Dear Friends,
A joke for the weekend: A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the headboard smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile. The egg grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says "Well, I guess we finally answered that question.”
I was briefly in Seattle last week to find new renters for a house we purchased in 2014 … back when purchasing a home was a reasonable thing to do.
At first glance, Seattle is a two-company town with Microsoft and Amazon racing toward corporate global domination and artificial general intelligence. Blink again and every neighborhood bubbles over with bustling bookstores, breweries, and boutiques. It’s hard to hold both truths: The city careens toward a hyper-capitalist techno-duopoly while neighborhoods flourish with thriving independent businesses.
As a friend once described Seattle: “Nowhere else will you find so many Black Lives Matter signs and so few Black people.” Walking around our old neighborhood, those BLM signs seemingly went out of fashion, replaced with new poster art: “Free Palestine!” and “End Apartheid!” ... and sometimes “From the river to the sea.”
I thought about an observation from
: Once we transcend material constraints, fixed identities and religion, we lose the traditional pathways to make meaning. And so, we search for meaning beyond material constraints in two ways. First, we may look toward the past to recover tradition: “the suburban American who rediscovers his Celtic heritage, names his child Cahal or Aidan, and takes up residence at the local Irish pub.”Or we seek meaning through “a proselytizing desire to bring freedom to others.” Free Tibet. Abolish prisons. Black Lives Matter. Free Palestine.
With the first approach, we resist freedom by recuperating the constraints of the past. With the second, we double down on freedom by demanding its universality.
I’ve never met anyone from Gaza, never been, and don’t have plans to go. I’ve read about Gaza, of course. 2.1 million people clustered together in a strip of land smaller than Chicago.1
For whatever reason, I’ve spent more time reading about the Democratic Republic of the Congo.2 (As a former colleague liked to say about any insecure person calling too much attention to their credentials: “It’s like the Democratic Republic of the Congo ... if you feel the need to put ‘democratic’ in your name, you’re probably not so democratic.”)
The DRC is Africa’s third largest country with 100 million people. By 2050, it is projected to have 215 million people and join the world’s ten most populous countries. It contains 70% of the world’s coltan and half of the world’s known cobalt — both crucial minerals for cell phones, batteries, and EVs. The country’s mineral-rich eastern region also has giant stores of diamonds, gold, and copper.
More money, more problems. The New York Times published an absorbing multi-part investigation about how China pushed the US out of the DRC’s Cobalt reserves, leading to an increase in unlicensed mining and conflict between criminal groups. As the mineral wealth of the region grows, Rwanda’s military trains and finances M23 rebels who regularly attack the Congolese military, causing 500,000 people to flee their homes just in the past three months. Nearly seven million Congolese have been displaced since the conflict began.
This coming Wednesday, “Congolese go to the polls to vote for president,” writes
in his excellent “This Week in Africa” newsletter., Editor of the Mail & Guardian’s The Continent magazine, calls the wrold “brutally indifferent” to one of the most important elections. The DRC contains not only the majority of minerals needed to power the green transition but also the second-largest rainforest to absorb the carbon dioxide we produce.Incumbent president Félix Tshisekedi seeks a second term against strong challengers. The Continent calls it the election in the most important country on the planet. These are five key issues at stake. The election will take place in the context of wide distrust and disorder across the country.
There are roughly 1,000 South Sudanese refugees living in Seattle and one of them, Paka, wakes up each morning at 4 a.m. to drive passengers from Seattle’s eastern suburbs to the airport. At 7 am, I was his third Uber ride of the morning.
He said that Seattle is the most beautiful place he’s ever seen, that he would wake up early to watch the sunrise every day in any case, so why not earn some money while talking to interesting passengers? “People like you,” he said with a charismatic smile. We talked about his favorite parks, the best places to eat, how he likes to spoil his nephews and nieces by taking them for ferry rides to Bainbridge Island.
We discussed the initial optimism of Sudan’s “two-state solution” when South Sudan gained independence in 2011 … and the disappointment ever since. South Sudan still lacks a permanent constitution, and its first democratic election (scheduled for this month) was postponed until next year amidst intensifying violence and ethnic conflict.
Did Sudan’s experience hold any lessons for Israel and Palestine, I asked. “One-state, two-state, three-state, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “South Sudan hasn’t gotten any better since independence. What people want are jobs, or else they’ll keep fighting. The US, UK, and Turkey should stop funding Israel’s military and instead put all of that money into funding factories in Gaza and the West Bank. Give jobs to every Palestinian and you will see, there will be peace.”3
I sensed that he slowed down during the last 10 miles of the drive so that we could finish our conversation unhurried. The airport was packed. Bleary-eyed morning travelers stared bug-eyed at their phones while waiting for their little red cups of corporate coffee to appear under the mermaid logo. Inside of every screen was a tiny piece of metallic tantalum mined from the molten rock of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite my former colleague’s joke, I hope that Wednesday’s election is democratic indeed.
What is the point of this week’s newsletter? Do I want to make you feel bad for spending more time reading about Palestine than the DRC or South Sudan? I hope not. For me, it’s a reflection on the forces that influence my curiosity, the modern struggle to make meaning, the unexpected encounters with strangers from far away, and our inability to influence the outcomes of the atrocities that appear on our screens.
As with all editions, it is a small deposit into a time capsule for an unknown future.
If next week is your last week at work, may it be relaxed and festive,
David
I like to ride my bike 80 miles on Saturdays. Gaza Strip is only 25 miles long. If I rode along the perimeter of Gaza’s border, it would be less than my usual training ride. Half of Gaza’s population is under 18, most are unemployed, and 75% are registered with the U.N. as displaced refugees.
Mostly Howard French’s excellent reporting compiled in A Continent for the Taking. And also Siddharth Kara’s majestic Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
Excellent post David. It made my day.
I loved this read, even at 6:15 am on a Sunday before I go work my shift as a barista, wait, especially bc before I go work my shift. My reasons: it was just fascinating to read about DRC, the Seattle comment alone of more BLM signs than the B, and that you too make conversation with your driver. While dating my ex, I realized that he rarely acknowledged Uber/Lyft drivers, rarely a hi and would never make conversation, just hop on his phone entire time. But what made it worst was that you could tell he thought of the driver as less than. Every one of these moments that I observed in him, I loved him less and less until there wasn’t enough to stay in relationship. I am not surprised you talk to drivers my friend. And was this pic AI generated bc you couldn’t take a pic? 😜