CITY LIGHTS: TRYING TO UNDERSTAND GENOCIDE
Daily Pilot, CA
March 26 2014
By Michael Miller
March 26, 2014 | 10:46 a.m.
If you’ve ever been to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, you
may recall the installation that tracks the rise of the Third Reich
in Germany. One of the early scenes depicts an outdoor cafe in Berlin
in the early 1930s where customers talk casually about their reactions
to Hitler coming to power.
I thought of that museum display when I had lunch last week with
Barbara English at Native Foods in Costa Mesa. I don’t believe genocide
will come to America any time soon. But this cafe couldn’t have been
too different from ones in Rwanda, Cambodia and elsewhere — and as
for it being a sunny spring day, consider that the genocide in those
countries, as well as Armenia, Sudan and Bosnia, all started in April.
English, who runs the nonprofit Living Ubuntu, was telling me about
her upcoming film series, “Remembering the Past Toward Healing Our
Future,” which will feature films about the acts of genocide of the
last century. The conversation turned to the potential for evil in
each of us, and I asked her: Were the people around us on this outdoor
patio capable of participating in mass killing?
“Yes” was her quick response.
“I think the range of possibilities for human beings in both directions
is immense,” English said. “And if you look at the Rwandan genocide
in particular, a lot of the so-called killers had previously been
neighbors, and they were farmers. They were not long-term killers. They
were not psychopaths.
“So I think it’s something that we need to really understand about
genocide and understand about human nature, that there’s an awful
lot of human beings that, under the right circumstances, would become
capable of committing atrocities.”
I first met English six years ago when she made me part of the “E”
in the word “End.” Her group, which oversaw the grass-roots campaign
Orange County for Darfur, had called for volunteers to gather for a
photo shoot in Corona del Mar and spell out the words “End Genocide
Now!” with their bodies on the beach.
You may have seen English’s name since then. In 2010, Living Ubuntu
distributed materials about the Darfur situation for Huntington
Beach’s HB Reads program, which spotlighted a book by Sudan refugees
that year; last November, she brought in Rwanda witness Carl Wilkens
for a fundraiser in Newport Beach.
With Ubuntu, she’s led petition drives to Congress and taught
tension- and trauma-releasing exercises, or TRE, to refugees and
domestic-violence victims. Still, an honest description of English
would focus on what she doesn’t do as much as what she does.
An Aliso Viejo resident with an office in Newport Beach, she doesn’t
live to make money: She works only one day a week in her practice as
a marriage family therapist. She doesn’t take vacations or indulge
much in general. She doesn’t favor military force, push a partisan
agenda or have a history of visiting, armed or otherwise, the regions
her group defends.
Instead, English’s weapon — or tool, if you prefer — is rhetoric. She
shows, tells, listens, encourages and provokes. Bob Dylan sang years
ago, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just
doesn’t see?” English has devoted her life to seeing.
With the upcoming film series, she hopes to make others do the same.
“Remembering the Past” consists of six screenings at different
campuses, including Golden West College, UC Irvine and Concordia
University. Each event, organized in collaboration with Amnesty
International and the respective campuses, will be accompanied by
speakers, including activists and refugees from the regions shown
on screen.
How much of an impact can an event like this have? I posed that
question to two of the series’ guest speakers: Joseph Jok, a Sudan
refugee who serves on the board for the Sudanese American Youth
Center, and Levon Marashlian, a Glendale Community College professor
and advocate of Armenian Genocide remembrance.
Jok, who met English through an Orange County for Darfur event about
five years ago, has taken an active role in spreading her lessons:
After taking a TRE class from her last fall, he plans to teach the
exercises to fellow refugees. And he’s always keen on educating people
outside that circle.
“Even small things can make a difference,” he said. “Eventually,
they add up and they can make a difference.”
I got a longer answer from Marashlian, who is a new acquaintance of
English’s and, when I spoke to him on the phone, hadn’t yet met her
in person. Fighting genocide, he said, is not simply a matter of noble
intentions. Atrocities like those in Rwanda and Cambodia are sanctioned
by governments, and the perpetrators have specific goals — centered
on race, class or other factors — that education isn’t likely to sway.
Still, it may not just be the student demonstrators of the future
who make up the audience of “Remembering the Past.” Marashlian,
who watched with dismay as the world shrugged off Pol Pot and the
Rwandan militias, hopes that more politically inclined viewers will
take away an idea or two.
“People who are in the audience who are students, today they are
students,” he said. “Someday in the future, they may be a senator.
They may be a president someday, or they may have connections to
people with power. So the more people are aware, the more chance
there is of preventing future genocide.”
I thought back on that day years ago when I toured the Museum of
Tolerance. The guide, a Holocaust survivor, got a few puzzled looks
from the crowd when he declared that Hitler only killed one person.
Just one? “The only person he shot was himself,” the man said with
a shrug.
The message was that, for good or bad, rhetoric is powerful. Those
who attend the film screenings over the next month will have the
immediate task of remembering the past. And in terms of healing the
future, even an indirect effort is better than none.
MICHAEL MILLER is the features editor for Times Community News in
Orange County. He can be reached at [email protected] or
(714) 966-4617.
‘Remembering the Past Toward Healing Our Future’
April 1: “My Neighbor, My Killer” (Rwanda), Soka University of America,
Aliso Viejo, 5 p.m.
April 2: “The Armenian Genocide,” Concordia University, 7 p.m.
April 3: “Enemies of the People” (Cambodia), Golden West College,
6:30 p.m.
April 17: Short films about Sudan, UC Irvine, 5 p.m.
April 23: “I Came to Testify” (Bosnia), Cal State Long Beach, 7 p.m.
April 29: “Numbered” (the Holocaust), Chapman University, 7 p.m.
Admission free to all screenings. For more details, visit
,0,4166394.story
http://www.livingubuntu.org/events.
http://www.dailypilot.com/news/tn-dpt-et-0328-city-lights-barbara-english-living–20140326