Forgotten

Between 2004-2006, I was really involved in the "Save Darfur" movement.  I co-founded a Regional Darfur Coalition in the Bay Area, moved to NY for 6 months to coordinate participation in a rally for Darfur in Washington DC., and helped to put together a mock UN trial against Omar Al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity.  I could hardly focus on things happening in my own life because I was consumed by what was happening in Sudan.

I am ashamed to say that was 8 years ago.  At the time, we knew that the statistics were wrong - we'd say "over 200,000 dead", even though we knew that the body count was much higher.  Ted and I watched a piece on 60 minutes about Darfur a couple of nights ago that gave the same statistic - a statistic that remains static because nobody can actually confirm how many more have been killed or have died as a consequence of being displaced.

I was watching the piece and I couldn't stop crying.  I stopped being involved in the movement because it felt useless - nobody was listening anyway.  I stopped being involved because I wasn't comfortable with the communities of activity in Los Angeles, where I moved in 2006.  I stopped being involved because I became increasingly involved in my own life.  Terrible excuses.

I can't think about it for more than a minute without feeling sick - the number of women who've been raped, the children dying of malnutrition, the villages being burned and the people being killed.  And it is only ONE place on earth where this is happening.  Just one place.  A place that isn't strategically important enough for us to care about ending its genocide.  It's a forgotten place - a place nobody talks about anymore, nobody sends their money there anymore.  It's refugees are forgotten as well - having been given up to 2000 calories a day five years ago, today they are lucky to get 900.

I am so ashamed - is anyone else?

And, it was only three months ago that 230 school girls were kidnapped right from their school in Nigeria.  I saw lots of "#bringbackourgirls" for a while, but I don't anymore.  I guess they are forgotten too.  I guess we cannot dare to imagine what it would be like to be a child taken from their school by terrorists - or the fear and grief and emotional torture of their parents.  We are overcome by our own lives and we forget.  I honestly don't know how to change this in my own life, let alone advise or admonish anyone else for the same.  I just know it makes me feel ashamed.

And frankly, I can't even post this post without acknowledging my grief over the three kidnapped and subsequently murdered Israeli boys, who were finally found yesterday, buried under some rocks.  Their parents are getting all of the messages we'd expect - about how their sons death brought together an international community, about how everyone they know is going to hug their kids tighter, about how they should be comforted by the Mourners of Zion (aren't THEY the Mourners of Zion?  In this case it actually makes sense because down the road, they will be left to comfort themselves.)  My statement on this one is far from political - I am left wing on Israel - very much for a two state solution - very uncomfortable with settlements - you can even quote me on that.  But I am so sad to think of three young boys hitchhiking (something I've done in Israel too many times to count), being picked up, scared out of their minds, and then murdered.  #bringbackourboys no longer.  They are gone forever.

And - I know these things don't all tie together perfectly.  They do for me - I just have a hard time articulating it.  But, I often wonder why it seems like so many people in my life have forgotten Maxie - and then I remember that he was just one little boy, just one baby, and he wasn't kidnapped or murdered or tortured, and STILL my life ended on that day that he stopped breathing.  And I want so much for him to be remembered.  SO MUCH.  But, I can't even step away from it long enough to remember the suffering that surrounds us all every single day.

Sometimes it really all seems too cruel, too much, too unjust.  Maybe all we can do to preserve our own sanity is to forget.  I just refuse is all.  I won't forget any of it.  I couldn't even if I tried.