Falling Whistles would like to update you on the growth and progress of our programs in Congo as well as our advocacy initiatives at home.

In establishing our current partnership in Congo we proceeded slowly and cautiously. Over the course of several months we communicated with multiple Congolese-led organizations and carefully considered the implications of a partnership with each. We thoroughly examined the structural and ideological components of each organization, reconciling both budgets and goals. After selecting our current partner, we proceeded with slow diligence to develop a working agreement that fulfills the goals of both organizations. We are currently working alongside these grassroots leaders to rehabilitate 267 war-affected children in northeast Congo. The programs are Congolese envisioned, operated, and led. They are designed to help stop cycles of violence and dependency which have contributed to the conflicts in the past and present. By funding projects that reintegrate children into their communities and revitalize their social skills, we hope to help create a better future for them.

Falling Whistles advises these programs, and provides the resources and funds necessary for their implementation. In return, we receive monthly reporting that includes a detailed expense statement and analysis of the following programs: nutrition and health, expression therapy, education, vocational training, and psychosocial therapy.

• Nutrition and Health: A nutritionist provides the children in with a healthy meal every day before classes and before sports practice.  Children also receive lessons on basic health and hygiene .
• Expression Therapy: Through dance, visual arts, theatre, music, photography, and sports, children are taught to express themselves and work through their trauma.
• Education. We help pay the tuition for children who are ready to take classes in local schools.
• Vocational Training: Children choose classes in one of three practical working skills: mechanics, carpentry or tailoring.  The process of creating or repairing with their hands is additionally rehabilitative.
• Psychosocial Therapy: The children are individually looked after by two social workers, who routinely check up on their lives outside of the programs, in order to better understand what particular challenges and traumas each child is facing and incorporate this information into that child’s program of rehabilitation.

With Falling Whistles investment, our partners have been able to:

• Move into a new facility that doubled their operating capacity.
• Purchase a practice engine and the appropriate tools to begin hands on learning in mechanics.
• Buy four additional sewing machines, tripling the sewing program’s capacity to practically apply their lessons.
• Construct benches in the carpentry program that are being used by other children in the program.
• Respond dynamically to the needs of the children by implementing programs that focus on alphabetization, reading, and writing.
• Expand their capacity to provide psychosocial support for children outside of the classroom.

Just as the work of our partners in Congo has impressed us, so have our committed volunteers in North America. Because of their dedication, in our short existence and with very few resources we have been able to:

• Sell 5,000 whistles in over 40 states and 12 countries
• Directly educate 17,000 individuals through a national speaking tour.
• Reach hundreds of thousands online
• Build five educational installations in that expose the public to the realities of Congo and ways in which they can advocate for peace.
• Expand our retail campaign to 40 storefronts in 14 states.
• Oversee a coast-to-coast bicycle tour that educated about Congo.
• Apply for 501c3, Charitable Non-Profit, status with the IRS.
• Recruit an Advocacy Coordinator in Washington D.C. to develop a cohesive peace building advocacy strategy.
• Bring on an experienced Development Consultant to help establish stronger program partnerships.

Together we have achieved much over the last year and a half, but it has not been without its share of complications. When Falling Whistles began, we had no professional experience in Congo and limited knowledge of common challenges faced by NGOs when building partnerships with community-based organizations. This contributed to a number of significant challenges when establishing our first partnership and created a delay in the distribution of funds to partner projects. As we began to better understand the complexities involved in the process, we took substantial steps to change our approach to one which more appropriately addresses the inherent challenges. We have apologized to all parties involved in these initial complications and are working toward reconciliation.

Moving forward there are many challenges. Given the dynamic nature of the crisis in eastern Congo and the overwhelming need in the region, we have tried to focus our resources for the highest level of impact. It has been consistently difficult to adequately supply the individual programs with all of the materials they need, and their security remains a high priority.

There have been incidences in which both the personal safety and the security of our partners property has been threatened by armed groups. Our partner organization is small in name, personnel, and reputation. As such, they remain vulnerable to violent attack and coercion by the forces present in the region.

As a result, they have requested that we keep their identity anonymous. We have consulted other, more experienced workers in the region, and many of them have confirmed the importance of these measures.
We are a young organization and have a great deal to learn. In that effort we have brought on Houston Shearon as our Development Consultant. Houston has extensive experience in Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and DR Congo, and a Masters in International Development. It will be Houston’s role in the coming months to work to expand and diversify both partnerships and programs, further enhancing the ability of Falling Whistles to provide support to Congolese communities.

In 2010 we are taking the steps necessary to improve upon our strengths while addressing our weaknesses in the areas of communication, transparency, and efficacy.

• Communication: We are in the process of developing new systems of communication with our current partners that will provide for more thorough and frequent inter-organizational communication. We are also committed to improving communication to our supporters, members of the aid community, and other interested parties.
• Transparency: Despite our confidentiality agreement, Falling Whistles strives to be transparent, in both our intent and our accounting. In the future we will be publishing quarterly program updates as well as annual financial reports including detailed financial breakdowns. We are currently in the process of constructing the first of these reports.
• Efficacy: We have recently begun conversations with our partners to redefine the scope of and budget for each program, in order to achieve a greater level of measurable impact.

As we reach out to established organizations operating in the region, we look forward to learning from both their successes and frustrations. Through collaboration we hope to contribute to positive solutions in eastern Congo.

If you have any questions regarding Falling Whistles please do not hesitate to bring them to our attention. We welcome an open dialogue, and are happy to speak directly to anyone with an inquiry.

This document is co-signed by:
Sean Carasso, Falling Whistles CEO and founder
David Lewis, Director of Operations
Houston Shearon, Development Consultant
Capers Rumph, Development Coordinator
Monique Beadle, Advocacy Coordinator

Hey all-

As some of you may have heard, our interns and some of our staff are jumping in a van and roadtripping to Oklahoma City tonight.  They’re on the move to support the activists staked out in front of Senator Coburn’s office.

Senator Coburn has put a block on the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.  The bill authorizes $40 million to post-conflict recovery efforts in Northern Uganda and directs President Obama to come up with a peace and recovery plan for war-ravaged Northern Uganda.

The number count varies, but people from all over the country are gathered in OKC, sleeping outside in the freezing cold to request a meeting with the Senator to state their case.  There are a wide variety of opinions on the bill and here’s a small taste of both sides.  We’d love your thoughts.

Regardless of your opinion on the bill, the people standing outside Coburn’s office are our brothers and sisters.  They are true heroes for putting themselves on the frontlines for other human beings half a world away. 

To The Holdouts: We salute you and many of us will soon be joining you.

Love
FW

For: http://www.undispatch.com/coburn
Against: http://tinyurl.com/yjj8pto

Taken in North Kivu by Dan Johnson

“I dont believe in charity.
I believe in solidarity.
Charity is vertical, so it’s humiliating.
It goes from the top to the bottom.
Solidarity is horizontal.
It respects the other and learns from the other.
I have a lot to learn from other people.”
-Eduardo Galeano.

http://tinyurl.com/radz7y

In the United Nations Special Report from Congo, released in June of 2009, The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, issued the following statement on the preliminary findings of her official visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
“Following decades of dictatorship, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is engaged in a political, economic and social transition. However, a conducive environment in which human rights defenders can operate has yet to emerge.”

Among the many recommendations that the Special Rapporteur made in an effort to increase the support and ability of defenders of human rights in the region, she advocates for the following:

    ·    Continue empowering the civil society, including human rights defenders…by increasing their
        capacity, notably their means of communications (funding Internet connections, mobile
        phones, etc.).

    ·    Carry out countrywide civic education, particularly through the introduction of human rights in the
        school curriculum, to enhance the appreciation of the activities of human rights defenders.

Falling Whistles is addressing both of these needs through our rehabilitation programs and partnerships with Congolese envisioned and led organizations.

    ·    We are currently supporting the improvement of communications infrastructures for our partner
        organization, including an internet connection, computer, cellular phones, and air time. These
        invaluable tools are critical in the efficient implementation of programs and in facilitating frequent
        communication between our partners and Falling Whistles.

    ·    We are in the preliminary stages of introducing human rights education into the curriculum of our
        rehabilitation programs. This training will teach the children their inherent value and the power of
        their individual voice, as well as their basic rights as a human being.

The protection of human rights defenders is an issue that Falling Whistles is deeply committed to, and it is our hope to continue to work collaboratively with these whistleblowers towards peace in Congo.

PROFILE STORY: Watch Dogs for Mineral Trace
JUSTICE: Human Rights Defenders put Behind Bars
RESOURCES: HP Retracing Mineral Production
POWER: Violence Prevents Aid for Internally Displaced

How is life out there?  These new interns are starting to crank out some pretty slick arts and crafts.  This weekly roundup is definitely the best yet. Our interns would love feedback, so please dig in and then send some this way

Things have been buzzing here in the garage-office.  Our accountants were in from New York last week, and our lawyer was here from D.C. a couple weeks ago. We have a new installation coming up at ACTIVE in Santa Monica and hopefully one at STAG in Austin, just in time for SXSW. Just on the backburner we have some amazing new education just waiting to be designed. 

Our development consultant began his first official review of our programming in Congo.  As we grow so will our ability to do better, more transparent work on the ground.  We are all looking forward to the day when you can see the results of your support. 

As February closes as quickly as it came,we want to thank you for your continual support.  Please continue to pick apart these round-ups.  They are here for you so that you always know what’s going on in Congo.

“Violence is rarely irrational — it almost always has root causes that can be addressed. We’re often just too busy or lazy to learn enough about a situation to figure out how.”
-Michael Kavangh

DRC Relations and the Reining FDLR Threat
Women Suppressed as the War Persists
A Complicated Return for the Lawless
Multinational company maps the soil of Congo

Well friends-
Things are moving rapidly these days in our garage-office, even in the sub-arctic temperatures, but we can’t complain. There is a lot to be celebrating. The FW staff and interns have been hard at work refining the Congo Weekly Roundup which will soon be updated every Friday. We encourage you to share it with friends and send us your feedback as we continuously search for ways to improve.
And if you are passing through Portland this month, check out our beautiful new installation there at Lizard Lounge.  It was built by Nathanael Balon to tell the Falling Whistles story, and then stocked with 30 books from the public library that have informed our understanding about Congo - perfect reading material for a rainy day in the lounge.
Read on my friends!
With peace and love.
Falling Whistles

Taken in Bukavu

“There is nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example.  Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart, but which needn’t be reiterated.”
-Dave Eggers, “You Shall Know Our Velocity”

This is what we at FW would call Constructive Rebellion.
Love when people take matters into their own hands

Forests and Timber Exploited by Conflict
Congo Halts Exports by Mining Companies for Not Growing Corn
Global Movement in U.S. Shines Light on The DRC

Photo Credit: Dan Johnson
North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

“Our earth is wounded. Her oceans and lakes are sick; her rivers are like running sores; the air is filled with subtle poisons. And the oily smoke of countless hellish fires blackens the sun. Men and women, scattered from homeland, family, friends, wander desolate and uncertain scorched by a toxic sun…
In this desert of frightened, blind uncertainty, some take refuge in the persuit of power. Some become manipulators of illusion and deceit.
If wisdom and harmony still dwell in this world, as other than a dream lost in an unopened book, they are hidden in our heartbeat. And it is from our hearts that we cry out. We cry out and our voices are the single voice of this wounded earth. Our cries are the great wind across the earth.”
- From the Warrior Song of King Gesar

We Need The Same Response For Other Crises
Top UN Officials Pay Visit to Congo
Rebel Leaders Stand Trial at Hague
New Budget Unveiled for 2010

Photo Credit—Lindsay Branham

DR Congo

“If you came here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you came because you believe your liberation bound to mine, then come, and we can walk together.”

A film about the deadliest plague that humanity has ever known that is still, today, killing nearly one million people each year.

Saturday, February 6th 2010. 5:00pm
McMenamins Bagdad Theater
Portland, OR

UN Gives 16 Million USD to Humanitarian Activities in DRC
DR Congo Offers Aid to Haiti
DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi to Hold Meeting of Chiefs of General Staff

Victim Tells Court His Village Wants Reparations

Top Mobile Phone Company On Trial

Congo Must Help Itself

This is posted at the entrance of the FW office to remind us who we are and what we are attempting to do.

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists…

The saving of our world will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority….

like Thomas Jefferson, who in an age adjusted to slavery wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”;

Through such maladjustment an already decadent generation may be called to those things which make for peace.”

This reminded me of a portion of Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”  I think much of his wisdom still stands today.

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies—a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.”

UN: Act to End Atrocities in Eastern Congo
Security Council Should Urgently Deploy a Civilian Protection Expert Group
December 13, 2009

  Continued killing and rape by all sides in eastern Congo shows that the UN Security Council needs a new approach to protect civilians. The Security Council should send a group of experts to Congo to kick-start a serious civilian protection plan.  Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher, Africa division

(New York) - The United Nations Security Council should urgently act to protect civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo from further atrocities by government and rebel forces and ensure peacekeepers are not implicated in abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report published today.

The 183-page report, “‘You Will Be Punished’: Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo,” documents in detail the deliberate killing of more than 1,400 civilians between January and September 2009 during two successive Congolese army operations against a Rwandan Hutu militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The report is based on 23 Human Rights Watch fact-finding missions this year and interviews with over 600 victims, witnesses, and family members.

“Continued killing and rape by all sides in eastern Congo shows that the UN Security Council needs a new approach to protect civilians,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Security Council should send a group of experts to Congo to kick-start a serious civilian protection plan.”

Congolese army soldiers and FDLR rebel combatants have attacked civilians, accused them of being collaborators, and “punished” them by chopping many to death with machetes. Both sides also shot civilians as they tried to flee or burned them in their homes. Some victims were tied together before their throats were, according to one witness, “slit like chickens.” The majority of the victims were women, children, and the elderly.

Human Rights Watch recommended the immediate creation and deployment of a civilian protection expert group that would put forward specific measures to improve strategies to protect civilians in eastern Congo. Alan Doss, special representative of the secretary-general in Congo, will address the Security Council on December 16. The Security Council is scheduled to vote on a renewal of the mandate of MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, on December 21.

Human Rights Watch urged the peacekeeping force to immediately cease all support to the current military operation until clear procedures and the means to implement and evaluate them are put in place to prevent violations of international humanitarian law. Human Rights Watch also called for all commanders with known records of human rights abuse to be removed from operational responsibilities. The procedures and conditions should be made public.

