Trojan Takes on Ideology

“We can’t become sexually healthy until we reframe the way we think and talk about sex and sexual health.”
- Trojan “Evolve” campaign

The Trojan “Evolve” campaign won the “Product Brand Development Campaign of the Year”, awarded by PR Week. Many of you will remember the furor that erupted last summer when CBS and Fox refused to run the ads because they focused on pregnancy prevention.

Trojan uses the reject of chavaunist pig (literally, a pig) to create a message framework around equality and modern sexuality. The main message: using a condom is “a symbol of respect for you and your partner”. The campaign manages to be socially conscious, educational, funny and hip. Jim Craigie, CEO of the advertising firm who created the campaign, said, “We’re trying to appeal to your psyche”. According to Craigie, Trojan sees a massive potential to expand the condom market.

I would write about the fantastic messaging of this campaign, but maybe its better to let it speak for itself (the case statement is copied below). The campaign recruited notable sexual health experts like Dr Drew Pinsky, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, and Dr. Cynthia Gomez to help launch the campaign. The campaign engaged the college market by launching an annual “sexual health report card” among university campuses (the University of Minnesota ranked first).

Trojan Campaign Case Statement:

Evolve: Toward a Sexually Healthy America

The fact is, America is not a sexually healthy nation. How can we be, when our rates of sexually transmitted infection, unintended pregnancy, and abortion are higher than in virtually every other Western country?

Our problem isn’t resources – we have the most advanced health system in the world, easy access to information, and effective, low-cost protection available at every corner store. What’s keeping us from benefiting from these resources are our attitudes about sexual health.

What is “sexual health” anyway? It means understanding that everyone is sexual by nature, taking care of your body, and being able to experience pleasure, satisfaction, and intimacy when you’re ready. And it means protecting and respecting yourself and others. Being sexually healthy means enjoying your sexuality, both emotionally and physically, throughout your life.

That’s where today’s conflicted attitudes fail us. Often, we promote ideology over information – such as when we deny people comprehensive sex education in favor of “abstinence-only” programs even though government studies show they don’t work. Our television networks regularly put sexual content in prime time programming, but restrict or even forbid ads for condoms during those very shows.

Worst of all, we continue to associate using condoms, or even just buying them, with promiscuity and “bad intentions”. Single sexually-active Americans between the ages of 18 and 54 use latex condoms only about one-quarter of the time, even though they’ve been proven effective at preventing pregnancy and helping stop the transmission of disease.

Simply put, our attitudes need to evolve. We can’t become sexually healthy until we reframe the way we think and talk about sex and sexual health. If we fail in this, we’ll not only hurt ourselves, but also risk passing on our unhealthy attitudes – depriving future generations of the healthy, fulfilling sex lives they deserve.

This challenging task begins with a simple message: Sex itself isn’t an unhealthy thing that needs to be challenged or demonized; it’s a natural expression of our humanity. Using protection consistently and correctly is a critical component to managing one’s sexual health.

Deciding to have sex with someone means asking yourself some heavy questions about trust, intimacy, and shared responsibility. Our message is straightforward: the use of condoms is a positive signal that partners respect one another.

That’s the conversation the makers of Trojan Brand Condoms want to start in America. We’re not promoting sexual activity. We are promoting open, fact-based dialogue among people who are considering having sex. The immediate goal of our “Evolve” campaign is to reframe the way people think about carrying condoms, but that’s not all. We also have to wake people up to the idea that valuing themselves means choosing partners who value them. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But we’ve been part of America’s sex life for generations. This journey is worth our time, and yours too.

Farewell to Diet Coke

Doctors can photograph the inside your digestive system with tiny cameras. As we hovered over photographs of my lesions, the doctor demanded that I give up Diet Coke - immediately.

If you are not addicted to diet coke, you may not understand this blog. Some of you might think this is about caffeine, but that’s only because you fundamentally misunderstand the diet coke phenomenon. This is not about kicking a soda addiction; this is about quitting a lifestyle brand.

When I was 9 years old Coca-Cola ran one of the greatest commercials of all time, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. The following year the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced, and shortly after that tennis legend Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the “battle of the sexes”. During these years the Mary Tyler Moore show was breaking ground by portraying a single professional independent woman. Mary also broke ground by discreetly mentioning her use of birth control and alluding to a sex life. The Coca-Cola brand in my adolescence represented world peace and equality and hipness and the kind of momentum that was truly changing the world.

