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The Current Transcript for October 26, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Harrison is like a patsy in a way. You can make a case where a lot more places that are a lot more racist than Harrison.

MATT GALLOWAY: Harrison, Arkansas, has the dubious distinction of being known as the most racist town in the United States. The Klan is headquartered nearby. A white pride billboard is prominently displayed in the centre of town. And when a filmmaker stood in the community this summer with a Black Lives Matter sign, the ugly responses he received were seen around the world in a viral video. In 30 minutes, our Road to November road trip rolls into Harrison to speak with locals trying to change the town's reputation and grapple with the president accused of amplifying racial divisions. Also this morning, CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward has seen death covering conflicts around the world, but it's the war in Syria that stays with her the most.

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VOICE: I was so consumed by this story and it did break my heart. And I did want the world to know and understand that it's on us that we let these people down.

MG: In an hour, how she got to some of the most dangerous places in the world, how she ended up in a Quentin Tarantino film, and the personal cost of bringing stories of war back home. We begin though with a luxury that many Canadians take for granted, clean running water and mounting anger in an Ontario first nation that hasn't been able to drink from the tap for 25 years. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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'This is not the country you believe it is,' Neskantaga First Nation chief says amid water crisis

Guests: Allan Moonias, Chris Moonias, Chris Skead

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VOICE: My hands are cold. They're red.

MG: Late October isn't exactly the best time to be in a lake, but Wayne Moonias has no choice. That's the only way for him to get water right now.

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VOICE 1: This is what we're asked, to live like this.

VOICE 2: In Canada.

VOICE 1: Yeah, in Canada. It's bordering on savagery, the way we're being treated right now.

MG: Wayne Moonias is a member of the Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario. The community has been under a boil water advisory for 25 years. But last week, an oily substance was found on the surface of their water reserve, so their taps were turned off, leaving the community without access to any running water. Most residents have been evacuated to Thunder Bay, residents including Allan Moonias, who's staying at a hotel in the city with his family. I spoke with Allan on Friday. You have 10 people in your household. Describe for me what was happening in your home when the water was shut off.

ALLAN MOONIAS: There's a lot of frustration in our household. Like, we had to boil some water if we wanna, like, do the dishes or if we wanted to wash our face or after we go to the washroom, we have to fill up the washroom tank with 10 litres and another 10 litres on the toilet bowl. So 20 litres for each person. It was really frustrating and when the community decided to to evacuate, that was it was really pretty hard for my family to decide to come out because of the COVID-19 that's happening in this in the world, a pandemic. And my kids are scared. They don't want to expose themselves in the city life.

MG: Did you feel like you had any option to stay in the community or you had to leave, you felt like you had to leave?

ALLAN MOONIAS: I wanted to stay, but I had to look at my family and my grandkids because they're so small, like they're like four, five years old and there's a baby. They needed water daily. So this was the only option was to come out.

MG: Where are you staying now?

ALLAN MOONIAS: I'm staying at the Victoria Inn at Artist Street here in Thunder Bay.

MG: And what was it like when the family arrived there? I mean, you arrive leaving a place that has no water, no running water into a hotel in the city. What was that like?

ALLAN MOONIAS: First of all, we had the first flight and our flight was at 10:00. And it's about a 20 minute drive from the community to the airport. So I could just get up and walk out of the house. My older kids there were didn't go to the washroom and when they got to Thunder Bay here, there was a shuttle, a bus shuttle loaded with washrooms. They were surprised that there was a washroom inside a big bus like running water. Like here we don't have water at our home. So they took turns going to the home from the airport to Victoria Inn.

MG: Wat does it tell you that there's running water, as you said, on a bus, but there's not running water in your home? What does that tell you about the state of the infrastructure on First Nations?

ALLAN MOONIAS: This tells me like we've been going through this for quite sometimes, like 25 to 26 years, boil water advisory. But mostly for the past years, ever since they started rebuilding the water treatment plant, we've been having a lot of problems and the water keeps being shut off daily. Sometimes it's off for one whole day, wait for the reservoir to fill up and then turn it back on. It tells me that in our reserves that we don't even have running water and once we got off the plane, there was a bus shuttle there and a bus has water inside a vehicle, like a big vehicle, like a bus. I don't know how to explain it, but like, I wish we could have that kind of system in our community. And people here that were evacuated are already asking when are we going back? Even my children are asking, when are we going home? All I say to them is, I don't know. And I see them really frustrated because they have to come here in a different environment, like we have life, like we have to adjust the city life. And my family is very afraid of COVID right now. We're living in fear.

MG: I wish you the best of luck. Take care of yourself and I hope you get home soon.

ALLAN MOONIAS: Thank you very much.

MG: Bye bye. Allan Moonias is on the Council of the Neskantaga First Nation. Chris Moonias has also been evacuated to Thunder Bay. He's the Chief of the Neskantaga First Nation. Chief Moonias, good morning to you.

CHRIS MOONIAS: Good morning.

MG: We just heard from Allan about the living conditions in your community and his frustration. Do you share that frustration?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Yes, I do. And I'm really sad to hear what the families are going through. And those are the things that I hear from every family member in Neskantaga.

MG: When was the last time that you were able to drink from a tap in your community?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Never.

MG: You've never been able to drink water from the tap in your community?

CHRIS MOONIAS: I've never been able to drink water from the tap in the community.

MG: What effect does that have on the community? I mean, this is the community's second evacuation in a little more than a year, but it's been under a boil water advisory for 25 years. What effect does that have on a community?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, it's traumatizing, it's dehumanizing and, you know, it's there's a lot of mental psychological effects that it has. You know, here I'm sitting in front of you, talking to you and I have three bottles of water in front of me, drinking. You know, even here in Thunder Bay where there's clean drinking water, I don't, I can't seem to bring myself to drink water from the tap. I have to go get bottled water because it's automatically ingrained in my head that, you know, it's like that everywhere. Like I've travelled to Toronto, I've travelled to Ottawa and I'm doing the same thing. The first thing I do is I get bottled water.

MG: You're travelling back to your community today. What are you going to be doing today?

