When you store your brains in your weaponry, then every situation is a security threat. US military in Haiti, hyper-vigilant about securing emergency relief, obviously missed the central purpose - get the supplies out to save lives.

When the Wall Street Journal presents Cubans as heroes and US soldiers as paranoid idiots, you know the screw-up must be off the scale.

"Benoit Leduc, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, on Monday said "hundreds of lives" were lost because five of its planes carrying surgical teams and equipment weren't allowed to land and were diverted to Santo Domingo.

"Several countries and other aid groups also have complained that the U.S. military has refused to let some of their supply planes land at Haiti's crippled airport.

""It's a question of physics," says Capt. John Kirby, a U.S. military spokesman in Haiti. "The airport is the only way in, it only has one runway, and there are literally hundreds of flights trying to make it in." " - (Charles Forelle, Jose de Cordoba, and Joe Lauria, Wall Street Journal, January 17th, 2010)

Here's a suggestion. Give planes carrying doctors, and medical supplies, landing priority over those packed with soldiers. Like the two massive C17 military transport aircraft currently blocking the airport runway.

The U.S. military is reluctant to move shipments out of the airport without a security escort, sometimes causing added delays. "Twenty containers go out, but you have to have about 100 heavily armed soldiers," says Gilberto Castro, emergency response director of transport company Deutsche Post DHL, which is handling hundreds of tons of aid.

Right. Because food packages and bottles of water and bandages and painkillers need to be protected from starving, wounded people.

Yet a team of Cuban doctors were seen Monday treating hundreds of patients without a gun or soldier in sight. The deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Haiti, David Lindwall, said the U.S. had done a lot, but that some teams and supplies "aren't getting out as broadly as we'd like because of security" concerns.

Hmm. Did he happen to notice that relief teams from Cuba, Iceland, China, half-a-dozen other nations, are out there saving lives? Without security? Could that be because they see Haitians as fellow human beings, not rabid jackals they need to protect themselves from?

The Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports from Port-au-Prince:

Day seven of the catastrophe, yet wherever we go we are still surrounded by crowds of people living on the streets pleading with us for water. A few miles away at the airport huge quantities of supplies are stacked high in the sun. Under a deal finalised between the heads of relevant parties on Sunday night, US troops will be responsible for securing the incoming supplies at the airport, and then moving them to four central distribution hubs. One of those hubs is at the national football stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince and another at a golf course near the US embassy.

Ah yes - the Superdome Solution. It worked so well for Hurricane Katrina. Listen up, all you wounded, traumatized Haitians! Yes you, camped in the ruins of your home surrounded by your last remaining possessions. Yes you, keening in the rubble for your dead loved ones. Yes you, still frantically digging for survivors. A message from the US government: Just Let Go and head for a Hub. The US Marines are here to give you a Fresh Start!

Like Katrina survivors, when you finally return to your home or neighborhood, you'll likely find that bulldozers have completed the job begun by the earthquake. That foundations are already being laid for high-rises and luxury hotels, office blocks and swimming pools, for the influx of crisis entrepreneurs, aka Relief Workers. They'll be around for a decade or two.

And if you happen to be too injured to move, have infants or immobile elders you can't carry, if you just can't bring yourself to leave the bodies - bad luck. We've all got to make difficult decisions in disasters. Were you really expecting the relief to come to you? We've only got 10,000 troops here, lady! You want us to whip out maps and highlighters, mark off neighborhoods and just send our guys out with supplies? Whaddaya think we are - Cubans? It's dangerous out there. We may have assault rifles, but we've heard about your Voodoo.

Paranoia. Incompetence. Preemptive criminalization of disaster victims. Militarism-gone-mad. Secure the water against the starving. Force survivors to trek to the food and medical aid. But at all costs, keep the soldiers safe.

Shailja Patel is an award-winning Kenyan writer, theatre artist, and political activist. www.shailja.com

Our first impulse when we see a disaster of this magnitude is to help in any way we can as individuals.

However, if we take a moment to assess the big picture, we can often have a much greater impact when we leverage our collective power to lobby governments and international bodies.

I recommend Haiti Action as an excellent source of information and on-the-ground-reporting on grassroots organizing for justice in Haiti:

www.haitiaction.net

I've put together a ten-point list of progressive action for Haiti, based on the work of Haiti activists and progressive analysts.

1) Grants, not loans.
2) Keep corporations and corporatist policies OUT of Haiti. Stop disaster capitalism in its tracks.
3) Cancel ALL Haiti's debt to the Inter-American Development Bank.
4) Let Aristide return to Haiti.
5) Lift the ban on Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party.
6) Rip up the neoliberal Clinton-Obama program for Haiti: boutique tourism, sweatshops, privatization, deregulation.
7) Get the guns out, get the aid in! Stop the militarization of this disaster by the US.
8) Allow all Haitians in the US to work, and remit money home.
9) Release all 30,000 Haitians held in US jails for deportation, and grant them Temporary Protected Status.
10) Demand that France repay the $21 billion it extorted from Haiti in 1825, by warships, to "compensate" France for loss of Haiti as a slave colony.

