Liberia Fundraiser

Together with the National Arts Honor Society, MRHS STAND hosted our first event of the year - a talent show fundraiser for a Liberian education foundation, to help students who can't attend school because of the Ebola outbreak. The program featured 10 musical acts playing, dancing, and singing. An enthusiastic crowd of 150 cheered the students on at the first musical event to be hosted in our new auditorium. In all, we raised over $900. Thank you to all who attended and donated, and all the STAND and NAHS students who made this great event happen.

Emmanuel visits HHS

On Monday, March 24, 2014, Emmanuel Habimana, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide visited Harwich High School as part of his national tour on its 20th commemoration sponsored by World Outside My Shoes. He spoke to five groups of classes in the library, discussing his experiences before, during, and after the genocide. He gave us a sense of the buildup to the genocide during which there were many massacres and his family moved twice to try to find a safe area. Once it began, he escaped attacks by hiding different places and when he was found by soldiers in a school desk he pretended to be a Hutu taking on the identity of a family of former neighbors. He eventually walked alone to Zaire ending up in a camp there. After the genocide he was stuck in that camp for another year before returning to Kigali and being reunited with his surviving siblings. In the 20 years since he has attended school, graduated from university, entered law school, and co-produced a documentary about the orphans of the genocide called Komora: To Heal which we were able to view excerpts. Watch the trailer here or a video from one of the class presentations here. Thank you Emmanuel for visiting and sharing with us. This was an eye-opening experience for our students. 

After school, Emmanuel was interviewed by Heather Goldstone for The Point on WCAI. Check out the broadcast streamed here.Or watch a video of the broadcast here.

Hear Her Voice Day 3

After packing up, checking out, and navigating the Metro (don't get me started about the surcharge) and getting to Cannon through security (and snow), we made it on time to the minute to our first meeting with Kerry O'Brien in Rep. Keating's office.

(Check out Graham trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue)

We did our rehearsed presentation with nine students each explaining a part. The "asks" are to support HR1692: The Sudan Peace, Security, and Accountability Act, attend a hearing tomorrow, push the administration on Congo, and support HR3571: The International Violence Against Women Act. Keating is already a co-sponsor of both bills so this was an easy sell. 

From there, we trekked through the snow across Capitol Hill to Sen. Markey's office. 

We met with Matt Willner who was thoroughly on top of all these issues and in fact we got into greater depth about aid issues - Sen. Markey is chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees USAID. Then Sen. Markey stopped by the meeting which was a thrill. 

After the meeting we trudged back through the snow to Longworth. 

After a couple of drop bys to leave info packets (one for Rep. Kennedy) we went to the conference luncheon. At the luncheon we heard from Amb. Garvelink (former ambassador to Congo), JP, and then Rep. Ed Royce - the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee. He was great! He knows the issues deeply and he really cares. He mentioned a bill he is sponsoring to Electrify Africa. And he encouraged us to keep holding our legislators' feet to the fire. When they feel the heat, they may see the light.  What an ally! 

To top it off, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke. She was awesome! She seconded all Rep. Royce's remarks. She described a trip to Darfur a few years ago - children who had seen too much and seemingly lost their souls - and a more recent one to Afghanistan where she met with several groups of women. These women emphasized the need to end corruption in order to create security. She ended with a great motto for the students. Don't agonize, organize!  The students accused me of fan girling. Guilty. 

We also got to talk to JP and to compare his flowing locks to Troy's. 

MacKenzie met us there and took us on a Capitol tour - she said it was her favorite part of being an intern. 

We saw the Crypt, and the Rotunda. 

We next went to see the old Senate chamber where a guide gave us a vivid description of Preston Brooks' cane attack on Charles Sumner that occurred here. 

We also went to Statuary Hall and took at picture with Sam Houston for Mr. H. 

To top off the tour, Mac had gotten us tickets to the House gallery. No pictures but it was fun for me to try to describe the scene at the State of the Union. 

Our next appointment was at Sen. Warren's office, where we met with Feras Sleiman, her foreign policy aide. The students again knocked it out of the park with their presentation. They were great lobbyists in the best sense of the term. 

Now the sun was out and the day had turned quite nice for some pictures at the Capitol. 

We grabbed all our bags which had been in Keating's office all day and then headed across Capitol Hill one last time to Union Station. 

After a nice meal in the food court, we took a rather crowded commuter train to BWI and caught our 715 flight home. Everyone was on the road to the Cape by 9 and home by 11. No excuse for missing school tomorrow! Except that we ran them ragged and some of them will need a day or two to recover. What an awesome trip!

