got for Christmas. I felt left out,” she says. She had to go to school during Ramadan. The Islamic schools are closed during the month of Ramadan and other Islamic holidays.
The experiences are numerous. Keyworth tells me at a community college in one of the towns in Michigan where she teaches, students ask her if she has cancer because she covers her head. “These girls attended public schools. The public school material is biased…incorrect and missing diversity. Why would every one of my students think I have cancer?,” she asks.
These stories, plenty of them, of isolation and insecurity, made parents and educators feel the need for Islamic schools that provide Islamic environment, where children see others like themselves and hijab is not outwardly. This seemed the best way to keep the faith, while living as an American.
But absorption and acceptance in America is still to come. Dr. Saeed Shahzad, one of the founders of Al-Noor Academy, was at a hospital in New Jersey helping patients when the two planes struck the two towers of the world trade center. “Islam was introduced to the world that day as never before,” he says.
The Muslim community has been a victim of negative stereotyping since then. Ameen Sheaffer, who converted to Islam in May 1994, says after he converted, he started facing prejudices.
“My managers said- ‘what do you guys do at the mosque? Build bombs in the basement’? I have heard people referring to solution of the Muslim problem, saying that Yemen should be bombed and made into a parking lot,” he says.
Though, the Muslims condemned the act or did not agree with it, they were isolated, branded and misunderstood and so were there institutions. So, Muslim parents feel insecure and want to protect their children from stinging comments, of which there are many, and teach them Islam.
That’s why Al-Noor was established. It is an American-style religious school. It can well be called Al-Noor Madrasa, says one of the founders, Dr. Saeed Shahzad. The tuition is higher than public schools, around $3,800 per year. In that, these are different from the madrasas in Islamic countries.
Everyone asks me why I chose this school. May be because they let me in. Why am I doing this story? Because I am curious to know what terrorism is, how it is taught in Islamic schools and whether it is part of the curriculum. I am intrigued with the rhetoric that almost always puts Islam and terrorism together. I have been warned too. “They are dangerous people, take care,” I have been told. Don’t they all hate us Hindus? Isn’t the Jihad against us too?
All through January, February, and half of March, I had been calling schools to see if I could visit them. Many declined; some put me on hold. Perhaps they do not trust me enough. Then finally, I get an e mail from Robert Mond, the principle of Al-Noor Academy High School. He asks me to visit the school. So, I travel to Boston, take the commuter rail to Mansfield, lose my way a couple of times, but finally make it to the school on 20 Church St.
Al-Noor means truth in Arabic. It is the only Islamic high school in Massachusetts. Founded in September 2000, it has around 75 full time students. Students come from as far as Rhode Island and Dorchester, traveling for more than an hour to attend school. It was an outcome of parents’ desire to have a high school where their children, who were already attending religious school in lower grades at Islamic Academy of New England at Sharon, could go. So, St. Mary’s Church was bought in Mansfield and the school shifted form Quincy, where it was first established, to the more spacious property. The building, which was a Catholic church, dates back to at least 1920s. It had been abandoned for around 30 years before the school bought it, says Mond. They bought it, renovated it, put an elevator, added the third floor to serve as a mosque for the students and the locals to pray, put in ceramic tiles, and fixed the outside windows that were broken. Mond says limited funds restricted too much of change in the building, inside or outside. Was it done deliberately?
He disagrees, “That it looks like a church…that’s fine.” I ask about the cross at the back. He says it does not exist. I have a photograph of it. I don’t push.
Born a Catholic, Mond converted to Islam, traveled the Middle East, Oman and Syria. Islam, he says, aroused his curiosity. When he was looking for a job, he consciously chose to join an Islamic school. The money was far less compared to what he would have earned as a technician. But faith beckoned.
So Mond applied and got accepted. He explains the mission as providing an education that is rooted in Islamic faith.
“It is trying to develop a sense that they are in front of God, they would fear God and would be up to any bad things,” he says to me, later on the phone.
“Who is an American Muslim?” I ask him. Did the want the students to be one? This is important to me. This is the conflict, it is in the identity. “I remember that time John F. Kennedy said I am an American who is a Catholic. I tell them they are Americans first and then Muslims,” he says.
Identity is the key to understanding terrorism. Because terrorism is important for what it does to an identity. At times it defines individuals, even countries and sometimes it defines religion.
I was not able to meet with Dr. Saeed Shahzad, a neurologist and one of the founders of the school, but we talk on the phone later when I am in Syracuse.
Shahzad is from Pakistan. His daughter went to a private school until 4th grade. In 1994, when the Islamic Academy of New England was established, he transferred his daughter here. They started with just 26 students in a rented building in Quincy. It aimed to serve the Muslim population that he estimates to be around 30,000 in and around Boston. They, later, extended the school to 8th grade because the parents did not want their children to go to public schools or non-Muslim schools.
“We might lose our Islamic values, the way and the morals,” he says. He considers himself American now and is married to a Christian.
“In this country they have separation of Church and State. A Muslim child does pray. We start our assembly from the holy Koran. This was not available in public schools,” he says. “A Muslim prays five times a day…If you go to public schools you have to give up your religion for that period of time…Why God has been thrown out...I don’t know?”
I met Raja Abou-Samra at Al-Noor. She wanted her two children to learn the Islamic way of living. So, she put them in Al-Noor Academy. Her two older children, who she put in Christian private schools, were getting confused. Her husband was one of the community members, who were active in establishing the school so that the children could study in an Islamic environment. “My son was getting confused in the Catholic school. The values at schools were different and at home he was seeing different things,” she says.
Samra’s husband then decided to put their other two children in the Islamic school. The daughter, who is elder, just completed her high school.
“Her personality is stronger. My son…he becomes weaker. In his school, he is different from others, he avoids others. My daughter is one of them. She is open and confident,” she says.
Samra teaches Arabic and Koranic memorization to children at Al-Noor. She is from Syria. She tells me how religion was never a problem because Arabic being their first language, she could always pick up the Koran and read. She thinks children lack values and respect here. That’s missing.
At the Friday prayer meeting at Harvard University that I am invited to attend, I also meet Habeh Ismail, who is the vice-president of the university’s Muslim Students Association. She went to an Islamic school in New Jersey. “We were taught the same books. But the biggest emphasis was on values…you got into trouble for cheating,” she says.
After getting back from Boston, I wonder if I have searched enough. So, I called Abdeelah Ahmed of Al-Ihsan Academy, an Islamic school in Syracuse, and asked him if I could come to his school again.
I have been there once. The school is in an old building on West Onondaga Street. When I got there in the afternoon, I saw Ahmed, who is from Egypt, teaching children how to add and subtract.
I sat there for a while, peeped into the classrooms and chatted with the receptionist. It is just like any school- children looked bored in their classroom, teachers tried to get the calculation correct, parents waited outside for their children. It was around 3:30 p.m. and school was over.
I had borrowed their textbooks, pored over them, searching for terrorism, finding nothing.
But I want to go again and check. So, I walk to the school after work one day. At the corner of West Onondaga Street, I think if I will ever find the little terrorists in these schools. I call the school and tell them I am not coming. They have lined up a few children who could talk to me. But I am done. Maybe some other day, I tell them.

color, gender and caste...do they define our existence?

