When it seems like the world looks at you as if you’re supposed to be a fuck up. When your own parents tell you you’re a fuck up. When nobody believes in yourself… shit gets really hard to handle. It would be much easier to be done with life as I know it. I was supposed to end my life many years ago anyways. The only reason why I’m still here is because I believe in myself. I believe some day soon I’ll be everything I dreamed I would ever be. I believe I’m already becoming what I’m meant to be.

Right now I wish for the whole world to go fuck itself. For everything bad I represent even before I was born, before I had a chance to speak for myself, before they even asked me my name.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about these things. Year after year, day after day, I deal with looks that turn into words and then into actions. I can stand quietly in any corner of any street in the world and I can still ’cause a reaction on most people. Make them tuck their purses, make them smile, make them cross the street, almost never nothing happens. At least not for the past 28 years I’ve been alive.

I feel like my parents should have made my life easier for me growing up. I don’t think they did. I would trade my parents and all the scars they inflicted in my mind just for peace. These scars I try to hide every day. Every fucking day of my life I tell myself “shit is alright”, “shit is going to be better”… I’m tired of talking to myself, padding myself on the back and I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me either. I just want everything and by now I should have something, but I don’t feel like I do.

And then I think: I shouldn’t even be writing this shit down, ’cause this is how the world is and life doesn’t deal everybody a good hand. If my life was a game of poker I’d say I was dealt a 9 and a 3. A 9 for having parents who stuck together and provided a steady income for the family, and a 3 for being black.

Happy fucking New Year…

Tags: 28 years, game of poker, new year, parents, peace, purses, scars

Genocide or any other act against humanity should never go unpunished. The fact that there are people in this world today that are being discriminated, forced out of their homes, raped and even murdered should make us all reflect about how fortunate we are to live in a country which foundation is based on the protection of human rights and urge us to help those less fortunate. This, however, is not what usually happens when help calls. It is not because most of us are evil, immoral or selfish; but because our hierarchy of needs is not affected, and until this happens we see no reason to “defend” ourselves. The book Not On Our Watch by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast is very insightful about the genocide in Darfur. It tells us about the history, the parties involved in the conflict and even what each one of us, not directly affected by the situation, can do to help stop the acts perpetrated by the Janjaweed militias and sponsored by the Sudanese government. This is great; it is good to know that even though we are thousands of miles away we can also help. But even I, a Panamanian who lived under the dictatorship of Manuel Antonio Noriega and know first hand what it is for a group of people to feel oppressed, find it difficult to do more than just have feelings of compassion. The fight must start with those affected. In the past, when human rights are violated, we start to see alliances and leaders that are willing to step to the frontline and even risk their lives for a greater cause. We must find these leaders in Darfur and help them spread the word through their stories, scars and let the rest of the world see their pain. The purpose of this essay is to prove that the current measures taken to fight the genocide are not working and as history shows, the people of Darfur must accomplish the following three steps in order to effectively stop the killings: 1) Identify their leaders, 2) Unite and 3) Seek help through media exposure.

The U.S. government is well aware of the genocide in Darfur. A total of 52 U.S. Senators have participated in at least nine drafted resolutions and acts addressed to the President of the United States. They each report on the situation in Sudan and call for action to be taken. These documents date as early as May 6, 2004 go into details about the number of people that have died or have been displaced from their homes in Darfur since 2003. Since Resolution 99 of the 108th Congress 2nd Session, which reported 700,000 people had been displaced within Sudan as of May of 2004, the number of displaced people has grown to at least 2,000,000 and another 70,000 people have died due to violence and insecurity in Darfur. As we can see, with each new resolution, the numbers get bigger but actions, other than providing food for those displaced, are yet to be seen. Also in Resolution 99, the U.S. Congress recognizes that “the militia forces backed by the Government of Sudan have engaged in the use of rape as a weapon of war, the abduction of children, the destruction of food and water sources, and the deliberate and systematic manipulation and denial of humanitarian assistance for the people of the Darfur region.”

President George W. Bush has responded to these resolutions by repeatedly condemning the genocide in Darfur. On April 18, 2007 he stated that “genocide is the only word for what is happening in Darfur – and we have a moral obligation to stop it.”