CHRIS MOONIAS: I'll be escorted with a group of people, you know, from Indigenous Services Canada and couple of, we have my community members to Neskantaga, to do some inspections and hopefully that it's done right.

MG: All the families and children have now been evacuated. There are a couple of dozen people who stayed behind to run the community. What have you heard from them about how they're managing without any running water?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, they are struggling. That we know. And they, but their spirits are high. You know, it's the heart and soul of the community and I fully support them. I did ask them if they can be part of the evacuation, but I don't want to take anything away from them that, you know, that's the duties and responsibilities they feel that they have. And they support the community, that the evacuation is happening and it's part of their commitment to the community. They committed to each community member, each household that all the houses are going to be taken care of.

MG: We heard from Allan Moonias just about how difficult it's been for his family to relocate to Thunder Bay. They're worried about the spread of COVID. They're just concerned about leaving their homes. As you understand it, I mean, with everybody going, families and children out. How difficult is it for them to be uprooted from home?

CHRIS MOONIAS: It is very difficult. And unfortunately, it is not the first time that this has happened. It has happened last year for the same reason and it has happened a few years ago for a forest fire. And, you know, it is always difficult to be uprooted and be sent to somewhere where you're not familiar and it's just a totally different environment. You know, people, do have culture shock at times.

MG: The prime minister was asked about the water crisis in Neskantaga on Friday. Have a listen to some of what he had to say.

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VOICE: Reconciliation is something that is extremely important to this country, and it is a process that will involve many steps forward and a few setbacks. It is difficult, as we all know, to end these long term boil water advisories. Otherwise, other governments would have done it. We've managed to lift, 95 of them, have dozens more to go and we're continuing to work very closely with all communities involved.

MG: Chief Moonias, what do you make of the Prime Minister's comments that it's difficult to end these boil water advisories?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, they had 25 years to do it. I mean, they're using COVID-19 as an excuse now. How come they didn't do it last year? Two years, 2018 when we were promised? In 2016, we were promised that our water treatment plant would be finished in the spring of 2018. Minister Bennett at the time, told my daughter right in her face that you will have clean drinking water in spring of 2018. I am glad that other communities are getting or has been able to lift boil water advisory and I do hope that other other communities as well have will lift their boil water advisory, including mine.

MG: I want to bring in a leader from one of those other communities. Chris Skead is the Chief of the Wauzhushk Onigum Nation near Kenora, Ontario. His community was under a boil water advisory for three years and late last month they finally got access to clean drinking water. He's been listening in. Chief Skead, good morning to you.

CHRIS SKEAD: Good morning, Matt and Good morning to Chief Moonias as well.

MG: What's it like for you to hear what the members of the Neskantaga First Nation are going through right now?

CHRIS SKEAD: Yes, as well as the prior gentleman that was speaking, another Mr. Moonias as well, it was very a very similar hearing those words, those discussions. Right. And I know I'm kind of hearing that it was very similar on kind of what my community was going through as well. Right. Just kind of hearing that, you know, the impacts that the chief is going through as well as kind of, you know, of the luxury of coming from the community to have a bigger city. Right. And then even a bus has water and, you know, sometimes things like that I think, you know, that regular general Canadians take for granted in regards to just kind of walking over to the kitchen tap and kind of turning it on and they could have a glass of water. And, you know, unfortunately, there's a lot of communities that experience that and we kind of went through the same process. And that's kind of what the information that I used to kind of, I guess, paint a picture in regards to dealing with it.

MG: Jjust briefly paint us that picture. What was it like for you when you didn't have that clean water to do things that, as you say, a lot of Canadians would take for granted? You think of, you know, having a drink of the tap from the tap, you think of, you know, kids in a bathtub. How difficult was it for you to do those normal things?

CHRIS SKEAD: Yeah. Because we never had the luxury to do that, right? We have our in a certain part of our community, we have jugs of water that would be trucked in and then our membership, we have about 300 on community, but overall off reserve as well, we have about 700 in total in my community that live here in Wauzhushk. But yeah, we would have two jugs of water that would be, would come once a week and we would have to limit the amount of water that our people would be able to to take with them. And same thing, right, sometimes there's houses in our community that have 10 plus people living in their households. So it's very difficult, very challenging and was also very, very expensive to to do that. And I know prior to us getting our clean drinking water, we would notice that there would be a different water colour in regards to like when we'd give our children a bath. It would have like a little bit of a yellow look to it, almost like apple juice or something and I had really worries when I would give my grandson a bath. Right? To kind of see that and and experience that.

MG: Chief Moonias, on Twitter, you had retweeted a request or an offer from one of the members of your First Nation, inviting the prime minister or leaders to come in and live in your community. If they came there, if Justin Trudeau came to Neskantaga, what would he see do you think?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, he'll see, in his backyard, his citizens living in third world conditions.

MG: When you say in his backyard, what should that say to people across this country about the fact that this is still continuing? That this is continued in your community for 25 years?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, it should say a lot. It should say to the, I mean, to Canadians that, you know, this is not the country you believe it is. There are people, there are citizens in this country that are still living in third-world conditions supposedly with community.

MG: One of the we heard about the difficulty that your community isn't close enough to a city to connect to an existing water system. Does that make the situation more challenging to to fix?

CHRIS MOONIAS: Well, being in a remote community is very difficult and the costs are high. Like you know, a four-litre jug of milk will cost you around $200.

MG: What would it take for you to be able to have the community go back safely?

CHRIS MOONIAS: We do have a list of demands that we we sent out, you know. We want to be able to go back to have running water 24 hours a day. We want to be able to feel safe that, you know, there are no contaminants found in the water. We did ask for a membrane package, water treatment units to allow for clean drinking water to be produced just to mitigate the effects of the crisis.

MG: Chief Skead, what would you say to Chief Moonias about the situation that his community finds itself in?