Lord Krishna asked his mother in a song titled ‘Radha kyon gori main kyon kala …’(why is Radha so fair and why am I dark-skinned?). Radha, his paramour was fair and Krishna was dark. Even God could not comprehend the dynamics of color and the bias associated with it. I don’t know what Yashoda, Krishna’s mother, had to say to that.
When I first listened to the song, a popular bhajan, it echoed my concern. My mother could not answer my question.
When my cousin, a girl, was born everyone was unhappy because she was not fair enough. Concerns about her getting married into a good family and getting a good match were expressed profoundly. And then began the ardous process of applying various homemade concoctions to make her fairer.
I saw fair women on television and in print selling everything from home appliances to men’s underwear. And I was confused. Why did color matter so much? Why was I asked to put sunscreen when I went out in the sun? Why was I asked to apply Fair & Lovely cream on my face? Why was there so much importance attached to color? And why were we, the not-so-fair ones, considered ugly?
When I took up the media and diversity class, I took it to understand the questions that have evaded me all my life. I come from a conservative and middle-class family and though education, unlike in other such families, was important, being beautiful was always more important. I did not quite understand why it was so.
The complementary status accorded to women was another norm that confounded me. In ancient societies like ours, gender roles are defined and it is very difficult to deviate or follow one’s own choices in life. Women always have to compromise and it is the men who get the upper hand. It is all in the power structures of the society that recognize male supremacy, sanction it and revere it. My aunts never had a choice in selecting their husbands. The couples had never met before marriage. Not even seen each other. Such things are difficult to imagine in free society like America. But they did happen. Divorce was almost always a woman’s fault, brought about by her mistakes and immorality. Women are willful agents, wrote the ancient philosopher Manu, and must be kept in check lest they corrupt men and society. That was what I grew up with.
I went to a good English school, learned about the sacred concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity but found them lacking in my own life and surroundings.
When Muniya came to clean the toilets, she announced her arrival in a loud voice. My mother and grandmother quickly removed things from her way so that they don’t get polluted by her shadow or touch. Muniya was a shudra, one belonging to the lower castes, ordained to clean up after us. She was an untouchable.
Caste system is another issue that plagues the Indian society. Decades after it was abolished by the Indian Constitution, untouchability is still practiced in India, even in cities like Mumbai that are progressive and considered at par with Tokyo and New York City. I feel this is also done to maintain class distinction and to divide votes by dividing people in certain groups. At a film festival in Mumbai, I saw this documentary on low caste women considered untouchables and not even permitted to draw water form the village well, being raped by men from the upper castes.
One woman who was interviewed said when it came to sex, there was no untouchability or class distinctions. There was no fear of getting polluted or corrupted by the touch, she said.
I was not allowed to eat at my Muslim friend’s house because it would violate my religion and faith. And I could not share my lunch with my best friend because she happened to be from a lower caste and I happened to be from an upper caste.
I do not blame my mother or my grandmother because they are products of social and cultural conditioning and never challenged those things. They never had the benefit of a liberal education or were not born in changing times like mine.
From that far and that situation, America looked tempting. It looked perfect. And I wanted to be here. But I was surprised to learn that color is an even bigger issue in United States. Racism is big here. Whiteness is beauty. And blue collar and white collar live different lives and almost never interact. Everywhere I go, I can feel people looking at me with special interest. They make me feel exotic, from the east, from a land of poverty and strange practices and rituals and spicy food. And I never fit in. I can feel it. I can sense it everywhere. At the food courts that I work at, in the class, on the street. The color is a giveaway.
The immigrants are no better. The hyphen never goes. One is always an African-American, an Indian-American and so on. The second or third generation Indians whose parents or grandparents came here and settled are still struggling to blend in and sometimes do not mix with people of their own group in order to maintain the uniqueness or to show the white people that they shun their groups or have nothing in common with their own people so that they find acceptance in a society that they live in but never quite merge with.
Color sticks to us, it shapes our identity, and it shapes other people’s perceptions and notions. And it determines our own views, frustrations and judgments. It determines our social and group behavior. There is a sense of understanding between me and Barbra because we are both products and victims of social conditioning and prejudices. We are both considered exotic and most people think that I am a product of eastern mysticism…that’s my identity at times. And it bothers me. And it bothers me especially because in this society of black and white, the browns are always a misfit with their ‘imperfect’ accent.
Race is our creation and the definition changes to include or exclude people depending on power politics. And in order to maintain the balance of power.
As per the discussion on groups, I feel both sides are equally responsible for creating the difference. One side tries to subdue people, the other side feel victimized but accepts it. That was the problem with the so-called low caste in India. They accepted it. Muniya accepted the tea in a broken cup that my mother pushed toward her with a stick. Why didn’t she challenge it? When I asked her to sit on the chair instead of squatting on the ground, why did she laugh and thought it was such an unbelievable concept? Because they believe in the distinctions and have seldom rebelled against it and the system believes in blocking access to education so that they don’t challenge the power.
These are some of the impressions that have influenced me and have shaped my thinking. I am hopeful though. And though outside pressure in form of revolutions can change society, they are not sustainable or desirable means of change as they bring destruction in their wake and often result in reversal of power structures with the same results.
I feel education will help the most. My mother was more progressive than my grandmother and I am more open to ideas than my mother. So, it changes. It is upon us to go out, find more about other people and think rationally and do away with our insecurities.

feminist...am i one?

Probably I am a feminist afterall but of a different kind. I don't look like them... Maybe I just don't want to put myself in a slot. But I believe all women are feminists in some way. All of them, wherever they are, or whoever they are, aspire for equality and rights. It is just that culture and faith, in some cases, takes precedence. Or they are just conditioned. Freedom is every man or women’s dream.
I remember having an argument with a Muslim friend about the purdah system, about women wearing the hijab. I just could not get it at that time when he said what can one do if women want to don the hijab themselves. I sort of understand that now. First, it is conditioning and second, it is conditioning. I guess feminism goes far beyond bra-burning, lesbianism and equal rights or pay for women.
It is the hijacking of the feminist movement by the elite women that worries me. They are the pretty ones, the powerful ones, who don Gucci sunglasses and carry Louis Vuitton bags, they clamor for glamour and their moments in print or on television. It is not women’s liberation or it is not women’s rights that matters to them. The movement has become an exclusionist force, a force that has zero impact on millions of women living in poverty or shame.
What have they done for the sex workers, who still live in shanties and contract AIDS because their customers would not wear condoms? What about the women in rural areas, who have to walk miles to get a pitcher of water? What about child marriages? What about dowry deaths? What about female infanticide that has taken such proportions that it is now feared that women will disappear from some communities? What about rape? What about domestic violence, outside and inside of marriage? What about incest? What about child molestation?
The feminist movement started for all the right reasons, but has degenerated into a restrictive movement obsessed with making non-issues national stories. And they do become, lapped by an ever-biased media that sustains itself on sensationalism. I remember quite a few incidents. And I am strictly talking about India here, though from my own perceptions of the U.S. media, it fares no better. The Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Bangalore, India, invited the ire of these feminists, who then marched and rallied and spoke on television. They objected to the commodification of women, threatened to stage dharnas if the swim-wear round was not taken off from the show. Then came the controversial video where the singer’s g-strings are seen. They march again and disrupt a show saying that the singer was promoting nudity and it would lead to rapes and objectification of women. Now, these are events, not processes. And being in the media for a short time has taught me that events make the headlines and processes…well who cares for them.
AIDS is big, and even bigger is tuberculosis, but nobody frets after those. Because they are not action-oriented news. In fact these are not news. What’s topical about them? These are routine affairs.
When I watched the clips in class the other day, I was intrigued. Sexual liberation of women is good and desired but is that all? Voting rights are needed, but is that an end in itself?
During my research for a paper that I wrote on media’s coverage of domestic violence in India, I came across very interesting clips and women too. Well-known women journalists said they did not chose to write about women’s issues because they were afraid of being branded as feminists. These are powerful women, some are editors of national dailies, yet they would not take up these matters and they would fear the branding. Women’s issues have become non-issues and that’s where the danger comes from. And on top of it, the fear about being branded. Why is feminism looked down upon?
I tried thinking about the term itself. And the automatic associations took it to different dimensions. The word is now related with man-haters, lesbians and manly women, who wear loose clothes, wear their hair short and rant about men. Also, it has come to mean a profession of women, who have been rejected by men and are thus against all men and have taken up the cause of women out of bitterness, not out of love for womankind or passion for fighting for women’s rights.
When women are starving or dying slowly, still selling their bodies, they don’t have time to think about equal opportunities, or feminism. The feminist movement has to restructure itself to focus on core issues that affect women’s living status and not just their representation.
Women journalists must make an effort to address these issues. Most cases of domestic violence are relegated to briefs columns or in obscure city crime sections. The society and media have come to treat these as routine events and not social evils. A dowry death makes headlines but seldom do columns or analysis follow the publication. The media has failed the women.
I come from a traditional patriarchical society, a society that venerates male hegemony. And if we don’t fight, no one else will. We have to redefine feminism and give voice to the vloiceless. We have to reform the media by removing its obsession with TOPICAL and make it relevant to the society. We have a lot to do.

terrorism...who defines it?

