In the 1944 film Casablanca, there’s a scene I look forward to, no matter how many times I watch. It comes at the end, as the French policeman Captain Renault (Claude Rains) misleads authorities in order to protect a very dashing Humphrey Bogart.
“Round up the usual suspects,” Captain Renault tells his deputies, hoping to throw them off Bogart’s trail.
It’s a classic line, and one that has become a stand-in today for lazy logic and the act of casting blame on others for the seemingly intractable problems around us.
As I watch current political events unfold, I’m struck by how many global leaders have taken this path, pointing fingers at the vulnerable, the poor, or the aid workers, and scientists – those who tell the truth about what’s happening on the ground as a result of our mis-guided decisions and policies. The usual suspects we look for when we want someone to blame for our hardships, our unhappiness, our loss of power and influence.
We have all been tempted to bargain away our humanity in exchange for the belief that everything will be okay if only the usual suspects can be rounded up and taken away. But the paradox of our time is that doing this – isolating, blaming, bullying – only increases our insecurity. That it is the reaching out and overcoming of our divides that makes us safer.
Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Let no man bring you so low as to cause you to hate him,” because he knew that acting in solidarity with the struggling, with the truth-tellers is the only way to achieve the justice that will safeguard our own existence.
In other words, we are all the usual suspects, because we all make mistakes, we all get lost, and we all need help from time to time.
You already know volunteering creates this solidarity by building bridges of understanding and painting a picture of a better world.
But now it’s time to make sure the rest of the world knows it, too.
2026 will be the UN’s International Year for Volunteers for Sustainable Development and we hope you will join with IAVE to create a Call to Action that delivers more recognition and investment in volunteering globally.
Also, please mark your calendars to attend one of IAVE’s upcoming webinars on why volunteering matters.
And above all, keep building bridges through volunteering.
Nichole Cirillo
IAVE Executive Director