Over the first nine months of 2009, the UN recorded over 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls across North and South Kivu in eastern Congo, nearly surpassing the figures recorded during all of last year, and probably representing only a fraction of the total. Most of the women and girls were gang raped, some so violently that they later died. Many women and girls were held as sex slaves by both the Congolese army and the FDLR for weeks or months at a time; they were raped repeatedly and some were mutilated and then killed by machete or shot in the vagina.

One of the youngest cases of rape documented by Human Rights Watch was of a nine-year-old girl raped by FDLR combatants on January 27 in Ngwilo village, Masisi territory, when she and her mother fled the fighting. The FDLR first raped the mother and inserted a large stick in her vagina causing serious injury which led to her death. When the young girl cried out in distress, the FDLR raped her as well.

“Many UN Security Council ambassadors have visited Congo and expressed outrage at the massive sexual violence,” said Van Woudenberg. “Yet rape is increasing -  not decreasing -  in eastern Congo. That outrage needs to be translated into bold and effective action to help protect these women and girls.”

In January the Congolese and Rwandan governments began joint military operations against the FDLR in a five-week operation known as Umoja Wetu. It was followed in March by a second military operation, Kimia II, conducted with the support of the UN peacekeepers, which continues.

The Congolese government said the military operations were intended to bring peace and security to this volatile region, but they have not. Human Rights Watch documented horrific crimes against civilians by the FDLR, the Congolese army, and, in some instances, the Rwandan army, during the military operations. Human Rights Watch investigations link senior FDLR commanders and several Congolese army officers to some of the worst atrocities. Many of the abuses amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

UN peacekeepers made important efforts to protect civilians in this complex and difficult terrain, Human Rights Watch said. But the peacekeeping force’s role as a joint player in the military operations, providing substantial support to the Congolese army, has implicated peacekeepers in the abuses and undermined the mission’s primary objective, which is to protect civilians.

The civilian protection expert group should be created to investigate and make specific recommendations regarding civilian protection needs and challenges in eastern Congo, Human Rights Watch said. This expert group should evaluate the circumstances under which attacks against civilians are taking place, the measures taken by peacekeepers to carry out the mandate to protect civilians, and the best ways to bolster these activities.

On November 11, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1894, which restates the council’s pledge “to respond to situations of armed conflict where civilians are being targeted…, including through the consideration of appropriate measures at the Security Council’s disposal.” Human Rights Watch said that the situation in eastern Congo serves as a test of that commitment.

“The Security Council needs to provide UN peacekeepers in Congo with clear and concrete direction,” Van Woudenberg said. “Sending a group of experts and making clear to the Congolese army the conditions under which the peacekeepers will work with its troops can play a crucial role in ending abuses and ensuring that UN peacekeepers are not implicated in future atrocities.”

Accounts from the report:
A woman who was abducted by the FDLR during an attack on Busheke village in late January 2009:

  They [FDLR]...killed my husband with a machete and two of them raped me. They also killed my father and raped my mother and sister before killing them as well, all with machete. Ten other Hutu women and girls from my village were raped and killed with machete the same night. They abducted me and brought me to their camp where I was made the “wife” of Captain Jean Claude. He raped me every day until I managed to escape six months later… The FDLR said they were brothers of the Congolese Hutu and didn’t understand why we had welcomed the FARDC. That’s why they were punishing us.

Woman attacked by the FDLR in Nyakabasa village after the rebels killed her 25-year-old son in February 2009:

  I ran outside, and an FDLR [combatant] grabbed me and cut me everywhere with his machete. I was almost dead. He cut me on my head and on my arms. He wanted to cut my neck, but I put up my hands to block it… There were many combatants. Some were burning houses and others were killing people…They continued to beat me and left when they thought I was dead.

Witness to the massacre by the FDLR in Busurungi on May 10, 2009:

  When the FDLR came, they circled the entire village and started killing people. They stopped those who tried to flee with their own hands. They raped the women, even the young girls, and then they started to burn the houses. Some people who tried to leave their homes were stopped by the FDLR and thrown back into their burning houses, even the children…I came back the next morning and saw bodies decapitated, burned, and raped…I saw two women who were pregnant, and the FDLR had cut open their stomachs and removed the fetuses from their bodies.

Witness to the Ndorumo massacre by Congolese and Rwandan soldiers in February 2009:

  The soldiers arrived at the school and said they wanted to meet with the population…Some civilians had already gathered in the classrooms when they instead started killing us. They said we were being punished for being complicit with the FDLR, but there weren’t even FDLR in our village when they attacked.

Rwandan Hutu refugee woman who lost six members of her family when the Congolese army attacked Shalio hill on April 27, 2009:

  [They] were all beaten to death by wooden clubs in front of me. Then four of the soldiers took me and raped me. They told me that I’m the wife of an FDLR and they can do whatever they want to me.

Woman who lost her father and three of her children when the Congolese army attacked Ndorumo in August 2009:

  The Tutsi soldiers want to exterminate us. They come to attack us in places where there are no combatants or soldiers to provide for our security. When they come, they say they want to push us out of our land so they can occupy it. Some have already come with their cows and are taking over the land just above our village.

Press Release
16 December 2009

UN expert on extrajudicial executions calls on UN to end support to Congolese military operations commanded by known war criminals

GENEVA—“As the UN Security Council considers renewing the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), it should ensure that no further support is given to Congolese military operations commanded by individuals who have committed grave human rights abuses,” according to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston. 

“It is a contradiction of basic UN principles for UN peacekeepers to cooperate with a military operation led by individuals who stand accused of war crimes and grave human rights abuses,” said Alston.  “The situation is all the more problematic as a result of the continuing reports of major abuses committed against the civilian population,” stated the UN independent expert.

Through 2009, MONUC has supported “Kimia II,” a Congolese military operation against the FDLR rebel group in eastern Congo.  The Special Rapporteur stated that while action against the FDLR is necessary, the manner in which this operation has been carried out to date has been “absolutely catastrophic” for civilians in the Congo.

“There has been insufficient planning for civilian protection, and civilians have been raped to death and massacred in revenge attacks by the rebels.  Shockingly, civilians have also been gang raped and hacked or shot to death by the Congolese army – the very force that is supposed to protect them.”

The Special Rapporteur traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in October this year, and gathered evidence of unlawful killings by all sides, including civilian massacres led by Congolese army commander Innocent Zimurinda in an area called Shalio.  “The UN has clearly taken important steps in response to my statements following the mission,” said Alston, “but it appears that Colonel Zimurinda remains in command, and that the UN has not implemented a strong conditionality policy that would prevent it from supporting units led by him or by Bosco Ntaganda, for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes.”

The Security Council will vote on a renewed mandate for MONUC this Friday, 18 December 2009.  The Special Rapporteur urges the Security Council, as it negotiates a new MONUC mandate, to require MONUC only to participate in or support Congolese operations that respect human rights, humanitarian, and refugee law.  “Civilian protection must be at the centre of both the planning and carrying out of military operations in the Kivus,” said Alston.  “Strong conditionality, especially with respect to the removal of war criminal commanders from Congolese army leadership positions, must underpin MONUC support for military operations.”

The Special Rapporteur also called on MONUC to make public the terms of any conditionality policy it currently implements, and to ensure that it has adequate monitoring in place to guarantee that the conditions are being observed.

The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions carried out a human rights fact-finding mission to the DRC in October 2009.  He found widespread unlawful killings by all sides to the conflict in the Kivus, including by the FDLR rebel group, and by the Congolese army.  His press statement, delivered at the conclusion of his mission, is available here: English http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/docs/PressStatement_SumEx_DRC.pdf
French http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/docs/PressStatement_SumEx_DRC_fr.pdf
Learn more about the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/index.htm
OHCHR Country Page - The Democratic Republic of the Congo:  http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/AfricaRegion/Pages/ZRIndex.aspx

For additional information and media requests, please contact the Special Rapporteur Philip Alston (Tel.: + 1 212 992 8873 / e-mail: philip.alston@nyu.edu)

This was drawn by a young lady just after she heard me speak at the University of the South.  It’s an extremely intense image, but maybe 5.6 million dead deserves some intensity.

