shift

The following video was filmed to present a small survey on how much our teenage generation knows about genocide. Although you may be snickering at some of the dumbfounded responses, I suggest you think long and hard about your own knowledge. Would your answers be any better?

Although we may learn about the Holocaust and Rwanda in our history classrooms, genocide remains very apparent across the globe. It seems with every generation comes a new genocide. So my question is: who will have the courage to break the cycle? With each generation throughout history, genocide has continued to slide by as leaders neglect quick reactions and refuse to step up as the sole forces capable of stopping the madness. Time and again, the United Nations has beat around using the term “genocide” to label obvious massacres so they can avoid the necessity of getting involved. Now it is our turn. Will we let it slide? Will we refuse to face the violence, or will we call it like it is and step up to the plate to fight back against the perpetrators?

Awareness is simply the first step. Hopefully through this short video as well as the other informative articles included in this platform, you have developed some sense of awareness to a few of the genocide issues existing in our world. Action comes next. Some of the students in this video weren’t in the least bit aware of the genocides occurring today, while others were thoroughly aware. Whose to say those informed individuals will have the courage to step up and join the fight actively against genocide? We can all be fed the knowledge, whether it be through the news, protests, commercials, or clips like this. The choice now is how you will allow the information to move you, how you soak in the knowledge. Will you allow the awareness to soak into you like a sponge as you stand heavily with a burden of selfishness and watch the massacres go by? Or will you let the knowledge seep into your soul and broil within you until it explodes into action! As the great playwright Arthur Miller tells us, “Let the storm come, even from God, and yet it leaves a choice with the man in the dark. He may sit eyeless, waiting for some unknown force to return him his light, or he may seek his private flame. But the choice, the choice is there. We cannot yet be tired. There is work to be done. This is no time to go to sleep.” Our generation must strive to be men and women who always light candles in the dark.

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/theMovement/ - Invisible Children for Uganda Genocide

http://www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=yes - Save Darfur

http://www.dosomething.org/whatsyourthing/International+Human+Rights/Darfur?gclid=COrZwYvdy5YCFQsQagod9yI3wg - Take Action against Genocide in Darfur