CHRIS SKEAD: Yeah, Chief, first, my thoughts and our prayers are with your community, of course, as well as, you know, your citizens, the babies, the youth, the men, the women, and, of course, the elders. I know it's difficult, especially being displaced and the impact and with COVID, you know, it only compounds it. I was just listening in when you were speaking earlier, you know, and I definitely really from my community, Wauzhushk Onigum, we're definitely our thoughts and prayers are with your community. And I know there's also the impact in regards to, you know, the mental holistic impacts that probably the membership are going through. Right? Not knowing when you're going to get to go back home. You know what, how things are hitting your membership in the city life and, you know, that sort of stuff. But I'm also a firm believer in regards to, you know, the Creator and all that, that would definitely look after each and every one of us. And I really hope, you know, holding the federal government's feet to the fire here. And I know that's kind of how I approach this. When my prime minister mentioned, you know, that was one of his mandates to end boil water advisories and those are, I used his words when I started speaking with the federal government. It took us probably around two to three years to to negotiate, to actually convince them, right, that, you know, the same thing, like having the luxury of going and turning on the tap. I had to come back solve and kind of mention that to him. Just to kind of paint the picture of what you know, what exactly is happening in communities.

MG: Chief Moonias, I hope those words are encouraging to you. We'll have to leave it there. It's great to speak with you both about this. Thank you.

CHRIS SKEAD: OK.

CHRIS MOONIAS: Yeah, thank you.

MG: Chris Moonias is Chief of the Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario. And Chief Skead is the Chief of the Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation near Kenora. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Road to November: Residents of the 'most racist town in America' say they're working hard to shake that reputation

Guests: Fredi Mendez, Kevin Cheri

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward takes us to the frontlines of the war in Syria. But first, we're making a pit stop in what's been called the most racist town in America.

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VOICE 1: Together, we will make America great again.

VOICE 2: If you're going to vote by mail, vote early.

VOICE 3: But you don't hear them talking about COVID. I saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

VOICE 4: The only thing he could tear America apart is America itself and cannot let that happen.

MG: We're nine days out from the U.S. election and during our Road to November series, we have travelled all along the Mississippi River. Our guests are regular voters, no pundits, no politicians. Instead, it's the pastor, the mechanic, the barbecue pit master. And the goal here is to get a small glimpse at what this election means to everyday Americans. Today, we've rolled the radio RV into Arkansas and gone a little further from the river's edge, the normal. Four hours west of the Mississippi, nestled in the Ozarks, is a little manufacturing town called Harrison. By all accounts, it is very much the idyllic rural American town. But of course, nothing is ever perfect.

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[Clip of viral video in Harrison, Arkansas]

MG: That is a small portion of a viral video from this summer. The filmmaker stood outside a local Wal-Mart holding a Black Lives Matter sign and hit record. And what you heard are some of the very few moments we could play on the radio. Everything else shows people driving by, yelling racist comments or threatening the filmmaker's life. For years, Harrison has been affiliated with white supremacy, thanks largely to the national director of the Ku Klux Klan living nearby. But a two minute video doesn't always give the full picture of a town and the people who live there. So we thought we'd go back to Harrison now that some time has passed and hear what people think.

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VOICE 1: We're not the most racist town in America. And so it hurt. And it hurt, it hurt deeply. It made me mad a little bit and embarrassment that somebody would drive by this guy and say some of the things that were heard on the video.

VOICE 2: I think it's more a thing of the past and there's a couple old people still bringing it up and causing a problem.

VOICE 3: I've lived here my whole life and I have not had to deal with racism. Also I'm white female, so I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's not as bad as it's portrayed to be definitely.

VOICE 4: I'll say this about Harrison and racism. It's been known as a racist place, in fact, most racist place in the country for a long time, mainly because of the Klan. But this is what people don't realize. There's racism all over the place. Harrison is like a patsy in a way. You can make a case for a lot more places that are a lot more racist than Harrison. You see black people here and people of other races all the time, walking the streets, not in no danger at all. At worst, they might get a little dirty look. That's it. Every once in a while.

VOICE 6: They've had several Black Lives Matter protests down here and they went very smoothly. There were no problems whatsoever and they had plenty of support. I was actually at the first one. And there were tons of vehicles driving by and honking, so they definitely had support from people in the town.

VOICE 7: I lived here 16 years. Not once I have experienced racism and I'm always felt loved.

MG: The last voice you heard there is that Fredi Mendez, he owns HPO Detailing and Power Washing in Harrison. And Fredi is with me now. Fredi, good morning.

FREDI MENDEZ: Hey, how you doing today?

MG: When that video went around for the first time, what did you make of it?

FREDI MENDEZ: Well, you know, to be honest with you, actually the first thing it was posted, I got a phone call from a lady in Florida and she told me that that video was showing the address of my detail shop. And I said, will you please send me the link? And she did. She said it was on YouTube and she went ahead and sent me the video. And I went ahead and looked at it, watched it, the whole thing and I'm like, I just can't believe this. You know, I just I was shocked that somebody took the time to come to a small town and actually make a video to try to make our town look racist.

MG: Your auto detailing shop shares a parking lot with a couple of billboards. And I've seen a photo of this. One of the billboards reads White Pride Radio and Alt Right TV. And the other is a billboard for a guy, he's an attorney named Jason Robb, who on Twitter declares himself as a white nationalist that believes that protection and preservation of his people. What is it like to see those signs every day?

FREDI MENDEZ: Well, I don't really, you know, they don't bother me nones. I think when it comes down to because they the reason it doesn't bother me none is because I know what our town is like. I know how our town behaves and acts towards people who are, you know, from a different ethnicitiy or race per say. And so, you know, the only thing that bothers me is when people stops in the parking lot and starts taking pictures and then this happens almost alien.

MG: You live, you're not white, but you live and work in this town that, as we heard, is called the most racist town in America. In that video, that little clip that we played, you were saying that you don't really experience racism. Do you think you're an outlier in that experience? I mean tell me a little bit more about what it's like not to be white, but living in a town that's been called, as I say, the most racist town in America.

FREDI MENDEZ: OK. I can tell you this. I moved here about 15 years ago. My kids were small. I have two daughters that were little. And I was a little hesitant because, you know, that's what I heard when I first moved here. So I didn't even send my kids to public school because I was afraid they're going to have to go through what I went through growing up in the state of Virginia. That's where I actually grew up in.