In high school I began drinking Tab because I wanted to both have Coke and be thin. I was in college when Diet Coke emerged with its slogan “Just for the Taste of It”, which strategically downplayed the dieting angle of Diet Coke. Celebrities like Elton John helped position Diet Coke as a lifestyle beverage, not simply a low calorie option. By the time I finished college Diet Coke was my touchstone. It seemed to help me concentrate, it kept me brave when I felt alone, it made me sharp when I had to perform. At first I drank it in secret each morning, but eventually it became a commonly accepted morning beverage. It’s not that I drank a lot of soda, it’s that I always had a soda nearby. Even holding a diet coke bottle in my hand would calm my nerves.

I remember the major milestones of my life with Diet Coke as my constant companion. In college while my girlfriends took cigarette breaks I took Diet Coke breaks. After work when I went jogging with my girlfriend around San Francisco’s marina green, we rewarded ourselves with a Diet Coke on the walk home. On late nights when we were planning marches and rallies I would sit with my Diet Coke in the Women’s Building and rewrite phone bank scripts or type up press releases. In 1992, the so-called “year of the woman”, I crisscrossed the state of California drumming up grassroots support for women candidates, always with a Diet Coke in the cup holder.

I looked with envy at the coffee crowd. Coffee shops are the best, with their newspapers in many languages and intellectuals typing their novels on laptops. Every Hollywood star is photographed carrying a Starbucks cup down the street - in fact I ran into Sarah Jessica Parker at the Starbucks in Greenwich Village a few years ago. You’ll never find a Diet Coke for sale at Starbucks because the coffee brand and the Diet Coke brand represent two different kind of people. Coffee people are always the in-crowd, whether “in” is listening to alternative musicians or eating organically grown food. Diet Coke people are the modern martini lunch crowd, only we are working too hard to actually have alcohol mid-day. We have stressful jobs and are juggling kids and work and making our public schools progressive.

We are too smart for diet coke, but here we are. If it was simply a matter of breaking up with the Coca-Cola Company I could have switched to tap water years ago. Coca-Cola spokesperson Diana Garza told ABC News last year in a response to concerns about the health risks of Diet Coke, “Great taste. No calories. Wholesome ingredients. How could you drink too much?”

I didn’t drink Diet Coke all these years because of people like Diana Garza. Obviously Diet Coke is a dubious health choice, and pushing this beverage as a healthy option (such as Diet Coke with vitamins) can only be harmful to the world. No doubt we ought to topple Coke as the world’s drink of choice and replace it with bottles of clean water. No good can come from Coke’s expansion of the power drink market, especially into poor communities. I sincerely hope my kids don’t grow up to be regular soda drinkers.

I drank Diet Coke because I was addicted to not just the taste but to what the taste symbolized for me. It seemed to make me my best in a world where I have always had to be earlier, more prepared, sharper, faster, super creative and maniacally motivated to live my own version of the Mary Tyler Moore dream.

Breaking up with a brand is hard to do. That’s why building a brand is a precious investment. Branding is more than an advertisement or a slogan. It’s a personal connection with the public, it is your reputation. A good brand can defy logic, it can leapfrog whims and trends. It is patient, honest, and unafraid.

Farewell to Diet Coke. We are broken up for good.

I am old enough to know the inside of farewells. The caffeine headache has already passed but isn’t it the wasteland of the argument’s aftermath that is the worst?

Farewell, Diet Coke. I am free. I always deserved better than you.

Middle School Tragedy

“Our hearts go out to Lawrence’s family - and to all young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids who are - right now, right this minute - being bullied and beaten in school while adults look the other way.”
- National Gay & Lesbian Task Force

A 14-year-old boy was shot in the head in his middle school classroom last week, probably because he was openly gay. Time reporter John Cloud took exception to the above quote issued by NGLTF in the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence last week. Cloud claims that the group had no basis on which to claim “adults look the other way” - he assumes that NGLTF was accusing adults at that particular school of negligence. Further, he asserts that LGBT organizations exaggerate claims of harassment among teens.

Whatever the numbers reveal, the fact is that homophobia is a deeply embedded part of school culture. Even in my son’s elementary school, which proactively takes measures to be inclusive and gay-friendly, the kids toss around gay slurs with abandon. Terms like “that’s so gay” or “you’re such a homo” are so prevalent in schools that there has to be some adult, somewhere, either looking the other way or using the same terms.

When do claims prevail as common sense, and when do they need careful research?

