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

Sitting In Wheelchairs, Standing Up For Their Rights

Bobbie Wallach, who has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 30 years and is wheelchair-bound, was arrested last year.  Twice.  Now she’s back for more, handcuffing herself to the White House fence and participating in other forms of civil disobedience with ADAPT, the direct action group that fights (non-violently) for disability rights.  As they have every year for the past decade, the group has descended upon Washington, kicking up a stink about problems the disabled face everyday.

The central focus this year is nursing homes.  According to the group, programs like Medicaid favor nursing homes, which they say provide a lower quality of life, as a means of caring for those who need assistance.  “I’m protesting to get people out of nursing homes all over the country.  I’m here for them, because they cannot come down here themselves, and I can,” says Wallach.

Having lived in a Rochester nursing home until recently, Wallach is adamant that nursing home residents “have no rights.  They eat what they’re served.  They get a shower once a week!  That’s it.  There is nothing for them to do in a nursing home.”    

Kachina Rice, a Certified Nurse’s Assistant from Denver who spent 15 years working in nursing homes agrees.  “After working in the nursing home for all those times, I think life is more beneficial on the outside.”  She relays the story of one resident who hadn’t seen snow for five years because she was stuck indoors.  Breaking the nursing home rules, Rice took her outside to enjoy the winter landscape.  “She just bawled and cried.”

For ADAPT, plain old protest is not enough.  Direct action and civil disobedience are acceptable and useful alternatives for making their voices heard.  That’s one reason why Wallach, along with several of her wheelchair-bound compatriots, stop traffic with a blockade 4 wheelchairs deep and chain themselves to the White House fence, demanding to discuss their cause with political leaders.

Hundreds of wheelchair-bound individuals participating in acts of public disruption creates a jarring visual effect, says Josephine Williams, a 28-year old from Memphis, Tennessee (and one of the few participants in the crowd of several hundred who is not disabled).  In her view, the very notion of disabled activists clashes with common perceptions of the disabled as helpless people.  

“We don’t just stand there with signs.  We holler, we get in the way, and we don’t stop,” says Joe Casias, a Coloradan who works with Center for Independent Living. Breaking minor laws is a “squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of thing.  You get enough numbers and it makes the papers and it comes out there for the rest of the public and the nation to know what’s going on.”  When asked why she participates in civil disobedience, a fellow protester indignantly replies “Well we’re not gonna be violent!”

Title IX of the Social Security Act, which promises funds for people with disabilities to go to nursing homes, was created with good intentions, says Fran Fulton, a disabilities advocate from the Philadelphia branch of Center for Independent Living.  Yet, the homes have become an overused, expensive, and inhumane parking lot for the disabled.

“What it’s turned into is kind of a warehouse for people, especially people with disabilities. Young people who either don’t have a place to go to or maybe their parents have recently passed away and they have no caregivers assigned, or it could be someone who acquires a disability but can’t go home to their own house because it’s a row house with three flights of stairs,” says Fulton, who is blind.  “So you go to a nursing home.  And once you’re in it’s very hard to get out.”

While nursing homes are important for people who need constant medical attention, ADAPT is pushing to expand assisted home care as a more humane, efficient, and cheap alternative.  Instead of spending money on the facilities and administration, says Fulton, the government could far more cheaply offer in-home care for disabled people.  Fulton believes that the institutional favoritism toward nursing homes has contributed to their inefficiency.  “Nursing home is an industry, and they get the Medicaid dollars to supposedly care for you.”  

Wallach, who left her nursing home with the assistance of Centers for Independent Living, wholeheartedly agrees.  “The nursing home costs me $3,600 a month, whereas I get my own apartment for $400 a month.  Do what I want, get aids, eat what I want, have my own freedom of choice.  I think that is in the constitution!”

Although ADAPT has few qualms with breaking laws to get its point across, it functions within a legal system that has adapted to standard acts of civil disobedience.  Stunts like chaining yourself to a building or blocking traffic will lead to standard in-and-out of jail arrests and fines on par with speeding tickets.  Yet by incurring these higher costs and breaking protest norms, such actions convey a deeper conviction than the typical sign holding and slogan chanting.  It’s easy to understand why people like Wallach choose the more extreme option.  “I never want to go back to a nursing home, I don’t have to go back to a nursing home, I can get home care,” she says.  “It’s my civil right to live where I want and do what I want.”

-Niv Elis

The Prayer Warriors

The Pray at the Pump group believes that there’s a solution for all of the nation’s problems.  Put politics aside, let go of silly policy ideas, and focus on a more powerful avenue of fixing the world: prayer.  It works with any religion, as long as you’re praying.  “It doesn’t matter to us.  It can be Muslim or whatever,”  says Rocky Twyman, the group’s founder.  

