Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices...

This text is excerpted from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize speech in December 1986, and which can be found on the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity website.  

"Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do - and at this moment more than ever. The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions...
This honor belongs to all the survivors and their children and, through us to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.

I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember he asked his father: "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"

And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."

I have been looking for accounts of genocides to share with you all, accounts that will help us remember.  After hearing our NOLA 50K Preview installation speaker Claude Gatebuke's story, I've decided that we'll start with Philip Gourevitch's account of the Rwandan genocide from The New Yorker Magazine in 1995.

This beautiful image is of loved ones lost during the Rwandan genocide, and it's from a wordpress.com site called the Rwandan Genocide 

If you have essays, articles, photos, or accounts you think would be good to share, please let me know.

Love letter to New Orleans, post script (part 2)

P.S.  I’ve got one tiny question NOLA.  You’re so lovely; however did your Buck Moth caterpillars get so mean? Youch!

 

For most of the morning, while we were laying the bones down, we were working to the sounds of drumming.

But at some point, the drummers quieted and for a time, we listened to the chiming sound of ceramic bones being laid in the square.  As those last bones were laid, the volunteers began to stand back and just look at what they had been part of.  It was a gorgeous moment when everyone there knew in their hearts that they were part of this thing that was so entirely about them and also entirely more than them.  One person, one person’s efforts, beautiful and meaningful, but mattering even more in the context of every individual’s efforts inextricably combined with everyone else’s effort.

 

So there was some silence and some clapping and then all the volunteers gathered around the circle of bones and held hands quietly for a moment. For me, that quiet moment was a testament to humanity, to our goodness and caring, and to the knowledge that however long it might take, that goodness and caring will win out over the violence we’re protesting.

And then it was time for words.  Susan and Naomi both spoke a bit, introducing the project and thanking the community for their gracious support, and Jamilah, the drummers and dancers made a blessing for ancestors and all good people.

New Orleans Council Member Kristen Gisleson Palmer spoke and then OMB’s dear friend, Eric Ndaheba, shared his story of the Gatumba Massacre and his journey to life here in the United States, and Claude Gatebuke shared his story and reflections about his survival of the civil war and genocide in Rwanda. 

And then what?  Food and refreshment, of course.  After everyone had some time to rest and eat, the final part of the day began; reclaiming the bones.

 

Kathleen, our National Liaison, told me when the day was done, that she thinks reclaiming the bones is humbling.  I agree, and have to say that I love that part of the day.  It’s completely informal but everyone stays and everyone works with the same diligence and care that they did in laying the bones out in the first place.  That’s amazing to me because by this time, trust me, you are tired and hot.  But somehow, it doesn’t matter.

And then, we’re finished.  Our staunch movers come and pack the boxes of bones into the truck to take them to the studio. We pack up the last of the stuff, tables and chairs, signs and sunscreen, drums and coolers. The volunteers begin to wander off.  And it’s dusk and Congo Square is quiet again.

And the last thing to do is to say thank you again to all the students, artists, individuals, orgnaizations and businesses that made this possible, and beautiful:

Gerard Cox
Jennifer MacNeill; Leigh Durhum; Dana Nguyen; Stacey Lee; Alysha Campbell; Amanda Raudsep; Malia Johnston; Firan Chauhan; Maegen Edwards

Claude Gatebuke; Eric Ndaheba; Council Member Kristen Gisleson Palmer; Luther Gray; Alexey Marti; Schubert Dauphin, and our amazing Master of Ceremonies, Melanie Grace Lawrence, from the NO/AIDS Task Force.

Second Line Ventures; Tulane Center for Public Service; Unfold Media Gallery; National Performance Network; City Of New Orleans; Calliope Digital; The Regen Group; Tungsten Monkey; DW Turner; International House Hotel; Markit 360; ASI Federal Credit Union; Purple Monkey; Hotel Parc St. Charles; Evacuteer; Bharat and Daxa Chauhan; William Sabourin; Brad MacNeill; Cuc and Tuan Nguyen; Lan Nguyen; Gary McMillan

And we want to thank all of our community partners: New Orleans Center for Creative Arts; Congo Square Preservation Society; Urban League College Track; Young Aspirations Young Artists; Artfully Aware; Tulane African Student Association; NO/AIDS Task Force; Tulane Global Service League; Crescent City Christian School; Belle Chasse Academy; New Orleans Healing Center; Harold Keller Elementary School; Young Leadership Council; Arts Council of New Orleans; One Million Bones Baton Rouge Chapter; Hope Christian Church; University of New Orleans Visual Arts League; Loyola University Student Art League; Tulane Human Rights Law Society; Professor Feike’s classes at Delgado and Tulane; Ashe Cultural Arts Center; 504Ward; Hands On New Orleans

Thanks again to Jane McPherson for the use of her wonderful photos and to Artfully Aware for theirs, as well.