In a string of recent stories about teens and internet safety, gay hostility is at the heart of the tragedy. The suicide of Megan Meier followed a campaign of harassment by a fake myspace character whose identity had been sparked by homophobia. According to news reports, Megan was accused of calling her friend “a lesbian”; that friend’s mother began the online campaign against Megan.

Ryan Halligan was a young teen who committed suicide in the wake of cyberbullying. Halligan’s father points to the harassment at school where Ryan was called “gay” as the beginning point of Ryan’s descent into despair. Apparently Ryan told a fellow student that he had undergone a rectal exam during an emergency room visit, and that sparked campus-wide gay taunts.

The power of gay slurs remains intense. All bullying is tough on kids-and by all accounts, homophobia remains deeply imbedded in the playground (and now online) culture of adolescents.

In Greenwich Village my son struggled with how to handle the volleyball of gay slurs among the preteen boys. He finally landed on this retort: “Why don’t you say that to my mother? She’s gay”. At least for now his comeback seems to be working. The boys seem startled briefly into retreat. I imagine that a vision of someone’s mother has crept into their heads, and that personification makes hate language a bit harder to use for amusement.

Borrowing Words

Everyone in public relations knows that leaders rarely write their own speeches, memos, quotes, or books. It’s not “plagiarism” if you pay someone for the rights to their words. Presidential candidate Barak Obama claims to have “written most of my speeches”. My guess is that he has had a good deal of help with those speeches, ranging from modifying a draft speech to relying on researchers and fact checkers to fill in the blanks.

Speechwriting is a rough sport whose rules of engagement can seem fuzzy. It would never be acceptable for a painting to be attributed to its benefactor, or for song lyrics to be attributed to their singer or a student to submit a paper written by someone else. But the currency of words are unique. We can’t really know which brilliant zingers by Jon Stewart were written by others. We know that Anderson Cooper is generally reading from a teleprompter, but the second those words exit his mouth they become his quotes.

The Clinton camp has accused the Obama team of lifting words from Governor Patrick Duval. Obama’s defenders say that Duval gave permission, and in any case this practice falls more into the “common public rhetoric” field, as described by former Bill Clinton speechwriter Kusnet. In the playing field of political rhetoric politicians routinely use phrases and references that are not unique. Obama downplays the plagiarism accusation by essentially arguing that he did not steal words, he borrowed them.

The Obama/Duval remarks are less about plagiarism and more about politics. Plagiarism is a loaded term that can spark deep reaction. Plagiarism translates to cheating and that can seriously undermine credibility. Some of the most trusted public figures have survived allegations of plagiarism with their career intact, such as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Others have not - and this list is much longer than the former.

A recent scandal in Virginia shines a light on the limits of political ghostwriting. Apparently a lobbyist drafted an op ed and asked a number of people to publish the piece. This is common practice among many advocacy organizations - -they pen a sample letter to the editor or opinion piece and ask supporters to publish a version of it in their name. When an elected official submitted the piece for publication the newspaper balked because it had already been published under a different name in a different publication. The elected official was accused of plagiarism.

Plagiarism worries should also guide internal writing as well. Just over a year ago the American Association of Public Opinion Research issued new recommendations for RFP’s (Requests for Proposals) intended to reduce plagiarism. The Association found that some organizations were lifting text from proposals submitted by third parties and using that text in RFP’s.

New communications technologies are making plagiarism easier to detect. Many academic institutions, including high schools, are requiring students to submit their work electronically so they can be run through software programs that detect plagiarism. In July 2008 the third international conference on internet plagiarism will explore these issues.

The double standards that allow ghost writers to remain hidden are firmly intact outside of academia, as long as each unique piece is only used for one author. My prediction is that many years from now these standards will also begin to erode, and some type of attribution will be required when a public figure is not delivering her or his own words.

Dodging Disease Prevention

The American couple in front of me in line at Taca Airlines was turned away because they did not have proof of a yellow fever vaccine. The security agent was adamant - anyone flying from Ecuador to Brazil must have a yellow fever vaccination.

“What?” They both said, incredulously. The man turned to me and said - “it’s the craziest thing - they are asking for proof of vaccination. For yellow fever.”

The Taca security agent pleaded with them to go see the travel agent in the airport to arrange for a vaccination, but they wouldn’t budge. “We have hotel reservations”, the male traveler declared firmly, “we are getting on this flight. And there is no way we are getting a vaccination in Ecuador.” His companion chimed in, “If they don’t require yellow fever vaccines in the United States, why would we need to get it here? That’s just crazy”.