MG: And what did you face in Virginia?

FREDI MENDEZ: You know, it was the town that I was I grew up in. I mean, I was you know, they was pretty was pretty, I was getting beat up all the time and called names, all that stuff for being Hispanic. So we put them in private school, then the private school shut down and to make make story short, we had to put them in public school. But really, we have never experienced any racism at all, my kids or I in this community. In fact, I'm very well known in this community and I got nothing but love.

MG: This is an election that's coming after people who been talking a lot about racism. And I mean, sure, I mean, your town gets some of that discussion, but there has been this uprising around anti-Black racism and racial justice across the United States and elsewhere as well. Are those issues affecting, influencing your vote this year in the election?

FREDI MENDEZ: You know, my vote has already been set for a long time. I will do the same thing as I did it last time and then vote for who I feel is the best candidate for our country.

MG: Do you mind me asking who you're voting for?

FREDI MENDEZ: Yeah, I'm voting for Donald Trump.

MG: And you voted for him four years ago as well?

FREDI MENDEZ: Yes, I did.

MG: What is it about Donald Trump that you think is qualifies him as the best person to lead your country?

FREDI MENDEZ: You know, he's pretty much the most honest person I've ever known. He tells you like it. And that's the thing, a lot of people don't like him because of the personality, his personality. But, you know, we're not hiring somebody with a personality. We're hiring somebody who gets the job done and he gets the job done. And he is supportive of our Second Amendment rights and he's against abortion and just, you know, I mean the list goes on and on and on.

MG: He's also been called a racist and a bigot and has been accused of helping to fuel the racial divisions in the United States. Things that people, you know, point to your town and say, this is an example of what's been going on in the United States. What do you make of that? I can hear you sighing.

FREDI MENDEZ: I don't never seeing any racism going on with him. He just wants to build a wall, so people don't come. I'm an immigrant. I understand what he's talking about because I know what immigrants do sometimes. You know they come, they reap the benefits and they'll commit crimes and do stuff like that. I grew up around it. I hate to say it, but sometimes immigrants do that. Not all of them, but they do that.

MG: I mean, one of the things he has done is, I mean, and this is a notorious policies is separating kids from their parents. And there are still hundreds of kids who haven't been reunited with their parents. You see those and you see those images of kids in cages, does that, as somebody who was born in Mexico, originally from Mexico, does that make you rethink your vote at all?

FREDI MENDEZ: Hey, let me tell you something. I was arrested by immigration when I was 16 years old. OK. I was in Maine. They put me in a prison cell by myself. They separated me from my mom and dad. I was in jail for five hours, 16-years-old and they actually released me. So you told me, is that any different than what it is now? This has been going on for over 20 years. It's not that I'm defending Trump, I'm just telling you that this has been happening for a long time. The cases and all that stuff, it's been happening before Trump happened. It's people been exposing this now to the public because they want Trump out of the office. That's different. But you know what I'm saying is, I mean, when I was under Clinton's administration when I got arrested by immigration when I was 16 years old. You know, the thing is, this has been going on, it's just never been exposed.

MG: That doesn't make you rethink your support for him?

FREDI MENDEZ: No, absolutely not, because it's been over 20 years or so.

MG: When you think of how divided the country is. What is it that gives you hope?

FREDI MENDEZ: What gives me hope is that we are, there are still people out there, they're willing to fight for what's right.

MG: Have you voted already or are you going to vote on Election Day?

FREDI MENDEZ: No actually I'm going to do that today.

MG: You're going to vote today?

FREDI MENDEZ: Yup.

MG: Excellent. I really appreciate talking to you, Fredi. It's good to speak with you. Good luck with the voting. I hope there's not a long line.

FREDI MENDEZ: Well, thank you so much for having me and you have a blessed day.

MG: Fredi Mendez owns HPO Detailing and Power Washing in Harrison, Arkansas. As we've said, the title of the most racist town in America is one that Harrison has been trying to shake for a while. Back in 2003, a group of concerned neighbours decided to form the Harrison Task Force on Race Relations to tackle this problem. Kevin Cheri is part of that group now. He's lived in Harrison for 13 years and he's been listening in. Kevin, good morning to you.

KEVIN CHERI: Good morning.

MG: You're a black man living in what has been named the most racist town in America. Do you think that it deserves that title?

KEVIN CHERI: Absolutely not. I was quite surprised to learn of that labelling years ago. And I think as it's been mentioned, part of it has been built up over time as a result of a little of early history of Harrison, as well as the more recent relocation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan here in a town 15 miles away from Harrison, but they have a mailing address in Harrison because their town so small. So for purposes of I think of people just being able to locate them more easily, they use Harrison as their mailing address, but their presence is not seen or really had much impact at all upon this community. But the Klan did move here in the mid-80s and with those things and there whave been other stories of people, minorities who have maybe had instances of racism experiences within this region. And so those things have somewhat affect this town.

MG: Have you been the target of racism in Harrison?

KEVIN CHERI: Not direct racism. I think that, you know, when you are a minority in a in any of the Townsends in the Southern or Midwestern parts of this country, you can walk into stores or businesses and sometimes you get stared at. OK. You get looked at a little more than everyone else because you're the odd. You're, you know, people don't see many of you. So some of it is curiosity, some of it is could be outright racist attitudes. And so, you know, this is something that has gone on to this country for years.

MG: What about the Klan though? I mean, as you said, it's out of town, but for a lot of people, I mean, they hear of the Ku Klux Klan and that sounds like something from the 50s or 60s. How how active is the Klan in Arkansas right now?

KEVIN CHERI: Not very at all. I mean, if this is, you know, the head of the clan in this area, he has a few events on his property. But, you know, the people here in Harrison don't see that. He's 15 miles away. They've had a demonstration or two at times within the city, but they're not well attended and most people don't even know they occurred. We just don't have the influence and presence that it implies. So you could be here for years and not even realize the clan is in this area.

MG: How have you seen the city, I mean and you're part of this with the task force on race relations, how have you seen the city pushback against its reputation when it comes to race?