As with so many of my journals, I hope you will read through despite the length.  There are valuable lessons to be learned from halfway across the world…

~~~~~~~~~

The truth is, I don’t know what to write.  At least not yet.  I guess that’s why I’m sitting here staring at this empty page. 

It’s been well over a month since my last real journal entry. We’ve had a few friends asking for updates – what’s the deal man?  What are you guys even doing? 

There’s an interesting disconnect between marketing and reality.  This is the first time any of us have done something people (other than our immediate circle of friends) really cared about.  Always before, friends knew what was happening because we were living life together.  This time around we have friends in all corners of the globe asking – “Do you even care about Congo anymore?  It seems there is no progress.” 

So much has happened in such a short amount of time, the task of updating seems a daunting one. The story is an exciting one, full of sleepless nights, fights, intrigue and great, great love. But in the interest of time, let me take you back to the moment when everything changed. In sharing that moment, maybe you’ll gain a telling glimpse into all the others.

The majority of our time in the Democratic Republic of Congo was beautiful.  The land itself is breathtaking, as lush as anywhere I’ve seen.  We spent long days learning, questioning, digging and attempting to understand.  With so many shadows and disinformation, we asked the people living though it – why is this war happening? Who is driving such suffering?  What is true?

There were many hours spent laughing with old friends, playing instruments and dancing, telling jokes lost in translation and enjoying the company of young people not so different than our friends here in the U.S.

We spent hours crying for the many who have been lost.  The Congolese people have endured a kind of pain I am unable to understand. Attempting to balance their reality with mine in the US tends to leave me lopsided.  Such clashing realities come crashing together and I have trouble allowing them to coexist.  Most days I just block it out and keep it from my mind - better to live functionally than allow the daily slaughter to crush me. 

But there are those rare days when I sit back and allow the full breadth of the suffering to wash over me like tidal waves of pain and human horror.  Those days are paralyzing.  They make for an inefficient version of me.  But they are important.  Vital even.  Unless we remember with regularity, we choose a life lived in denial. 

Toward the end of our last trip to Congo we ran into some trouble. We had gone deep into a region rife with mystery, and brimming with the deaths of innocents. Walikale. Home to our world’s second largest rainforest, and among our deepest “red-zones.”  For many reasons, Walikale takes center stage in this conflict. 

It is midnight, black outside, fireflies the size of racquet balls are flying overhead, and we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of miles of jungle.

One of the few places still awake in this tiny town is the pub shack. With a cracked lantern hanging overhead, walls of rope-wrapped sticks and President Kabilas face plastered across them, this backroom stinks of secrets. 

The regional heads of Intelligence, Police, and the Army surround a table littered with beer and brandy. In the shadows of this pub, this is a night among men.  And these are the men who know.  These guys have seen it.  Seen what you ask?  All of it.  Murder.  Rape.  Torture. Exploitation.  Colonialism.  Oppression.  War.  This is a list that goes on unending. And these are the men that know. 

At first glance they see nothing more than our white skin.  And to them, white always means oppressor. Arguments ensue. In a place where war has been constant for over a decade and commonplace for the greater part of a century, misunderstandings and confusion seem inevitable. And yet, there is a mutual plea from each of us sitting around this dark table to simply be understood. The head of intelligence turns to me and yells words I don’t think I’ll soon forget. 

“Do you not see?”  He asks. “You are the problem. Your people have created much of this.”  At that he lifts up his hands and points all around.  Of course he’s referring to the chaos of the Congo war. 

“My people?” I ask.  What does that mean?  My veins carry the blood of dozens of countries, tribes and religions.  My people have been both teachers and fools, oppressors and oppressed. 

“The West.”  He responds.  “Those are your people.”  There is a frustration in his voice that goes back many, many years.  “Why can your President kill another President? Another leader does such a thing and he is a war criminal. But yours does as he likes.”  He’s referring most recently to Sadaam, but obviously hinting at the first democratically elected leader of Congo – Patrice Lumumba, whose assassination is sometimes pinned on the CIA. 

“Why does our President take his orders from yours?” He is clearly disgusted. “Congo wants a president who answers to the people of Congo first.”

The chief of police is old and grey.  He says he remembers the days of the Belgians.  “You cannot know what it is to be ruled.  It is humiliating. It makes you angry.  My country still shakes.”

Beat.

We all breathe deep.

I try to imagine such a thing.  A country shaking. 

My memory goes back to my first university days.  I was a fresh arrival, green and volunteering to reach “troubled teens.”  I fell in love with a group of freshman guys at my old high school and was soon getting midnight phone calls – “Uh, I’m drunk and stuck.  Can you grab me?”

It began innocent enough, picking up vomiting 14 yr olds from the house parties of parents who left town and left the liquor cabinet open.  And then one night my phone rings and the voice on the other side isn’t shouting or begging. 

It’s shaking. 

Violently shaking. 

Oh shit.  “Where are you, I’m on my way.”  Jeep driving through 2am hills, twenty minutes later my headlights slowly pan across a backtown curb.  There sits a quivering creature huddled in the shadows about a mile from his home. 

“Get in homie.” Placing a jacket around his shoulders, we slowly walk toward the doorless passenger seat. 

A drive in the open air will be therapeutic and we’ve got a special place, he and I.  Off we go.  Another twenty winding minutes later and we arrive at a boat ramp, leading into the local lake.  Turning the car around, I back down the ramp.  A steep decline, jerk the parking break, and our eyes are now pointing toward the sky.  Water laps against the back tires. 

In silence we sit, for how long I can’t estimate. 

And then it begins.  The shaking. 

His whole body, quivering at first and then violently wracking, tears start coming in an unending stream. 

The clouds pass overhead as he weeps, for how long I can’t estimate. 

And then he begins. The sharing. 

His father had beat him. 

He had beat him and beat him and beat him and beat him. The full force of his self-hatred pummeling into the boys back. 

And his shoulders.  And the back of his legs.  And the back of his head. 

Months later I will sit across a table from the father and he will return my gaze with head held high.  As though I am the wrongdoer for exposing his wrongs.  It is our lies that make us proud.  Only honesty can create humility. 

And the boy shakes.

I wonder what it was like for the old American slave masters?  Beating men, women and children in the backfields, then using silk scarves to wipe the sweat from their neck.  Was it easy for them to return to their beautiful plantation home?  Did their slaves shake?  Did they?

Power has often been gained off the backs of others.  I want to know how much has changed.

It is this desire to understand that snaps me back to the graying chief of police who says – “My country still shakes.”

Trauma.  He may not even know the word in English.  But he sees it in his people.  For decades and decades, beat and killed by the men of the west.

I never understood why people made such a big deal about colonialism. That was then, this is now, can we not move on?  I questioned the practicality of living in the past. I assumed people were attempting to displace blame, and failing to take responsibility. Until Congo. 

During his time, Mark Twain was a part of the first movement to end the war in Congo.  He said the horseless carriage had brought the world closer together.  Obviously he was referring to the car and how it changed everything for much of the world.  But what natural resources did the car require?  Therein lies the bulk of his point.  Because in our pursuit of rubber for tires, the Belgians killed 10,000,000 people in 20 years.  Ten million. People. Dead.

This done in the name of progress.  In the name of growth.  And it is the now the grandchildren of progress who look on with disdain and remark – why are there always problems over there? Won’t they simply get on with it and work things out? 

But aren’t beaten boys more likely to beat their own?  And then their own as well?

While we stand surprised, such questions are rarely asked. Violence is more than a moment. Violence tears us from one another. Tears us from ourselves. And the ripple effects of such trauma are felt for many years.

We stand in horror at the horrors of history, but can’t seem to react when it stares our present eyes in the eye. 

What is this fog? This thing that keeps us from seeing our own day with as much moral clarity as we see the past? 
How can we understand it
so as to describe it
so as to expose it
so as to destroy it? 

The fog centers on self.  Almost always. Looking too closely at ourselves, we often fail to see all this is behind and the possibility before us.  We fail to see much of anything. 

Knowing this, the Congolese leader looks at me with wrinkled eyes and asks, “Do you not see?  Your people are part of the problem.”

As my scales come peeling off, the fog begins to clear. 

The Falling Whistles journal was written with as much ignorance as urgency. I had heard there was a problem, but it took tortured children to shake me into paying attention.

What we’ve learned since that day has changed us forever. We all begin in ignorance.  It is where we go from there that determines our destiny.

The minerals mined from the war-region of Congo fund the constant rebellions. Then, through a wildly complicated process few fully understand, those minerals end up in our electronics and every person along the supply chain gains from the original low price. 

And Mark Twain’s observation, like history, repeats itself.  But this time it is not cars, but instead our cell phones and computers, that fund this holocaust. 

The most important element of this scandal is that all the groups profiting have a vested interest in continuing the violence.  Or at the very least, the chaos.  With chaos there are no taxes, no regulations, no rules decreasing profit ratios. Just an endless supply of human beings looking for work.  Bring them to the brink of death and then replace them.  Now repeat.

And so it was that sitting around this table littered by beer and brandy, we began to see the enormity of the job ahead of us.  We must shift the very trajectory of history. 

There is currently a generation in Congo that has known nothing but war.  The rehabilitation of these children is a global emergency and we are currently giving everything toward that end.  We have partnered with community leaders to rehabilitate 270 kids.  All from whistle sales. Your purchases working to save lives.  What began with 5 has continued. It’s an extraordinary step, given the chaos of the region.

And while it is their job to lead their children toward peace, it is our job to do the same here in the west. 

This is that task laid out for a whistleblower. To pursue freedom in the face of opposition. To speak up when others are silent and few will listen.  To protest. 

And even those acts of courage will be only the beginning.  A moment of outrage is very necessary - reacting is part of what makes us human.  But reaction only creates the potential for change.  It is what we do with every day after that paves our path.  We can judge our love only by an equation of follow-through. This is called advocacy.

The road out of ignorance is a long one. But one we must walk. Together.

And in a manner of speaking, this is what have we been doing these past few months.  Re-Learning everything. Wading through the miles of garbage covering 6 million deaths, thousands of rapes, tortured children and silenced outcries. What we’ve found will more than likely change you as it has changed us.  It will take time, but we will continue to share with you all we learn. 

We don’t have all the answers.  But we know that speaking up is first.  Wear your protest and be a whistleblower for peace.  Use the whistle as a tool to elevate common conversations in the West.  Because a problem this size will not be solved by big men on big stages - there is too much to be gained by too many who will allow it to continue for too long. A problem this size requires the “us’s.” The collective we.  Giving all we can with what we have. For peace. 

Only then will we begin to do what the Head of Intelligence asked of us.  See.  And with eyes wide open and heads held high, we might just maybe reverse the trends of history and push together toward a world more free than our fathers. 

Peace.
Sean.

There are a wide variety of players pulling tangled strings…..

New York, 27 October 2009:

“Impunity for killings is a key cause of illegal killings around the world”, said Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.  He reported today to the UN General Assembly on his work over the last year, during which he investigated unlawful killings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States. 

“In each of the countries I have investigated, there are disturbing reports of Government responsibility for illegal killings.  While the nature and scale of killings varies widely – murders by UN-supported Congolese troops, killings of civilians for reward by Colombian soldiers, police death squads in Kenya, or targeted killings by US forces operating drones in Pakistan – the common thread is that the killings are rarely properly acknowledged or investigated.  This failure by Governments to provide accountability is often the key ingredient in continued unlawful attacks on civilian populations.”   

The expert returned from an investigation to the Congo just a week and a half ago.  He reported that the Congolese army (FARDC), which is supported by UN forces (MONUC), has killed, raped, and looted from the civilian population.  Alston described evidence he had received that FARDC members massacred more than 50 civilians and raped and abducted approximately 40 women in Shalio (North Kivu) between 27-30 April 2009. 

“The Congolese army is a makeshift coalition of former militia groups, too many of whom are heavily prone to violence.  These forces are supported by the UN pursuant to Security Council resolutions, and there are serious concerns about the measures the UN has taken to ensure that it is not implicated in the rights abuses being committed by its partners,” said Alston.

The independent expert stressed that both the Congo and MONUC must do more to combat widespread impunity:  “In response to my description of the Shalio massacre, the Congolese Information Minister stated that the Government was not prepared to take action against the commander responsible because ‘arrest would have had worse consequences than the crimes of which he is accused.’  Further, MONUC officials have themselves indicated that they will not take steps to arrest General Bosco Ntaganda, an FARDC commander whose whereabouts are well known and for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant.  Both the Congolese Government and MONUC must abandon their untenable ‘peace first, justice later’ approach.”

Referring to the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north of the Congo, Alston warned that, “The LRA continues to be very active in the Congo as well as in the region generally.  The consequences in terms of killings, kidnappings, looting and large-scale displacement are horrendous.  To end a reign of terror that has killed over 1,200 civilians since September 2008 in the Congo alone, there must be a concerted international campaign against the LRA.” 

Alston also expressed deep disappointment that since his February 2009 visit to Kenya, “The appalling impunity for killings by state forces that I called attention to at the time continues months later.”  He said that there have been no serious Government investigations into police death squads that brutally killed hundreds of Kenyans.  Both the police and the military also remain in denial about torture and unlawful killings committed by their forces in Mt. Elgon.  “I had called for the dismissal of the Police Commissioner whose responsibility for police death squads is well-documented.  Although he has been relieved of command, it was only to be promoted to another high Government post,” said the expert. 

Alston further highlighted continuing impunity in Colombia, which he visited in June 2009.  “The most prominent issue concerned the so-called ‘false positives’ (falsos positivos) in which victims are lured under false pretenses by a ‘recruiter’ to a remote location, killed by the military, and reported as combat killings in order to gain rewards for their killers.”  Alston reported that many of the killers remain free. 

Alston underscored the “dramatic growth in importance” of legal questions he had previously raised concerning the United States’ use of unmanned drones to carry out targeted killings.  “Although the US Government informed the Human Rights Council in June that it would study my report, since that time I have heard nothing.  In the meantime, the number of killings by unmanned drones has escalated significantly, even as critical questions remain about who is being targeted, on what legal basis, and the measures the US is taking to ensure that its attacks are lawful.  Unless the US Government moves to answer these questions, it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law.”

Alston’s report to the General Assembly discussed in detail the phenomenon of vigilante and “mob justice” killings, which he described as “a widespread problem that is often ignored by the international community.”  Alston added, “Government officials often are either involved in vigilante killings or encourage them and States should take comprehensive efforts to ensure that their officials are not supporting or encouraging such killings in any way.”

Alston also reported that, since he began his mandate in 2004, more than two-thirds of the UN member states to which he has officially requested a visit have either denied the request or failed to respond.  These include 11 current members of the Human Rights Council: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. 

According to Alston, “There is something badly amiss with the system when a wide range of large and important States does not permit UN scrutiny of alleged killings.”

****

Professor Alston was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in 2004 and reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. He has had extensive experience in the human rights field, including eight years as Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, principal legal adviser to UNICEF in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

For more information, please see http://www.extrajudicialexecutions.org, or contact Ms Sarah Knuckey or Ms Hina Shamsi, Advisors to the Special Rapporteur: sarah.knuckey@nyu.edu; hina.shamsi@nyu.edu. 

We couldn’t agree more. 

LOS ANGELES - Falling Whistles is a campaign for peace in Congo.  In February 2009, a team of Falling Whistles staff, documentary filmmakers, and Congolese allies traveled to Goma and Walikale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the purpose of establishing relationships with local NGO’s, researching effective forms of rehabilitation, and documenting the illegal trade of conflict minerals. 

The Falling Whistles team secured necessary documents to ensure safe travel, including visas, press accreditation, and letters of permission to travel in and around the volatile region.  Additionally, the team received and implemented advice on further security precautions from the United Nations, MONUC peacekeepers, journalists, aid workers, and local activists. 

In spite of the precautions taken, several members of the Falling Whistles team were arrested in Mubi by non-uniformed men claiming to be Congolese intelligence officials of the ANR (DR Congo’s National Intelligence Agency).  Following an unsuccessful intervention by UN peacekeeping forces, the team members were detained for three days in ANR facilities in Mubi. 

According to a recent Amnesty International report, the ANR regularly acts outside its powers, “making arbitrary arrests of opposition supporters, civil society activists and journalists.”  The ANR also regularly arrests environmental activists and human rights defenders who draw attention to illegal mining activities.  The U.S. State Department confirmed that in 2008, government:

security forces continued to act with impunity throughout the year, committing many serious abuses including unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, and rape.  Security forces also engaged in arbitrary arrests and detention.  Harsh and life-threatening conditions in prison and detention facilities, prolonged pretrial detention, lack of an independent and effective judiciary, and arbitrary interference with privacy, family, and home also remained serious problems. Security forces retained child soldiers and compelled forced labor by civilians. Members of the security forces also continued to abuse and threaten journalists, contributing to a decline in freedom of the press. Government corruption remained pervasive. Security forces at times beat and threatened local human rights advocates and harassed UN human rights investigators.
“We were arrested, yes,” said one of those detained.  “We were arrested by a group that has committed widespread and documented human rights abuses and intended to divert attention from the systematic problem that our team sought to shed light on: the abuse of Congolese people through illegal mining activities and the recruitment of children as soldiers and human shields.  There are many forces attempting to silence the Congolese people and their advocates.  Our arrest points to how far they will go to do so.”

Following three days in ANR custody, the Falling Whistles team was transferred to the custody of DGM (Director-General of Migration) in Goma.  According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “the immigration service ... also function[s] as security forces” in DR Congo.  DGM officials regularly extort bribes from asylum seekers, journalists, and human rights defenders in their custody.

Following an additional three days in DGM custody, the Falling Whistles team was finally released.  One member of the team, a Congolese national who had served as a translator, was separated from the team and placed in a Goma prison, where he was beaten by government officials.  Falling Whistles staff successfully negotiated for his release prior to their return to the United States.  Following his release, he said simply, “Make sure the world knows about the injustice in my country.” 

The team’s detainment period was extended in part due to unexpected plans by President Joseph Kabila and the national soccer team to visit Goma that coincided with Falling Whistles’ journey to Walikale. The President’s visit resulted in the unfortunate absence of several of Falling Whistles’ official contacts in the region, who were away while attending Presidential events.  Additionally, Congo’s weak infrastructure, the prevalence of official corruption, and a total absence of due process of law exacerbated the situation.

“We consider the security of our on-the-ground Congolese partners our highest priority,” said Sean Carasso, Founder of Falling Whistles, “We deeply regret that our efforts to shed light on human rights abuses in Congo caused our volunteers and allies such difficulties.  We have sincerely apologized to our partners in Congo and others whose security was compromised by this incident, and have taken substantial steps to prevent an incident of this type in the future.” 

Additional information about Falling Whistles’ work on behalf of war-affected children in Eastern Congo is available online at: http://www.fallingwhistles.com

I_-_Sept_11,_09.pdf

Commencement Speech given by Paul Hawken to the University of Portland

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

My friend Ben Sasso introduced me to this speech. I thought I would
share a small bit. If you’d like to read the whole thing, you can check it
here http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/nobel/index.html

....And then I explained to him how naïve we were, that the world did
know and remained silent.

And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human
beings endure suffering and humiliation.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when
human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become
irrelevant.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race,
religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become
the center of the universe.

....There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One
person — a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther
King, Jr. — one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference
of life and death.

As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As
long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame.

What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone;
that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we
shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the
quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

Be a whistleblower for peace.
sean

By James S. Gibney

IN NOVEMBER 1999, the United Nations Security Council authorized sending peacekeepers to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, despite the growth of the UN force to more than 18,000 personnel, at a cost of more than $1 billion a year, violence and turmoil have killed millions more Congolese. Of course, some things haven’t helped, like the Pakistani peacekeepers who rearmed, in return for gold, the militia they were supposed to be disarming; or the Indian troops who reportedly traded arms for ivory from the rebels and bought dope from them in the bargain; or the contingent of UN troops who failed to stop a massacre of 150 people taking place less than a mile away. Even before that tragedy last December, Congolese had rioted outside one UN compound over the mission’s ineffectiveness, and the Spanish general newly appointed to command the UN force had resigned in a huff over weak political support and feeble military resources. And so it goes with all but the most routine UN peacekeeping missions, which are effective only to the extent that their host combatants allow.

There is a different, more robust approach to making peace in nasty places: deploy private military companies like Executive Outcomes, whose small, highly trained force defeated insurgencies in Sierra Leone and Angola during the 1990s. Executive Outcomes is now out of business. But as researchers like Peter Singer have documented, the private-military-company marketplace now fields scores of firms (including the U.S. giants Xe—formerly Blackwater—and DynCorp) that take in billions in revenue. Put them on retainer, and they’ll go where they’re paid to go—unlike every one of the 19 countries that had pledged troops on a standby basis for UN peacekeeping and then refused, in 1994, to send them to Rwanda.

We don’t condone “mercenaries,” sniffs the UN. But a system where the top 10 payers of peacekeeping dues (rich countries
like the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.) rely on the top 10 troop contributors (poor countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Nepal, Ghana, etc.) to do their dirty work sounds pretty mercenary to me. Countries that provide troops get roughly $1,100 a month per soldier, many times the salary of a Bangladeshi private at home—not that he’d see much of it. Critics worry about accountability of private military companies, since they operate in a murky legal environment. But their forces seem no less accountable than, say, the miscreant UN contingents serving in Congo, and they would certainly be more effective. Some UN relief agencies already rely on military contractors for security. Why not extend that protection to the populations they’re trying to keep alive?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/ideas-mercenaries

Key:
FDLR - Rebel force with roots in the Rwandan Genocide
CNDP - Rebel force formerly led by Nkunda, wants protection of Tutsis
FARDC - The Congolese National Army
MONUC - UN Peacekeeping force
Kabila - Congolese President
Kagame - Rwandan President
Goma - Major city in Eastern Congo, home to much of the conflict

~~~~

I could live a year in Goma and not know half of it.  Every corner holds new mystery and the scene masks much what is actually taking place.