Ultimately the line progressed around them, so I was surprised when I later saw the man while I was standing on the tarmac waiting for security guards to inspect my luggage. “We had to bribe the travel agent in the airport $35 each to get documentation”, he explained, red-faced. “This country is COMPLETELY CORRUPT”. He shouted his last few words in the direction of the security guards.

I don’t think it ever occurred to him that his health might be endangered without the vaccine. I’m sure it never occurred to the couple - who I last saw sitting in first class drinking vodka tonics - that their own actions in dodging the public health requirements might endanger others. I am positive they never considered that their own actions - purchasing a false document and using it to evade public health authorities - were in any way corrupt.

If they had done a quick search on the Internet, here’s what they would have discovered.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued a health alert for travelers to Brazil in response to a recent outbreak in that country, where 15 have recently died from yellow fever and an additional 33 have been recently infected. Vaccinations are strongly recommended for US-based travelers; Brazil requires vaccinations for travelers from a specific list of countries, including Ecuador. Now the health emergency seems to have spread to Paraguay, where last week more than 4000 people blocked a major highway to protest the lack of available yellow fever vaccine in the country. Today Paraguay declared a state of emergency related to an outbreak of yellow fever.

In Brazil, “jungle yellow fever” has a mortality rate of about 50%. There is no cure, only prevention efforts will curb the disease. Other high-risk countries like Honduras are taking precautionary vaccination measures, including restricting entry to the country to those who have been vaccinated.

The experts at the Harvard School of Public Health predicted the response of these American travelers during a course I took last year. Harvard experts warned that when facing health emergencies, traditional alerts and quarantines can be undermined by two major factors. First, we can expect resistance among those who haven’t been reached or convinced with the right messages. Secondly, an inadequate international supply chain for vaccines and other treatments will make infectious disease containment difficult across borders.

Yellow fever doesn’t usually rank among the most feared infectious diseases today; that is largely due to vaccinations and public health monitoring. Two hundred years ago yellow fever was the most feared disease in the United States. In fact human volunteers working on the Panama Canal - who allowed themselves to be infected with the virus and then died of it - were an important part of groundbreaking public health research that confirmed a connection between mosquitoes and yellow fever.

Other mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, have not yet been curbed with vaccines. A rigorous international effort is underway to identify a malaria vaccination, which could prevent up to 3 million malaria-related deaths per year. Along with scientists and public health authorities, communications experts need to plan for effective public health communications. Science, medicine and public relations must interlock for public health programs to work.

Episcopalians Defend Their Brand

The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church USA is meeting in Quito Ecuador this week. The Council is roughly the equivalent of an elected non-profit board of directors which carries out the mandate of the membership meeting and also holds fiduciary responsibility for the national organization. This week at the Hilton they are debating budgets and program priorities and the thorny issue of a vocal minority who oppose gay leadership in the church.

For those laypersons like myself whose language and framework is centered outside of organized Christianity, finding the genuine voice of the Council takes patience. The language of the church leadership is so gentle and loving that their words mask the fierceness of the group’s commitment to inclusion. At stake are which programs get funded, which ministries get prioritized, and of course, what to do about those who oppose lesbian and gay inclusion in the church. The battleground is the process, and the council members eat and breathe the maze of chess moves that shift the winds of power. They make earnest gestures toward everyday chitchat during their meeting breaks, commenting on the Presidential primaries or swapping stories about the pull of gravity on the equator line. But this is only a minor pause in the conversation chain about procedure and prose.

Don’t get me wrong - they are a remarkably energetic and intriguing group. With very few exceptions they are terrible salsa dancers but will take to the dance floor with great enthusiasm if asked. They are curious — they discovered the best bottle of rum on the continent right here in Quito within hours of arrival. They are like a human myspace page, there seems to be only two degrees of separation between any Episcopal priest in the United States, and maybe only three if you include Latin America. They would be unbeatable contestants on The Price is Right and Jeopardy, and would bring elementary school contestants to tears on “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader”.

The Episcopal Church in San Joaquin California is on their minds this week. This congregation, led by Bishop John-David Schofield, has refused to ordain women for more than 20 years; predictably, they recently have openly defied the church on gay inclusion as well. I can only speculate that the election of an openly gay Bishop and the election of the first female head of the church threw Schofield into moral tailspin. A few months ago Schofield formally left the Episcopal Church USA but announced he would keep church property and other assets - including the “Episcopal” brand. Schofield’s actions were like quitting your job but keeping your office, your title, and your salary.