KEVIN CHERI: Well, I think what the first thing was to come together as a community and to begin to talk about it. Most areas of this country, people are uncomfortable with talking about racism. And here this town, despite its reputation, that it learned to be as bad as it was, said wait, this is not us and chose to come together as a group and say, look, we need to deal with this. And even the people who first started the task force were sometimes pressured by their own family and friends saying, you know, you're going to make it worse by, you know, and just don't say anything. But they said, no, that's the problem. We we are being perceived and continually perceived this way because we are not defending ourselves. We're not letting people know who we are and how we act. Is there racism in Harrison? Sure. There's some, but no more and a lot less than a lot of other places in the United States. And I can attest to that because I've lived in several places within the United States. So, as a black man, don't tell me this is the most racist town in America. That's not true.

MG: We were talking with Fredi Mendez about that and he said, you know, as somebody who's from Mexico has lived in other places in the United States and now lives in Harrison as well, he was talking about not just the town, but the influence of the president on this larger conversation of race and was pretty insistent, saying that he doesn't believe that Donald Trump has amplified these. Do you see Donald Trump, after you take a look at what's happened this summer and the uprising in the United States and elsewhere, he's faced accusations of inciting racial divisions, of amplifying the divisions that are there. Do you see Donald Trump's presidency playing a role in the divisiveness in your country?

KEVIN CHERI: Most definitely. And I respectfully disagree with Fredi. It is so obvious that since this man has become our leader of our country, he has empowered people who have been quiet before and about the best thing that's come out of the Trump presidency is that he has wakened up the rest of white America to realize just how bad racism is in this country. People who have been in denial, who don't think it's all that bad, and now all of a sudden they see neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others within this country feeling empowered because of the things this man says or does not say as far as proclaiming them as being a bad group or with bad intent.

MG: Do you see the appeal of Donald Trump? I mean, Fredi was was pretty definitive in talking about him being a better leader and him, you know, not being bound by personal concerns, but standing up for people like Fredi. Do you see the appeal of Donald Trump?

KEVIN CHERI: I see how he appeals to certain people who need some reason to defend their own failures or needs that, you know, where they are weak. And and that's what sometimes how racism is influenced within this country. When when when things aren't going so well and you can find another reason, another group to blame or hate to do sort of defend why you're thinking the way you think or makes you feel better about your own situation then people do that. And Trump gives people an excuse. He does lie a lot. He tells them things they want to hear. And so if they can just say well he's president, I can believe him, then it doesn't force them to go and seek the truth. It's just an easy out. And, you know, folks who take the time to really learn and see what's happening, can clearly see that this, the things that he's saying aren't true.

MG: And yet there are tens of millions of people that still support him. I'm just wondering what's behind that, do you think?

KEVIN CHERI: Well, some of it is a direct link to racism. They found a leader wo talks their talk. Then there are others, they're having hard times, he gives them an explanation and he talks in a way that makes them feel comfortable. You know, I heard I believe Fredi and others I've heard say well he speaks his mind. Well, how does that qualify him to be a president? A person in an insane asylum speaks their mind. That doesn't give them the ability to run a country. So he speaks his mind, but what he speaks is foolishness or outright hate our lies. The way he speaks about people of other countries and for people to put him on a pedestal, it saddens me because what they have done is in America is we've lowered our standards. I mean, the man talks trash about women. It's locker room talk. Well, I play ball. I never spoke that way in the locker room. It would never be allowed.

MG: What do you think is at stake? What's at stake for your community then, given that? What's at stake for your community in this election?

KEVIN CHERI: Well, I think our community is strong in the sense that we have many good people here who do respect one another, who do care about one another. What we unfortunately still have though, is this reputation that we have been it has been difficult to shake. And it's unfortunate. But I'm proud to be part of the task force that is here within this town because they respect the fact that while racism exists in this world and also in Harrison, it's not who we are and we want to do all we can to show that that's not who we are, but also to address anything that occurs immediately when we can. And that's why when some other billboards were put up in this town, we quickly acted and we were able to eliminate all, but one.

MG: And is that the kind of thing that gives you hope? I mean, I asked the same thing to Fredi. In a really divisive time when you walk down the street and when you go and vote, is that sense of community involvement the kind of thing that gives you hope?

KEVIN CHERI: Yes, definitely. I mean, you know, to know that at least you have friends and neighbours of all races that are coming together and beginning to see the injustices and the things that are wrong within this country. Now, technology, with proof, and they're seeing people videotaping these atrocities, it's hard for people to shake that. And it has woken up white Americans who are now also angry. And so there is hope of more now than in the past of change and will it be quick? Now, I can't say that. But there's hope and that's what we have to rely on and that's what we have to continue with. We can't let up.

MG: I really appreciate talking to you, Kevin. Thanks for your time. Hopefully, when this pandemic is over, I have the opportunity to see Harrison in person. In the meantimem thanks again.

KEVIN CHERI: All right. Thank you. Bye.

MG: Bye bye. Kevin Cheri is the former superintendent of the Buffalo National River, it's part of the National Park Service. He's also a member of the Harrison Taskforce on Race Relations. And that is all the time we have in Arkansas. Later on this week, we pull the radio rig back over the river into Mississippi herself and while we've been steering the radio RV down the Mississippi, Nate Hegyi has been charting his own course through the states. Nate is a reporter with the U.S. public media outlet, the Mountain West News Bureau. And rather than a comfy imaginary RV, Nate actually rode his bike more than 1200 kilometres, 800 miles or so from Montana through Idaho and Wyoming, all the way to Colorado. And on the way, he spoke with people about this election and a project he's called Across the Great Divide. He met people like Talyn Lang, who runs a cannabis dispensary in a small town in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, also happens to be a veteran and one of the few Democrats in the area. He's becoming increasingly worried about the rhetoric that he's hearing them around him.

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VOICE: I swore an oath to my country when I joined the Marine Corps to defend it from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I have all of these people on the right who are saying that they need their guns to fight the government, but they don't realize that the instant that they take up arms against my government, they become insurgents. And I believe that they think that they're on the side of right and that they're the heroes in this story and they're not. And so that's a terrifying thing to realize that these guys really, truly believe that once they start shooting at the government, that everybody else that's a veteran or everybody else that's a patriot is just going to join with them. And I'm not going to be one of them. I'm going to be one on the other side. And I don't want to have to start shooting at my neighbours. You know, that's not my idea of a good time.