Walking night’s streets I pass a dreaded kid standing in the shadows bumping side to side with paced rhythm. Smiling slyly to himself with eyes closed, he hears something clear in the silence that I simply don’t hear.  It’s inside him, deep and prodding, the color begging it’s way from darkness. 

Cautiously coming toward him, he looks up and claps his fists together in a way that reminds me of the artist Common offering an impassioned plea dressed up like a music video.  We start walking, talking, he starts flowing, going, we get deeper and like every conversation we have in this place, things turn political. 

Each person we speak with here in Goma seems to know, at any given time, what is happening, where it is happening, who is involved, and where it will go.  There is a strange communal cognizance, but I suppose with so much at stake “current events” hold unique urgency.  He says, like so many say, he doesn’t think the conflict will ever end, but with equal conviction says it must end.  We want peace.  We want peace. This is the mantra. There is a style about the way he talks that makes me want to believe. 

“Look man, the big guys all know each other.  They all have been friends for years and wont give each other up.  Naw man, Nkunda wasn’t arrested.  He was relocated.  Now he’s got a cell phone and controls the CNDP still.  Nothing new here man.  We did Brosage (rebel consolidation) one time and now we have what?  Shit for an army.  Now they are doing it again man – putting the CNDP together with FARDC and these guys couldn’t hate each other more.  Most of Nkundas men are Rwandan man and the others think FARDC is corrupt and lazy and undisciplined and weak soldiers with no backbone. FARDC believes the CNDP is traitorous and treacherous so what now man?  Most aren’t event Congolese, so how can we fight by their side - these guys our enemies?  Come on man.”

“What can they even say to us?  We have killed their children. They have killed ours.  So now we fight side by side?  Naw man, can’t happen, won’t happen.  Nkunda with his cell phone chillin at Kagame’s is gonna put the call out right when the violence gets high and boom – he says pull back.  Defect. Time to go.  Regroup.  So they do and we are defeated.  And who can come to save us?  The Rwandan Army man.” 

The Rwandans came into Congo in a unilateral decision by Congolese President Kabila. Parliament furious, finally progress progressed.  Nkunda was arrested, the Rwandans, Congolese and MONUC came together to combat the FDLR.  After a few weeks, displaying their obedience to the international community, the Rwandans had a ceremonial exit putting their departure on display for all to see, but who’s looking? The few that care and almost always the powerful.

Who is paying attention to the war in Congo?  The rich. The global traders.  The world players.  Electronic companies, mining companies, oil companies, environmentalists, humanitarians, the global food trade, arms trade, mercenaries, security firms, the World Food Bank, UN, China and Russia, the US, the UK the French and the Belgians - all are interested and understand Congo’s strategic importance.  It’s the potential breadbasket for a continent in poverty; the strategic destabilizer of a region on fire.

Despite these realities, most of us view it with tired eyes.  It’s supposed to happen will always happen okay heard it seen it cared and nothing changed stopped now numb know I oughtta just don’t wanna. Care.any.more.

So we let it go and allow it to be handled by those with power.  The Smarts.  The Influential. Those with Connections. Money. No need to worry, they’ll handle it of course.  Have you heard about those guys?  They’ve got like triple degrees and a trust fund.  They’ll take care of it, leave it to the experts and do not, under any circumstances, get involved in this - it’s just too big for you little one. 

Daunted and overwhelmed, most of us stopped paying attention a long time ago.  Or never knew to try.  We don’t know how it affects us or how we affect it.  We don’t see the lines of connection, contention.  We buy fruit - don’t know from where it comes.  We buy shoes - don’t know from where they come.  We buy gold.  Diamonds. Computers. Cell phones.  What of raw materials? Production?  Packaging? And what of when we’re done with it? Plenty of life left but need to move on.  New new new - sustaining on appetite alone is not too sustainable but anyway all good who’s watching.  We’ve been doing it for years why would now be any different?

And so walking and streaming, thoughts tumble on top of each other and this kid! Man, this kid is the jam, the real deal, the Gavroche of Congo saying look - there is a scene here.  The people are rising.  They’ll rise if given the chance.

I ask him if he knows some of our friends here and he nods.  Yea I know of them, but they don’t know about me.  Not yet he says.  But those guys have it man, the film and the music and the dance and the art, they’re talking peace and people are beginning to listen.  The music comes out of him, down dark roads he sings like a band plays on all sides….

L’son de l’est, l’est
Le son de la liberte’
Le son de l’est, l’est
Le son de l’humanite’.

The sound of the east, the east. 
The sound of liberty.
The sound of the east, the east.
The sound of humanity.

Backpack slung over his left shoulder and dreads hanging below his hat, he believes it. 

This city that once thrived with music, business, clubs, politics, and culture has been ravaged by nature and war. So many have said, home is here - let’s make it work. 

They’ve made it work and now on Saturday mornings, the community comes out and each offers their back to repair roads, build walls and burn trash. I find it hard to imagine such a thing – Saturdays called everyone-time and everyone does it?  No doubt strange, and I wonder why I never learned such an ethic. Watching the masses serve the common good, I have to ask - what is the extent of what people coming together can accomplish?

The town is full and dirty and busy and full, but just outside, on the outskirts, there is a river of dried lava.  Growing up and out are trees of pure florescence. It is mineral rich, lush, green, growth. Beauty rising out of a suffocating blackness.

And so it is with underground Goma.  Their whole lives lived under the strong ceiling of oppression – stay down, stay slow, don’t look up, don’t think, follow fear follow, many have responded by digging deep within. The forced silence has grown deep roots.  The street art, the music, the films - all demand, with common cry…

L’son de l’est, l’est
Le son de la liberte’
Le son de l’est, l’est
Le son de l’humanite’.

They want what all people who have seen its absence want. Peace. Only within sanctified sanctity do we forget to fight for it - but it is our fight that keeps us free. 

Walking into our friend’s center, the Grandpa observes the work being done.  This man overseeing this special place wears a shirt with bold letters stretched across; Le Movement de Liberation. Le movement de Congolese. 

These guys know in whose footsteps they walk.  Ghandi.  Mandella. Aung San Suu Kyi. They’re young but ready. They’ve seen war and won’t have it for their sons and daughters. So like the lush coming from the lava, this bright and stirring movement moves out of darkness.  Patrick is this boys name.  Named for Pascal.  An original if there ever were one. 

Ah, yes.  Goma. The black city.

In 2002 a volcano erupted covering this thriving metropolis with rivers of raging fire, settling into a blanket of blackness.  The entire city covered in rock, we’re told the people simply waited in the hills for the lava to cool, walked down, and began digging.  With nothing but their hands they used rock to break through rock in the hopes of home. I’m not sure I would have had the fortitude to do the same…though I suppose that’s a fairly common reaction inside this region.  I find myself regularly asking - how did they survive this that or those and stand to walk another day? 

Standing and waiting and standing and waiting, we’re at Immigration guarding our gear. The women in dresses of yellow and orange and green and purple and every known flower and pattern, say they like my smile and with a smile say they want to search our luggage.  They don’t really.  They just want money.  Batting their eyelashes I feel bated.  They tell us they have to “inspect us” but if only we’ll give them encouragement not to, we can pass unscathed.

If they search us they could say anything is wrong and we’re back at ground zero. If we pay them we’re simply playing into their game. I smile back and try to flirt our way forward.  Okay, you want to search them?  Please, be my guest.  You can get up from your comfortable chair where you look so pretty, stop fanning yourself for a moment, and go through our heavy bags.  Or you can just stay there looking pretty and we can laugh the afternoon away while Fantassin makes the magic happen.  Fantassin is the man.  He’s the guy that got Immigration to open our email.

Walking across the border we are keenly aware of how little we know of this land.  For nearly a year we have studied, read and listened to anyone who would make time for us – and still we are overwhelmed.  Men and women who have dedicated their entire lives to Congo possess few real answers and intrigue and confusion pervades conversations of this country. A recent journalist arriving home called Congo “one of the world’s most complicated countries.” There are moments when the sheer size makes us want to tuck our tails and give up.  A country the size of Western Europe. 5.6 million dead.  70% of the world’s rapes.  68 million people and over 300 languages.  Nearly 2000 dying every.single.day.  With so much we are often left wondering where to even begin.

We stuff one by one all five of us and luggage into a small half jeep and Fantassin jumps on Jon’s lap in the front seat. The moment the door closes my camera is out.  He looks at me, smiles, and says Jon’s legs are very ssstrong.  He says it with passion as though we should understand the implication.  What does it mean?  No one knows. Maybe, like so much else, it’s simply lost in translation.

There is an officialness to the Congolese culture that consistently surprises me.  They care a great deal about formality and structure even when it is most lacking.  It seems to be the natural pendulum swing of some against the pervasive violence – answering those who create war and chaos with an utter commitment to the rule of law.  Again, even when it is most lacking.
I often wonder what this land would be like without the last hundred and thirty years of oppression.  Would they be as proper in their presentation? Would corruption still pervade their institutions?  The line between that which is Congolese and that which is European is rarely clear in a country whose borders were built by outsiders.
We arrive at the hotel, barter like bandits to put more of us in smaller rooms, cheaper meals and less less less until it is settled at a rate we can afford.  With so many wealthy businessmen and politicians with interests in Congo, prices are often inflated to levels higher than home.  Unpack, unwind, stretch out and its off to find internet.  Doga.  The spot. A bass heavy nightclub and the only source of wireless around, the connection speed makes me crazy until I go anywhere else.  Sitting and waiting and sitting and waiting.  Hoping for the page to just load.

Doga was my second home a year ago.  This place was the space of unending loneliness where I first learned to write. Driven by what I was seeing all around, I had to find ways to share it. Strange to be back with four companions and new reasons to be inspired this time around. 

If memory serves correct, there’s never a boring day in this land.  Last year we connived our way into every interview – shiest might be the most appropriate term.  Fake passes, fake names, fake credentials, fake connections.  A year later the mission is more official and has more to loose.  Time to learn new lessons – how to navigate proper channels.  First step, UN.

We enter the UN Compound and are immediately struck by the structure, wealth and order.  What is this place?  So transparently different than the rest of Goma, I feel as though we’ve walked through a portal into the West. 

We sit with the head of Press Relations and please let me tell you, this man can talk.  With a double Windsor strangling an ornate French shirt, large cuffs, gold links to clasp them, a finely honed mustache and perfectly polished wing tips, he just goes and goes.  Our brief visit to announce our arrival has become story time.

And let me tell you! he exclaims with full flamboyance, there was this one journalist, and I am just telling you he was just making a big film, and like I mean, a big film, and just like that he was arrested and that was that, gone and there’s nothing we can do to help him, gone and that is all there ever was to him, so I smell trouble on you boys, and I am telling you – watch your back.  Cover yourselves.  Let’s get you all the proper documentation so we’re sure you don’t go running into any of this nonsense boys cause I am just telling you. I mean, I am just telling you!  We laugh quietly at his hand motions while making mental notes to get our minds in the game.  Time to focus down.

On a paper strewn and crowded desk I look down into his bowl of business cards only to see staring back at me the card of one of my dearest friends.  It’s good to know there are others coming to cover this situation. 

We sit down to meet the regional General of MONUC, an Indian man of raw intensity. He walks into the meeting with short Umbro soccer shorts, a Puma windbreaker and a face lined by the burden of his post. The quick and talkative man from Press Relations says please! no nonsense with this man, he has a job to do, and his job involves lives, so right to the point now right to the point.  Introducing ourselves, I want to lighten the moment with a small joke, but Jon gives me a look that says do or die and biting my tongue we sit for the debriefing

The largest source of conflict is currently the Rwandan rebel group FDLR.  Built mostly from the sons and daughters of those behind the Rwandan genocide in ’94, they fled into Congo and have been a source of instability ever since.  Recently ousted by the Congolese Rwandan joint operation, deaths and arrests were minimal and for all the trouble, the FDLR appears only scattered. Heralded as a successful mission by much of the international press, few rebels seem to have been actually handled. We’re told they are killing their way back to hiding and, as the civilian death toll rises, this is among the FDLR’s finest forms of political speech. 

With our accreditation handled, we have only to come back tomorrow and confirm before we are clear, set, and ready to go. 

Stepping out of UN land, we grab a moto and off we go. Passing homes, walls, roads and ruins blackened by lava, there is no mistaking Goma.  This land has a fortitude like none I have ever seen.  Over a century of oppression and still they rise to face the sun.  With today’s sun setting, the air turning cool and this strip of pavement smooth enough for high speeds, our drivers take full advantage. Though we are a few days in, this feels like the beginning. The pace of the moto is like the pace of my mind as we push our way forward. Full speed ahead.

Peace.
Sean.

****Please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone. It’s the only way they’ll know.****

Hello everyone.  This journal is a bit long and in our time of short-speak some will probably not finish it as a result.  Most of you don’t know me and have no reason to read, but this is my attempt to reach across the internet and look you in the eye, asking humbly; hear me out. I hope you will take a deep breath and take the time to consider another persons perspective. 

