"Hey Hey, Ho Ho. This Genocide Has Got To Go!"

Last weekend was probably one of the greatest weekends of my life. I went to Washington D.C. with the New Trier STAND chapter. STAND is the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network. We were there four 4 days; we went to workshops, listened to amazing speakers, asked people to sign petitions on the street, and marched on Capitol Hill. The main goal of the conference was to help us help others learn about genocide and mass atrocities in the world. It was the biggest anti-genocide movement conference to ever take place, with almost 1,ooo people (mostly students) coming together to share ways to educate, fundraise, and advocate. Coming back to school, I'm so excited to tell everyone everything I know about Darfur, Congo, and Burma, along with ways to help. 

Layla Amjadi, the STAND student director and senior at Harvard University, mentioned an inspiring experience at a previous conference. Someone had asked about Darfur fatigue, which is when your efforts seem too little and your impatience takes over, and you don't even feel like trying to help before. It's a pretty common feeling - it was addressed quite frequently during the conference. In response to that question, a Sudanese man on the panel stood up and said "The only people that should be having Darfur fatigue are those that are in Darfur." 

How true!! If you're reading this, there are so many little things you can do, and we can stop Darfur fatigue together/forever!

You ready?

Call 1-800-GENOCIDE

Join.

Donate.

Come to the club meetings room 301 on Thursdays after school and Friday mornings before school!

We're going downtown on Thursday so we can canvass and get a bunch of people's signatures together so we can pressure politicians and let them know that we want them to address what is going on.

I thought that with a class of almost 40 blogging people, we could all raise awareness easily and efficiently. Not only do more Americans need to get involved, but our age group absolutely needs to! High school and college kids need to step up if anyone is going to listen. We have the resources, the blogs, the facebook, time, school clubs..everything. 

We have learned about how our American civil liberties have been molded in times of pressure and stress; imagine not being able to live because a harsh military regime was being encouraged to kill your tribe. Or imagine the leader of your political party of choice being under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.