In fact, the members of the group are mostly Seventh-Day Adventists, a Protestant-like denomination that celebrates Saturday as the Sabbath, and their philosophy draws heavily on the Christian bible. “If you go to the Bible it says ‘God is a jealous god,’ and He wants us to give Him credit.”  Not doing so has brought about the collapse of kings and kingdoms time and time again, says Twyman.

While prayer is important for all, the group has recently set its focus on one man, whose prayers are, perhaps, closer to God’s ears.  Twyman believes that President Barack Obama could get a great deal more done if he were to only engage in public prayer, both to ask for help and give thanks.  “After all, God is the one who made it possible for him to even become President,” Twyman sermonizes, explaining that God went to great lengths to position Obama for the Presidency, bringing about, among other things, well-timed economic turmoil.

Twyman’s beliefs motivate him and several of his co-religionists toward numerous acts of protest, each aimed at raising awareness of faith, prayer, and its importance to public policy outcomes.  Before the Glenn Beck Rally in Washington, they gathered outside the White House to demand that Obama bring Beck and Al Sharpton, who was manning a counter-rally, together in prayer.  On Labor Day weekend, he and his self-proclaimed “Prayer Warriors” gathered at an unemployment center near Union Station to pray, sing, circulate a petition, and, according to their press release, “pass out candies of hope to help soften the blow” of unemployment.  They hope Obama is paying attention and will find some humility in the face of the great creator.  ”HARVARD WISDOM IS FOLLY TO THE RULER OF THE UNIVERSE,” their petition reads.

Unemployment and Glenn Beck are not the only problems prayer can tackle.  It can work on anything from war to natural disaster. The BP oil spill could have been cleaned up much sooner with a little help from God, says Twyman.  ”Cuz he made the Earth!  He knows, man!  He knows what to do!”

But Twyman isn’t just acting on faith.  He’s had confirmation from his previous experiences that prayer works.  The Pray at the Pump movement started, as its name indicates, by conducting prayer vigils at gas stations in the summer of 2008, when the price of oil hit a record high.  “We prayed and God blessed our efforts and the prices started coming down whenever we prayed!”  

Never mind that the price of oil came tumbling down due to reduced demand, caused by the fast deterioration of the American economy.  As you’ll recall, that was part of the plan to get Obama into power in the first place.

God works in mysterious ways.

-Niv Elis

Asking the World to Pay Attention

“The only way that the Islamic Republic can stay in power is to kill and maim and rape and torture.”  So says Maria Rohaly, a co-founder of Mission Free Iran, a group devoted to supporting the democracy movement in Iran.  Rohaly has been active in the cause since her friend, a member of the pro-democracy movement in Iran (not to be confused with the Green Movement, which advocated reform within the Islamic regime), was arrested last September.  In calling attention to the human rights abuses, political repression, and executions carried out by the Islamic Republic, Rohaly hopes to help undermine the regime, or at least curtail their human rights violations. 

The protest Rohaly organized in front of the White House was one of 17 being held in concert around the world, specifically focusing on the plight of seven condemned dissidents, whose executions are imminent.  “They’re going to be killed for chanting, for demonstrating.  For doing what we’re doing right now, it’s a death sentence,” says Joanne Michele, a fellow activist. 

The political landscape in Iran has been volatile since the already restricted presidential elections were rigged last June, sparking a wave of street protests reminiscent of the Islamic Revolution that brought the ruling mullahs into power in the first place in 1979.  The government came down violently against the protests, shooting into crowds and arresting activists, like the seven now set to be executed.  Worldwide, Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out each year.  

But given the United States’ woefully low level of influence over the Islamic Republic, why would a group of 12 protesters in Lafayette Park, huddled under umbrellas and shielding their signs from the rain, think they could make a difference?  Because, say the organizers, they are part of something bigger and, more importantly, it has worked before.  

When Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahariwas imprisoned in Iran and accused of being a spy in 2009, the campaign for his release made its way up to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who mentioned his case in international talks.  Iran decided that he was “more of a liability than an asset in jail,” and finally released him.  “The prisoner’s worst nightmare is the thought of being forgotten,” Bahari would later write.  Similarly, a campaign of protests to prevent the extradition of Iranian dissident Jamal Saberi from Japan to Iran proved fruitful.  “Globally, we’re just trying to get the word out, because the strongest thing we can do is advocate for these people,” says Michele.

