Safe space, solidarity & something more than air conditioning, OCOM Commencement address

Watch Ryan Bemis’ commencement address for the graduating classes for Doctoral and Master’s in acupuncture degrees at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in 2019. He tells the story of how Crossroads was founded through the inspiration and solidarity with women in Cd Juarez, Mexico, and how they were able to bring acupuncture to some of the darkest corners of the murder capital of the world.

The video can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhLbBn0Lrs

Here is the full transcript:

“SAFE SPACE, SOLIDARITY, and SOMETHING MORE THAN AIR CONDITIONING”

By Ryan Bemis

Oregon College of Oriental Medicine Commencement Address, Graduating Class of 2018

Portland, OR

August 27, 2018

It was a hot summer day. I just crossed the border into Mexico, and I was immediately pulled over by a pick-up full of federal police officers armed with AK 47’s. 

It just so happened that I had something with me in my backpack in the back of my truck.

It was a brick of 100 grams of a soft, green and yellow fluffy herb.  Artemesia.  Moxa.

And so, I made a decision.  And that decision was not to tell them about the herb in my backpack.

And so what was the one question they asked me?

“What dya’ got in the backpack?”

I told them: “I got some zapatos.”…some…shoes (?). 

I know, I know:  Why did I lie? I don’t know!  I really don’t. 

“I got this herb on me.  I know It looks like marijuana.  It smells like marijuana.  I call it moxa.  I know that sounds a lot like the spanish word for marijuana.  MOTA. 

I know moxa sounds a lot like mota.  But it’s NOT mota, I swear!  It’s moxa, not mota!  And I’m….I’m trafficking it...I mean….delivering  it down the road…to a bunch of nuns.  And the nuns are going to... burn the herb.  They’re going to burn it down on top of the head, arms, and legs of these people. Sitting in church pews.

And the needles…yeah well that’s…that’s just NADA.  I’m going to do some Moxa and NADA in some churches.”

I mean, come on!  Who wouldn’t believe that?

My journey towards carrying Oriental medicine supplies with me everywhere I go

began here in Portland, 20 years ago, as an undergrad studying Theology. I took this class on solitude and social change, and about this monk named Thomas Merton.  Back in the 1960’s he was this hermit who was also an activist who taught nuns and priests about the practice of Zen and meditation and he worked to bridge this divide between the east and the west.  And he believed that silence and stillness are radical acts that can change the world.

And in one of his journal entries I read, he wrote:

“Under the surface of glitter & trash in the midst of all the mess of traffic,

There are the people:  sick & distraught, drunk, mad, melancholy, anguished or simply bored to extinction.  It is the people I love and not the roles in the city,

not the glitter of business and of progress.  Can’t we give them something more than air conditioning?”

Can’t we give the people something more than air conditioning?

What a challenge!

Can’t we give them something more than any material thing? More than food? More than shelter?  More than a hand out, more than just our spare change.  More than a pat on the back And a... “I’m sorry; I can’t help you.”

And these questions led me eventually to Juarez, in a project where these needles bring people together.  Believe me:  It’s certainly not the air conditioning that brings us together.  Because there is no air conditioning in in the summertime when it’s 114 degrees in these churches in the far corners of Juarez. There's nothing at all fancy or shiny or waterfall-ey about it.

It’s simple:  People come into churches. The churches provide sanctuary.  And ordinary people there offer acupuncture.  

Witnessing this needle induced silence and stillness sprawl out into these urban slums, I’ve witnessed the birth of a new, and authentically community supported healthcare model. A model of creating safe space, solidarity, a model that calls us into activism.  And that’s what I want to share with you today.  A story about how people creating this safe space in a...precarious place have forged a powerful solidarity.  It’s a story of healing and peacemaking and justice.  And my hope is for you to begin to see that you can have an even greater impact as an acupuncturist than perhaps you had ever imagined.

Living on the US side of the border, too often, I take my personal safety for granted.  I live in El Paso,  one of the safest cities in the US.  On the other side of the border, Juarez Mexico was known, not long ago as the murder capital of the world.  

Let’s be honest: There’s a lot of unsafe space over there.  Some of our students have worked out in the desert near a dumping ground for chopped up body parts.  In another place where they offer acupuncture in the chapel under the Guadalupe altar, in that very space, a man was kidnapped off of the altar during his wedding. A few blocks from this same altar, assassins opened fire on 60 teenagers at a party, killing 15.

As a result of this violence, there’s been a mass exodus over the past decade.  Hundreds of thousands of people have left this place, the 3rd biggest city in Mexico.  Tourists don’t go there much anymore.  As people leave, as people stay away, there’s fertile ground for more violence.