Look Into My Eyes

Look into my eyes
Tell me what ya see
U don’t see a damn thing
Cuz u can’t relate to me

U blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to u
I’m the persecuted one
U the red, white and blue

Each day u wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thankin’ God He let me rise

Ya worry ‘bout your education
And the bills u have to pay
I worry ‘bout my vulnerable life
And if I’ll survive another day

Ya biggest fear is getting a ticket
As ya cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that’s just left
Will turn around and come back

Yet do u know the truth of where ya money goes
Do u let the media deceive your mind
Is this a truth that nobody knows

Someone tell me

…See I’ve known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It’s the check point on my way to school

Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother

The bulldozers and the tanks
The gasses and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds

You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I’m terrorized in my own land
What, and I’m the terrorist

… So if I won’t be here tomorrow
It’s written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait- Outlandish

I came across the lyrics while searching for something on the net. It is so true and so sad. It is just how you look at it. Or how the media shapes your vision or distorts it that you don’t see the pain but only the threat. And then we discriminate.
Sometimes, I feel lost here. I feel sad when I keep saying the same thing in my classes and all I get is a blank look. It is like knocking on doors that perhaps will never open up. I feel frustrated at these times and I wonder how big is a task it is for the people form the Middle East to get themselves understood, to say their religion is not terrorism or they are normal people living in terror.
What is terrorism? The definition seems to be shifting depending on which side of the world you are. The media defines it for the west. It brands Muslims, makes it common knowledge that Muslims are arrogant people, who are violent and fanatics.
When I met the 18 journalists from the Middle East and Europe who came to Syracuse University as part of a program sponsored by the state department, I saw how eager they were to get themselves understood, to tell them about their lives, their views and explain they are not against Americans but the American government’s foreign policy.
Amer Jomah does not want to go back to his country. A journalist form Iraq, he told me how dangerous it is to live in Iraq, how difficult it is to go out and just have coffee at a café. You don’t do those things there, he told me. After sunset, there is nobody on the roads. Jomah does not see the situation improving there. When I offered to visit Iraq, he laughed. He thought I was mad. It is dangerous, he warned. And then a girl in my class said how Americans did not kill or kidnap journalists like the Iraqis and how her mom would kill her if she went to Iraq. I wondered if it is not us who had screwed up in Iraq and now are afraid of even going there. What about the people there? What is the media doing? Why is it silent? Is it not approving of the government’s policies or the people’s biases in its silence?
I wanted to change the world. Sometimes, I wonder if I can.
I belong to the ‘model minority’ and I have never dealt with a negative image myself. But I understand how it must feel when people call you names and link you to terrorists
I met the journalists at my religion class and then later at Sheraton hotel where they were staying. Marek Kubicki, a journalist from Poland, asked me to come. So, I went expecting others to be there too. But except for one girl from my class, there were no students there.
We started talking. Except for Kubicki and a journalist from Denmark, most felt United States was too good. I agreed but only partly. I told them about racism, Hill TV incident and they were shocked. I don’t know why I did it. May be to shatter the myth about United States. That reminded me of my own feeling when I came to United States. I had thought everything to be wonderful here. I could not believe that racism existed here. They could not either. I asked them, “What did you think…you will find rivers of milk and honey here? That everything is equal here.”
But that’s what the media has led them to believe. That America is great. That it is a land of opportunities, of freedom and of equality. The images show the good life in America, the great universities, the retail stores and the happy people. What they seldom show is the poverty here, the inequality here.

are newspapers dying???

When Janet Cooke told the story of ‘Jimmy’, an eight-year-old boy in a low-income neighborhood of Washington D.C., who was addicted to heroin, she thought she would get away with it. And she did. She even won the Pulitzer Prize for the moving story that appeared in Washington Post on Sept. 20, 1980.
It took months for the editors to find out that “Jimmy with velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms” did not exist. He was her creation. The Pulitzer was taken away from Cooke and she was sacked.
Examples of fabrication, plagiarism and using composite characters in journalism are many. Many have committed these and got away like Cooke did. And in an age, where Internet has empowered the readers with fact-checking abilities, it is imperative that journalists should be more careful than ever in order to retain and in some cases, regain the credibility.
“We have to bring humanity back into journalism,” said Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com at a panel discussion on ethics and journalism at The New York Society for Ethical Culture Wednesday.
Research shows that trust in the media has declined. People are beginning to trust a fellow citizen’s comments or reviews more than that of a journalist. And with online medium gaining ground and many of us choosing to click the mouse instead of buying newspapers, it has become very essential that we tread carefully and be thorough with our research and facts and establish that we don’t mess with facts, that we have the correct information. This means a lot of work but the age demands it.
When I visited my brother and his family in Detroit, I got up in the morning and went downstairs expecting to find the newspaper. I did not. Alter, I was told they did not subscribe to any. They preferred to read news online.
Many feel that newspapers will soon become extinct and that they already are an endangered species. With Internet changing the media landscape, it is increasingly becoming a challenging task for editors and reporters to retain their readership and maintain credibility, while transitioning to online format.
What this means is that newspapers, in order to survive and thrive, have to change form and change content. Breaking news is most suitable for the online media. What I can read the previous evening online, I would not want to see it on the front page of the newspaper that I buy in the morning because it is stale news. I believe the newspapers have to veer toward public service journalism and focus more on analytical and in-depth reporting and come out with solutions. This is just one of the examples.
There are many sides of the story now instead of just focusing on the two sides that we are supposed to as journalists. Any story can be told in a million ways and that’s precisely what the bloggers are doing. They give a million more perspectives. So, as creators of information, we have to learn more, read more and be receptive to a lot of different, maybe conflicting views. We have to be innovative. And the first step toward doing that is that we have to view blogging or the online medium as a collaborative force and not an adversary.
The managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, who was another panelist, said blogging and pod casting signifies the flowering of a new kind of journalism. When everyone can be a fact-checker, the responsibility to be accurate and truthful increases manifold, he added.
“The key to survival is how to reckon to all that,” he said. I could not agree more. As a student and a journalist, I am worried about my profession and I feel concerned when others tell me that they don’t trust us.
I believe and I agree with Jarvis that instead of newspapers getting frustrated with the whole deal of saving their papers, it is essential that media organizations redefine their relationship with the public. Citizen journalism, as some call it, has become a trend and people are now increasingly posting their comments, reports and even videos on the web. The Internet is vast and unlike the television industry, it is not regulated. Nor does it knows boundaries or is limited to countries.
I know at this moment my thoughts are coherent. I was talking with my roommate the other day and his comments made me think. He said in an age where small kids are hooked on to the Internet, the possibility of newspapers continuing in the future looks bleak. Surely, there was some truth in that statement but I don’t believe the newspapers will ever die. Because we survived the television and the radio, I am hopeful we will overcome this crisis too.
I still buy my newspaper, at least one. This way I hold on to my faith in my profession and I contribute to the survival.
We have seen so many changes already. With journalism becoming “functional journalism”, I am afraid the real issues will never surface and ethics are slowly being kept aside to keep the revenues. I am scared of an age where newspapers will completely forget their loyalty to the citizens and will only become a medium for propaganda and trade.
But I am hopeful. I chose this because of the passion I felt for writing and reading and I am sure there are enough who care. I urge all of us to think and be more responsible because it is crucial for us to continue.
Internet is a friend and let us all embrace it and work out a way for both to exist. Blogging is good but it lacks the discipline. Bloggers are not accountable. They can contradict us but as professionals, let us be the watchdogs and help people know the truth. Blogging can help with presenting various viewpoints and as a source of story ideas for us….but let us work toward a new future where newspapers are at every doorstep.