Some ideas take more space than nano-blogging allows….

~~~~~~~

I wish I didn’t know.  So much, I wish I didn’t know.

I wish the world were as I once imagined it to be – stable, functioning and run by great men and women of wisdom.

I wish I had nothing to do with the problems and therefore no stake in the solutions.

I wish even that change wasn’t possible.  Were we doomed to perpetual conflict and chaos, there would be little incentive to try.

But, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed my point, this is not the case.  The world is not stable and those who run it are flawed.  We are all part of a wide variety of problems and solutions, and change happens every day all around us, often driven by whoever is winning at any given moment.

Despite popular opinion, at this point in history, the solutions do seem to be winning.  Things are getting better.  The short term may look dismal with a recession, two wars and mounting debt, but in the longer view, being a human being has gotten progressively better.

Though it may not look it with a sensationalized 24-7 news cycle, global poverty is on decline and Steven Pinker argues “that today we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.” None of this is moving as fast as it could or should, but in many parts of the planet there is in fact great progress. 

Despite the growth, there are still places where this kind of stability and security has not reached. Large pockets of the world, like North Korea, Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Uganda and Congo, where women are subjugated, speech is still stifled, men are not free and children enslaved.  Who is to blame must take a back seat to the far more pressing question – what is to be done about it?

At this point, in 2009, an Africa in trouble is old and tired news.  There was a time of optimism and attention in the late 60’s, when progress seemed inevitable. But the global recession of the 70’s created large imbalances of wealth and many developing countries were driven deep into debilitating debt.  For decades the same headlines have dominated our view of the world’s second largest continent. After a while, we just.get.over.it.  Block it out.  Words like crisis, war, famine, genocide become comparable to discount, best, sale, guaranteed, and lose all meaning, glazing over us as we stare intently at the next set of flashy lights.

Eventually some people got mad enough to get clever and they learned the art of the flashy lights and began to “brand” these problems.  Penetrate the Popular Psyche was their mantra as newer and more sophisticated methods of reaching people were developed. Issues went and got Advertised.

And it worked.  We were stirred. Whether by global warming, a black man for change, or children with a gun, we responded to these new kinds of lights with vigor and saw the world anew.

But like every form of flashy lights, they either already have, or will at some point, lose their luster.  We’ll see the lights through a dull lens and go through the same deadening all over again. Like robotic repeat we’ll check out and stop paying attention. And then what?

Staring such cycles in the eye, I have to ask - what is happening to us?  We live with more comfort than any other people in history and are very nearly the least happy.  Depression rates are at record highs.  Even our attempts to live with purpose soon become fadded and faded. I often wonder if all we lack is that which our culture offers so little of; perspective.

Recently a famous musician posted a video promoting a social cause and a teenage girl posted this below:

“i think the number of causes I’ve signed onto is beginning to show… *bags under eyes from sleep deprivation*.. wow.. sorry, could i sound more selfish? Ahh I don’t know.. I just feel like sometimes its never ending, though I know that doesn’t justify indifference.. really. I do care, and I watch the news.. but is that ever enough? Not to me. I’ll probably be the person who works until the day she dies trying to change things, I hope so anyways. It’s just a real problem among teenagers today I think.. and this whole humantarian thing is sickingly becoming a fad. I know it sounds wrong but I want it to die. If you don’t want to help out of the goodness of your heart, just dont do it. And please god don’t do it for the sake of other people or image. (sorry I wasn’t refering to you if thats what it sounded like) . I just think it means more than “trendyness”, and in a way this trend is just degrading our generation even farther to see it not for what/who it impacts, but for how “good” of a person you’ll appear to everyone else if you do it. Uhg.”

With a new cause every week, the facebook invites have become like modern day telemarketers, berating us to give a damn.  With so many flashing lights and so little teaching, we are often left wondering – give a damn about what?  A brand?  A logo?  Some poor kid who looks sad?

Evites and email aside, here is a genuine invitation coupled with what little information I can offer.  This Saturday Invisible Children is throwing a global rally for the rescue of Joseph Kony’s child-soldiers.  And you should go.

The first time I heard about child-soldiering my shock pushed the idea away like so many other issues of human horror.  I saw a book in Starbucks called A Long Way Gone and my first thought was about the shade of green and the positioning of the photo.  Don’t dig the brand; don’t want to read the book.  Simple as that.

I remember walking up to my bedroom one night around 7:30 and for some, strange reason checking my old hotmail address for the first time in months. Among the few emails I read was an invitation to come see a new documentary. Starting time – 8pm.  I sat back, took an obligitory breath, rolled my eyes, grabbed my coat and went to see Invisible Children – the Rough Cut.  Watching the film, I dug deep inside knowing this should be harder to watch and cause more hurt inside.  But instead I just sat there.  Despite Jacob’s relentless tears, I just couldn’t cry.  What is wrong with my mind I began to ask?  If not this, then what could drive me to feel?  To act.

A year later I met a former child soldier in Austin and heard his story.  The reality of what so many people had been talking about began to set in but still, I could not bring myself to feel the kind of pain he was describing.  It was too distant, too deep.

Another year later and I met a teenager named Bahati living in DR Congo. He wore a purple Texas Rangers shirt and the man taking care of him told us he had a staggering intelligence. Bahati said he wanted to use his mind to bring peace to his country and all of me wanted to believe him.  But when he looked away there was still a horror in his eyes.  Because at age 12, he had been forced to kill.

This is not a problem for those people in that land, somewhere far far away.  As we’ve seen from the veterans of WWII, Vietnam and Iraq, war has far reaching affects in any land, but when children are brought into the fight, it is not just the current generation that is affected. It is often three or four or five generations left traumatized.  This isn’t too difficult to imagine; if all living generations are dysfunctional who will raise the next to become educated, stable and active in the world around them? 

If left unresolved, these conflicts of children will be inherited by our grandchildren. And in an age where a trillion dollars is passed around the globe every day, and planes cross over all our borders, each of us has a deep stake in global security.

There will be those that say we should spend more time working toward solving the problems in our own home.  And they are right.  Working to help people in another country does not excuse us from working to help our own.

Education, healthcare, energy, entitlements, crime, homelessness, the list is unending and often overwhelming. Each of us must do our part to address these issues with vigor.  Like my farsighted eyes, to look only across the pond and not across your street is a form of blindness.

But the troubles we now face as a country require a larger view of who we consider “our own.”  Our most pressing problems are in many ways global and cannot be solved without the rest of the world.

The great danger is when we open our doors, look outside, and see Them instead of Us. As though we are not in this together.

So many times this has been done – modern history our most dashing example.  To those who plotted he Holocaust, Jews simply were not human.  During Apartheid, blacks and coloreds were spat on and killed like excess garbage, and in the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus called the Tutsi “cockroaches” and stomped them out like little more.

Much good has come from the past hundred years of growth and development, but much evil has come as well.  My great-grandmother was put on a ship at age 13 from Greece because her family was abducted from their island to be killed by the Nazi’s.  There is now a large stone engraved with my family’s name among the long list of those taken and massacred.  Over six million Jews died in that war and in its aftermath we spoke a single plea of rare unity that resonated across the globe and changed the shape of our world forever - never again.

Most of our problems do.not.care. about our borders and differences – they belong to us all.  If climate change is happening and the threats are even the smallest bit true, it will not only be the problem of our greatest polluters, it will be all of ours.  If men and women are allowed to break natural laws and commit mass oppression, then our children grow up in a world where our word no longer holds value. When we say “all men are created equal” and “never again”, they won’t believe us. Why put stake in liberty when “justice for all” has never been the policy of those who wear it most proudly?

The cold reality, despite our wide divisions, is that we are all stuck here. Together. Put more simply, we are all we have.  When injustice is permitted to run rampant and subjugate a people, the world is less secure. We are all less secure.

There is currently a region of our world caught in comparable conflict to WWII and innocents are dying at an extraordinary rate in wars that began born before they were born.  And we should do more to stop it.

Though I must admit - writing those words I barely understand what they mean.  Innocents dying?  Little in my life has made that real to me, so I have to assume that most of you read it in a glance and gave it the same small thought.  We can all acknowledge, no matter how much we think we know, that there is a disconnect between their lives there and our lives here.  A large one.

A couple days ago, I came home from an incredible day on the beach – perfect weather, great friends, a big cold cooler, hours of sand volleyball, playing cards, sunscreen, chips, dip and pretzels, followed by a double decker fried meal of goodness.  I crashed to a dvd, still hypnotized by sun and fun.  It was a hell of a day.  At one point early on, a girl asked what I did for a living and I’m like man, I don’t want to spoil the moment, does she really want to talk about Africa? I mean, probably not, so I tell her that we work with young people and one thing leads to another and here we are, talking about Congo.  But she already has her cause and her friend has her cause and then there’s this other cause, ooh but have you heard of this one and do you know of this cool one and there’s this new one and…damn.  Human suffering has become an industry. A thriving and popular industry.

Each has a tag line and a way they get you. Some pull you in and others annoy and keep you out.  Each has advocates, those that fight for them, and it’s almost as though it becomes, oh I don’t know, your taste.  Like I like post-Warhol modern art and also kids from India, but I’m more emo-goth and want to end human trafficking.  Me myself, I’m personally concerned about the global food crisis and by the way don’t you love the new…fill in the blank.

With so many options, the cause becomes more about who we are than what we’re fighting for and all issues stand equal.  After all, who am I to say your accessory is less valuable than mine? 

But not all emergencies are equal and what is occurring in east Africa demands urgent response.  John Prendergast of the Enough Project describes it this way:

“The two hornet’s nests are two central African militias that most Americans have never heard of: the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known as the FDLR.

For over 15 years, these militias have committed some of the world’s worst human rights abuses with near total impunity for their actions. The LRA is a Ugandan militia specializing in the abduction of children to be used as soldiers and sex slaves. The FDLR, whose leadership contains some of those responsible for Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, uses mass rape as its war tactic of choice.”

So, like I said, this Saturday Invisible Children is throwing a global rally for the rescue of the LRA’s child-soldiers. And you should go.

But please, don’t stand up out of your chair and lay down a day in protest because you like or don’t like the marketing campaign behind it, or because you like or dislike this logo or that brand.  The fad of fashion activism will pass like all fashion passes and then you’ll be left staring at your passion the same way you stare at your old denim, asking - did I really wear that?
Stand up and protest because it is, very simply put, right.

The Rescue will hardly solve everything, just like our few bucks here and there will hardly be enough in and of itself.  But it is a big step forward.  The Obama administration must know that we will not sit idly by with our usual distracted tactics lacking the necessary follow through.  We will demand much more, from them and the world, than any government has given to date.  And we will not stop demanding after this Saturday.

You and me, we the free, have unprecedented influence over a great many people in the world. The U.S. government is the largest to have ever existed and our reach is far. As citizens, our singular vote makes us more powerful than most human beings in history.  Born into such privilege, each of us must ask; for what will we use that power?

In September 1989 a small group of people held a protest rally in Leipzig, East Germany.  The very next day the neighboring town held their own protest.  The small action rippled through the country with explosive momentum until only a month later 1,000,000 people gathered for one of the great protests of all time.  Together they tore down, some with their bare hands, the Berlin Wall.

On November 21 2004, Ukraine held a presidential election amidst an extremely corrupt and charged political culture.  The results came back and despite exit poles putting the peoples candidate 11% ahead, the candidate of the ruling party had won by 3%.  Knowing they had been cheated from justice, individuals across the country stood up and began to walk to the capital city. Without a history of peaceful protest, most of the people had never participated in a political event – and yet, on November 23 they marched with over 500,000 people.

They were named the Orange Jackets for the orange raincoats they were given by aid agencies and for an entire month these people slept outside in the rain and snow.  Purposefully and peacefully, so-called ordinary citizens simply…waited. And then, on December 26, there was a re-vote. And fifteen days later the people won their victory.  Justice was served and freedom was grown.

The world as it now stands is very nearly half free and half unfree.  We have seen an explosion of freedom around the world, one unimaginable to the “experts” a hundred years ago. But the story of these whistleblowers is not the history we are taught in elementary school – because this is the history of revolution.

Both of these protests were considered spontaneous by many outside observers, but a closer look reveals a different root cause. Young activism.  Massive grassroots canvassing and even radicalizing had shown a population that they were in fact the roots of true power.  Not the suits or the bank accounts – the us’s.

Should I go on?  The Hungarian Revolution?  Led by youth.  The Color Revolutions? Led by youth.  Even now, in China, Iran, Venezuela, Congo, Cuba, young people are rising against oppression. Born into a civilization unwilling to grant them their birthright, they rise.

The lineage of liberty is the continued dispersion of power from the hands of the few to the hands of the many.  Men and women have given everything to gain such power for you and me – what will we give to share it?

This is hardly philanthropy.  Don’t give in to pity, it only robs the receiver of dignity.  A man sitting on the streets of Haiti echoed an Australian Aboriginal when he said, “If you came here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you came because you believe your liberation bound to mine, then come and we can walk together.”

In an era of comfort and smooth selling, the voice of activism is often too abrasive to be heard by softened ears.  But please, don’t not listen because you’re over the “cause thing” or the “Africa thing” or the “activism thing.”  I think, to one degree or another, we are all over it. I certainly am, in much the same way I’m over skinny jeans and oversized sunglasses.

But do not make the mistake of confusing the lives of millions of people with what we see on magazine covers.  This is not fashion.  This is war.

JOSEPH KONY IS THE FIRST MAN INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.  HE HAS ABDUCTED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF BOYS FOR WAR, GIRLS FOR SEX AND HAS KILLED INNOCENTS IN UGANDA, SUDAN, THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC AND THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO.

And we stand.and.watch.

IT SHOULD OFFEND US.

It should make us mad.

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-comformists…The saving of our world will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority….like Thomas Jefferson, who in an age adjusted to slavery wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”; Through such maladjustment an already decadent generation may be called to those things which make for peace.

Those are the words of the revered Martin Luther King Jr. who also said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  That we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality and whatever affects one directly, affects us all indirectly.