Our love letter to New Orleans (Part 1)

Dear New Orleans,

We felt that your heart would be open and generous, but how magnificently true that was has still taken us by surprise.  Your people, your beautiful Congo Square, your artists and students, your businesses and organizations, even your weather; we couldn’t have asked for anything else.

Thank you New Orleans!

With love from One Million Bones

Every day we work on this project, we learn a little bit more about what we’re doing.  I know that sounds kind of crazy, but really it’s true in a way.  When Naomi came up with the idea to raise awareness of genocide and atrocities by laying 1,000,000 handmade bones on the National Mall, she envisioned the path needed to get there, but not the exact route that path would take. 

This is part of the beauty of One Million Bones. We are building a partnership between individuals and groups and organizations and businesses across the world and asking them to become invested in the project.  What that looks like is going to be different for each of them: One type of emphasis here, a different focus there, this kind of feeling, that kind of presentation.

The 50,000 Bones Preview in New Orleans was a beautiful event.  We were sharing the area with the Crescent City Classic, a 10K road race, and all kinds of Easter celebrations.  Where Albuquerque was almost silent as we were setting up, New Orleans was blasting the theme to Rocky and I Run So Far Away by Flock of Seagulls to get the runners motivated.  But Congo Square is a magical place and somehow those songs were swallowed into the space to become a muted soundtrack for us as well.

We spent a couple hours emptying the boxes of bones into piles at five different stations around the plaza. 

Congo Square, for those of you who’ve never seen it, is an asymmetrical circular plaza surrounded by 200-500 year old Live Oak trees and other beautiful plants.  The floor of the plaza consists of stones arranged in half circles radiating out from a center point.  Other than the motivational soundtrack in the background it was pretty quiet, with Naomi’s amazing core volunteers setting up registration tables, the reception area and the piles of bones. 

A little later in the morning, the drummers started to arrive and the blessing of the space began.  And at about 9:50 lines of volunteers in white started streaming into the Square, ready to help lay out the bones. 

William, our filmmaker extraordinaire, started taking opening shots as the volunteers were getting oriented and into their stations, and shortly after 11am, the very first bone was laid down by Jamilah Peters-Muhammad.

Then we all got to work. We asked the volunteers to come one at a time from the five different points, carrying a few bones to the center of the circle. 

Once they had laid them down, they walked back to the next point so they were zigzagging through the stations on each side of the square.  It created a beautiful, almost melodic, flow of people through the area.  It took a little longer than we anticipated but by 1:20 we laid the last bones down.

Super thanks to Jane McPherson, who runs the OMB-Tallahassee Chapter for taking such amazing photos!

Check back on Friday for part 2 including the reception, speakers, reclaiming the bones and thank yous!

Here we are in New Orleans

Sometimes it seems when you organize large-scale proejcts or events that they seem always distant, like you have plenty of time to make all the arrangements; it's not about procrastination, it's jsut that when you have eighteen months or three years toplan something, you seem to get used to be happening "sometime in the future." 

That is "sometime in the future" until you wake up one morning and you're looking at it... from the day before. 

Welcome to where we are right now!  The day before.

The bones are packed and on the truck.
We have a most amazing venue in Congo Square, which you can, and should, learn more about here, and here.
We have powerful speakers including Eric Ndaheba and Claude Gatebuke
We've got food and water, tents, and drummers, and a film crew.
We've got dozens of people to thank, and we'll have a comprehensive list for you, here, next week. 

Whever you are tomorrow at 10am central time, think about us and our 200 volunteers, laying bones and reclaiming them in Congo Sqaure.

Up, and now down again...

All of us at One Million Bones see the work we are doing here as hopeful.  There are terrible problems and people are suffering and yet we continue to believe that what we are doing is going to make a difference.  For me, today, it is especially important to believe that.  

Just two weeks ago, I wrote a post about a glimmer of hope in Mogadishu, Somalia, that the National Theater had reopened, that good people were reclaiming their city.  Oh, I qualified it; I'm an eternal optimist but not clueless, but I had absolutely no idea that this soon, I'd be sharing this article about an al-Shabab suicide bomber killing 8 people in that same theater.

See, this article in the NY Times, talks about what Somalis can have, what the people are willing to do to have their lives back (for young people to have a life they've never even imagined before). 

I know that the Somali people have to solve their own problems, but no one can think or expect that a people so ravaged by 20 years of war and terror can do it on their own.  The international community must help in whatever way we can.  Every person deserves to be safe and secure, to be able to hear music, or play soccer, to work and create, and revel in their life. I just don't think that's asking too much.