media and us...crime and its perpetrators

When we talk about crime and its coverage in the news media, we are mostly looking at manipulated truth, truth that is mostly distorted and edited to capture the most dramatic elements. Crime sells and that’s universal. I am not much familiar with news programs here but in India there has been an onslaught of late-night crime news broadcasts that cover everything from witchcraft to burglaries. The perpetrators shown are mostly people from the slums, the underprivileged ones. Here, they are mostly black or Hispanics. Crime has a face and it is mostly black or of a poor man. They are shown as threats to the society.
When I was in Baltimore for the winter break, I was advised not to be in the downtown area after 4 p.m. as there are mostly blacks there and they are criminals. Crime rate is pretty high in Baltimore and many people think it is because most blacks stay there and also because of poverty. It is a vicious circle. Blacks are criminals because they are poor and they are poor because they are stupid and arrogant, attributes of a black person, largely supported and maintained by the media.
I will talk about my country because that’s familiar ground. There is a group of people, mostly tribals, who were classified as criminal tribe by the British because the rulers thought these underprivileged people were intrinsically criminal and went so far as to brand them. After independence, the nomenclature changed but the category remained. And the media did not do much to address it. As I read Dilip D’Souza’s Branded by Law, a book that explores the tribe and its travails as a result of this branding, I felt betrayed by the media. We seek the truth as audience but do we ever get nothing but the truth. I guess never.
The book is a remarkable attempt by D’Souza to portray the deep-set prejudices in India against certain communities through his own interactions with the DNTs especially the ‘Pardhis’ and the ‘Sabars’ tribes. It is also a well-researched documentation of the historical and social context, which pushed the community to the periphery of civil justice and social life depriving them of the basic human rights.
He describes his personal encounters with the people once branded as criminal and now after being denotified, continue to live in the shadow of their derogatory branding.
In course of his examination of the various laws which were passed to for a repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act in 1952, after India became independent, not much has been done to uplift the DNTs. One incident that really set me thinking was the murder of Limbu Jayaram Bhosle ‘s husband (both Pardhis) because he happened to steal pomegranates to appease his pregnant wife’s desire. Is that what being criminal is? And does the media have no responsibility toward clearing misconceptions? By keeping quiet, media says a lot.
The most interesting thing is that D’Souza also draws a comparison between the bias against certain categories of people in the US and these tribes here. He talks about gypsies, blacks and other communities in various other countries who also suffer from distrust and prejudice and all the evils that come along with them. And that seems to be so true. I remember watching the promos of a certain program called the Cops or something like that and almost all the cops were white and the criminals were black, which goes on to prove media’s branding and its selective treatment of crime.
As a creator and distributor of information, I see an urgent and inherent need to be unbiased and reflect social or crime issues.
Curbs on the freedom of movement, grinding poverty and lack of opportunities have resulted in generating an attitude of frustration and anger in the DNTs in India and blacks or Hispanics in United States toward the society. As I understand, the social alienation and isolation of communities have largely been responsible to a great extent for civil strife and agitations.
The faith that people repose in the media is reflected by the account of Mithun Gongajya Shinde of Rajale village urging D’Souza to publish the photographs of the people of his community so that the people come to know about their conditions. Media has a tremendous task to fulfill in a country where the prejudices are so deeply ingrained.
The fact that the DNTs still continue to live in clusters and have not yet achieved absorption in the society is a mockery of democracy and the fundamental rights. Media acts as a watchdog of the society and the issue of DNTs has to be treated as a social disorder by them for a complete restoration of the lost dignity to these hapless people.
The socially oppressed must rise and it is the fourth estate’s obligation to bridge the gap and erase prejudices. The lack of political will to better conditions must be compensated by media’s will.

media and us...continued

“Muslims have hatred in their hearts,” said one Indian student who I met at a common friend’s house. We were all talking about religion and suddenly the conversation veered to Muslims and Pakistan. The guy then went on to convince me about his statement regarding Muslims. He argued that terrorists were mostly Muslims or in fact most Muslims were terrorists. He used the two words as synonyms.
The recent controversy regarding the Danish cartoons and subsequent conversations made me think. I am no spokesperson for Islam. But it made me uncomfortable to see a few of my classmates say that Muslims are arrogant and the Danish paper was just exercising its freedom of expression. They have problems with the reaction that has Muslims all over the world burning embassies, protesting and issuing fatwas. I have a problem with that too. But they do not understand or consciously fail to understand that Muslims are a set of people and not just violent terrorists.
What is the freedom that we are talking about? The media images of Muslims are almost always negative, a bunch of crazy fanatics out there to take on the western world. Why can’t the media be more responsible? Why can’t they be fair? Almost all the initial reports that I read in the papers or the internet had no moderate Muslim speaking or expressing his views. The views were extremist and I feel the newspaper, and I am talking about the U.S. media, had an agenda, to defend what the Danish paper did. What is the justification for publishing those cartoons? Just to show that WE CAN DO IT or we are the champions of freedom of expression. Well then, that’s their expression and the whole world does not go by the western world’s liberal views. They are an entity and we need to respect that.
Why do we attribute arrogance and anger as being characteristic or defining features of a community? How much of effort do we make to understand and be tolerant of those of other faith and regard them as individuals? And should we not do it considering the present situations?
I am a First Amendment and freedom of speech and expression person but I think one must not be insensitive and hurt anyone’s religious sentiments. Religion is dear to people. And a lack of understanding of other religions or groups can lead to negative stereotypes that can in turn create fierce group loyalties. When people think there identity is under threat or their background is misunderstood, they start becoming a closed group. This is what the world at present is dealing with in case of Muslims. They are branding them and creating a stereotype, a negative one.
And we talk about white and black. That’s important. But I think it is not only about color now. There is a different kind of racism, something that is orchestrated and will have more serious ramifications if the media does not get its act together. Blacks were portrayed as evil or bad, but Mulsims are being shown as terrorists. Who is fighting for them here? That’s something for us to think about.
Section 2

entries - media and us...

When my teacher in high school called me a lesbian just because I was a fan of this basketball player in school who happened to be a girl, I did not even know what it meant. Homosexuality was a subject that nobody talked about or even hinted at. This was in 8th grade. So I went back home and looked up the meaning in a dictionary.
That was my introduction to sexuality and its variations. It was not just man and woman who could be ‘happy ever after’ like how I was conditioned to believe. I knew eunuchs existed. I had seen them dancing and roaming around in trains or on busy roads clapping their hands at male commuters and demanding money. The failure to comply meant that they would lift their skirts and flash. I was always curious about them. The media never had anything on them. They did not exist for them but I saw them everyday on my way to school, to play or to work.
So I researched and found they were intersex people, born with both sex organs. I was always intrigued by their physical features. They looked like men but had breasts and talked and behaved like women. They did not exist for the government where any job application required one to specify whether one was a male or a female. The in-betweens had no option to click. They could not get jobs. They were reduced to begging and dancing on the streets and entering prostitution. The media ignored them. And it annoyed me. They were people and isn’t the media supposed to give voice to the voiceless.
All through my time in India, in Mumbai and Delhi, I never came across anyone who was gay or lesbian. Maybe some of them were, but they were not out. I read all these reports about boys sodomizing other boys in school toilets and I read about this lone activist Ashok Rao Kavi who was fighting for gay rights in India.
Having sex with someone from one’s own sex is a punishable offence in India and maybe that’s one reason why people are afraid to come out of closets. As I became part of the media, I came to know many of these people. And I started to understand the complexities of queer representation in the media.
Fire was the film that brought the issue to the forefront. Made by a woman director considered very arty and a champion of parallel cinema, Deepa Mehta, the film is about two women married to two brothers, who indulge in lesbian sex because their husbands do not have time for them. The film disturbed me. Something was wrong.
And a few years later, I realized what was wrong with the film. It showed the women turn lesbian after they were shunned by their husbands. So, the film was not about women loving each other at all. It was a story of rejection and degradation of women who are unsatisfied and turn to each other to fulfill their sexual needs only after they are rejected by their male counterparts.
Then, as I was starting to comprehend media messages, came another film Girlfriend. The promos of the film had two girls making out and it was erotic enough to attract viewers. I went to watch the film, intrigued by the boldness of this director to touch a subject that is so forbidden. The film at best was outrageous. The lesbian character was portrayed as villainous who was trying to lay her hands on her straight roommate who was in a relationship. She was a dark character, trying to kill the other girl’s boyfriend in a fit of jealousy. In a way the film looked down upon lesbians as vamps and straight girls as victims and men as their saviors enforcing the stereotypes. The lesbian character was butch lesbian, while the straight one was a demure, pretty and innocent damsel in distress. The savior of course was a macho guy.
The film also was rejected by the public who were not ready for stark lesbian portrayals. Girlfriend was a mainstream commercial cinema. The actresses later apologized to have acted in a movie that had something to do with lesbians and said it was a fault and they respected the culture and would not do such films again.
When I came to United States for my master’s in journalism, I made a lot of gay friends. But I did not come across any lesbians or bisexuals. I took up the LGBT issues as my beat for my advanced reporting class in order to learn more about the community and the problems it was facing. My first story was on Vatican banning gay priests. I was shocked to see how even in America, sexuality was pre-defined. People did not have a choice and gay rights was an issue here too. Being gay is also viewed as being a pedophile by the Catholic church.
I am a straight ally and I am a member of various gay clubs on campus. A friend saw my name in one of the gay clubs on facebook and asked me why was I in Gay At SU, the gay group. This was interesting. It is judging and compartmentalizing people based on their preferences or views.
The media representations are also mostly stereotypical. Will & Grace is one show I am familiar with. The gay characters are almost always impeccably dressed with a fine taste in arts and music. They are effeminate and metrosexual males who spend too much time on their looks and have a lot of money. They are also the best friends for the female lead character.
But my friend Roger Batson was not at all like this. He shopped at Walmart, T.J. Maxx and did not frequent operas or went to theatres. He does not flutter his eyes when he sees an attractive guy. He is just like any other guy. But this is not what the media portrays.
Damon Romine of GLAD told me the media does this to create easy reference points for the audience. He said it is dangerous because when gay people do not see themselves reflected in the media, they think something is wrong and this delays their coming out process. Sometimes, it forces them to be in the closet all their lives.
In Indian films lately we are seeing more of gay characters but they are not fully developed characters. They are either there to provide a comic relief or are there to be the actress’ best friend. Another film that comes to my mind is Monster. Charlize Theron enacted a lesbian character but though the film deserves kudos for dealing with such a subject, the portrayal of the character was very stereotypical and it showed Theron as a butch lesbian.
And as per the discussion in class, there are no bisexuals or transgender characters on television. I agree. During the fall semester, I also had a chance to meet with Frances Fischer, a transgender woman. She was in the process of transitioning and lost her job. At 52, she was struggling to get a job and at the time I met her she was cleaning tables to earn a living and was on public assistance. As I sat with her in the food court at the mall, I saw several people look at us with interest. They were amused. Why can’t we treat people as humans and respect the choices they make in their lives regarding their sexuality?
Most gay organizations do not include transgender people. That leaves the transgender people in a bad situation. I thought the gay community will understand their pain and suffering since they are experiencing the same isolation and rejection. But they don’t.
Bisexuals are another set of people who are finding it difficult to explain to others that their sexual inclination toward both sexes is not acquired. It comes natural to them. I have many bisexual friends and over so many cups of coffee I have tried to understand them and feel their difficulties in hiding or selectively revealing to others their true selves lest they are misunderstood.
Such is the image that media presents that many people think that gays and lesbians are desperate and are terrified of associating with them. When I introduced one of my straight friends to my gay friend, he confessed he had always been scared of entering gay bars or hanging out with gay people because he thought they would hit on him.