When Priests break their vows they are first “inhibited” - which basically means being fired - and then ultimately “defrocked”, which is the equivalent of losing your license to be a priest. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefforts Schori immediately “inhibited” Schofield and put to rest any notion that the church would be compromised, “The Episcopal Church will continue in the Diocese of San Joaquin, albeit with new leadership.” A new group called “Remain Episcopal” launched a website and is already organizing a post-Schofield ministry in San Joaquin. But Schoefield still has the keys to the church properties, and it is this delicate situation that the council is attempting to address.

In recent years news reports about the Episcopalians have been dominated by stories about whether the Church will fall apart in the aftermath of the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man. While the media reports continue to ask the question, “Will a split happen?” the Episcopal Church USA is already in a post-split reality. It’s a bit like the reality gap between political leaders warning of a recession while millions of families are losing their homes to foreclosure. The church’s top leadership worldwide continues to move the chess pieces on the question of an international theological split while the church leaders in the United States are already managing the messy aftermath of church defections.

San Joaquin brings the philosophical debate to a very practical level. How do you manage to wrestle your brand (and your physical assets) from a wayward local leader? How do you minister to a congregation whose leader has been defrocked but remains on the premises?

Episcopalians in Quito offer a first hand look at what happens when priests and bishops break the rules. The Bishop in this region apparently veered off the Episcopal path when he began stealing money and other assets from the local churches. By the time he was defrocked by the regional Episcopal leadership (years after the financial irregularities were discovered due to a bulky process), he had literally decimated the church’s structure in this region. Churches, schools, and other programs that directly benefited some of the poorest people in the world were either destroyed or ruined.

I visited a local church that was the victim of this leadership abuse. A few dozen determined and faithful Episcopalians were building a new church to replace what had been decimated, where they will house a public health center, a day care, an education program, and a food program, among other social services. When I say they are rebuilding I mean literally, they are working for $10 per day and then using what funds they can save to purchase materials and they are themselves laying the concrete stones.

It seems unfathomable that a bishop-turned-crook could get away with bringing a diocese to ruin. Equally unfathomable is the notion that the church can’t get its property back. The Council members have now personally witnessed the aftermath of a powerful minister who broke his vows. What is not yet clear is how the lessons this executive council learned in Quito will be brought to San Joaquin.

A bishop who breaks his vows because he cannot be true to a church with gay leaders is quite different from a bishop who breaks his vows by stealing money and buildings from his church. But the fundamental question remains the same: how does the Episcopal Church USA move aside wayward leaders and maintain its assets and congregations?

In the end this council is not in Quito simply to map out the most Christian-centered plan of action for power struggles like San Joaquin (although that accomplishment alone would be admirable). The council holds in its work product the trusted relationship between the public and the institution. Will the public see a church that allowed its assets and its essence to disintegrate in the morass of social politics? Or will the public see an institution that fiercely protected the donations and goodwill upon which it built its power? Is this Council perceived as the freedom fighter or the embattled establishment?

By the end of the week the Council issued this statement about San Joaquin:

“We are deeply concerned for those who are members of The Episcopal Church but now
find themselves in parishes or dioceses attempting to depart. To the members of The
Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, know we stand with you. Your struggles and needs
inform our prayers, deliberations, and plans. This is a new and unfamiliar landscape for
all of us. We stand with you and commit ourselves to provide pastoral care, to aid in re-
organization, and to support legal actions necessary to retain the assets of the diocese for
ministry. We will hold clergy leaders accountable to their vows to uphold the doctrine,
discipline and worship of this Church, and lay leadership accountable to the fiduciary
responsibilities of the offices they hold. Up to $500,000 of income from trust funds will
be made available in the calendar year 2008 to support the mission work of the Diocese
of San Joaquin and similarly situated dioceses.”

Teens Dropping Out

In the next hour 1,000 teens will drop out of high school in the United States. Collectively 1.2 million U.S. teens will drop out each year; the overwhelming majority of these teens are African American, Latino/a, and Native American. For most teens that never earn a high school diploma, the economic future is grim. These realities are spelled out in a new report issued by the Women’s Law Center.

Contrast that to millions of Ecuadorian teens who do not have the option of dropping in to high school. In this country the school day is cut into thirds to allow kids to work as well as to accommodate the lack of facilities. Some kids take the early shift, some take the midday shift, some take the evening shift. If you don’t have shoes, clothing, transportation, food, book fees, and other basic necessities, you can’t access education.