Those poetic words stir something deep inside of me, but there is something far more penetrating than his prose.  It’s more than his compassion or insight or ability inspire – what’s penetrating is that he was right.  As were the Germans.  As were the Ukrainians.  As have been every man and woman who has believed us all free. When they rose, our world was never the same.

Ensuring that these children are rescued is also, very much, right. 

We should fight to make Melville right when he said that the past is the textbook of tyrants and the future, the bible of the free. 

Come out this Saturday in peaceful protest.  If you’ve never been to something like this before, don’t worry, you won’t be alone.  But if you do in fact give a damn, then you.must.show.up.  Our strength is not in wealth or stature, influence or connections, but in numbers. Compassion means little when not coupled with action.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace, one must believe it. And it isn’t enough to to believe in it, one must work for it.  These are words by Eleanor Roosevelt, who as a teenager dragged her cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, across the train tracks so he could see something neither of them had seen before – poverty. They were never the same and my grandparents were able to rise out of poverty because of their policies.

The policies of this nation and other powerful nations do affect lives and the men and women who write those laws answer to us.  Powerlessness and despair are easy with something so far away as a holocaust in Africa. Despite this, I implore you; look through the flashy lights and see a history true but rarely told; that change is reserved for those that dare to dream of a better tomorrow and give all that’s necessary to see it through. 

Dare to dream.

This Saturday Invisible Children is throwing a global rally for the rescue of Joseph Kony’s child-soldiers.  And you should go.

Peace.
Sean D. Carasso

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone.

Take a look at a map of Africa. Check the size of DR Congo. It’s massive. The epicenter of the continent, Congo contains unmatched resources of the highest quality – diamonds, gold, copper, coltan, rubber etc, etc, etc.  And yet the country starves, plagued by more than a century of tyrants whose hands have laid claim to its wealth.

King Leopold, the figurehead Belgian king, took over Congo in 1885.  The Belgian government eventually colonized the country, but he left in his wake over 10 million people. Dead.

The Belgian elite built a retreat for themselves that could only be described as paradise.  Beautiful lakefront villas, paved roads, new railroads and a free workforce.  Sitting here in Congo, it is easy to see the country’s potential to rival the tropical destinations of the Caribbean.  But you must look quite hard.  Because currently there is little more than destruction. 

There is a strength to the people here that causes me to pause - they have known death, but they seem to know life in ways I can’t begin to understand. 

In 1960, the Congolese won their freedom.  Among their leaders was a man made martyr - Patrice Lamumba.  His assassination is fraught with intrigue and international scandal, but his words and ideals still stand. 

I wonder how different they sound from our own?

Patrice Lumumba
The First Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire)
On June 30, 1960, Independence Day

Men and women of the Congo,

Victorious fighters for independence, today victorious, I greet you in the name of the Congolese Government. All of you, my friends, who have fought tirelessly at our sides, I ask you to make this June 30, 1960, an illustrious date that you will keep indelibly engraved in your hearts, a date of significance of which you will teach to your children, so that they will make known to their sons and to their grandchildren the glorious history of our fight for liberty.

For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that is was by fighting that it has been won [applause], a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood.

We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.

This was our fate for eighty years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory. We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.

We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening, because we are Negroes. Who will forget that to a black one said “tu”, certainly not as to a friend, but because the more honorable “vous” was reserved for whites alone?

We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right.

We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other.

We have witnessed atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.

We have seen that in the towns there were magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks, that a black was not admitted in the motion-picture houses, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; that a black traveled in the holds, at the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.

Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown [applause]?

All that, my brothers, we have endured.

But we, whom the vote of your elected representatives have given the right to direct our dear country, we who have suffered in our body and in our heart from colonial oppression, we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.

The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its own children.

Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.

Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor [applause].

We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun’s radiance for all of Africa.

We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children. We are going to restore ancient laws and make new ones which will be just and noble.

We are going to put an end to suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man [applause].

We are going to do away with all discrimination of every variety and assure for each and all the position to which human dignity, work, and dedication entitles him.

We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will [applause].

And for all that, dear fellow countrymen, be sure that we will count not only on our enormous strength and immense riches but on the assistance of numerous foreign countries whose collaboration we will accept if it is offered freely and with no attempt to impose on us an alien culture of no matter what nature [applause].

In this domain, Belgium, at last accepting the flow of history, has not tried to oppose our independence and is ready to give us their aid and their friendship, and a treaty has just been signed between our two countries, equal and independent. On our side, while we stay vigilant, we shall respect our obligations, given freely.

Thus, in the interior and the exterior, the new Congo, our dear Republic that my government will create, will be a rich, free, and prosperous country. But so that we will reach this aim without delay, I ask all of you, legislators and citizens, to help me with all your strength.

I ask all of you to forget your tribal quarrels. They exhaust us. They risk making us despised abroad.

I ask the parliamentary minority to help my Government through a constructive opposition and to limit themselves strictly to legal and democratic channels.

I ask all of you not to shrink before any sacrifice in order to achieve the success of our huge undertaking.

In conclusion, I ask you unconditionally to respect the life and the property of your fellow citizens and of foreigners living in our country. If the conduct of these foreigners leaves something to be desired, our justice will be prompt in expelling them from the territory of the Republic; if, on the contrary, their conduct is good, they must be left in peace, for they also are working for our country’s prosperity.

The Congo’s independence marks a decisive step towards the liberation of the entire African continent [applause].

Sire, Excellencies, Mesdames, Messieurs, my dear fellow countrymen, my brothers of race, my brothers of struggle—this is what I wanted to tell you in the name of the Government on this magnificent day of our complete independence.

Our government, strong, national, popular, will be the health of our country.

I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a prosperous national economy which will assure our economic independence.

Glory to the fighters for national liberation!

Long live independence and African unity!

Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!

(translation taken from friendsofthecongo.org)

Photos by Dan Johnson


Paix means Peace

Day 4.

I gotta admit.  We’re having fun. 

Not too much fun of course, but definitely, we are having fun. 

Today was a wild day and one I don’t think I’ll soon forget.  Woke up at sunrise to head, once again, to the border and attempt to gain entrance.  The details of this whole ordeal are a little confusing, but let me give you the basics as well as I understand them. 

Apparently they changed the Immigration laws two days ago and now we need our Letter of Invitation emailed to the Chief of Immigration who will then respond via email with a Letter of Admittance.  Which of course sounds very efficient and logical because we live in an era dominated by smart phones baby, if it aint 3G it just aint fast enough, but this isn’t an iPhone holding Chief, this is Congo and oh my goodness, could it go any slower.  So now we’re waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Apparently for some guy, somewhere, to check his email and just.press.reply.  Of course all of this is to be expected, but it’s taking me a couple days to regain African Patience.

The guy won’t reply and we’ve sent the email three times over two days and it might just be time to start thinking of alternatives. After fruitless attempts I head back to the hotel to wake the fellas and let’s at least be productive. It’s 9am and we can interview Rwandans, write blogs, organize accounting, take meetings with NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations, essentially the non-profits of the developing world), research the economy, review local budgets, the list goes on and on.  Jon is ready to roll, Dan a little disgruntled, Red is hungry and Dav doesn’t look so good.  Wonder what’s going on there…

Jon heads off with a fellow named Kenneth, who is actually quite remarkable, and we hunker down to work.  Kenneth speaks four languages and believes language is the silver bullet solution to the problems plaguing his home.  Like a quest against Babel, he has studied and studied and now teaches and teaches, attempting to bring cultures together by giving them the simple chance to have a conversation with one another.  The west likes to claim credit for Social Entrepreneurs, but these guys here are the true heroes.  This kid has so little and has not only survived, but thrived and is now living for others. This is seriously inspiring stuff.

We find a beautiful balcony at the front of the hotel to set up shop and just as we’re diving into work, a car skids up to the front gate urgently honking.  The hotel security runs to let them in and Kenneth and Jon come storming up.  “The soldiers are coming the soldiers are coming!”  Like Paul Revere, we’re called to action and go guys go, gotta grab that equipment, set yourself straight and let’s move boys move.  This is our first day truly “in the field” and the team is a little slow to respond.  I’ve no doubt that by day 4 they’ll be hardened and trained, but today the cameras, pens and monopods still feel clumsy. 

Off we go and what is happening right in this moment, I’ve certainly never seen anything like it, but what do I know really?  Must be hundreds, hundreds, could it be over a thousand? maybe even thousands, so many soldiers, I simply cannot count, meticulous and marching, meticulous and marching, meticulous and marching.

Pouring across the Congo border, well over a thousand Rwandan soldiers are marching back into their homeland.  But why?  Who are these guys?  Why are they so public? So clean? Many unanswered questions in this moment, but the commotion leaves no time to pause, jump right in and start asking questions. 

Though we’re on the Rwandan side of the border, I’m still hesitant to show my camera.  Creep a shot, and maybe another.  As I get closer and they ignore me, my confidence builds.  Closer and closer, moving in and wait a minute - these guys don’t seem to care at all.  Nobody seems to care.  This is not normal. Walking up to the soldiers, they almost welcome the camera. Directly up to RPG’s and filming, nobody pays me any mind and this.just.cannot be right.

Running to keep up with the march, soon I’m alone and sweating. Leading the parade is a truck packed with speakers blaring the Rwandan national anthem, grab a moto and follow the sound. After about an hour of meticulous and marching, there is a field ahead. A soccer field?  Some kind of field and by this time they’ve picked up a crowd of who knows how many, definitely over a thousand Rwandans celebrating the return of their troops. 

Marching and meticulous and eventually one entire side of the field is lined with Rwandan soldiers and the other entire side of the field is lined with Rwandan civilians.  The music is still blaring and I’m a little confused about the climate, cause everyone seems happy, but there is a hesitation in the air.  Side to side the soldiers begin swaying to the sound of the music, step snap, step snap, slowly moving and feeling their freedom. 

A single soldier walks forward with some slight swagger and begins to dance with a still hesitant sway.  Two others trail delicately behind him.  His swagger turns to dance and others begin to break rank and step snap their way forward.  This slow forward motion begins to happen down the line and the momentum is heading toward something significant, but I can hardly tell what. 

And then it happens. The moment. That single soldier brave enough to walk forward just breaks.  And dances.  And another walks forward with a whistle and starts blowing and the other soldiers fall-in and the dancing spreads.  Gaining enthusiasm, hundreds of AK’s and RPG’s and every other kind of terrifying tool become props in this dance and they shake and stir in ways that seem to be from a long forgotten era.

A sound from behind and turning there is a boy coming out of the civilian crowd perfectly imitating the lead soldier as he breaks into the same dance and boom.  He breaks the hesitation of the civilians and these two crowds come after each other en mass.

Standing in the middle of the field and watching the two groups head toward each other, I feel like I’m living through Braveheart when the Irish rush the Scottish and meet in the middle with nothing but handshakes and hugs.

Colliding together and becoming a single intermingled force, what follows is an hour of pure, unbridled celebration. Rwandan soldiers dancing with guns held high among Rwandan civilians hugging their brave men.  A man puts his camouflage hat on what appears to be his son.  Another wraps his jacket over the shoulders of what appears to be his wife.  Trying to film, I just can’t help myself, so caught up in the moment.  I’m dancing like a fool with the camera held high. 

In the passion of the hour, they dance and dance and sweating and smiling, this moment feels like a good one, but who can be sure.  If nothing else, it’s deeply human and that seems to be the thing so rarely shown – their camouflage hides more than just their bodies, it hides the humanity within even these men of war. 

Thirty or so trucks pull up and the whistles turn from tools of music to tools of command and the men pile in.  Men hug wives, children hug fathers, thirty dusty minutes later and off they go. 

So many unanswered questions, time for basecamp, internet and someone who knows what exactly is going on.

Asking anyone who will listen, what we can gather is this: The President of Congo, Kabila, made what seems to be a unilateral agreement with the President of Rwanda, Kagame, to allow Rwandan soldiers into Congo to begin ousting the Rwandan rebels within Congo, the FDLR.  Sound confusing?  It’s gets even trickier, but we’ll do our best to explain over the coming weeks.  With few hard facts available, the Rwandan soldiers seemed to be operating under Congo control.  This parade was their public exit from Congo, proving to the world that they would in fact keep their word and leave at the agreed upon time. 

And this explains why they so relished our cameras, because that was their job – to put on a show.  The day seems to have been organized for PR purposes but a local NGO researcher warns us - “Not all is as it seems.  Never be so foolish as to believe what you’re told here.  Today the press will announce that Rwanda has left Congo and the FDLR has been ousted.  But there are still Rwandan soldiers out there in the jungle, some maybe in fake uniforms, and the FDLR is only been scattered. They’ll be back.  It’s even possible that this is a set up by Rwanda.  The FDLR will come back as a force and the Congo army will not be able to handle them.  Then the Rwandans will return to save the day. Or maybe not. All I know is this - don’t believe all you see.”

A day filled by human expression has left us breathless, but all signs point to her accuracy. In the coming weeks we’ll have to learn to take her advice, or leave more confused than we came. 

peace.sean.

Photos by Dan Johnson

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0903/S00077.htm
880 Children Linked To Armed Groups In DR Congo
Press Release: United Nations

UN Helps Demobilize 880 Children Linked To Armed Groups In DR Congo
New York, Mar 4 2009 4:10PM The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) has demobilized 880 children associated with armed groups in the volatile eastern province of North Kivu between 30 January and 2 March, it was announced today.

Crouched in a bus together. And why not?  Why waste room?

Why, when I go to a US Airline do I.want.my.space? Like, I want it.  Bad.  I love my aisle seat, no center seat, I wanna spread these dirty kicks all out and deep breath, chill out. 

But here, here in Rwanda, sit me by that cold, airy window, no problem.  Sleep pressed against a sweaty grandpa, no problem.  A baby in your lap, fruit at your feet, no matter, we’re good, roll on. 

The whole things seems terribly unfair.  Why do I have such unreachable standards in my own land and non-existent ones in another?  Certainly seems like a double. 