i meet frances again...and i write a final piece

For 53 years Frances Mary Fischer wore the wrong shoe in her feet. That’s what she refers to as being a man for almost five decades. It was like living in agony.
“When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
For Fischer, a transgender woman, taking a decision to transition was tough. She waited for her two children to grow up. “I waited till my kids were out. Now is the time for me to blossom,” she said. “The pain of remaining in the bud is more than the pain of blossoming. I feel better now. I don’t hate what I see in the mirror.”
For years Fischer had her own wardrobe, hidden away. She would dress as a woman once in a while and go out. But except for those stolen moments, she lived in the disguise of a father, a husband and a man.
But expression came at a cost. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life. She lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She blames it on discrimination against transgender people. She cleaned tables, ate onion soup for days but did not give up. Nor did she ever lose her faith.
“It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme,” she said when I met her last year. At the time she had no job and no money to pay her rent.
Born into a Catholic family in Iowa Falls in 1952, Fischer was the fourth child of Esther Mae Polles. Polles had seven children. Fischer was right in the middle, the fourth child. And so was his sex. It lied somewhere between the male and the female. “I always had a nurturing instinct. It was like having a maternal instinct,” she said.
Even as a child, then known as Francis Mark Fischer, she loved to play with dolls and once traded her bicycle for a neighbor’s doll. But her family never suspected anything except for perhaps her mother, who she said, pushed her toward priesthood because she thought it was the best way out.
“Maybe my mother knew. Maybe she pushed me toward priesthood because she knew I did not feel like a man,” she said. “My birth was fraught with little miracles. The umbilical chord was around my neck. I could have died. At 3 I had been run over by a car. It literally crushed my mid-section. It made me a eunuch. My mother considered it a sign,” she said.
By 1955 she had been indoctrinated that she was chosen to be a priest. Fischer and her younger brother Jerry both became altar boys when they were young. Their father, a military personnel, imposed religion on the family. All children were to attend services at the church, volunteer for any help that the church needed and religiously pray.
As a young child Francis was deeply attracted to religion. As an altar boy, he loved wearing cassocks. She said it was because it resembled woman’s clothing. “I did not identify with the soldier, the football player and wrestler…not with the man in charge,” she said.
Little Francis did not know what being transgender meant. But he wondered why he did not have a vagina or why he was not like his sisters. “I was desperately seeking why I am not like my sisters. I wanted to play with the girls,” she said. After the accident, young Fischer asked the doctor why he did not have a vagina. “I was questioning my very nature since I first came into my being,” she said.
At home, he was tormented. The siblings used to sing ‘Franky’s going crazy…’. Franky, as they called him, stomped, kicked and cried but they would not stop.
Franky did get crazy after all, as her brother Jerry Fischer called it. She became the woman she had always wanted to be. Years after Fischer’s family came to know about her being transgender, her brother is still struggling with the idea of his big brother becoming a woman. Jerry still falters between ‘he’ and ‘she’, while referring to his brother, who is now a woman. He has to remind himself that the brother who was an altar boy like him and who gave him his first condom is no longer a man. He instantly corrects himself if he calls Frances a he. But he does it again.
“To me it is very strange. I did not see Frank as being transgender,” he said. “He was a brother, a wrestler, the guy who had helmets and grenades…”
When Jerry met Fischer at his father’s funeral last year, he said he did not feel any difference. But the change in the physical appearance was difficult to take in.
“I am trying to figure out what the heck. She is my brother. I just ask why,” he said.
In 1993 Fischer’s mother died. At her funeral, he did not give any indication. But later on everyone started noticing things about Fischer. At family reunions relatives noticed Fischer had painted nails or no hair on her arms. Some even suspected she wore a bra inside her shirt. But no one ever thought Fischer would transition so completely.
Her brother finally realized he had one more sister when Fischer’s ex-wife Diane Fischer sent the newspaper cutting of an article that was published in Syracuse Post-Standard about Fischer’s struggle as a transgender woman.
“He used to have a big Afro in those days. But everyone had. My big question is why,” said Jerry, who lives in Iowa Falls. “Probably he hung around with the wrong crowd. We don’t have anything that flaming here.”
All the rejection and the shock in people’s eyes have only strengthened Fischer’s faith in god. A Born Again Christian, Fischer gave up her brotherhood vows when she thought the Roman Catholic Church was exclusive in its vision.
“I have had a communication early on in life. I was born again early,” she said.
Doubts about the Roman Catholic Church began to disturb Fischer just before she became a priest. She read the scriptures, generic parchments and compared the teachings of the Church and God. At the time she had been following the church’s teachings blindly, she said.
“Christ is the high priest between men and God, not the priests,” she said. “At the point when I realized this I said I can no longer be a Roman Catholic priest because this is not what God said,” she said.
Fischer became disenchanted. With a doctorate in religion, Fischer’s questioning of the Roman Catholic belief also made her write her thesis on fallacies of the Catholic Church. “Here people put a checklist. If I go to the church once a week, I will be a good person,” she said. “The dichotomy was there. A man with man was banned. Deuteronomy 23 of the Bible says a man should not put on what pertains to a woman.”
She went to the archbishop of Dubuque and asked him what to do. “I didn’t know what I wanted,” she said. That’s the time Fischer met Diane. She used to sing in the choir. She proposed and they got married. When their first child David died, both moved to Syracuse to be with Diane’s family. They got divorced in 2001 and now Fischer lives with Franky, a cross-dresser.
The cross hung from a gold chain in her neck. It was difficult to miss. Except for her voice that is still deep and sounds like that of a male’s voice, Fischer looked like a woman. Dressed in a light pink shirt and beige pants she did not attract much attention at the Onondaga Library compared to the time last fall when I met her at the Carousel Center. People stared at her confused by her voice and her persona.
Fischer’s eyes had a dreamy look when she spoke about religion. The voice was distant. But the cross remained intact in her hands. She kept touching it as if in reassurance, while she talked about herself. “I believe I am the product of Satanic influence. God would not want to put somebody in this torment,” she said. “God allowed Satan to mess with me. But that made me strong. I would not have become the person I am. All the evil is in the world. It is allowed by God. My adapting my body from male to female to match my identity is my change. I am evil.”
She attends Believers’ Chapel in Cicero that welcomes members of LGBT community but not without condition. Frank Porter, assistant pastor, said these people are welcome only if they are willing to give up their lifestyle. He did not know Fischer personally but said that Christ did not approve of LGBT lifestyles.
But Fischer is unshaken. Fischer considers herself asexual. Her transition has nothing to do with sex or the desire for it. “It has to do with identification. Christ healed- that’s my nature too. It is an awkward feeling to not fit. Even after 1,000 surgeries, I will still not fit in. God is pro-choice. He wants you to live.”
Her faith is also what strikes her friends. Faye Brooks, Fischer’s friend, met Fischer at the Expressing Our Nature, a support group’s meeting. He has known her for around 3 years. “She is very religious…now more than ever. Her state is more of an amplifier for her,” he said.
He said her faith also makes her trust people easily. “She is very honest. A giving and caring person…almost to the point of putting herself at risk.”
Brooks related how once when Fischer had gone overseas, she had let one of the tenants live in her house. The tenant had been having some problem with finances and nowhere to live. “She stole her things and even damaged the house,” he said.
Friends have kept her company and have provided her with shelter when she needed it. Her boyfriend Franky took over the lease of her apartment at 110 2nd North St. in April because Fischer was not in a position to pay her rent. Also, Franky underwent an operation and had difficulty in climbing the stairs to his third floor apartment. Franky is on permanent disability security and gets around $7,000 a year from the government. The money is not enough for both but they manage. Sometimes they get food from Rescue Mission or Peace Corps, at other times friends bring over food to share.
The one-bedroom apartment had boxes and clothes lying everywhere. The small kitchen table had been pushed against the wall to make space for Franky’s stuff. He recently moved all his things here. Both had been cooking a dinner of split pea soup and patties when I arrived.
Fischer and Franky met last year at EON’s meeting. “We have a strong relationship. Our faith in the lord is a big thing.”
Fischer had been waiting for a bus when Franky first talked to her. “I asked her if she could teach me computers,” he said. It was around August last year that Franky brought her computer over to Fischer’s house and stayed on.
“She did not know if I stayed for the computer or her,” she said. “We just stuck together after we met. It developed over the months.”
Franky underwent surgeries for back and neck and these rendered him helpless. This is when Fischer took over. She nursed him. “After Thanksgiving he literally became a cripple. He had trouble,” she said.
“She has been a tremendous help in getting my body back together. I think the lord brought together to take care of each other. It is not a legal connection but a familiar connection,” he said. He called Fischer to ask what she thought their relationship was. Words like co-dependence, couple and friendship were thrown in.
“We just have fun. If we both had jobs, we would do more stuff,” he said.
In a denim skirt and a powder blue top, Fischer looked the woman she aspired all her life to be. Franky’s lip stretched into a smile when he described Fischer. “I think she is pretty. I don’t think of her as any other way than a woman. I give her that respect,” he said. “I don’t know what to do without her. If I had stayed there I would have been dead.”
Besides Franky, Julia Dunn is a friend Fischer knows understands her. Dunn and Fischer grew up together in Iowa Falls, where Dunn still lives. Fischer had been preparing for priesthood and Dunn saw nothing that indicated Fischer felt like a woman.
“She wrestled in high school. She was no macho guy, just a regular guy. She would have made a good priest,” she said.
For 34 years they had not met. But when Dunn received a voice mail from her brother that Fischer was coming for her father’s funeral, she decided to go. She had been looking for her childhood friend.
“We were buddies. I could say anything to her. Franky was a real good person,” she said.
When Dunn saw her, she said found the same friend I could laugh with. “The only thing that had changed was her sex,” she said. “I found my friend.” When Fischer went to Iowa Falls last year, she stayed with Dunn. And then the conversations flowed and the obvious questions followed.
“I asked her why she did it,” she said. “I have no problem with it. I wish people could give these people a break. Franky is a beautiful woman. I love my Franky.”
Such people have made life a little easier for Fischer, who is still trying to get a job. She has sent out at least 1,100 applications so far, she said.
“My voice gives me away. They don’t want me to use the same restroom,” she said talking about the difficulties in getting a job.
For now both Franky and Fischer are surviving on food stamps and security money. They pray together before every meal.
“We would get where we want to. The lord will carry us through this,” said Franky, while Fischer put another tray of patties in the oven.

