Obama at a Baptist church: It calls to mind the civil rights era

 It’s heartwarming that a number of commercial establishments are practicing corporate social responsibility. This development enhances their image of going beyond the profit motive by helping improve the lives of people in communities near their area of operation. A good example is SM  Foundation which has organized wellness centers for the elderly, children’s activity centers and hospice units for the terminally ill.

 Its newest project, Adopt-a-Barangay-Health Center, provides best quality service and continuous health care to the Bago-Bantay Health Center in Quezon City, which is made up of three barangays — Alicia, Sto. Cristo and Magsaysay whose combined population reaches 34,566. The center, a five-minute drive from SM City North, is aimed at decongesting government hospitals with patients complaining of minor illnesses that can be addressed at the health center-level, thus freeing hospitals to focus on secondary and tertiary care cases.

The foundation renovated, repainted and refurbished the center and added a new wing to house the centers for the elderly and children’s activity, to serve the social needs of the community.

It provides the center necessary medical and recreational equipment plus seed medical supplies. With the Department of Health, the center’s staff will be appraised of recent medical techniques in handling primary cases and trained to make the center become self-sustaining.

The inauguration and turnover of the pilot project to Quezon City was attended by QC Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. who accepted the donation from the SM Foundation by Debbie Sy, Foundation head, and Connie Angeles, executive director for medical and health services.

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I had the opportunity yesterday to meet Adel Bouraoui of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) before he flew to Marawi city to conduct a four-day session on training trainers in the field of teaching the Arabic language to non-Arabic speakers.

ISESCO, formed in 1982 in Morocco, has 51 member states. Among its objectives are “to strengthen, promote and consolidate cooperation among the member states in the fields of education, science, culture and communication, as well as to develop and upgrade these fields within the framework of the civilizational reference of the Islamic world and in the light of human Islamic values and ideals.”

The training of trainors in teaching the Arabic language falls under the category of education, Adel said. Sessions have been held in various Islamic countries and in those whose Muslim population consists of only 10 percent.

Adel, a Tunisian, told me that while it is true that there is one standard Arabic language and there are only very slight variations in the local dictionaries, there is need to teach the methods of teaching the language particularly in the written form. Knowledge of the language will enable readers to really understand the Koran, he said. And understanding the Koran contributes to the promotion of peace, as it teaches peace, not terrorism and killing.

So far, three sessions have been held in the Philippines. Responsible for inviting the ISESCO to hold the sessions is Sharifa Macarandas, president of the Women’s League and Establishment, Inc. (MWLEI), who herself is proficient in the Arabic language, having lived and studied in Egypt for 18 years. The Marawi session, which starts today, is being held at the Marawi Resort Hotel, which is owned and operated by the Southern Philippines Development Authority.

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The electoral primaries in the US are in a feverish pitch, and observers like us are drawn to the boob tube even at the oddest morning hours to know who the winning Democrat and Republican contenders are. Except for excerpts of the candidates’ campaign speeches, we hardly know what they stand for on issues.

The other day, a friend e-mailed a speech delivered by Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat standard bearer-contender, to  mark Martin Luther King Day at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. King began his ministry and campaign for social justice.The speech contains Obama’s stand on certain issues.

It calls to mind the civil rights era under which people suffered the yoke of oppression. It says that what Dr. King understood is that if enough Americans were awakened to the injustices of the civil rights era — “if they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall (of oppression) would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

 “Unity is the great need of the hour — the great need of this hour,” Obama says in the speech. “Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.”

He is not talking about a budget or trade deficit, nor of a deficit of good ideas or new plans. “I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m talking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the word of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

There is empathy deficit when the color of one’s skin still affects the content of one’s education; when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can’t afford a doctor when their children get sick. When children see nooses hanging from a  schoolyard tree today, in the twenty-first century; when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of American cities; when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans serve tour after tour of duty “in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.”

He says Dr. King led by taking a stand against a war, by challenging American economic structures . . . (he) understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; “that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.”

“That is the unity — the hard-earned unity — that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope — the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.”

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