Anyway, we’re in the bus together and things are rolling.  Flights have been on time, grab a cab from Kigali Airport to the bus yard, $5 each and 4 hours later, there we are.  Gisenyi.  Border town to Goma.  The border won’t let us through - our Letter of Invitation is stuck in email and they haven’t gotten it yet.  No problem, we’ll send it tomorrow to a new address.  First kink yet.  Can’t believe it’s all gone so smoothly. 

Crash the night, red wine and beef, share a bed with Dav.  The people at the bar are a blast and I am once again frustrated by my lack of French.  The more language adept members from each of our groups compensate and we get along fine, talking soccer, politics and beer.  They love beer. 

Here there is an interest level I am unused to in the affairs of our world.  Everyone is curious, because everyone is affected.

It feels good to move back to a place of question asking.  Saying the same thing time again may cut it back home, but here you gotta be sharp to keep up.  Here things are always changing and the implications are wide.  I feel my minds curiosity rising with every minute we talk.

But why this? Why that? In asking I find myself enjoying again.  In learning, I come open.

It’s strange how good it feels to be back.  I don’t think I expected it, but I feel alive again.  Awake.  I wonder if it’s a culture thing, land thing, or maybe it’s much simpler.  Maybe it’s merely a technology thing.  Just a technology thing. 

That thing where our fingers always go press-beep-flash-grow-glow-gloss-shrink-shadow-pretty slide side to side.  Our eyes move left, right, up, down, swing around.  Can’t concentrate, don’t stare straight, can hardly articulate, like um and well, we couch ourselves, convince ourselves…

“No one, no one, no one, can get in the way of what I’m feelin…cause everything’s gonna be alright, sayin everything’s gonna be alright.”
And we must know it’s true.  We must.  It’s imperative for our survival. 

But we must know it’s not true.  Somewhere, out there, we must know it’s not true.  That it can’t always forever be true.  That everything will not always be alright. 

Many would say it has been true for some time and why won’t it continue?  Three whole cycles, each salvaged by those who rose to the occasion of their time.  But people did have to rise.  Alright has never happened on it’s own.  And standing here with men and women attuned to their time, I wonder if we will rise to our time.

We’re hardly experts on this land or any other.  But we do have questions and the people here are bursting to answer them.  We’ll keep listening and sharing if you’ll keep listening and sharing. 

So, like I said, maybe it’s much simpler than land or sky or culture.  Maybe it’s just that here I breath deep enough to hear. 

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice.

***Feel free to pass this on. You’re the only reason we exist***

British Foreign Minister skirts corporate role in Congo

Jonesin

Step off the plane and there is Dan smiling like a fool.  I take a deep breath, breath deep the Kenyan sky and let out a small yell.  The African sky has been worshiped for all time.  Cliché and overused, the rumors hold true and its expanse still moves me.  Laughing outloud, Dan grins and says, “it’s good to be back on this continent man, I’ve been jonesin for some Africa.”

Jonesin.  Such an odd phenomenon.  Still, the story keeps.  I’ve yet to meet someone who could scrub the dirt of this land out from under their finger nails.  Stuck inside it just don’t move.  And so Dan, like so many of us, is jonesin for some Africa - like a drug causing my media marketed move too fast cant stop wont stop up down eyes…to pause. And for the first time in nearly a year, see.

Life.

Real life.

Ah yes. The smell.  I’d forgotten the smell.  You only notice it for the first few days anyway, so my memory of it is long past.  It’s a smell common to the less developed parts of our world and reviled by the more.  It’s part of what makes everything here feel more…honest.  It’s the stench of human beings.  Sweaty, smelly, unwashed, undeodorated, unprocessed human, human beings.

Walking in the lounge, there are men scattered like a fifth grade slumber party.  Sleeping, lounging, laying, sitting, spread over chairs, tables, counters, couches, under jackets, nets, blankets…

Try try try and I can’t imagine my dad, or anyone elses dad, ever sitting like these guys.  Once again, I’m keenly aware of the structure of home.  Sit up straight, close your mouth, keep your arms by your side, don’t talk to strangers, stay by mom, stop asking questions, that’s just the way it is, drop it, submit, conform, stay safe.  To take a snap shot of JFK and compare it to a shot of Nairobi is to peer deep into the odd divisions from nothing more than foundations.

Coffee is my most immediate craving.  Two ten hour flights and either I get caffeine or I collapse next to these men.  For two dollars I get a burnt cup of blackness and for another three a premade omellette complete with “spicy and sweet sauce.”  Scruptuous.

Finishing the omelet, I’m hardly full.  Oh yes, now I remember, travel eating.  If I’ll just a wait fifteen minutes, I’ll be full.  It’s a healthy departure from the pre meal chips, eat every bite, two three sides, fork lowers at the precise moment I can just.eat.no.more.  Wait fifteen minutes and I must take deep, satiated breaths.  Here it feels just right.

Jonathan comes walking up from the restroom with tired eyes and a wide smile – behind him is the last of our team, Red.

Red, like Dav, is as genuine as they come.  His camera pack straped to his back, tripod in hand, good faded flannell, $30 Bass Pro Shop shoes on his freckled feet and the guy is all grins.  This is his first time to Africa.  Congo will be an interesting introduction.  I have no idea what the next few weeks hold, only that I’ve been jonesin for the unknown.  Welcome to the rest of the world.

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice

***please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone.  you’re the reason we exist.***

We’re currently on the plane to Amsterdam.  Dave is to my left wrapped up in his hoodie with a pillow to the window.  Jon is to my right watching LOST and making angry hand motions at his computer screen.  He gets really into his tv.  We’re en route to the Democratic Republic of Congo and I’m stuck in the middle seat because I was sending last minute emails in the LAX terminal and well…the guys thought my skinny butt would best fit between them. 

The movie playing on the public screen is A Flash of Genius.  It’s a simple movie, without special effects, graphics or flashy editing. To be honest, unless we were stuck in this tube, I probably wouldn’t give the story a second glance.  But since we’re here I might as well watch. 

It’s a movie about a man named Mr. Kearns who originally invented the automatic windshield wiper.  He then brought his invention to Ford Motor Company, the biggest player in the game at that point. They loved the invention, promised to buy it even.  And then they stole it. 

The deal gone bad sunk his family financially and he decided to see a small wrong righted.  He began speaking to anyone who would listen and telling them that Ford, the beautifully branded, job-providing behemoth of a company had stole.  The community who was employed by Ford immediately turned against Mr. Kearns and told him to shut his mouth and give in to the powers that be.  “You can’t beat Ford” they said.  They’ve got too much power, too much money, too much influence.  They’ll win, everytime. 

As Mr. Kearns began to buckle under the pressure two things happened. One was that his wife left him and took the kids with her.  She couldn’t handle his single minded pursuit and unwillingness to compromise his convictions.  The other was that he began to receive letters from other inventors from all over the country.  “Don’t stop,” they said.  “You’re not alone.” 

Mr. Kearns began to see that his wasn’t an isolated incident. This was one part of a much, much larger story - a story of exploitation of the weak.  This is a story as old as man.

The last time I went to DR Congo, I went out into the rebel Mai-Mai territory and found a hospital with bullet holes in it and without the medicine to care for the patients.  It was the first day of the American led cease-fire.  That same day, near the hospital, 18 women and children were shot in the back running from rebel fire.  They were running away from oppression and toward something better.  Freedom. 

That night I wrote “We who wish peace in the world cannot cower from power.  It is our burden to earn it, and with it, honor the helpless.”

And watching Mr. Kearns on this grainy airplane screen, I remember that day with new clarity.  We cannot be afraid. We must speak up however we can, whenever we can.  Our silence is compliance.

Ford came to Mr. Kearns and offered him a few hundred thousand dollars.  Broke and alone, he asked – will you admit to what you did? 

After losing his wife and children he was admitted into a mental hospital.  He came back broken but resolved to fight.  Over the course of 12 years he lost his job, his money, his credibility, and nearly every friend he had.  Left with nothing else, he continued to fight. 

Ford then came to him and offered a $1,000,000.  Surviving on unemployment he stared “the negotiator” in the eyes and said, “this isn’t about me.”  To him, this was about every inventor who had been taken advantage of by those more powerful.  This was about the small people - as Harvey Milk put it, “it’s about the Us’s”. 

Without a lawyer willing to take his case to court, Mr. Kearns represented himself.  Out-trained and out-funded, he taught himself law and made his stand.  The night before the jury decided their verdict, Ford came to his hotel and offered him $30,000,000.  Turning to his kids, he asked what they thought.  His daughter looked defiantly at the negotiator -“Don’t do it Dad.” 

The next day both sides had their moment to make their case.  In the end Mr. Kearns implored the jury – I’m asking you to use your common sense.  Do what is right. 

We’ve spent the past year asking people around the country to do the same.  But this time the issue is not an inventor’s credibility or patent. This time the issue is millions of peoples lives.  Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.  Human beings dying.  Needlessly. 

For the past year I’ve seen a growing coalition of people step into the same legacy Mr. Kearns stepped into and say that no matter what the cost, they want this changed.  The legacy is one of courage and it’s among the few ways change has ever come to pass.  Whistleblowing.  Speaking up time and time again until, finally, the tides turn. 

We’re walking into DR Congo to get some answers.  5,000,000 people dead and everyone we’ve spoken with says the war could have the knees cut out from under it.  We want to know how.  We’ll keep speaking up until those in power finally listen.  Will you?

At the end of 12 years, Mr. Kearns sat in the courtroom and awaited the jury’s response.  He had given everything up to fight against a system that gave little to those without money, power or influence.  In a tense moment the jury stood up and definitively decided that Ford had in fact stolen.  He won over $10,000,000 that day, but the victory was not his alone - it was a win for all independents, everywhere. He took the power from those who thought they could walk over whoever they wished and gave it back to it’s rightful place. The Us’s. 

I don’t know what it’s going to take to bring what every ordinary Congolese person wants – peace.  But I’m certain that if we give up before they have a voice of their own, we’ll have betrayed our greatest legacy and left a forgotten people to the whims of those who believe they can walk over whoever they wish. 

You and me, me and we, we the free face a historic choice.  Men, women, boys and girls are all walking toward a dream we call common.  Life, liberty and justice for all.  Will we be by their side?

I suppose I’m writing to recruit you.  DR Congo is home to 70% of the worlds rapes and thousands of child soldiers.  We can rehabilitate them to stop the cycle of violence and bring peace.  All we need are more Mr. Kearns.

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice

****please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone. you’re the reason we exist.***

It’s my birthday.  Today I’m 27 years old.  Most of my young life I’ve done birthdays with small groups of dear friends and family.  But facebook has made birthdays a public affair so we go with it and why not, let’s ask for support - I mean it can’t hurt. In two days we’re going to the Democratic Republic of Congo and we could use the funds. 

My friends are mostly students and non-profiters, but we figure if three hundred friends donate ten dollars each, we’ve got a good little sum.  Two days later the trip is paid for.  Gotta love America.  And the internet.

Three hours before take off, done packing, calling, emailing, plan plan planning, I suddenly remember – it’s the one thing of such consequential importance, I can’t believe it hasn’t been more of a priority.
Sunglasses. 
We’re going to Africa man, you’ve got to have sunglasses.  I bolt out the door, jump a quick six blocks to Venice beach, home to the z-boys, Dogtown, street acts, circus shows, fried fries, seas of beach cruisers, handy crafts, hemp hats and of course….sunglasses.  Grab a pair for each of us and book it back. Time to go.

Jump in the car with mi compadres and we’re off.  This is it huh?  Finally?  Back to Congo?  A year ago, I would never have imagined this is what the next trip would look like. So many stories in such a small amount of time.  There is much to share, and all in good time I suppose. First, the team.

Dave.
We call him the Supertramp.  Sitting in Alabama and reading blogs from Congo, he knew something had to be done.  Fast forward a few months and what the hell Dave is in LA with me and ready to tell the whole world and we don’t have a plan, but we know people have to know, so off he goes.  Flying to Austin spending the next four months hitchhiking to New York City. With every stop he meets and conspires. Coalition he says. We need a coalition. The problems of our world are too big and too grave.  We’ve got to fight and never stop fighting because man, look at Congo.  Look at what’s happening there. We’ve got power there and it should be used for peace. Building, moving, growing and always sharing this small window into the war, he hitches wherever he can and meets with anyone who will listen. On the side of the highway, merchandise in hand, it begins to rain.  What does he do? Stands in it. An ex-convict offers to pick him up.  What does he do?  Takes it. The Supertramp! We love Dav.  He may well be one of our generation’s most genuine players.  Smart and disciplined, he comes to Congo in charge of strategic relationships.  Who is who?  How do they operate?  How are they connected to what and in what way?  A lot of money out here in Congo and a lot of players in the game.  All we wanna do is help the kids - Dav will learn the channels. 

Jon. 
We had met all of three times when I received his message – call me.  I first met Jon at a makeshift wedding with a couple who had known each other for 10 full days.  The wedding was a blowout and Jon, as he always does, led the charge.  We saw each other again the night before he got a tattoo on his rear end and a year later, the evening before I left for Joburg 08.

Call him back, “Hey man, yea I’ve been thinking about something. I don’t know, like maybe using the money I’ve made in the past year or two and, I don’t know, volunteering.  For something.  I don’t know what to do but I know I want to do something.  I mean, something needs to be done right?”

What did he study?  Entrepreneurial management.  What did we need?  An entrepreneurial manager.  The next day he flies to LA, checks out the plan, flies home and puts his company up for sale.  Done and done.  A couple months later and I have a new roommate and we have a CFO.  Hilarious and selfless, he keeps this serious crew laughing.  His task in Congo is to understand the local economy – industries, markets, strategies.  He is here to learn how to create jobs.  Congo needs millions of them.

Dan.
We’ve never met.  Dan lives in New York and is an artist, photographer, designer, traveler, lover of all things new, foreign and fun.  He studies language, despises nonsense, and I know all this simply from email and phone.  My buddy Paul Steele thought we’d like each other and sent a connection email.  I wrote “Look man, here’s the deal. We’re doing something out here that’s real.  You won’t make money and you won’t get famous, but you’ll have some impact in a place few are reaching.”  He wrote back, “Okay, I’m down.  When do we go to Congo?”  Already I like this guy. He’s coming, like us all, to elevate the oppressed.  To ignore their plight is to deny our own.  There is a mutual distrust among our small crew for the addictive narratives of modern media - this thing somewhere far away is bad, there is nothing at all now way not possible nothing good happening, its connected to you but I wont prove it wont show it don’t have time, get a quote maybe two, listen quickly, run away and never, under any circumstances, offer a solution or a pathway for individual response.  These stories have dominated our international news for three generations. We’re over it.

We meet Dan for the first time in Amsterdam round noon.  He’s been there only two hours but already knows the structure of the city and a basic history.  A seasoned traveler this one, and I look forward to our friendship.

Red.
Red and I met just once, at a fancy night in Dallas, too distracting for genuine conversation.  He says he’s a filmmaker and I smile and say cool.  Everyone our age is a filmmaker.  Take his card and great to meet you and that is that.  One more person saying they want to help, one more who forgets the next morning.  Or the next week.  Or month. 

Scroll forward a few weeks, camera man has to cancel and man what to do boom let’s think – remember that kid Red?  Yea, he was cool, let’s call that one. That same day we get an email from him - this red haired former boy scout is offering to help once again. Gotta love his persistence. He has talent, can raise his own money, and has been studying DRC. So that is that.  Red’s in.  Our five minute conversation has turned into a two week journey into the jungle.