Islamic funerals - on the difficulty of burying their dead...

On a frigid Saturday afternoon when the winds were downright piercing, 11 men and women braved the cold to attend a seminar on how to wash and shroud a dead body the Islamic way.
“The prophet directed us to do this. It is an obligation for us. If the relatives can’t do it, the community has to do it,” said Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, director of the Islamic Society of Central New York, to the volunteers. “If nobody does it, the whole community is sinful.”
Three women and eight men sat attentively, listening to Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed, who explained why washing and shrouding was a community affair in Islam and more so in a country like the United States where most of the Muslim population consists of converts and first-generation immigrants, who do not know how to conduct the burial rituals in the Sunnah way. The Sunnah is a religious literary source based on Prophet Mohamed’s way of life and his teachings on how to live in a manner befitting a follower of Islam.
Since mortuaries and cemeteries are not familiar with Muslim practices, it is left to such organizations to create awareness of their customs in non-Muslim communities in secular societies. Thus, burials are part of a mosque’s community service program here. These help out with arranging and attending the funerals and conducting essential rituals required by the religion that are unique to the minority community.
Dr. Sayyid Sayeed, secretary general of Islamic Society of North America said most mosques in the United States offered such services. There is a need for such services here and it is also an Islamic requirement, he said.
“The families are split here. Some of them are overseas. We are not in a traditional society where these are familiar,” he said. In the Middle East and other South Asian countries, these burials are essentially a family affair.
Also, it is easy on the family that has experienced a death, said Juan E. Campo, associate professor of religious studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
“They might not want to do it themselves as they are aggrieved. It helps to have someone do it,” he said.
According to Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University, the prospect of reward also makes people volunteer to perform the rituals in the Muslim community, he said.
“Those who take part will get a reward. It is something very positive to be involved in a funeral process. We are not an individualistic community. If people do not have the community at such times, they are pitied,” he said referring to burials in Lebanon and other such countries.
Imam Taqiuddin Ahmed said Allah rewards those who come forward to render their services in such times.
“We do not know what the reward or sabab is. But there is something definitely,” he said.
Osameh Alwahaidy, who has been with the mosque since 1986 and volunteers to do washing and shrouding, said he does it because Allah will reward him. “Everyone tries to be righteous. We will get to jannat (heaven),” he said. The Islamic Society of Central New York, 925 Comstock Ave., has been helping the community with burials for 15 years.
There are five parts of an Islamic burial. The first part is physically cleansing the body, which is also part of Shari’ah. Around four volunteers are needed to do this. The next step is to shroud the body in kafan, plain white cloth, so that the private parts are not visible. The process is called takfeen. The third part consists in conducting the funeral prayer, which is led by the Imam. The next part is the burial itself. And lastly, the community members gather to pray for the forgiveness of the deceased. Muslims do not embalm the body. They wash it and then wrap it in clean white sheets called the kafan. Usually, three sheets are required to cover a man’s body and five are needed for a woman. The mosque keeps these sheets so that they are readily available.
The mosque keeps a list of volunteers to contact in case of a death, who then go to the funeral home to conduct the washing and shrouding rituals. Though six women had signed up for the seminar, only three were present. But more women joined them later. This was the first time the mosque was holding a seminar to train and educate volunteers about the funeral rituals. Earlier, volunteers would train others who wished to offer their services.
While Ahmed demonstrated the procedure, the others took notes. The volunteers have to be gentle and modest and handle the body with respect and keep it covered at all times, Ahmed said.
“It is needed here because we have so many converts, whose families do not know what procedure to follow in case of death,” said Ahmed.
However, the very fact that a large part of the Muslim population here is composed of converts brings many issues in its wake. Alwahaidy said sometimes the family that has not accepted Islam may have objections with the type of burial.
“Around 15 years ago we had a case. The son wanted the mother’s body to be cremated instead of an Islamic burial. The mother was a convert. We could not do anything,” he said.
Now the mosque has an Islamic will that converts can sign. The Islamic burial is part of the will, said Mir Hussainni, secretary of the Islamic Society. However, the will is not mandatory.
Danya Wellman, who converted to Islam 14 years ago, said that in Muslim countries the ritual was performed culturally, while here it is done Islamically. Only Muslims can wash and shroud a Muslim’s body and that’s why volunteers were needed. She said the thought that no stranger will handle her body when she died was good.
“I know my Muslim sisters will treat my body with respect. My own daughter will not do it. She won’t be able to,” she said.
Wellman volunteers to do washing and shrouding and has trained several other women. Women can only wash women’s bodies except in the case of the spouse. The family can participate but the rituals must be performed with great care as this is something that Allah has asked us to do and we can’t be wrong, she said.
“We wash and shroud the same way the Jews do it,” she said explaining the procedure.
Since the law here is different from that in South Asia or the Middle East, where the family takes care of the procedures, local mosques also assume the role of a facilitator.
The dead body in the United States is collected by the funeral homes and they contact the local mosque, which then sends volunteers to perform the washing and shrouding of the body. The body is then brought to the mosque where the janazah or the funeral prayer is said by the Imam and it is then taken to the cemetery to be buried. The mosques often have their own cemeteries or have a separate space marked for the Muslims in a cemetery. The body is put in a casket and lowered in the grave. Islam does not allow caskets but the law in New York and most states here requires the use of a casket for safety purposes. This also makes it expensive. A casket costs between $700 and $20,000 depending upon the quality and decoration.
“We have been directed by scholars and the prophet to follow the law of the country that we reside in. So, we use the caskets, though it is not right,” Ahmed said. “Many states with large Muslim population have successfully asked the state government to let them bury the body without a casket or coffin, but in New York we are not allowed.”
“The Muslim community here has decided to submit to the civil laws and the safety and sanitary laws,” said Campo, associate professor of religious studies.
States such as California do not require caskets, said Dr. Ayoub. However, in states where it is required by law, the caskets should be the most unassuming and the cheapest available because Islam prohibits any ostentation, he said.
A typical burial may cost anything between $2,000 to 3,000. The Islamic Society has already bought land in the local cemetery and people pay around $600 to the mosque for the grave, which goes to the graveyard fund. The mosque is planning on buying another plot as the one at Comstock Avenue does not have much space left, said Ahmed. It helps people who can’t afford to pay for the burials.
“We helped some of the refugees from Bosnia and Somalia with the burial as also some Muslim families here who could not bear the expenses,” said Hussainni of the Islamic Society. The mosque also helps non-Muslims if they approach them for burials.
Fudil Selmoune, the assistant Imam of the Islamic Society said it was a costly affair to bury people here.
“The cost it too much compared to our country where there are no expenses for digging. It is almost free. We just have to buy the cloth, which does not cost more than a dollar or two in my country” said Selmoune, who is from Algeria and joined the mosque in 2003. That makes the mosque’s role more important.