And yet there are people amidst this place creating safe space.  

During my last year at OCOM, I heard about some women in Juarez gathering to do Taiichi in a church.  So…I went right down to visit them.  It the last days of August 2010,  one of the most violent months ever in the history of Juarez.

And they introduced me to this priest Msr. Rene Blanco, the Vicar of the Diocese. He and I got coffee and he told me about his 80 churches throughout the city.  How they tincture their own herbal medicine out of native plants. How they’re working to keep kids out of gangs.  And their devotion to making peace possible.  And he told me how frustrated he is to talk to journalists that come to write only about the problems.  How all they want to do is write about the violence.  And the cartels. And the war on drugs.  About the corpses hanging from bridges in broad daylight

And he tells me what he really hopes for: A new story about his home town.

That Juarez would become the city of peace  

He tells me he’s twice a cancer survivor, he refused surgery and radiation.  Things like acupuncture saved him.  He got this vision to bring acupuncture into these churches.  And I came back to Portland inspired to be a part of this….this crazy training-nuns-in-acupuncture-idea with this starry-eyed liberation theologian hippy priest.

I immersed myself in the people, the culture and the situation of Mexico. My last year here was challenging.  Learning how drugs consumed on the streets of Portland are trafficked right through the streets of Juarez. That the demand for drugs right here in Portland was part of the reason why down there 8 people per day were being killed in Juarez.

And during this year, at the same time I was finishing my studies, a woman named Beatrice was having her Juarez experience.  Two men were shot outside her home in a place called the Valley of Juarez, a major drug trafficking corridor, a rural area south of the city that had seen murder rates much, much higher than in the city of Juarez, death rates were actually equal to that of an open battlefield.

So 2 months after these men were shot and she had closed the corner store based out of her home.  At this point 90% of the town is gone.  Nine out of ten of her neighbors were either dead or disappeared, and she was sitting around wondering what she would do now. 

Then she goes to sleep one night and she has this dream:  Two hands outstretched and holding hundreds of tiny needles.

She did not know what the needles were for. She had never heard of acupuncture. Until 2 months later, when her friend—a nun who had recently been re-assigned from Portland to work in the Valley—asked her if she wanted to attend a NADA ear acupuncture training.

Beatrice looked at the nun and asked: “What is acupuncture?”

And the nun looks back and says, “I don’t know!”

But they were friends with Msr. Rene, and because of their trust in him, they decided to take the 4 hour round trip every day for 4 days in a row into downtown Juarez for my training.  This is where I met Beatrice, and this is where she saw acupuncture needles for the first time.  

She called me up a few months later.  She told me about what she was doing with these needles, And asked me to come see for myself.  

When I came to her town, it was empty, it was spooky.  People fled. Doctors left.  Medical clinics and mental health care were non-existent.

Here, as I watched these survivors sit in silence together, needles dangling from the ears, I learned something about acupuncture. Something beyond the scientific explanations or esoteric theories of how it works.  

In this place Beatrice calls the Valley of Sadness, acupuncture is something simple.

Here in the midst of one of the most dangerous places in the world, where people don’t normally feel safe coming together, acupuncture is merely a medium for holding safe space for them, safe space for suffering, safe space for people to simply "be", feel at peace, and belong.  

Cultivating these community acupuncture dispensaries and working together with over a hundred women like Beatrice, we have found ourselves in solidarity with each other.  

Solidarity:  A unity born out of a shared experience, feeling or action, and one that ties people together.  In Juarez, we all shared this experience of needles and change and Silence and Stillness, these... bind us together

This bond was only possible however because of a shared vulnerability.  I came to Juarez during a vulnerable time in their lives. They opened up and exposed their world, their stories, their hearts to me.

I also came with my own vulnerability.  When I graduated from OCOM, that vulnerability shot right to the surface.  After the first training in Juarez, I still hadn’t graduated. So, I came back to Portland, graduated and like you are here today, I had to figure out what I was going to do.

I was offered a good job here in Portland doing acupuncture in a jail.  It was tempting, to just get a steady job.  Turning it down would mean I would have to venture somewhere and start up my own business. I had no clue how to run a business.  It was scary Leaving Portland, this mecca of acupuncturists that you all have created here and moving to Southern New Mexico, West Texas, Northern Chihuahua, what we call the borderlands.   Well …. there ain’t many acupuncturists there.  And when I got there, I felt alone.