It should be noted that progressive opinion is divided on the integrity and effectiveness of Aristide as a leader. However, there is no reason to maintain a ban on the Fanmi Lavalas political party, since collective organizing at this time could be vital to the survival of hundreds of thousands of Haitians.

On the subject of humanitarian aid:

Not all aid is equal, as we all learned from the fiasco in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

And far from being the "pitiful helpless victims" depicted by global corporate media, ordinary Haitians are mobilizing in amazing ways, with virtually no resources, while governments and international aid organizations remain paralyzed by bureaucracy. They are turning their homes into hospitals, sharing their meager supplies of food and water, while 3 days after the earthquake, international aid is stockpiled at the airport.

This just in from Sokari Ekine, creator of the award-winning blog, BlackLooks:

In August 2007, I visited Haiti to meet with Lavalas women. The trip was organized by Haiti Action, and I was able to meet many other activists on the ground as well. One of the women I met and stayed with was Rea. She is now using her home as a hospital and they are using whatever they can to tend to peoples' needs. Thousands of other Haitians are doing the same. Meanwhile, the aid agencies sit at the airport. Port-Au-Prince is quite a small but densely populated place. To say the aid agencies don't know how to go in, or have to wait - for what I am not sure - is stretching things a bit far.

This underscores the importance of getting any assistance directly to Haitians, and organizations:

- that have a track record of working effectively in Haiti,
- that are Haitian-led, or partner with Haitians as equals
- that already have infrastructure and operational networks in Haiti
- that are committed to justice and genuine democracy for Haitians

With this in mind, here is a list of organizations recommended by Food First:

1) Partners in Health -- Founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, this nonprofit health delivery program has served Haiti’s poor since 1987. Donate for earthquake relief HERE.

2) Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) -- Doctors Without Borders was working in Haiti prior to the quake with a staff of 800. HERE is a report on January 13, 2009 with a link to their donation page.

3) Haiti Action -- Haiti’s grassroots movement – including labor unions, women’s groups, educators, human rights activists, support committees for prisoners and agricultural cooperatives – will attempt to funnel needed aid to those most hit by the earthquake. Grassroots organizers are doing what they can with the most limited of funds to makea difference. Please take this opportunity to lend them your support HERE.

4) Grassroots International -- has a long history of working with organizations on the ground in Haiti. Grassroots has committed to the extent possible to, “provide cash to our partners to make local purchases of the items they most need and to obtain food from farmers not hit by the disaster.” This people-to-people transfer is vital to circumvent the aid industry and support Haiti's economy. Support their efforts HERE.

"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Yesterday was Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the nine-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.

I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism. In 2002, in the wake of the Gujurat massacres, I wrote Today I Dismantled My Gods (which appears in my poetry collection Shilling Love) and performed it across the US to raise awareness and funds for the survivors.

Today I Dismantled my Gods

Written in 2002, following the massacre of over 2000 Muslims in my ancestral state of Gujurat, by a state-condoned, carefully orchestrated pogrom led by the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement, Hindutva. For more on the Gujurat Massacre and Hindu Nationalism, see www.cac.ektaonline.org

I sat at my altar to pray this morning.
I began as always begin, with A-UM
and it flashed on my retina, bleeding - OM
gashed into the forehead
of a dead Gujurati Muslim - OM
slashed into the pregnant belly
of a Muslim woman - OM!
Scorched into the wet white bones
of children torched on bonfires - OM!!

Sound of creation
seared to evil, hum of the universe
twisted to genocide
and my tongue choked in my throat
and my throat refused to chant
Au - Au -

So I tried to sing
because Ali Akbar Khan has said
music transcends all barriers; I sang

Shiva Shiva mahadeva, namah sivaya sadasiva

and the marching began.
Legions of men, in kakhi shorts
saffron headbands, march - march - march -
ing, howling vengeance; cylinders
of gas passed hand to hand to
gutted door of pillaged Muslim building to
SSSSSS - to lighted match to - POWWW

And in the clouds of smoke
affluent families drove up
in Mitsubishi Lancers
to soak their arms in the torrents
of looting, cellphones spat out
names locations properties,
bloody tickmarks tramped
down spreadsheets, trishuls gleamed
three hideous prongs into the night

Fundamentalism
Fascism
Genocide

Trishuls impaled babies, ripped
fetuses from wombs, tore apart
vaginas. I saw the demonic graffiti:
Andar ka baat hai
Police hamara saat hai
I heard screaming
just like the Bollywood movies
bachau bachau
and if this were a Bollywood movie
Sharukh Khan would swoop down
in a helicopter, tanks and elephants
would storm the bloodcrazed mobs
heroes would arrive.