Various mosques in United States have licenses to bury the dead. So, the burying can take place the same day as preferred by Muslims. But in smaller cities, where the mosques have arrangements with the funeral homes, it may take days to bury the body.
Alwahaidy said it was particularly difficult if a person died on Friday and they had to wait till Monday when the funeral homes opened in order to bury the body.
“Sometimes, we have to wait for the death certificate. That delays the process. We have arrangements with the funeral homes that call the mosque when someone dies but sometimes things get delayed,” he said. “In Jordan things are simple. We don’t have to go to the hospitals. There are no funeral homes.”

how media distorts images and perceptions....gay is not effiminate

Roger Batson, black and openly gay, shops at T.J. Maxx, Wal-Mart and Marshall's and looks for good deals on almost everything. Calvin Klein and Armani are not what he can afford. He drives an old car that he bought on e-Bay for $1,250 and not a Jaguar. And he is not flamboyant or effeminate, does not cross his legs and sits primly or flutters his eyelids when he sees an attractive guy.
But Batson and his lifestyle are not what the media represents about the LGBT community. Most often gay people are portrayed by the media as white, affluent and flamboyant, while lesbians are either sexy women or masculine women commonly referred to as butch lesbians.
"Stereotypes exist in real life, so stereotypes also exist in the media because they are easy reference points when writers need to immediately make the audience understand that this is a gay character," said Damon Romine, entertainment media director, GLAAD. "Of course, stereotypes perpetuate more stereotypes, and the danger is that there is a risk that some people may come to believe that stereotypes represent all reality,"
Media stereotypes concern gay rights activists and LGBT people who think it results in prejudice and further isolate a community that is still struggling to get into the public forum.
"Stereotypes are there to oppress people. Gangsters, flaming gay guys, slutty women are common stereotypes. Designers use suggestive gay and lesbian images to sell their products. We are the second-largest spenders after the black community with a purchasing power of $600 billion a year and that's what makes us attractive targets," said Amit Taneja, assistant director of the Syracuse University LGBT Resource Center at 750 Ostrom Ave.
Some people say the real problem is that these images of gay people with lots of disposable income and a sense of style are far removed from reality. And though Batson said that some gay people are effeminate or rich, that's not only what they are all about.
The under-representation of LGBT people of color on television or in advertisements is another issue that bothers Batson and Taneja, an Indian who migrated to Canada around 15 years ago.
"We have no role models and this is frustrating. People of color who are also part of the LGBT community don't see themselves in the media. They have no positive images when they come out. Gay youth is very impressionable and this makes it difficult for them to come out and not see people like us out there," said Batson, 28, who is also a graduate journalism student at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Romine said stereotypes worried him too when he was a kid.
"When I was growing up in the '70s, there was a show on television called "Soap." This show starred Billy Crystal as a gay man who sometimes dressed as a woman and considered having sex reassignment surgery," he said. "The character was played as pretty campy and often as the butt of the joke. He was also the only gay character on television. The only one. So if you're a kid who realizes he's different and sees this as the only gay representation on television, you're going to worry that this is what you have to look forward to as an adult."
Some examples of common media stereotypes today are Jack on Will & Grace who is sassy and flamboyant, Adam, the quirky Filipino American on Half & Half, acid-tongued Neil in Twins, and the best friend Josh who is black on Emily's Reasons Why Not.?
Adrea Jaehnig, director of LGBT Resource Center, thinks mainstream media simplifies the lives of LGBT people for a joke. It is problematic because it does not reflect the reality, she said.
"Either our lives are funny or they are tragic. It is an incredibly narrow perspective on LGBT people. The humanity is often overlooked and it is very scary because these can have psychological effect on people and lead to violence," she said.
Andrew Augeri, coordinator of the LGBT center, feels that these negative and unrealistic portrayals are leading to people living a closeted life.
"This white image does not permit images of people of color, people of varying
abilities, body types, etc. to have airtime. And that invisibility of
people can prohibit or prolong the coming out process for someone who
doesn't see themselves represented in media outlets," he said.
GLAAD estimates that LGBT people represent only around 2 percent of the characters on television. The 2005 report finds that faces on network scripted shows continue to be predominantly white at 76%. African Americans make up 14% of the characterizations, Latina/os 6%, Asian Pacific Islanders represent 3%, with less than 1% making up other ethnicities.
Besides, another issue that is a product of the media portrayal is the near invisibility of bisexual and transgender people on television or in advertisements, said Augeri.
"I think this affluent, white male easily taints the view of who queer people are, to the extent that the bisexual and transgender communities rarely get spotlights into the issues and voices important to their lives," he said.
"One of the most interesting ironies of the LGBT media (because it does this as quickly as the mainstream media) is The Advocate. Its tagline is "the national
gay and lesbian magazine" meaning bisexual and transgender people are
not part of its reach despite countless articles on this segment of the
community. There is a lot of progressive work to do to really
understand who audiences are and what is "interesting" to people," he added.
But Jaehnig is hopeful and sees limited visibility as a good sign that will lead to discussions in the public space and thus lead to awareness.
"Today you see LGBT people on television, there are articles regularly written on them. It is an interesting development. We have seen the effect of silence, we now have to see what effect dialogue has," she said.
Brian Stout, president of OutRage, a campus-wide organization for LGBT people at Syracuse University, said it is just not the medium that contributes to stereotyping.
"It is one thing to put the image out there and another to buy into those images. I think that straight people need to recognize that all LGBT people are not what the media portrays. They need to rethink. Our lives are unfortunately not that glamorous. Everyone has multiple extensions to them," he said.
Another image that most often affect relationships between straight men and gay people is that the latter are promiscuous and do not believe in committed relationships.
Anand K. Jain, a graduate student at Maxwell School, Syracuse University, said after he met Batson, he felt he had misjudged gay people.
"I would hang out with you Roger. I mean it," he said to Batson at a common friend's house.
Jain always thought that gay people were all about sex and he dreaded going to gay bars in case he got hit on by people there.
Joe Carpenter, editor of All For One, a LGBT newsletter, and former editor of The Pink Paper, said it is difficult to propose a solution to the issue of stereotyping.
"When I was younger, it (stereotyping) angered me. Now I have become immune to it," he said. "But people should challenge these images when they see them. And gay people should go out and live their lives. This will show them as real people to others."
Romine feels that things are changing for the better and there are shows where LGBT characters are shown as leading normal lives. And this is especially true of the cable television, he said.
"Cable and reality television continue to present more diverse and realistic portrayals of the LGBT community, as well as gay and lesbian people of color. These characters face real-life issues concerning our community, such as marriage, parenting, workplace discrimination and religion," he said. "This leads to richer, more diverse representations - the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way."