With the number of people now affected in the millions, any person aware of the genocide must wonder why the U.S. government has not yet been directly involved in resolving the ethnic conflict in Darfur. It is certainly not because there is not enough information as to what may be happening in the country of Sudan. It also does not have to do with political affiliations. Of the 52 Senators involved in the resolutions, 21 are Republicans, 30 are Democrats and 1 is Independent. The evidence is clear, but what is happening in Darfur does not directly affect Americans or the “American way of life”. To prove this point we can take a look at three examples from the past that forced the U.S. Government to take action: the Women Suffrage in the United States, the African American Civil Rights Movement and more recently the fight against Terrorism.

By means of the U.S. Constitution, American women did not have the right to vote until 1920. During the beginning of the century, there were only a few individuals fighting for the equal right of women. Some of the first women to advocate for women suffrage were Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Lucretia Mott and Margaret Fuller. They each tried to raise awareness through individual efforts and were not able to accomplish what they intended to. It was not until organizations such as the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association were formed and large groups of women started fighting for their rights that changes started taking place. The goal of both associations was to secure an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in favor of women suffrage and oppose passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which provides that governments in the United States may not prevent male citizens only from voting because of race, color, or a previous status as a slave. In 1890, when both organizations joined as one single unit they were able to accomplish their goals.

The African American Civil Rights Movement aimed at abolishing racial discrimination of African Americans in the United States. In the 19th century, the U.S. government passed a series of racially discriminatory laws, especially in the South. Racial violence towards African Americans mushroomed all over the United States. Discrimination acts against African Americans fell into four main categories: 1) racial segregation, 2) voter suppression, 3) denial of economic opportunity or resources and 4) private acts of violence. The Civil Rights Movement success can be attributed to strong leadership by people such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, which helped unite black people across America, and the broadcasting of marches and clashes, which exposed the cruelties on blacks to sparked Middle America’s conscience.

September 11, 2001 is now a date American’s associate with Terrorism. On this morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed two of the airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the third into the Pentagon located in Virginia and the fourth aircraft crashed into a field in Pennsylvania as passengers attempted to retake control. 2,974 people died as a result of the attacks. Immediately, American citizens and the U.S. government united in ways never seen before. Political Party affiliations, race, age, sex and religion were all put aside. Above all, we were all Americans. Within weeks, the U.S. government had prepared a series of contingency plans. These included an attack on the Al-Qaeda network, a terrorist group based in Afghanistan and lead by Osama Bin Laden, who assumed responsibility for the attacks and new policies such as the US Patriot Act to prevent the financing of terrorist networks.

All three of these cases (Women Suffrage, African American Civil Right Movement and the Terrorist Attack on America) have two things in common: 1) all three of them were injustices to humanity, even though they targeted different groups (race, sex or nationality); 2) the solution to each conflict was achieved through unity, strong leadership and mass media exposure.

Recognizing leaders within the affected group, uniting those affected and seeking exposure of the conflict through mass media are the three steps the people of Darfur must accomplish in order to effectively solve the problem. The U.S government will continue to do only what is necessary to not be viewed as immoral. It is unnatural for a person or group to defend itself against something that it does not consider a threat.

There are efforts being made, such as the Voices for Darfur website (www.voicesfordarfur.org) that address one of the steps that need to be taken. However, more needs to be done. To prove the importance of media through visualization, I talked to 5 of my coworkers about the current situation in Darfur and recorded the amount of times they were willing to ask discuss the topic. In average it was about 40 seconds before they either changed the topic or didn’t have anything else to say. A few minutes later I showed them the pictures from the Not On Our Watch book, they spent on average about 4 minutes looking at the pictures. It is true that a picture speaks for a thousand words.

The supply of food to the displaced people in Darfur and surrounding areas and the deployment of peacekeeping troops are only temporary solutions. It is good that some of us are already taking action. But if want the U.S. government to take action, the people of Darfur must first touch the hearts of American citizens through their stories, and once we can identify with them, we the American people will demand action from our government.

Tags: alliances, Antonio, Bullen, compassion, darfur, dictatorship, don cheadle, feelings, frontline, genocide in darfur, hierarchy of needs, human rights, janjaweed militias, john prendergast, killings, manuel antonio noriega, media exposure, rest of the world, scars, sudanese government, three steps, world today