Some teachers warned me:  That’s a bad idea. That’s not going to work there.  That place ain’t ready for acupuncture.  I honestly didn’t know if acupuncture would fit into these churches.  I didn’t have a lot of confidence that I could ever make a living doing acupuncture.

I was also warned about the violence; how vulnerable I would be.  People told me: you’re going to get killed, hit by a stray bullet.  I was vulnerable to these messages, as well.  Some of my friends in Juarez have lost friends to stray bullets.

In the end all I could do was surrender my safety to a bunch of Sunday school teachers.  And that allowed for a shift to happen in me.  Rather than viewing my role as watching out for the vulnerable people, I had no choice but to trust for the people to watch out for me. Rather than welcoming them into my international aide project as my trauma patients, I let myself be welcomed into their churches, their homes,

I surrendered my security over to their... hospitality.

Early on I also realized that I was vulnerable to making the same mistakes of a hit and run medical missions project. A nun in Juarez showed me an empty building, where an outside medical aid program came years ago to offer several months of free doctors, free tests, free care, free drugs, until the funding…. ran out, and the outsiders left, and they left this empty building

So, I sought out mentorship from similar acupuncture training projects for health promoters in Central America and Africa. They encouraged me to focus on sustainability by training the local people. So that’s what I did.   I stepped out of the healer role out the rescuer role, and instead handed over the tools to them  

Most of our students are women.  They’re humble, they’re shy.  They receive no compensation.  They’re deep in a male dominated society. There’s a steep power differential.  Some of their husbands are ….jealous that they take one day a week away from home, away from their role as a housewife, just to go learn how to poke needles. Most have limited formal education, and little, if any, prior experience in any healthcare.  

And these….these are the people who created the first acupuncture school ever sponsored by the Catholic Church:  Promotores Descalzos (which in Spanish translates as Barefoot Health Promoters).  Teachers from here in Portland come to volunteer.  We don’t charge any tuition.  They don’t charge for acupuncture

So: What does this look like?  This acupuncture in a chapel thing?

From the altar, the priest announces: There will be acupuncture after mass.  The people sit in the pews in front of the altar.  Nuns scoot in. Place the needles.  They share…..silence and stillness.

Refugees along the border seek sanctuary in churches from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Or, as they are notoriously known to most as:  ICE).  They are trapped and stuck.  They can’t leave these churches, They have a lot of anxiety and our volunteers visit them week in, week out.

The Nuns visit the sick and homebound to offer communion, and after communion, they offer needles.  Many of our students are Factory workers. After work, they go to their church where they volunteer.  Their hero is Miriam Lee.  Using her protocol, a half a million needles later, today 10 churches in Juarez offer regular community acupuncture.  Every single day of the week you can find relief in at one of these churches.

These people show me how resilient a community can be.  These are people who don’t leave even as murder rates rise sharply again this summer, this year in 2018.   A palpable insecurity is returning, and these people facilitate peace making, nonviolent resistance.  Through silence and stillness, holding space for everyone. For victims.  For perpetrators as well.  These ordinary people build peace using hair thin needles and the simplest of acupuncture protocols.  

Our work starts with the recognition that the work of healing, of justice, of peace, is already happening in the world. Even in a place like Juarez.  There are these gaping wounds.  But the people were already on the path of healing.  And the needles just jumped on  for the ride.  Here in Oregon, it’s no different. There’s an opioid epidemic. One that is killing people at much, much higher rate than the bullets in Mexico.  Acupuncture can help.  BUT there’s so many places with no acupuncturist.  Yet there are thousands of community workers who could offer the NADA ear acupuncture for people addicted to opiates.  So many providers to team up with, to train, to empower, to mentor.  All that is missing is a crucial policy change to let other providers offer the NADA ear acupuncture protocol

Historically, in the US, ...we...as acupuncturists make the biggest difference when we partner with other health providers, other communities, particularly communities of recovery. In the 1970’s in New York, acupuncturists worked with the Black Panthers and Young Lords.  This led to the birth of the NADA ear acupuncture movement. And this very relationship with communities of recovery helped make possible the landmark 1997 National Institute of Health statement on acupuncture

And the same was true here in Oregon for achieving Medicaid coverage for acupuncture.  Community acupuncture, something that came ‘outta Portland, Making acupuncture something relevant for the working class.  All these are examples of activism born out of solidarity with underserved communities.