MG: The view from the bicycle saddle. Reporter Nick Hegyi will be with us on Wednesday for more on his wild ride through the mountains of Big Sky Country. In the meantime, if you want to catch up on any of our road trip stops, head to The Current's website or go to cbc.ca/roadtonovember. Coming up after your regional update is CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward has seen it all and in a new memoir, she gets frank about the emotional impact of reporting from the frontlines. Clarissa Ward is with me in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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War reporter Clarissa Ward remembers her first brush with death, and realizing she couldn't save the world

Guests: Clarissa Ward

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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VOICE: I've been a war correspondent for more than 10 years. I have been to Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and every terrible conflict that you can think of, I have never seen anything on the scale of Aleppo. There are no winners in Aleppo.

MG: That's CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, speaking to the United Nations Security Council about her experiences in covering the war in Syria. Her new memoir, On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist, chronicles her work from Beijing to Beirut to Baghdad the book explores her desire to tell the stories of people in some of the most dangerous places in the world. Clarissa Ward joins me from London, England. Clarissa, good morning.

CLARISSA WARD: Good morning, Matt. Thank you for having me on.

MG: Thanks for joining us. When you listen back to yourself at the U.N. Security Council, what goes through your mind?

CLARISSA WARD: I have to say, I get this feeling of remembering the nerves that I felt, but also the exhilaration to finally be able to say what I thought and had felt for all these years and say it in a clear and forceful way. It was intimidating, but it was also immensely satisfying.

MG: If you listen closely, you can hear your finger tapping on the desk, pounding on the desk in some ways. And you write about this moment in the book talking about how you were surprised at how emotional you became in speaking at the U.N.. Where did that emotion come from?

CLARISSA WARD: That emotion came from years of covering Syria with all my heart of witnessing atrocities, the likes of which I had never seen, and other conflict zones that I had been two of losing countless friends, people I had met who had hosted me along the way, who had risked their lives to host us and let us tell their stories and to seeing, well, ultimately just a complete lack of action from the international community to try to mitigate the suffering of these people. It felt somehow unforgivable to me. I was so consumed by this story. And it did break my heart. And I did want the world to know and understand that it's on us that we let these people down and that on some level, for me, that was unforgivable.

MG: The speech ends by saying there are no winners in Aleppo. Is that something that you still feel?

CLARISSA WARD: Yes. I mean, obviously, President Bashar al-Assad is the victor, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. If ever there was one. Half the country is no longer living in their homes. Millions are living overseas. They can't come back because many have an affiliation with the opposition. The regime is in really bad state, the army in an even worse state. The Russians are getting tired of propping the whole thing up. The Iranians are strapped for cash. It's a mess. And the international community is still hamstrung and seemingly unable to find a path forward. I'm not trying to pretend it's an easy situation. It's not. And frankly, as a journalist, it's not really my job to prescribe policy or lecture people about forgetting the Syrian civilians. But with this specific conflict, it was just so egregious and so heart wrenching that I became consumed in ways that maybe I hadn't been with other stories.

MG: I want to come back to this because that idea of what the impact of your work can be is a really powerful part of the book as well. This is, as you say about the education of a journalist. What was your introduction to storytelling into journalism?

CLARISSA WARD: Well, the moment I decided I want to be a journalist was 9/11. I was a senior at Yale University studying comparative literature. And from there, I pretty quickly went on to be an intern in Moscow for CNN. And there was a big news story that happened while I was there, some Chechen terrorists had taken siege of a theatre in Moscow and were holding over 100 people hostage. And then Russian special forces went in, stormed the building and released this sort of powerful nerve agent to try to make everyone fall asleep. But the dosage was not calculated correctly and many, many people died as a result. And it was the first time that I had seen a huge news story like that from the perspective of being on the ground and in the field and watching these reporters making phone calls, looking at their computers, reading wires, trying to interview people on the street, get more information, taking what they could verify to air. It was just dizzying to me. I felt this huge rush of excitement. It was thrilling to see the way that news was made behind the scenes. And at that moment, I knew absolutely that this is what I wanted to do.

MG: Let me go back to 9/11 just for a second. What was it about that? You write in the book that it created in some ways a sense of purpose and clarity. Tell me more about that.

CLARISSA WARD: I think like many students I had been so focussed on. I was very interested in Russian literature and French New Wave cinema. I thought I wanted to be an actress. We made movies and we published a magazine. And suddenly this huge seismic event takes place. And my whole world was sort of it was like a bolt from the blue. I mean, I had never, ever thought that much about America's relationship with the rest of the world and the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us and what kind of miscommunication and deep human. Ization was fuelling this horrendous act of violence, and I became almost obsessed with the idea of trying somehow to act as a translator to straddle worlds and travel to the tip of the spear and bring back the stories of the people there, but also to bring the stories of America with me to the field and in the process, hopefully to try to improve understanding of each other, humanizing each other. You know, I mean, keep in mind, Matt, I was 22. So I was like very idealistic and full of hubris.

MG: But you say that you realize that you were a communicator kind of in those moments.

CLARISSA WARD: Yes, I'd always loved telling stories. And fundamentally, that's what actors and actresses do. And I understood now that I felt that skill could be put to better use or more important use in this function as a communicator between different worlds.

MG: There is a very rapid kind of ascent of your career. Mean you talked about being in Moscow. You were an intern there. You end up on the overnight desk at Fox News in 2005. You end up covering the Iraq war. What was going through your mind when you arrived in Baghdad?