Hear Her Voice Day 2

It has been a long, intense day. Our first panel this morning was on the current situation in Sudan and South Sudan featuring Princeton Lyman who as US Ambassador to Sudan helped negotiate and implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that led to independence for South Sudan. We reviewed the history of Sudan being ruled from the center to the neglect and marginalization of those on the periphery. Lyman emphasized the ways that the CPA has not been implemented especially the steps toward democracy that are prescribed for both Sudan and South Sudan. In regions near the border - South Kordofan, Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains especially - Bashir has induced famine by indiscriminate bombing of fields and villages forcing people to take shelter in caves and at the same time blocking all food aid from the area. In Darfur, focus on South Sudan has led to increased attacks with 400,000 newly displaced in 2013 - more than 2011 & 2012 combined. And in South Sudan, weak democratic development led to the tragic outbreak of civil war this last December that for now is paused by a cease fire since the end of January. Some of the strategies we want the US government to adopt are to refine sanctions to block all military aid to the Bashir regime (currently only restricted relative to Darfur) and to allow for information and communications technology to enter (currently companies like Samsung won't do business there for fear of violating sanctions with the result that civilians are isolated and unable to communicate about attacks in real time). We also need to step up our support for the African Union peacekeepers, providing resources when requested. In general in both Sudan and South Sudan we need to support the development of civil society - education, etc. And we need to support a comprehensive approach to all the different conflicts in Sudan. The current piecemeal approach works to Bashir's advantage. Bashir must go. 

Our next panel brought us up to speed on the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has suffered through the worst war since World War II with over 5.4 million killed since 1998. Recently progress has been made in a few areas. Security has improved since the defeat of the deadly M23 militia in Eastern Congo last year. The trade In conflict minerals (tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold) has been reduced as processes are being developed to certify conflict-free mines in Congo and companies like Apple have made efforts to certify their supply chains for these metals which are critical in technological devices. Intel is coming out with a certified conflict-free computer chip - a first. The progress on this is attributed to a provision in the Dodd-Frank law that requires companies to report the sources of the minerals in their products. Jewish World Watch and the Enough Project were critical in making this happen. Despite this progress, the problem of sexual violence is still pervasive as militias and parts of the Congolese army use rape to terrorize local populations. And governance is a huge problem, especially corruption. Jacques Bahati described how the Catholic Church in many areas provides more education and health care facilities than the government despite the government's billions of dollars of aid and mineral wealth. 

After lunch we listened to a panel discuss transitional justice in Sudan and Congo, and the reasons why there can be no justice without peace, and no peace without justice. Creating a process to pursue justice for the victims if war crimes is a critical step toward a lasting peace. The discussion got quite detailed calling for the use of a mixed court process in Congo and a hybrid court process in Sudan. (The difference? A hybrid court would be in international court conducted in the local country with local participation and assistance - Sudan and South Sudan has little in the way of a reliable court system. A mixed court would be a local court with international court assistance and oversight - Congo has a legal infrastructure). 

We then were honored by a visit of a couple true heroes of the anti-genocide movement - John Prendergast, who is the co-founder and leader of the Enough Project as well as several other leading organizations working with celebrities like George Clooney. And Gayle Smith who after 20 years as a reporter in Africa became an activist (co-founded The Enough Project) and then a policy maker serving as a Special Assistant and member if the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Obama. What an inspiration!

 After this panel, we spent several hours preparing for our lobbying day tomorrow. We got detailed briefings on the information and "asks" we will present to members of Congress. Then we huddled as a group over dinner and assigned to various roles in our script for our three presentations for staffers of Keating, Markey, and Warren. Thank you to Maggie Quick especially for stepping up as a policy leader. 

To top it all off, we took a night monument tour. Herbert was our guide as we visited the Capitol, the White House, the Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea, FDR, MLK, and Jefferson memorials, and drove by many more learning lots of history along the way. Yeah!  E.g. I never know that Virginia ceded its part of DC the took it back in 1846 since the government wasn't using it. Finally back to the hotel at 10:15. Need sleep for our big day tomorrow. 

A quote to inspire our anti-genocide work:

Hear Her Voice Advocacy Delegation Day 1

This year's DC conference for HHS Stand is the Hear Her Voice Advocacy Delegation organized by Jewish World Watch and the Enough Project. We caught a Southwest flight this morning from Logan to BWI then took shuttle buses to the Courtyard by Marriott on 2nd St NE. 

From the hotel, after rethinking Mr. Dickson's original plan to walk, we rode the Metro to the Smithsonian stop then found some food at the American History    Museum. After checking out the Star Spangled Banner, we headed over to the Holocaust Museum. For most of the group, this was their first visit - a powerful experience to remind us of why we are here. 

Overcoming Mr. Dickson's ongoing directional challenges, we made it back to the hotel in time for the first conference event - a dinner and panel discussion about women in Darfur and Congo featuring Niemat Ahmadi and Nita Evele - stories of hope in the midst of atrocity, of women who are survivors not victims rebuilding their villages in the face of genocide. 

The keynote speech was by Mukesh Kapila who was the UN official who defied orders and blew the whistle on Bashir - first making the world aware of the genocide in Darfur. He talked about how courage is about survival and how true power lies in a person of principle.

He gave us five strategies to be an effective resistance worker:

1. Be Well Informed

2. Be Vigilant

3. Give of yourself - take responsibility 

4. Organize - work together

5. Be Optimistic and Humble

 A great start. Looking forward to tomorrow!