Organizing to Stop Genocide

Today, I spent the morning training college students on how to create effective and sustainable anti-genocide community groups. From all over the country, these 200 college student gave up a weekend to learn more about the massacres in Sudan, practice the basic skills necessary to create a lasting community group, and network with each other.  During the summer, these students have pledged to recruit locally-based individuals, meet as a group, identify leaders, and create an action calendar.  Ideally, the student will leave a fuctioning community group after the summer that will build awareness about anti-genocide events and actions.

The students are also in DC to participate tomorrow in the Rally To Stop Genocide, sponsored by over 100 organizations who make up the Save Darfur Collalition.  They are expecting 25,000 in DC and tens of thousands more across the country.

I spent 2 hours this morning faciliating a training for 18 college students that was organized by the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net). In my group, there were 17 women and 1 man.  This ratio held across the training groups. I wasn't surprised by this, just disappointed. Why would any red blooded American male want to trade watching the NFL draft with building skills to create lasting social change and prevent genocide?  As my Grandfather would say, "Take a long walk off a short pier."

For the students, GI-Net prepared a great summer action kit to give easy, step-by-step instructions for students to follow during the summer: Recruit, Meet, Take Action.  Facilitators received a very good agenda that did the following well:

• Articulated the goals of each section to focus the discussion early
• Offered suggested times for each activity
• Balanced activities between the full group, small groups and one-on-one practice sections
• Suggested questions for the facilitators to use if groups hit stumbling blocks

It was clear that GI-Net put a lot of time into the action kit and agenda.  Not only was the organization of the kit consitent with how a student would need to manage this community-building process, but also the research was fairly robust, something usually lacking in action kits.  There were pages of useful quotes from notable leaders and intellectuals, talking points that framed the issue, and frequently asked questions about Darfur. Here are my favorite talking points:

1. 3 years ago the government of Sudan armed a militie and together they kill, rape and displace innocent civilians in the Darfur region.  As many as 400,000 people are dead from the violence and 2.5 million people are displaced.
2. Darfur is "Rawanda in Slow Motion." We have the opportunity to redeem ourselves for the failures in 1994.
3. Congress and President Bush both declared the crisis "genocide."
4. Have you seen "Hotel Rwanda"? What will you say to your children and grandchildren after "Hotel Darfur"?

These students were so engaged with the content during the training that they recognized when the larger next steps weren't clear.  That showed me that they were focused on learning something, rather than just going through the motions.  There was also a general desire to describe specific anti-genocide  actions, something the action kit was a lacking. 

However, the kit was designed to guide the students to form community groups that will answer this action question from themselves. Commiment comes from ownership of the plan, so I understand why the kit was light on planning actions. Also, GI-Net is going to send Starter Kits to communities that actually meet and this will have more action ideas as well as buttons and bumper stickers.

Getting a refresher on community organizing was very satisfying because it's not something I've spent much time doing.  My strength is facilitating, not actually community organizing. Even during my days working and volunteering in the 2004 election, I only did a little organizing.  It's not ofter you get to practice how to talk effectively to people.  Ahhhhh, I'm wicked amp'd for tomorrow's rally.