Why is it that one of the wealthiest country’s in the world and one of the most impoverished countries in the world both cannot adequately educate its youth?

I spoke to a local priest who was running empowerment programs for impoverished Ecuadorians. She needs about $30 per teen to sponsor their education for a year. That’s the average price of a school backpack in the United States. She summed up the problem this way, “We are not poor people. Our country has many riches, and we are hardworking people. We are not poor people, we are a people who have been impoverished.”

The UNFPA would agree with her. According to the UNFPA website:
Since 1999, Ecuador has weathered one of the worst economic crises in its history. The country has been dollarised, privatized and decentralized. The continuing erosion of the economy has affected the country’s capacity to govern. High turnover of top officials in key ministries, such as for public health, education and social welfare has led to further problems. Economic disparities between rich and poor have deepened, increasing poverty levels. In 2005, about half of the entire population was struggling on two dollars a day, while 20 per cent were surviving on one dollar a day or less.

Nearly half the population of Ecuador is under the age of 20. One major barrier to education is the high rate of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Over the last five years, the HIV infection rate has increased by 224%, according to the UNFPA.

In Ecuador, access to sex education and reproductive health services is clearly understood as an economic issue. The government has passed progressive laws and initiatives aimed at increasing access to reproductive health care as an anti-poverty measure. Sex education and reproductive health care is carefully framed in a way that increases local demand for these services. “We have managed to increase the basic knowledge of women and men regarding their fertility and how they can have safe births with healthier children,” said Dr. Muenala, a UNFPA-funded program leader. “Because we are not preaching fertility regulation and the use of contraceptives alone, these traditional communities are much more receptive to our messages and services.”

An Australian Apology

Today Prime Minister Rudd apologized for atrocities in Australia that many Americans are only vaguely aware of. The previous Prime Minister refused to apologize for human rights abuses against the indigenous people in Australia. Among other atrocities, more than 50,000 children were forcibly removed from their parents between 1910 and 1970. Rudd chose to illustrate the reason behind the apology by amplifying the experience of Nanna Fejo at age four. Rudd utilizes storytelling in his apology because it is one of the most powerful communications strategies for conveying large human rights messages. Below is an excerpt of Nanna’s story, followed by the full text of the apology:

“[Sometime] around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men. Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide. What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip.
The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck. Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice, all in the name of protection.
A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them? The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England.
That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that.
She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission. Nanna Fejo’s family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again.”

Here is the full text of the apology:

I move:
That today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility._A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.
There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.
Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time.
That is why the Parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nations soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.
Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in Parliament say sorry to the stolen generations.
Today I honour that commitment.
I said we would do so early in the life of the new Parliament._Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd parliament of the Commonwealth.
Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians - those who are indigenous and those who are not - to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.
Some have asked, Why apologise?
Let me begin to answer by telling the Parliament just a little of one person’s story - an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s, full of life, full of funny stories, despite what has happened in her life’s journey, a woman who has travelled a long way to be with us today, a member of the stolen generation who shared some of her story with me when_I called around to see her just a few days ago.
Nanna Nungala Fejo, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s.
She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek.
She remembers the love and the warmth and the kinship of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the camp fire at night.
She loved the dancing. She remembers once getting into strife when, as a four-year-old girl, she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders rather than just sitting and watching the men, as the girls were supposed to do.
But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men.
Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide.
What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip.
The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck.
Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice, all in the name of protection.
A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them?
The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England.
That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that.
She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission.
Nanna Fejo’s family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again.
After she left the mission, her brother let her know that her mum had died years before, a broken woman fretting for the children that had literally been ripped away from her.
I asked Nanna Fejo what she would have me say today about her story. She thought for a few moments then said that what I should say today was that ”all mothers are important”.
And she added: ”Families - keeping them together is very important. It’s a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That’s what gives you happiness.”
As I left, later on, Nanna Fejo took one of my staff aside, wanting to make sure that I was not too hard on the Aboriginal stockman who had hunted those kids down all those years ago.
The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, sorry. And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.
Nanna Fejo’s is just one story. There are thousands, tens of thousands of them: stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century.
Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing Them Home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard.
There is something terribly primal about these firsthand accounts. The pain is searing; it screams from the pages. The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.
These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology.
Instead, from the nation’s Parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade; a view that somehow we, the Parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side, to leave it languishing with the_historians, the academics and the cultural warriors, as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.
But the stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.
The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward._Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today.
But should there still be doubts as to why we must now act, let the Parliament reflect for a moment on the following facts: that, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30% of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers; that, as a result, up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families; that this was the product_of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute; that this policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage were seen as part of a broader policy of dealing with the problem of the Aboriginal population.
One of the most notorious examples of this approach was from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who stated: ”Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes” - to quote the protector - ”will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white”.
The Western Australian Protector of Natives expressed not dissimilar views, expounding them at length in Canberra in 1937 at the first national conference on indigenous affairs that brought together the Commonwealth and state protectors of natives.
These are uncomfortable things to be brought out into the light. They are not pleasant. They are profoundly disturbing.
But we must acknowledge these facts if we are to deal once and for all with the argument that the policy of generic forced separation was somehow well motivated, justified by its historical context and, as a result, unworthy of any apology today.
Then we come to the argument of intergenerational responsibility, also used by some to argue against giving an apology today.
But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.
The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity. There are still serving members of this Parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.
It is well within the adult memory span of many of us.
The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.
There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation - and that value is a fair go for all.
There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all.
There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.
It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology - because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible.
We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves.
As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well.
Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history.
In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate.
In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul.
This is not, as some would argue, a black-armband view of history; it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth - facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it.
Until we fully confront that truth, there will always be a shadow hanging over us and our future as a fully united and fully reconciled people.
It is time to reconcile. It is time to recognise the injustices of the past. It is time to say sorry. It is time to move forward together.
To the stolen generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.
I offer you this apology without qualification.
We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted.
We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.
We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.
In making this apology, I would also like to speak personally to the members of the stolen generations and their families: to those here today, so many of you; to those listening across the nation - from Yuendumu, in the central west of the Northern Territory, to Yabara, in North Queensland, and to Pitjantjatjara in South Australia.
I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the Government and the Parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.
Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.
Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing._I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you.
I say to honourable members here present: imagine if this had happened to us. Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.
My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is accepted in the spirit of reconciliation, in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.
And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us._Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot.
For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.
It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history._Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs._It is also aimed at building a bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt.
Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.
But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.
This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation,_to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy.
The truth is: a business as usual approach towards indigenous Australians is not working.
Most old approaches are not working.
We need a new beginning, a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible,_tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation.
However, unless we as a Parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.
Let us resolve today to begin with the little children, a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations.
Let us resolve over the next five years to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper pre-literacy and pre-numeracy programs.
Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial pre-school year.
Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote indigenous communities up to four times higher than in other_communities.
None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.
The mood of the nation is for reconciliation now, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The mood of the nation on indigenous policy and politics is now very simple.
The nation is calling on us, the politicians, to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics and to elevate this one core area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide.
Surely this is the unfulfilled spirit of the 1967 referendum. Surely, at least from this day forward, we should give it a go.
Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new Parliament.
I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past.
I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement, to begin with, an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years.
It will be consistent with the Government’s policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition.
This would probably be desirable in any event because, unless such a proposition were absolutely bipartisan, it would fail at a referendum. As I have said before, the time has come for new approaches to enduring problems.
Working constructively together on such defined projects would, I believe, meet with the support of the nation. It is time for fresh ideas to fashion the nation’s future.
Mr Speaker, today the Parliament has come together to right a great wrong. We have come together to deal with the past so that we might fully embrace the future. We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched.
So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection.
Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest_level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.
It is for the nation to bring the first two centuries of our settled history to a close, as we begin a new chapter. We embrace with pride, admiration and awe these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us cultures that provide a unique, uninterrupted human thread linking our Australian continent to the most ancient prehistory of our planet.
Growing from this new respect, we see our indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that indigenous Australia faces in the future.
Let us turn this page together: indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation’s story together.
First Australians, First Fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance just a few weeks ago. Let’s grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land: Australia. I commend the motion to the House.

Chicle Children

I am in Quito, Ecuador staying at the Hilton. The first Ecuadorian I encountered when I left the hotel was a five-year-old girl who begged me to buy Chicle. She was soon joined by others in her age group - some just asking for money and others selling gum.

I was on my way across the street to the pharmacy to get drugs for my piercing headache. The diet coke in Ecuador tastes very different from the US-based Diet Coke that I’m addicted to, and I was beginning to suffer from caffeine withdrawal. I had been waiting a long time to check in because an American tourist in front of me was berating the hotel staff. I couldn’t tell exactly what for, only that he was finding his stay “unacceptable” and was certain that he was due either a refund or better accommodations.

