Crying Out in Pain
by Craig Wiesner - San Mateo Daily Journal - Monday May 10, 2025
There are two times in my life where a mother’s screams are seared into my memory. The first was our neighbor, Marge, an Irish-Catholic widowed mother of four girls who lived next door to us in the projects. I was playing in our living room when screams pierced our apartment walls. My mother dashed next door to see what was wrong. President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas Texas and Walter Cronkite had just announced he was dead. Years later, visiting my friend David in the same projects, talking about whatever kids talk about, we suddenly heard his mother scream out. On the television, news of the Israeli Olympic team having been killed by terrorists had triggered her agony.
Those screams were with me in 2002 listening to a little girl in Afghanistan, Amina, telling her story to our interfaith peace delegation. Her mother had asked her to go out to the kitchen and prepare tea for the family gathered in her house, while her parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents continued their conversations. The kitchen was a separate structure from the rest of the house and she was feeling a little lonely as she prepared the tea. Suddenly there was a terrible sound and everything went black. When she came around, the house was destroyed and her entire family was underneath the rubble. She screamed and screamed until neighbors came and started digging by hand to find any survivors. Only her grandfather survived and he had become mute, not saying a word from that day forward. Her home had been mistakenly targeted by an American missile as part of the U.S. response to September 11th.
When she finished telling her story a member of our delegation asked her if there was anything she’d like us to tell Americans when we went home. “I hate you!” She yelled. “We didn’t do anything to you. No one in my family was Taliban. No one in my family ever hurt anybody.” Like most Afghans and the vast majority of war victims, she and her family were trapped in the middle of other more powerful people’s conflicts.
Last year I attended a presentation in Palo Alto by two bereaved mothers, one Palestinian, the other Israeli. Each had lost a child in the many years of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Their stories were gut-wrenching, with pain that they and a group called the Parents Circle Family Forum had turned towards peacemaking, creating bonds of friendship out of bereavement. Together, hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis in that circle have been working for reconciliation, peace, and a shared vision of the future. Remembering that bereaved mothers were very influential in bringing an end to “the troubles” in Northern Ireland, these mothers gave me hope.
Last week I learned that USAID’s contract with the Parents Circle had been suddenly cancelled along with the vast majority of USAID projects around the world. Elon Musk bragged he had thrown USAID into the woodchipper. Vaccines, gone. Medical equipment, gone. HIV, Ebola, Malaria, TB, and other infectious disease prevention and treatment programs, gone. Food for pregnant mothers and starving children, gone. Peacemaking programs, gone. 5,800 out of 6,200 programs funded by USAID, gone. A program set up by John F. Kennedy in 1961, with funding allocated by Congressional legislation and oversight, gone.
How many people will cry out in pain because of this? How much hopelessness will this sow and what will we reap from that sorrow? How many people will needlessly die? USAID was a key part of America’s “soft power,” using funding and people to build connections, friendships, and alliances. Diplomatic scholar Joseph Nye said “soft power co-opts, rather than coerces,” causing people to admire, rather than fear another nation. During my time in El Salvador I saw how USAID’s assistance improved the lives of Salvadorans who had suffered horribly during their civil war, a war fueled by U.S. interests. It reminded me, and my Salvadoran hosts, how the United States could be a source of help and new beginnings despite our previous involvement in pain and suffering. We’ve turned away from all of that now.
Please don’t say that we need to focus on helping Americans “first,” when House Republicans also just voted for a budget blueprint that will slash domestic programs like Medicaid and SNAP to help pay for a $4.5 trillion dollar tax cut. How many mothers will it take to cry out before Congress and the White House hear their voices and change course?
NOTE: The Supreme Court did order $2 billion in USAID funds for completed contracts to be paid, but did not weigh in on the agency’s dismantling.
NOTE: Soon after this column was published, another court ordered USAID to be reopened, opining that the way in which it was closed was likely unconstitutional.
Share your thoughts in comments here at the Daily Journal and visit me on craigwiesner.bsky.social