In our profession today, we can feel the movement.  Acupuncturists are

working for this policy change to allow community workers to offer NADA ear acupuncture.  Acupuncturists in my home state of Wyoming.  Acupuncturists in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, West Virginia.  In the past few years these courageous acupuncturists--some who graduated from OCOM-- have made it so that the majority of the United States today have this policy in place.  We can feel this movement also, today in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine and Massachusetts right now.   They’re all getting closer to this policy change.

They’re fighting for the poorest of the poor.  Those who can’t afford an acupuncturist. Those who have no access to an acupuncturist.  They give us hope that we can curb this opioid epidemic. We know that states with this policy have more addictions programs offering any type of acupuncture than states without this policy.   

What I do in Texas and New Mexico:  bringing acupuncture into hospitals and universities and community clinics and with these refugees.  The opportunities I have to walk alongside these groups.  The requests I get to help shape their vision for integrative medicine wouldn’t be possible had acupuncturists in these states not fought for this type of policy.  And so many more opportunities are possible here for you in Oregon.  You…. you can be a part of this movement...this activism,

This policy change to make acupuncture more bent towards justice. Let addictions workers offer this safe 5 point ear protocol

And I know that may sound scary to us: activism. It’s easier to step back and hope change happens.   I personally like to hike up into the Franklin Mountains above my apartment to a place where I can look down and I cannot distinguish where the border line is. I can’t see the Rio Grande river. I can’t see the wall. I can’t see that line where the United States becomes Mexico – I can’t tell where “America” begins or ends

I just see these two cities—El Paso and Juarez—blend into one community.  And I like to imagine, sitting up there, looking down, that we’re all just one as a people. But a... A Utopian Universal Unity…. Is not reality in the borderlands, not reality in America.  Unity is a dream right now. Because the wall is there.  The border is real.  It shapes the narrative of the people.  

We are divided here in America, and yet immigrants are coming here from around the world right now fleeing danger arriving out of vulnerability.  Searching for safety Hoping we the people will welcome them in solidarity.  But instead they’re called criminals. They’re locked up.  These are the realities of America

And so I can’t sit up there on the mountaintop, and just dream of a better world.  There's a lot of hard work to be done.  This work will undoubtedly shake me out of my comfort zone.  It already has.

In his final speech the night before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr spoke to a group of public health workers, and he said:  “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness”

It was my friend Beatrice that showed me a dangerous unselfishness. Right there in her abandoned town, One day, we walked along dirt roads, between black stained...burnt concrete...rebar skeletons …the rubble of what her best friends, and her family, and her kids once called home.  And there…there in this ghostly place, I look at her and she has this incredible glow of optimism.  And she is going on and on about her hope for the future of her people as she tries to convince me “It’s more tranquilo now.” “The violence is in the past.” “It’s not like it was before”.   How a few families moved back in recent months, and how she is convinced more will return.  

And then….then she tells me she has dual citizenship. She doesn’t have to work in the Valley.  She doesn’t have to live there.

I ask:  “Why do you choose to live here?”

And she tells me:

“Hay que echar las ganas”

You  have to put forth the effort.

Beatrice chooses to stay.   The few others who remain there come and knock on her door, the door that was once her store.  Before they went to use the pay phone to reach out and talk to someone.  Today they ask for ear acupuncture.  

Here in Portland, you are in solidarity with Beatrice. Each time you put those 5 points in the ears, or each time you support someone like Beatrice so they can keep helping those truly on the fringes of society, out of your reach, out of my reach.  Each time you hang in there.  When your business gets tough and keep showing up day in, day out Even when you feel alone, but you find a way to you keep your lights on

Each time you make a stretch to serve people left behind in this economy, alienated by these times, hardened by the realities of America.  Every time you step out of your comfort zone, you stand with Beatrice.

And if this one woman in the Valley of Death Can cultivate so much life Imagine what we can all do.  If we each tap deep into our humanity.  And draw out a dangerous unselfishness.  Imagine what you can do. 

Walking up on this stage, now.  It’s time to join Beatrice. It’s time to put forth the effort

But remember this humanizing gift of healing comes with great privilege.  So... stepping across, stepping into that privilege, Join me ...join me and my compadres from Juarez.

Bind yourself to our vision:  A vision of a future where acupuncture is something relevant, something, real, and not just for some, but for everyone.

Con el favor de Dios:

Acupuntura para todos.

God willing: Acupuncture for everyone.

“Our work starts with the recognition that the work of healing, of justice, of peace, is already happening in the world. Even in a place like Cd Juarez, Mexico. There are these gaping wounds. But the people were already on the path of healing. And the needles just jumped on for the ride.”

RYAN BEMIS, 2018 Graduation Commencement Oregon College of Oriental Medicine