Many hours after that rocky entry into my Quito experience, I can’t get those three things out of my mind: the children begging on the street, my diet coke-driven lifestyle, and my fellow American tourist.

The Chicle children have been on my mind since I was a child and my family lived in Guadalajara for the summers. My father taught at the University, I was no Chicle child. But the wall of separation between me and the kids selling Chicle on the street seemed tenuous. As a child I was puzzled about how the adults kept going-on their way to the theatre or the bakery - when they could see a small kid homeless and starving right there, so close you could touch her. I used to wonder if the adults were just too tall, because as a child in Mexico I could look straight into their faces.

I came back to my hotel room and tried to figure out where the five year old girl got her Chicle. Cadbury Adams (CA) owns Chicle, one of the original chewing gums. CA is the “worlds’ top confectionary company” according the CA website, with brands like Trident, Certs, Swedish Fish, Dentyne, Halls cough drops, and Sour Patch. The most popular distribution point for Chicle is Mexico. “In Mexico, as you are stopped for a light in your car, you will have a street vendor come to your window to sell you Chiclets. This is one of the biggest market for Chiclets”, according to CA.

According to the Netza Project, tens of thousands of Mexican children as young as 3 and 4 work on streets, beaches and in fields instead of going to school. Many of these kids are feeding themselves and their families with Chicle sales - and they are an important segment of gum sales for CA that top $1 billion annually.

I then wondered if CA used some of its profits from the children street vendors to solve some of the social and political infrastructure that perpetuated this extreme poverty and violence. I found a charitable wing of CA, but no investments in Latin America and no mention of any sense of responsibility for the sales force of street kids who create “one of the biggest markets” for Chiclets.

I did, however, find some great NGO’s that are serving street kids in Ecuador and Mexico. Lisa Martin’s Netza Project is raising funds to break the barriers to education, like monies for schoolbooks and shoes and even school buildings. One Ecuadorian NGO built a computer center for homeless kids to connect via the internet. A charity on the outskirts of Quito provides housing, education and job trainings, and enrichment for homeless kids.

A Canadian-based nonprofit called Street Kids works internationally to empower impoverished youth. They were the 2007 Finalist for the Conrad Hilton Humanitarian Award. It’s a great organization started by Peter Dalglish, a former UN field worker assigned to Sudan in the 80’s. Mr. Dalglish’s response to being robbed by a street kid was to organize an effort that empowered street kids to find occupations where they could thrive and grow.

I felt a little better about staying at the Hilton knowing they contribute a tiny amount to the worldwide humanitarian crisis of street kids. In this hotel - and at the Mercado across the street, at the pharmacy, at the fruit stand - politeness reigns. People haven’t just launched into sentences or orders. They begin with “good morning” or “good afternoon”. It is not unusual throughout Latin America for someone to say, instead of “goodby”, “que la vaya bien”, which loosely translated means, “may all go well with you”.

I am thinking about my diet coke lifestyle here. I am feeling so trapped in my privilege that even half a day without my particular soda blend causes me physical pain. I am wincing at the American who is demanding that he be treated better. I don’t know this country, I only know that on this block there is a 5 year old child approaching strangers to sell gum, there is an American convinced that he deserved better than what the Hilton has offered, and there is me, who looked at this child forty years ago in Mexico and thought I would never be the adult who walked on by.

Good Reading

Wading through the post-election news, I ran across a great blog on race and feminism. Marjorie Valbrun writes in the Root about the unique concerns of black women in her article, Does Race Trump Gender? You can read the article at theroot.com. .

Another blog worth reading today is published by Perla Ni in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (thank to my friend who sent it to me). Ni interviews Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small about how fundraisers can most effectively communicate sympathy through storytelling and other strategies. Small asserts that sympathy is not just about the existence of a situation (such as homelessness), but it’s also about a change in status (from being housed to homeless). You can read the article at ssireview.org.

Small’s views about sympathy and storytelling rings true. Last weekend I read the novel “What is What” by Dave Eggers, which is the true story of Valentino Achak Deng’s journey from a childhood in southern Sudan to his heartbreaking navigation of the civil war to his resettlement in the United States. I had followed news accounts of the war but after reading the book went directly online to get involved. You can get more information at valentinoachakdeng.org. The book is beautifully written.

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