CLARISSA WARD: Arriving in Baghdad for the first time, having never set foot in a conflict zone in my life, was one of the most thrilling and petrifying moments that I've ever experienced. Petrifying because you realize this is real. You're in a war zone. But thrilling because you have no real frame of reference for it other than the movies. And so everything is so novel and exciting. That feeling of the hot blast of errors. The plane door opens, the sound of the security guys radios back and forth as you make the journey on the airport road to the bureau, watching your colleagues do their live shots, travelling around the country with the U.S. military in the back of Strikers and Humvees. I mean, this was all such intense learning experience and you feel like your brain is going to explode. You're just taking in new information every moment. And that is is dizzying. It's very exciting. Then, of course, you have your first kind of real brush with death. In my case, when our compound was under attack with by multiple suicide bombers, and you realze that it's not a game, that it's not exciting and glamorous, that it's real, it's hell, it's war, it's death. And that's a real moment of reckoning in any young war correspondent's life?

MG: What is that, you write about this and you and you talk about experiencing, in your words, naked, pure, the acid of fear. What does that fear feel like?

CLARISSA WARD: It's a very strange feeling because it's utterly unemotional. I had always thought that when you are in a real situation where you think you might die, that you be sort of crying or thinking that you want your your parents or your loved ones or your children, whatever it might be. And actually, you go into an almost zombie frame of mind where you're just trying to get your run back and get into the panic room. In this case, when I was 25 in Baghdad and there is a little voice that was going over and over in the back of my head, why am I here?What am I doing here? I don't belong here. I could die here. Why am I here? And suddenly my brain just could not quite compute that I could actually die in this environment that was fundamentally alien and abstract to my life, in the sense of my real life. And that was a real wakeup call for me and really, I think guided decisions I made and risks I took in the future about how to really keep in mind the full gravity of the risks that you're taking and be sure that you're taking them for the right reasons and that you're doing everything you can to mitigate them.

MG: You also say that you became addicted to that feeling in that moment, in some ways.

CLARISSA WARD: Well, the moment that you become addicted to is the moment when, you know, you've survived and there's this thrill of excitement. Oh, my gosh. We survived. We're alive. What a great story we have to tell. Open the Jack Daniels. Let's stay up really late and keep telling the story over and over again until it suddenly is no longer real. There's this sort of barrier or veil between the actual experience of it and the retelling of it. And that's the bit that I think journalists can become addicted to.

MG: What's the, that's a really powerful word. I mean, addiction has all sorts of connotations. Some, I suppose, positive, most of the negative. What's the danger in becoming addicted to them?

CLARISSA WARD: The danger is that it's not sustainable. You know, you are signing yourself up for a lifetime of PTSD if you actively pursue those kinds of near-death experiences. What I found was that I quite quickly realised and understood that and also realized that I don't have the sort of constitution or the nerves of steel that are required to live with that level of adrenaline. And so I understood that while I would keep going to dangerous places, I would go out of my way to avoid being in real frontline combat situations. Now, there are times where you can't really avoid it. And there are times when you try to and fail, but unlike other correspondents, I am petrified often in these situations, and I really do everything that I can to try to avoid them.

MG: Is that a difficult thing to admit? I mean, there's a lot of, you read about this, there's a lot of swagger and part of it's machismo swagger, but there's a lot of bravado that comes from being in those moments. And as, to your point, you survive and you, you know, pop the Jack Daniels and it's a late night of telling stories. Is it difficult to admit that it's terrifying too?

CLARISSA WARD: I think it is. And I think that's a problem. And this is something that I really try to address in the book, because it's still a taboo amongst people who do this kind of work. I can count on, well, one finger, the amount of times I've had like a real frank conversation with a colleague about the toll that this takes emotionally, about ways in which I have struggled. And that shouldn't be the case. We should be able to talk about this. And if we're not able to talk about it, it should at least be understood that anyone doing this work and I don't care how tough you are, the cheque is going to come, OK? And you're going to have to pay it. That needs to be part of the conversation in a very open and non taboo way so that we get rid of this stigma attached to struggling with covering these types of stories.

MG: What would happen when you came home from covering, you write about this, when when you would come home from covering those types of stories?

CLARISSA WARD: Well, in the movies, right, you see that someone sees a child die in the war and then they feel sad and then they have nightmares and they can't sleep and they're sad. And actually, what happened in my situation was I would see a child die, I would be shocked by it, but not necessarily really processing it in that moment. I would leave the war zone, go home, feel completely detached from my life, completely detached from the people who I love, my friends and my family. I would feel irritable. I was sort of like a caged animal pacing back and forth in my living room, trying to work ways out to get back to Syria at that time. And only in certain moments later did I fully understand, I think one of them was when I won two Emmy Awards and spent the whole night hysterically crying because I had forgotten to thank an editor. And I was like, OK, there's something wrong. Something isn't right here. I'm not able to experience joy right now. I'm not able to access that emotionally at all. I'm not able to hug my husband now, really, without sort of bristling and feeling like like, you know, that's not normal. That's not healthy. And maybe this is all related to when you did see that child die. And that's OK. But we need to be talking about this. I need to be talking to a therapist about this. I need to be doing yoga. I need to have a spiritual practise, whatever it is that works for you.

MG: You write that you started to pray. What does that give you?

CLARISSA WARD: For me, prayer is like incredibly cathartic, A, but B, what a relief to sort of let go of the idea that we can control things, that we can control the narrative, that we can control who lives and who dies. And when you sort of surrender that to the universe and embrace the fact that you have no agency in it, you know, beyond being sensible and taking precautions and all the rest of it. It's a really freeing moment. It allows you to really make peace with the limits, the limitations on your abilities to to change things. And and and that helps with acceptance and acceptance. Frankly, if you want to do this job and you want to do the full marathon and really go the distance. You have to be able to accept that you're not always going to save lives or change lives.

MG: So much of your career has been defined and that you've been to a lot of different places and told incredible stories, but a lot of your career has been defined by your work in Syria. And you write about falling in love with Damascus the first time you went. What do you remember about that city then?