the struggles, the hopes - when i met mike, a gay activist and hair stylist

It is that time again for Michael DeSalvo of Friends of Dorothy. A time to say final goodbye to his guest of one year who is suffering from HIV/AIDS and will not live beyond a few weeks according to doctors at University Hospital.
DeSalvo and Nick Orth, his partner of 16 years, have been taking in hospice patients as their guests for over 14 years, caring for them and making them part of their family. Those who come to their house at 212 Wayne St. are often fatally ill. Some have no where to go. A few are unloved and unwanted.
But they are always welcome at Friends of Dorothy - A Catholic Worker House.
“We provide a home for them, cook for them. Our guests are part of our family,” said DeSalvo. “Some move on, others pass away.”
In these 14 years, the couple has seen at least 30 of their guests die.
“It is an intense time. We become attached. When you wipe their ass, hold their head when they are puking, dress them, it is so intimate. Sometimes, I feel we know them more than their families do. And when they die, it is upsetting,” said DeSalvo who is a hairstylist and owns Hairnaoir, a beauty salon, at the intersection of Green and Catherine streets. When the condition of the guest becomes bad, DeSalvo cancels his appointments to be with him.
So while DeSalvo works at the salon, Orth stays at home to take care of the guest and run errands.
“He is our house husband,” said DeSalvo, 47, who met Orth at a demonstration at Syracuse in1989.
“It was love at first sight. He walked by and I said ‘who’s that?’,” he said.
At the time DeSalvo was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife of 13 years and Orth was living in Washington D.C.
DeSalvo, openly gay, said he always knew he was attracted to men but he was confused.
“I did not fit in the gay community. And I liked women too. May be I felt like that because of the pressures of the culture. But I am more gay than straight,” said DeSalvo who is now divorced. He has two step children.
For Orth too it was love at first sight. He had been in relationships before but they did not last. But with DeSalvo it was different. Orth moved to Syracuse in 1992 and together they started their home. He never felt like a marriage wrecker, said Orth, 42.
“I did not feel bad about his divorce. Never felt that because of me he lost something good. His marriage was bad and it was not working,” said Orth who is an artist and a carpenter.
Though DeSalvo and his partner have been together for a long time, they have not married.
“I am committed to him (Orth). I don’t believe in marriages,” he said adding that this is his way of showing to the world that being gay is not only about sex, it is about relationships too.
They do not have any children and Orth said DeSalvo jokes with his god-children that he expected them to take care of him when he grew old.
DeSalvo, an Italian, was born and brought up in Syracuse. He went to Henninger High School and after finishing high school went on to do courses in interior designing and beauty. He did the interiors of his salon, which he bought around two years ago. It has ochre yellow walls and maroon and dark brown furniture and little angels hanging from the ceilings.
“They look cool. One of my professors presented them to me,” he said.
The earnings from the salon pay for the house expenses. DeSalvo works with the University Hospital that refers patients to them. The couple does not have to worry about medical bills, which are usually taken care of by Medicaid. DeSalvo was taught how to take care of patients by nurses.
“We choose people who have the least amount of support. We keep one or two guests at a time so that we can give them proper care,” he said.
Things are not always easy for the couple. They have had bad times. Money has always been a problem.
“It is hard. When we first started, we had even less. We have always lived on a shoestring budget. I still don’t have health insurance because it costs money and we can’t afford it,” said Orth who does not work because someone is needed at home to take care of the guest.
But they have been working toward fund-raising by organizing and hosting dinners on Sundays and every first Wednesday of the month.
“Our friends have been generous with donations,” said DeSalvo who does not get any funding from the government nor does he want any.
“I like our autonomous status. I don’t have to worry about filling beds,” he said.
They have also been publishing a newsletter called Friends of Dorothy since 2003 to inform their donors and supporters about their work. Both DeSalvo and Orth write for the letter , which they design and publish themselves.
The Catholic Worker Movement started in the 1930s by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin inspired the duo to provide hospitality to the needy.
“This is our way of observing our religion. When everything collapses, someone needs to be working to pick up the pieces and this is what we do,” DeSalvo said.
Hope, who has been a guest at Friends of Dorothy, and now helps DeSalvo and Orth in their work, said if it were not for them, she would have died in a nursing home.
“I had AIDS and I stayed with them for seven months. They are my adopted parents. They cared for me better than my father. I consider them as angels that God put in my path. I feel blessed. They are now the constant in my life,” she said.
Hope came to stay at DeSalvo’s home around eight years ago and said she was very ill at the time. The doctors said she just had two more weeks left. And she owes her survival to the two men.
His customers love him. Kelly Donahue who came to get her hair cut, said she just loved DeSalvo for what he did for the community.
“He is very special for what he does outside his work. He is my Michael,” she said.
Donahue has been coming to Hairanoir for nine years.
Tom Burbank, who works at the salon, said he loved working with DeSalvo and appreciates his community work .
“I respect him immensely. There is a huge need for this kind of work,” he said.
DeSalvo has been involved with community service for a long time. He used to be a visitor at jails and an HIV positive prisoner inspired him to work with HIV/AIDS patients, he said.
The home is not part of the Catholic Church. And though he does not agree with many of beliefs of the church, DeSalvo still keeps his faith and attends mass at times.
“I call my work ‘peace politics’. Communion to me is having dinner with my guests. I don’t agree with the church but I am not going to let them drive me out. It is sad when people give up their faith because of institutions,” he said.
The Catholic Church recently barred gay people from becoming priests according to a New York Times report that was published in September.
“It is a disservice to us. They are using power and privilege to control sexuality. They are recreating what Christ changed for example, the way they treat women,” he said.
DeSalvo said though he is gay himself, he does not like the exclusionist approach of the gay movement.
“I have kept myself away from such groups. Groups scare me. I feel angry at the gay community for excluding transgender people,” he said. “I work with the marginalized people. I work to support transgender people. They need our compassion.”
The neighborhood in which they live is gay-friendly and most houses have the rainbow-colored flag hanging from their parapets or windows to show support for gays and lesbians.
“I don’t like this. LGBT issues should become non-issues. This is boxing ourselves,” he said.
DeSalvo is comfortable with his life and identity. But sometimes he wants to escape from his world. He wants to travel.
“I want to go to Italy, Europe. I want to go to a beach. Maybe I can do that sometime. I could never do it because I never had money,” he said.
The couple took a year off around three years ago but stayed at home. Orth was sick at the time.
“We could not stay away from work for a long time. We do think about going on vacations sometimes. Our work and home are inseparable,” said Orth.
A judge at Utica once told DeSalvo after he was arrested for protesting in a civil disobedience march in the 1990s that he was meant to do community service. He could not have been more correct.