But results are not always so straightforward, and calling attention to an issue can sometimes backfire.  A worldwide campaign to free Sakineh Ashtiani, a 43-year old mother sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery (after her husband’s death, mind you) seemed to be making significant progress.  Protests and petitions led to delays in her scheduled execution, and Brazil’s President Lula Inácio Lula da Silva recently offered her political asylum.  Yet just this week, the Iranian government took a hard line, claiming that in addition to committing adultery, she had also murdered her husband.

Despite such setbacks, Rohaly sees the Iranian government’s constant recalculations and contradictory proclamations as a sign that the protests are working.  “It’s hard to say exactly how it gets to them, but you can watch their behavior and you know.”  Regarding the most recent execution sentences, Rohaly says, Iran reacted to increasing international attention by imposing a media blackout on the topic.  “That’s the best sign you can get that you’re having an impact that they don’t like.”  Over time, small actions can lead to more significant results. “With the worldwide attention that has come, it has forced the Islamic Republic to stop killing quite as many people as it had been.”  

Through its petitions, demonstrations, and media campaigns, Mission Free Iran is, in Rohaly’s words, “asking the world to pay attention.”  Given Iran’s success in quelling protest, reformists face an uphill battle.  But given Iran’s revolutionary history, on the other hand, the government has plenty of reasons to worry about public opinion, both at home and abroad.

-Niv Elis

Correction:  An earlier version misstated the affiliation of an Iranian activist with the reformist Green Movement.  He was, in fact, part of the pro-democracy movement.  Apologies.

Lights, Camera, Immigration Rally!

If all the world is a stage, then the White House is a really useful set piece.

That, at least, is how well-organized protesters with a coherent media strategy see it.  In their calculations, the best way to get their message delivered to the government is through television, radio, and written media.  When Casa de Maryland, a group devoted to the welfare of the Latino community, organized a rally on immigration (in coordination with dozens of other organizations), it needed to create powerful images dripping with symbolism to attract the media, and help them deliver their message.  As a result, every detail of the rally was coordinated to send an emotionally appealing and potent message.  For example, the rally was planned to coincide with dozens of other protests across the country on the day that Arizona’s controversial immigration law was slated to take effect (many of its main provisions were struck down by a federal court that morning).

Meghan McNamera, a volunteer with a great deal of experience organizing protests, offered her insight into how a well-planned rally can be an effective aspect of a policy campaign. 

“First of all, it gets media attention, which is really important.”  In what opponents would call an unabashed act of political theater and supporters would call a humanizing exposition of the realities of immigration law, the organizers brought together some 700 children of undocumented workers, born citizens in the United States, from all over the country.

Wearing T-shirts reading “Don’t Deport My Mom” or “Dad,” the kids chanted a variation of a Springsteen classic: “Born in the USA, don’t take my mommy and my daddy away!”  As the cameramen made their way through the crowd, the organizers set up front page-friendly poses behind banners emblazoned with pointed slogans.

“There are about 360,000-400,000 deportations every year, and what people don’t think about is the kids and the families that they leave behind when the Obama Administration deports people,” says McNamara.  “Families are separated all the time.”

Using the White House as a backdrop for the rally conveys that the issue at hand is of national importance and should be dealt with at the highest levels of government.  It also can help the message reach the intended targets.  “If you do it in key areas such as in front of the White House or if you have key speakers, you’re able to target specific members of congress that would see it.” 

Finally, it has a galvanizing effect.  Protest “gives a voice to the people and makes them less afraid to come out of the shadows, and that’s a really important part of the movement, you know, having people who are willing to speak their mind.” 

McNamera’s own experiences have shown her the human side of immigration.  “I’ve had friends who are undocumented.  I worked in the restaurant industry throughout college and I got to know them and see them as human beings rather than as illegal immigrants who need to be deported.”  Protest is important because to those who do not interact with the immigrant community, “it gives us a face.” 

Rodrigo Carreon, a dual citizen who has lived in Houston, Texas for 37 years (and is running for a position as a Judge in Fort Bend County) agrees.  He came to support his community and champion a less punitive immigration policy.  “We prefer more schools than more prisons,” he says. 

Behind the theatrics, the organizing groups have coherent political goals and specific policy recommendations.  They advocate for comprehensive reform that would secure borders, but also provide a pathway to the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country subject to background checks, fines, and taxes.  But in the information age, with its overabundance of flashing news headlines and sound bites, the President will most likely hear about a protest outside his residence if it is spectacular enough to create a story that the media, in any of its forms, cannot ignore.

Even those with serious policy recommendations, then, must put on their costumes, learn their lines, get on the stage, and perform for the cameras.

-Niv Elis

Who is “Vegan Cocoa”?

That was the Ayn Randian question everyone was asking a group of activists outside the White House last winter.  The flummoxed activists, from the animal rights organization Peta, had to explain that their “Free Vegan Cocoa!” signs were an advertisement for samples of non-dairy hot chocolate, not an imperative directed toward the government.