CLARISSA WARD: What an intoxicating, beautiful city to walk around the old souk market. The different smells, the spices, the nuts and pistachios and this wonderful old ice cream store and the hustle and bustle of people haggling over different wares and shouting to you because you're a foreigner. And people in Syria are so friendly, so incredibly warm and welcoming. And I would I had this ritual that I would go and I would get this freshly pressed pomegranate juice and this shish taouk sandwich, which is like a grilled chicken sandwich with garlic mayonnaise and pickles and absolutely delicious and sit there and just soak in the atmosphere and watch people and then stroll to the Umayyad mosque, one of the most beautiful mosques in the world. And you just sit on the cool white marble in the afternoon and there's lots of people coming in and out. Some of them are praying. Some of them are taking a nap. Some of them are just looking at the beautiful mosque. You know, there was a different pace to life there. It was a very, very special place.

MG: When the uprising begins in 2011, you were working at CBS at the time and you go back to Syria. How did you get into the country in that moment?

CLARISSA WARD: So I posed as a tourist. I found I was looking on sort of online chat rooms to see where intrepid tourists who still wanted to go to Syria were able to get visas. And I saw one post by a sort of French cyclist saying that he and his partner had managed to get a visa in Oman, as in O-M-A-N.And so I was like, all right, I guess I'm going to go to Muscat. And remarkably, CBS agreed. And so off I went to Muscat and I applied for a tourism visa and I was granted one which was, you know, hugely lucky, frankly. And then I had a male colleague, a producer who also applied, and he was not granted one. So then there was the difficult decision of, okay, well do I go to Syria alone, into this uprising, into this underworld of activists who I really know nothing about?And of course, you really sort of ham about it for about five, ten seconds. And then it was like, who am I kidding? Of course.

MG: That was it? Five or ten seconds?

CLARISSA WARD: Maybe five or ten minutes, but yeah, it was a pretty quick decision.

MG: You've covered by that point, you've covered wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Iraq. What was different to you about Syria?

CLARISSA WARD: The difference was that in the beginning, this uprising was of the people, from the people. It was not religious. It was so sincere in terms of wanting to find a better way forward, wanting to give a better future to their children, to the next generations, and the incredible courage of people to march into a hail of bullets. I mean, I just don't think we can really conceive of that. Sometimes in the West, we're so privileged. We grow up surrounded by these incredible institutions that afford us all sorts of protections and to actually be willing to risk your life in the pursuit of a better future for your children in the pursuit of freedom, it's you know, that is heady stuff. And as a journalist, you I think I was completely overwhelmed by the bravery I saw and by the importance of trying to tell this story.

MG: What was it like to see the culture that you loved? The first time you went, see that destroyed, see the cities destroyed, see peoples? All of those rituals that you talked about have evaporated.

CLARISSA WARD: It was heartbreaking. It was absolutely heartbreaking. And every single trip I did some lovely human who I would spend a few moments with or stay with or travel for part of the journey with, I would find out a month or two later that they had died, that they had been taken to a prison, that they had been kidnapped, that they had never been heard from again, that they had been in a bombing. And I'd never had that with a conflict before. I've lost friends in conflict, but this was losing friends almost every month. And I mean, that is so excruciatingly painful, frankly. And to see this beautiful country brought to its knees, its people slaughtered, its history blown up, its culture eviscerate. I mean, it's just the scale of the loss is staggering. Not for me, for everyone, for humankind.

MG: You're there telling that story and you write about the difficulty of wondering whether the stories will have impact. That people are sitting down to eat dinner and they're turning on the television and are they paying attention? How do you how do you cope with that? And how do you try to understand the way in which you can present a story that will get people's attention in a busy world?

CLARISSA WARD: So I think that, you know, when I was younger and we've sort of touched on this a little bit, I was very interested in the idea of changing the world and making it a better place and stopping wars and. And you do get to a place in your career. And for me, it was Syria where you realize that despite pouring your heart and soul into a story, you are not able to affect change. You are not able to save anyone. And it can be a deeply distressing experience, but ultimately, it is also very freeing because I think we have to realise in this job there needs to be a more humble approach. Your job is not to solve the world's problems. Your job is not to end wars. Your job is to shine a light on stories that are taking place, to give people a voice, to allow them to be heard, to bear witness to their suffering, to do the best job you can possibly do at at bringing home to people around the world the reality of their suffering. And that's it. That's your job. Your job is not then afterwards, to become an activist and prescribe policy and say what should be done to end things and no, there are there other people whose jobs that is. And once I sort of accepted that, that's okay, that this is my job, this is my focus and I understood it in a more humble and narrow context, I was able to make peace with a lot of it, but I was also able then to really hone the craft of, like, telling the story. And how do we make this rich and vivid and resonate with people hundreds of miles away who can't keep track of all the different warring factions and keep track of all the different names? How do I get their attention? How do I make them care? How do I make them feel this?

MG: You write in the book as well about getting married and starting a family and you have a new baby as well and you're on maternity leave, which is wonderful. What do you miss about being out on the road?

CLARISSA WARD: Well, I mean, it's also just this pandemic, isn't it? So it's it's not just being on maternity leave. You just think, how can we cover this huge story from our living rooms? How can we do our jobs over Zoom? How can we bring home the humanity of what's going on and the loss and the scale of the casualties of people who have been killed by this virus? And that to me is, you know, you do you feel a bit bereft, like, oh gosh, we're just sort of really struggling to make this as compelling as it should be, not just on a sort of news level, but also on a kind of emotional level in terms of understanding of the momentousness of this moment. So I am desperately missing, travelling in many ways, but I understand that it's a good moment for me to be on maternity leave because no one is really able to travel, certainly not in the way we used to be able to.

MG: It's a real pleasure to talk about the extraordinary work that you've done. This is a great book. Thank you.

CLARISSA WARD: Thank you so much.

MG: Clarissa Ward is CNN's chief international correspondent and the author of the memoir, On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist. She was in London, England. That is The Current for today. Coming up next on your CBC Radio One, it's Q. We were speaking earlier in the program about the boil water advisories in Indigenous communities. One of the many communities currently under an advisory is North Caribou Lake First Nation in Northern Ontario. As a kid, Nick Sherman would go to North Caribou Lake with his grandfather and it was on those trips that he was introduced first to the guitar. We'll leave you today with Thunder Bay's Nick Sherman and a tune called "Northern Ghost." I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Song: "Northern Ghost" by Nick Sherman]

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Oct. 26, 2020 episode transcript

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