Remembering to Never Forget Darfur
The pile of dead teenagers strewn on the grass of Lafayette Park flummoxed the South Korean tourist group who had come to photograph the White House. The corpses lay alongside black paper tombstones inscribed in chalk: “200,000 - 400,000 have DIED since 2003”; “3,600 people die per day”; “22% of people do not have access to clean WATER”; “Let’s save Darfur NOW! Stop the Silence.”
The teenagers in the “Die-In” are members of the Maryland chapter of Young Judaea, a Zionist youth movement that espouses social action and peer leadership. “We are reminding people that Darfur is still happening,” says 16-year old Frances Lasday, the high school student from North Potomac Maryland who thought up the protest.
But why is a Zionist movement concerned about Darfur to begin with? “When it happened to us in the Holocaust, we said never again, so we’re trying to promote that message that we won’t stand by and watch another people go through that same thing,” says Ilan Simanin, 17. Indeed, the Jewish community has been heavily involved in Darfur activism from early on; about a third of the Save Darfur Coalition’s directors are Jewish. But the Young Judaeans are concerned that people have habituated to the genocide. “A lot of people forget about it sometimes because it’s been going on for seven years and nothing’s happened,” says Lasday. As such, vows to “Never Forget” are themselves in danger of being forgotten. People must be reminded to “Never Forget” again and again.
Like Dream University, the group that protested for immigration reform by holding “teach-ins” with immigrant youth this past July, the Young Judaeans begin their protest with a lesson. But whereas the adult Dream University coordinators ran the lessons for their students, the Young Judaea staff simply step back and allow the teens to teach one another.
Sitting in a circle, they discuss the history of the conflict, circulate political cartoons about Darfur, and discuss political and moral dilemmas. Should Israel, for example, be responsible for taking in refugees from Darfur? Some think that, given the Holocaust, it has a moral responsibility. Others interject that there are practical difficulties to opening their borders. How can the United States help? Should it pressure China, which has more economic influence on Sudan? How?
Armed with the facts, the young activists go about making their tombstones. “Can we die already?” they chide one other. Finally, they sprawl out on the lawn with their tombstones and wait. They feel a little silly as the tourists start to stare, but take comfort that their peers in New York City, Chicago, and San Diego are carrying out the same protest. Lasday and her friends originated the idea over the summer at a leadership program at Young Judaea’s summer camp, Tel Yehuda, and decided to coordinate it nationally.
“We just want to put in our two cents and show the world that we want to make a difference,” says Rachel Goldberger, 16. Given the leadership skills, training, and opportunities their movement infuses into them, there is little doubt that someday, they will.
-Niv Elis