And I’m Sean. It’s my job to understand the political situation. The players here operate on a global stage and many don’t want anyone to know what they’re up to.  I’m here to dig.

And so we are five.  From Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Houston and Huntsville.  We leave the comfort of home to meet the other half.  So much to share…all in good time.

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice

***please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone***

Rewind - February 2008

Riot Police surround the Peace Conference en masse.  Depending on the day and which diplomat is attending, they are either lounging in the shade asking attendees for cigarettes or glaring at high alert. 

The road leading up to the front gate has a brick wall nearly 10 ft. tall along the left side.  Above each column down the wall, men stand ready at arms, staring down.  It’s an intense spectacle, but at this point I hardly notice it. 

It is nearly comical how comfortable I have gotten here.  My first drive from Goma to Sake – the town between opposing mountain military bases – shook me to my bones.  We stopped to refill our car engine with water and a solider walked up to us.  At the time, I couldn’t take my eyes off his gun.  His uniform, his bearing, all of it captivated me.  Terrified me. Now I barely see it. 

After the entrance to the Conference there is a main road about 40 meters long and then a large courtyard.  Last week they built a small stage there.  The next day they tore it down.  Two days later they built a larger stage.  The next day they tore it down as well.  Two days later, they built a grand stage complete with rafters for lighting and a red carpet. Yesterday I watched the builders put the lumber back in their trucks. 

For more than a week, there have been hopes that the President of Congo, Joseph Kabila II would grace the conference with his presence.  Each day those hopes have been crushed.  The stage is simply another example of the waste involved in the government’s lack of organization.  But far worse than the waste is the damage to peoples morale.

With the rise of fall of The Presidents expected presence, the people’s faith in Peace has reached new lows.  Rumor and whisper float round the town, every one hoping and praying that Kabila and Nkunda will meet in secret. 

The politicians keep smiling and the camera men keep flashing, but every one I’ve spoken with here feels it – Kabila can’t cut it and Nkunda is a scoundrel.  Peace won’t come.

But progress has been made.  Every voice has been heard in over two weeks of speeches.  Many groups have been able to speak to their government for the first time in the countries history.  Names of the dead from the original Congo Wars have were brought out of secret shadows.  Mothers and widows cried. Fathers have pounded their fists.  Brothers have yelled with zealous veins pumping from their necks. A passionate, destroyed people have risen up to reclaim their land and now, after 3 weeks, their frustration is palpable. 

What many of them don’t know is that for the past week, the real negotiations have been taking place in a neighboring hotel.  The conference has been a venue for the people to speak, but the peace talks have been more discreet. 

Difficult compromises have been made.  The UN has trucked Nkundas representatives, under armed protection, into the mountains every day so they could meet and discuss each set of new terms with their General. 

The Mai-Mai commanders of the larger and more powerful Mai-Mai brigades have snuck among the populace in civilian clothes to meet with their representatives.  There are dozens of smaller Mai-Mai groups that have nothing to fear and less to hide. Some are merely frustrated villages who took up arms to protect their families.  Most are little more than bandits.

So much effort and conspiracy and secret meetings and calls for optimism and still, the people are loosing hope.  But then, with the people at their lowest, the announcement comes from the executive office – Kabila is coming and Peace has arrived.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and everyone is holding their breath. 
The final day of the Peace Conference is a circus. President Kabilas personal security has taken over.  These are some mean suckas.  Stories abound of the presidents police and their secret prisons.  A number of Congolese journalists - who have seen my temper flare with the mistreated of local police - all warn me with concerned whispers.  Don’t mess with these guys. They are not to be crossed. 

After the rise and fall of three stages, President Kabila finally arrives at the Conference of his country.  His retinue is nearly a full military brigade.  Truck after truck bursting with soldiers.  And every player in this deadly game makes their presence known.  The UN is out in full force, their blue helmets standing tall. Nkundas representatives are there.  The Mai-Mai of every shape and size have come.  And behind them are every other, small, rebel group who seem proud to have even been invited. 

The ceremony begins when a short, stocky man in a too-tight tuxedo calls everyone to order.  Rebel group after rebel group come forward and sign the Peace Agreement.  In the beginning of the ceremony the audience enthusiasm is high for the pomp and circumstance.  Cheers and applause follow each signature.  But after watching men sign their John Hancock for five hours the applause calms a bit.  Hands are throats are now raw.  That’s when I realized we haven’t even gotten to the speeches.  Dang, peace takes a long time. 

Around 10:30pm, Kabila finally stands to speak.  He is the youngest President in the world, having taken office at 27.  Like nearly every Congo leader, he was originally a rebel and overthrew the dictator Mobutu. Originally known for his intensity on the battlefield, I can understand why people were afraid of him - the guy is seriously large.  Today, however, he is a “Man for Peace.” He is all smiles. 

The Presidents speech is nothing spectacular. But as he comes towards his conclusion, we can all feel the energy resurging.  We are finally here.  Peace has come. 

As he ends, many are containing their joy with only the utmost control.  Attempting to stay poised until it’s all over, I see women round the room with eyes brimming. 

Peace is declared and the people rise.  Rise up.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  The people are screaming and singing.  Arms above their heads, their faces lift toward the air with unabashed tears. The songs and shouts come from a place deep within.  I doubt I’ll ever understand the depth of their life’s pain.  Or their current joy. 

Of course, the politicians still shake hands, wave and give soundbite answers to the mobbing press.  But as the different groups come together wildly in song and dance, I wonder if the human race has ever known greater praise.  They are thanking their maker for his blessing and my widening smile grows into weeping.  I can barely film.  My body is shaking.  This is a moment.  A great moment. 

Outside there is indulgent feasting.  A group of nearly 20 college students - who represent the Voice of Youth - are laughing and jumping with their arms on each other’s shoulders.  They’re falling over each other like schoolboys at recess. 

Everywhere victorious smiles.  Everywhere hugs.  Mai-Mai soldiers shake the hands of Nkundas diplomats.  Tutsi and Hutu break bread together.  A priest is swigging down wine.  A boy of about 19 grabs my shoulder, yanks me around and yells, “We are very proud,” the young lines of his face bursting.  Pride.  That’s what this is.  On every face.  Their country has done something of honor. 

The western diplomats and press all leave for their own celebration.  Tonight, alone in my white skin, I feel Congolese.  The women show me all the traditional dances.  Shaking my rhythm-less hips, I can tell the men can’t wait to get me drunk.

It’s rousing time.  We are all howling traditional tribal screams.  They’ve wrapped Congolese material around my waist and I look quite the fool.  But tonight, I feel the pride of the Congo people pulsing in my blood.  And it feels good.  Tonight, for the first time in a long while, it is good to be Congolese.

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice

***photo taken by Lindsay Branham***
***please feel free to pass this on to anyone and everyone***

January 2008

My first day in Northeast Congo marks the first day of preparation for the Peace Conference.  After 11 years of war, America called a cease-fire and peace talks have begun.

There are five general forces fighting in this region. The Congolese Army (FARDC), the Rwandan refugee army (FDLR), Nkundas rebel army (CNDP), the Mai-Mai and of course, the largest UN force in the world MONUC.

A few months ago Lindsay met a dozen former child soldiers and had reports that they had rejoined the Mai-Mai.  We went into the bush to see what it would take to get them out.  That simple step forward has unfolded a deep drama provoking dangerous doors to open our way.

We teamed up with a Congolese man named François who took us directly into Sake, the strategic village just outside of the major city of Goma.  The UN won’t allow the rebel armies to move past Sake, so it has been the place of constant war for years.  The village is between two hills.  He pointed to the left hill and said, “there is the base of the Congolese Army” and pointed to the right hill and said “there is the base of the rebel army.”  The people of Sake had spent the better part of a decade fleeing their homes and returning when it felt safe. They were just returning from having fled one week ago.  Neither base was more than 200 meters away.

Our car broke down so we resorted to motorcycles as we traveled deep into the conflict zone. We crossed four security checkpoints and each time François negotiated for over thirty minutes to push our way in.  Here, automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenade launchers (RPG’s) are more common than food.

At the fifth security checkpoint, we asked the soldiers where the Mai-Mai were and looked at us with a chilling laugh. “We are the Mai-Mai,” they responded.  We looked at each other and knew.  We had entered rebel territory.  It would be my first of many encounters with this rebellion that had stolen the lives of so many children. 

They looked just like government soldiers, except that here and there, I saw personal artifacts of style or expression that would never be found in a regulated military. One boy of about 15 had a motorcycle racing jersey on with army green sunglasses. Classic. And tragic.

I’ll be honest…I don’t know how to tell the story of Congo.  The chief of Sake said to me, “We live our lives running from bullets.  My children die for nothing.”  The trauma reveals itself in every dead plot of land and bullet torn home.

The following is simply my best effort to explain. It will not do this land justice – this land that has known none - but I suppose it’s a start.

We stumbled onto a town hall meeting filled with leaders from the surrounding villages.
The Peace Conference has asked every district to hold meetings and discover what people on the ground felt were effective solutions to ending the war.

It bore a strange resemblance to the town hall meetings previous to the American Revolution.  Leaders from every town had come together to decide whether they would risk the lives of their children to gain freedom from the British.  Those were brave gatherings with men of principle.  This held the same resonance of patriotic defiance.  The difference was that the men and women here had already lost their children.

We met a schoolteacher who, despite his conviction that education was the only way to move his country forward, had closed his school.  We struggled to understand why.  He looked at us with sad eyes and responded that the schools have become like a corral for cattle. With all the children in one place the rebels job is that much easier – they’re captured, boys and girls, in one fell swoop.

On our way out of the conflict zone, we stopped by a hospital to see the local conditions and report back to our medical friends in Goma.  We found bullet holes and signs of heavy artillery.  One of the rebel groups had attacked the hospital just a few days ago to steal medicine.  I could see in Lindsay’s eyes the same question I knew was in mine, “Where in the hell are we?”

Leaving the hospital we turn around and see Bahati come out from behind a pillar.  Bahati was of the boys who had reportedly gone back to the Mai-Mai and we simply couldn’t believe we had found him.

A man had found him wandering alone in the bush and seen in him a staggering intelligence. The adopting father took him in, despite his eleven other children, and put him in school. A miracle.

Bahati’s goal is now to transform his nation. He studies with fervor but at any moment you can still catch the horror in his eyes. Because at age eleven he killed fourteen people.

Children who have killed stand at the far fringe of any society.  Even societies riddled with war and violence such as this one.  Many are unable to ever find their place again.  Instead, they go on to create new rebel movements and with each child trained to kill, peace takes two steps backward. You can see it in Bahati. Had this man not found him, he would have refound the only family he knows – the Mai Mai.

We returned home that night only to discover that the cease-fire had been broken not far from where we spent the day.  The cease-fire had lasted all of a couple hours and eighteen women and children were shot in the back while running away.

The pursuit of liberty has never seemed more real. They were simply living in their village under the auspices of an American led cease-fire. When the bullets rained down, they fled toward freedom and away from oppression.  In the process they were shot down like hogs.
This Peace Conference will begin dialogue, but today was an acute reminder that talk without might falls deaf.  The poor have little hope in the Conference. A man said, “They will speak French and drink milk, but we will still starve.”

We who wish peace in this world cannot cower from power.  It is our burden to earn it, and with it, honor the helpless.

Only love.
sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice

***please feel free to forward this to anyone and everyone. you’re the only reason this campaign exists***

This time around, it’s all together new.

A year ago, I wanted to get lost.  Today, I just want to understand.

Originally I went to Africa to put shoes on kids’ feet.  My friend built a company grounded in giving and there I was, on the ground, giving.

After the Toms Shoe drop, I went wandering. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes safe, sometimes not.  I wanted into the wild. And wild it was.

Herman Melville said this of getting lost, “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”

I yelled at thieving monkeys and saw Nelson Mandela yell from a stage.  Cried in refugee camps and laughed during moonlight tribal dances. Witnessed a baby born and parents buried.  Climbed south to the bottom of the world and headed north to see invisible children become visible. Slept inside mansions and on mud, ate porridge and gazelle, fended off pickpockets, swam with otters and rarely stopped, showered or stood still.

For two months, there was death and destruction, failure and fear, adventure.wonder.motion.  But all around was a pervasive hope moving steadily toward what could only be described as progress.  Stories of change everywhere to be found.

Until I walked into the chaos of Congo.  The so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, home to one of history’s deadliest wars.  Strange circumstances led me to her doorstop, but there I stood ready to see what she might show my western eyes.

What was meant to be only a five day trip turned into something much more.  My partner and I stumbled into Titu, an illegal prison for children, and learned that abducted boys too small to carry a gun were being forced to the frontlines armed with only a whistle. That night through tears I wrote, “with falling whistles, their only choice is to feign death or face it.”

We resolved to find the people responsible for this and ask them, face to face, why they were fighting. Everything and anything upside downed in this rich land of uncontrolled expanse. We found rebels who spoke poetry and warlords with vision.  Seventy percent of the world’s rapes are here, but still, women lead the families. UN soldiers asked for bribes and men with nothing offered to help for nothing.  Excuses abounded but honest answers were hard to come by. 

Coming home and not knowing how to respond to what I had seen, one of my closest friends Marcus welcomed me home with a fierce embrace and an unusual gift.  A whistle. Hanging just over my heart, this tiny tool kept the story of Falling Whistles alive. Everywhere we went, people asked what it was. That’s when it struck me.  Their weapon could be our voice.

The world is changed by those who speak out.  Whistleblowers.  Rarely understood in their time, history looks back and calls them courageous. Whistleblowers speak up when few others will.

And so the Falling Whistles Campaign was born.  The experts tell us that this war can be resolved.  They tell us peace is possible.  All we needs is a massive coalition willing to lobby for these kids freedom.  We’re talking millions of us fighting for ‘the others.”  It’s a big war they warn us, so the coalition will have to be committed to doing it time and time again.

We’ll then have to reintegrate all the children who were forced to fight so the cycle of violence doesn’t continue into the next generation.

So this is how we begin. Wear the whistle and become a whistleblower by sharing the story as a window into our world’s largest war.  Buy the whistle and 100% of the proceeds go to support war-affected kids.

Seems easy enough.  Speak up at home so they can speak up within the war.  Grow the healing and grow the coalition. No problem.

For those of you who are new to this story, I’m going to send a few old journals to catch you up to speed.  Then we’ll proceed with the adventure at hand - we crossed into Congo this very morning.

But, like I said, this time it’s all together new.  A year ago, alone and overwhelmed, I gave up hope.  This time we’ve got a team, they’re on the move, and we’re here to get some damn answers.

Peace.
Sean.

http://www.fallingwhistles.com
Make their weapon your voice.

***please feel free to forward to anyone and everyone***