But the heroes
have turned off their cellphones,
barricaded their homes, the heroes
are on extended tours outside Gujurat
have given orders
No protection to be offered
the heroes
have renounced the gods

Today I dismantled my gods.

I am no longer Hindu
until the word means dharma
not terror, no longer
will I make deevas
to light the rapes of my sisters
no longer pray in temples
built from coffers of fascists
or seek peace in ashrams
locked to terrified victims.
I will worship at no altar
where slaughter feeds the puja
I will claim no murti
hoisted over murder.

Today I dismantled my gods
because they told me to. They said
Go! Meet us
in every human face,
walk our living essence
against mass hysteria: Kali, maha-Kali
who slices the heads off demons
of hatred and ignorance;
Lakshmi, Maha-lakshmi
who pours lotus-compassion
from every orifice
Saraswati who shreds
veils of delusion, dissolves
the choking saffron fog
of politicians' lies.

The gods are calling us
to shatter their images and
BE them - in the streets
the schools and senates; BE them,
love and justice, truth and courage, on platforms
and airwaves, in boardrooms
and parliaments!

They are calling us
to touch them
in every human heart
that repudiates violence,
cherishes Life
and all her children,
calling us
to bow to the word
that resounds in us all, the wind
that sings in us all

Namo brahmane namaste vaayu
twameva pratyaksham brahmaasi
twameva pratyaksham brahma vadishyami

I have taken down my altar
I am in the streets
chanting down that monstrous trinity

Fundamentalism
Fascism
Genocide

until this air is sacred again with our tears.
And I shall worship justice
I shall worship truth

ritam vadishyami
satyam vadishyami

I have put away my gods
until I can face them
without shame
for all our blindness, for the horror
beyond naming wrought
in their names, until I can say
to their eyes:

I defended you
in every living form
I welcomed you
in all that breathes and weeps
I gave my life
to make you

love and justice, truth and courage

make you

manifest.

Om shanti shanti shanti.

Since that time, conversations with progressive South Asian friends and colleagues have convinced me to reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist. Navaratri has been a potent and transforming festival for me since childhood. It's a time when I reconnect with my own Goddess-hood, and celebrate all the manifestations of the Goddess in my life.

So this year, I was able to re-enter the space I wrote about in an earlier poem, "Ode To Durga", which evokes the Goddess as "Great Mother of the Universe, whose limits are unreachable, present in all beings":

I’m glad I can worship with all my senses,
with petals and flame, bells and incense smoke,
succulent offerings of halwa and khir,
glad this ritual rides a spectrum,
austere silence to ecstatic noise.

More than ever, all of us on the planet need to reconnect to the Sacred Feminine. To move in the world with the radiant consciousness born of that connection; as a collective, unstoppable momentum for reparation, restoration, justice, and equality.

I’m glad I can touch my gods
with intimate reverent fingers,
tangible forms to absorb my fears,
demons, longings,
to draw from me
what’s brave and joyous,
in showers of rice and water,
libations of milk and ghee.

Whenever I doubt my own abilities or capacities, I turn to all the amazing women I know. Writers, scholars, warriors, leaders, builders, activists, healers, dancers, teachers, dreamers, changemakers. I draw on their potency and courage to recharge my own.

Goddess present in all beings
who sang me into the light of dawn,
you who are a million faces,
which one shall I be today?
You whisper in my ear like a lover:
Do the thing you dread the most.

May we all continue to honor this fragile, luminous, wounded world as the Body of the Goddess.

I say: I’m scared.
You say: I know.
I say: This hurts!
You say: So what?
Would you rather stay asleep?
I say: What if…..
You say: Jump.

Yaa devi sarve bhuteshu
Trsna rupena samstitha
Namastasye namastasye
Namastasye namo namah

Goddess present in all beings
in the form of desire,
you whisper in my ear like a lover:
Seek the words of creation.

Name the first hunger:
That of the belly and mouth.
Name the second hunger:
That of the heart for a home.
Name the third hunger:
That of the hands to shape what they touch,
that of the fingers to imprint the world.

Name the final, deepest hunger:
That of the self we dare not name
to be without limitation -
inhabit all that moves and speaks,
runs, flies. breathes,
leaf and stone, sky and bone,
fruition, destruction -
a greed no smaller
than infinity.

O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga

Durga flaming on your tiger,
Goddess present in all beings,
truth from illusion,
asato ma sat gamaya
light from darkness,
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
ride triumphant through our monsters,
enter us as if we burned.

• Copyright Shailja Patel, 2002. All Rights Reserved