The Peta organizers learned their lessons, and worked to ensure that their signs would not be misconstrued again.  

Katie Arthe, who is in charge of organizing all of Peta’s outreach events and demonstrations in DC, stood with her colleagues at Lafayette Park distributing vegan sandwiches and literature on veganism to passersby, hoping to demonstrate to them “how delicious vegan food can be” and “how easy it is to switch to a cruelty free diet.”

For Arthe, the utility of gathering at the White House is unrelated to the fact that it houses the most powerful man in the world.  Nor is it related to the White House being the center of executive power or a symbolic backdrop for her message.  No, the White House is a useful venue for Arthe because, like the national mall and crowded metro stops, it provides her with exposure and the chance to interact with pedestrians.

“We know that there’s a lot of people here, tourists and people who live in the city, who are always looking for ways to be more compassionate, and most people are horrified when they find out that animals like turkeys have their throats slit while they’re fully conscious, and millions are even dipped into scalding tanks alive, which makes a tofurkey sandwich a great alternative,” says Arthe.

Organizing 15 such events throughout D.C. every week, and giving away hundreds of (quite tasty) Tofurkey sandwiches, Arthe’s activism eschews the top-down assumptions of most D.C. protesters in favor of a truly grassroots model of change.  Working to change people’s buying habits, according to Peta’s strategy, is more productive than trying to get the attention of politicians.

“Today we’re working on just encouraging people to make choices within their own life and vote with their dollars, and not support cruelty to animals.” 

Were she real, Vegan Cocoa would surely approve.

-Niv Elis

The Power of One?

Think again Aimee Mann, it looks like one is not the loneliest number after all.

Just ask “TC from DC,” the ebullient, nicknamed fanatic who says she’s been coming to the White House to protest, all by her lonesome, 4-5 days a week for over two and a half years.  Ensconced in her bible-quoting posters, an Obama-as-Joker sign, and an Israeli flag (no protest is complete, it seems, without an Israel tie-in), TC amiably engages anyone who will listen.  And boy does she have a lot to say!

The New World Order (the wealthy, elites, executives) are trying to create a one-world government.  The collapse of the U.S. Economy is imminent (according to a “reputable” economist).  Obama is a socialist who was planted by the Order (why wealthy elites want to empower a socialist is beyond me).  And can you believe all those people voted for Obama despite the fact that he wasn’t even born here!?!  TC brags of personally meeting the head of the “birther” movement.  You can read all about it on worldnetdaily.com and infowars.com (slogan: “Because there is a war on for your mind”), websites of the conspiracy-theory minded radical right.

Fortunately, there’s a solution!  “Heaven’s Bailout.”  The word of god.  The promises of the Holy God of Israel (and, by extension, the New Testament.  But not the Quran, obviously.). 

Fanatical, conspiracy-minded, and zealous, TC is willing to spend a great deal of time at the White House preaching.  She takes her inspiration from a religious adage.  “It only takes one person who truly believes to change the history of the world.”  TC is intent on being that person.

Not far off, a man stands by a large sign debasing that scourge of the government: the U.S. Postal Service.  Fred Mauney, “aka the Pheonix,” is peeved because he believes the Post Office has wronged him personally, and is also involved in various acts of fraud, sedition, and corruption. 

Don’t be fooled.  Fred has a greater strategy toward effecting change than just protest.  The first Statement of Fact in a legal petition he filed in the United States district court of Utah reads “not only are the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and the US Attorney Office’s positions outrageous, they are out and out absurd.”  His website mentions the “Ride for America,” his epic motorcycle rides across the country aimed at raising awareness, and includes important new information about who was really behind 9/11. 

Despite so much adversity, The Phoenix refuses not to be heard (that’s right, he just keeps on rising from those ashes).  “You know that guy standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square?  I feel like I’m that guy.”

Seeing the fanatics and paranoids out and about, determined to make a difference despite no apparent support from anybody, invites conclusions that such behavior is simply irrational.  But how, then, does one explain the solitary protests of the passionate teacher Laurie Thomas, or human rights refugee Kim Bui Than? 

The common thread running through the one-person protesters is an impulse (either culturally formed or innate) to take action.  These individuals, whether totally bonkers or thoughtfully practical, feel empowered by doing “something,” perhaps because it feels better than the alternative.  Beyond that, there is the idealistic sense that individuals have the power to change systems larger than themselves, no matter how improbable their chances are.  Regardless of whether Fred’s actions actually make him like “that guy” in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square, the fact remains that “that guy” existed, acted, and made a real difference.

That knowledge, for some, is motivation enough.

-Niv Elis