Free Burma!
// October 4th, 2007 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
I am writing this post in an effort to gain attention on the recent protests from Burmese Monks to stop this genocide! (and it’s not just happening in Burma)
The world has been changing rapidly in the past couple of weeks, President of Iran Speaks at Columbia, hired mercenaries are clogging courts because of ‘reckless’ murder, and of course, monks are protesting the Burmese Government. Why?!?? I’m sad and feel helpless during these hard times. Recently my boss at work was involved in bringing some refugees from Burma just a week prior to all of this protesting and mass media attention. They are looking for jobs in Carteret County, although they do not speak english (well), the father and daughter can speak enough to understand things. They have all of their documents to work in the US.
This video shows a little of the protest.
In related happenings…well, not really related in the sense that things like that happened, my work had this program called, “Under Ground Railroad” And, you guessed it, it’s all about the underground railroad where children are told a story about a child from the Sudan who is taken away as a slave (true story actually – a class of children raised money to buy him out of slavery at about 15 dollars) then the kids go on a voyage over the ocean in rough weather where the finally find themselves on the shores of the slave-trade. Fast forward and the kids get separated into conductor groups (because they are now escaping) and are led through our 60 acre property only to be discovered by bounty hunters and other hazards before they finally end their journey at ‘Canada’ where they have to find work, but are free. After this simulation, the children are then debriefed and talk about how they felt which hopefully leads to a conversation about slavery, racism, sexism, and how we can put an end to said issues. The talks are usually amazing, speckled with children revealing how, in scary detail, they have been called names and pushed just for the color of their skin.
Well, I ended up prepping all of the adults and chaperones that will be fully participating in this program as conductors and harriet tubman as well as bounty hunters when one guy gets really nervous about how the kids might explode into heated arguments with the other kids. And while I explain, I use the word levity to kind of explain that you want add a little relief to this heavy subject (like a bounty hunter thinking the kids to be pumpkins in the wagon), but to still honor this past and respect it, while also making sure the kids get a good empathy session by really being treated like slaves, but a lady has a huge problem with the word levity, like it will cause an infection of total disrespect. She then goes on to explain that she does this for colleges all over. So as to not offend her, I humbly state how I see her point of view, only for her to keep trying to push her point on the word ‘LEVITY’!
So, here I just want to say that in order for there to be progress in changing our world, understanding each other, and making progress towards compassion and tolerance, you can’t always be afraid to engage in discussion about race, slavery and the like! You just can’t, so it entirely makes me upset when people want to get on their ‘high-horse’ and proclaim that, albeit in a subtle way, they don’t think that the kids can handle it. For goodness sake, give some trust to these kids! Anyways, I’m glad we went through this meeting, despite my thousand explanations and use of words like, ‘ethnically homogenous’ and ‘disparity of discussions’…(it was getting ridiculous)
All in all though, that meeting opened the floor (and made people confortable – the adults) in confiding their views on race throughout the rest of the day. And I have to tell you, there were some heavy conversations about being marginalized, thought to be less, and not feeling worth it- and big feelings of fear for offending other people in their group. People are scared to touch this subject…but I guess the people I talked to a few days ago are more equipped to engage in discussion. It feels like they do anyways.
