Today, I woke up and worked on an essay. Had some granola and yogurt. Sat on my couch with Siri and Collen and whined about not wanting to trek to class. I got ready to go: slid on smelly orange Nikes, grabbed my North Face backpack, realized it was cold, pulled out a Polo sweatshirt and Mountain Hard Ware fleece. I walked to up to my university, which employs 5,442 people for the education of just under 25,000 students, 1,000 of these being Semester Study Abroad students like me.
Today, I thought of home. Today in Iuka the temp should be about 95°. It's supposed to be 80° in Boston, though there's a decent chance of flooding. It should be sunny in both the places I call home.
But today in Libya, no one cares if it's sunny out. No one is grabbing fleeces and Nikes and heading off to a Top 200 university. Today in Libya, the rebel forces have announced that pro-Gaddafi forces have 4 days to get out. Today in Libya, people are dead. Families are mourning. A country is torn apart.
...And you probably don't care.
I'm not pointing fingers or placing blame. I'm just saying. We don't care. We feel bad when we see the footage on the news or a quick blurb in the paper, but do we really care? Nope.
Because this doesn't affect us. I mean, it's all politics. It's all a power struggle as old as time. It's all high up and out of reach. It's all about something we don't really get and don't really have the time and energy to stress about. Right?
Except it's not. It's babies. It's families. It's kids that love soccer and playing in the dirt. It's husbands separated from wives. It's campers and teachers and mommies and daddies. It's everything you care about, but on another continent and in a different language.
Today in an African culture class, my brilliant, fabulous teacher, Siona O'Connell, showed us a movie about a similar situation in Liberia. In 2003, thousands of ordinary women came together across religious lines and prayed for peace in their war-torn country. They prayed and united and stood up and told the ones responsible for the war that they were done. They were sick of the situation, and they changed it. [If you ever get a chance to watch Pray the Devil Back to Hell, take it.]
I'm not saying that you need to go sit on the side of the road for days and protest. I'm not saying you should go on hunger strikes or sex strikes (which are exactly what they sound like). I'm just saying it doesn't take much. It just takes someone to care a little. Because, yes, it's an age old conflict over power between a corrupt government and an unstable rebellious group, but it's also the lives of Libyans, the moms and dads that run for miles with babies on their backs only to starve in refugee camps. It's not that complicated, not so over our heads that we can't understand and therefore can't do anything.
It's just people. People like you and me that are looking over to the West and saying, "uh, hey guys? Where you at?"
And maybe Libya isn't your thing. That's cool. Check out Mexico. The Congo. Malaysia. Somalia. The Sudan. Venezuela. Syria. Nigeria. Check out America, where 1 out of every 8 children goes to bed hungry at night. Where domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44. Where there are approximately 785,000 active gang members and 300,000 rapes, most of those in either Baltimore or New Orleans.
As much as we'd like to believe it, it's not out of our hands. We live in a democratic society for a reason. Write your reps. Call 'em. Show up in their office. Send a letter to the editor. Tell people that you, too, are done. That you're tired of whatever it is you're tired of, whether it be hunger or murders or suicides or bullying or droughts or air strikes or torture.
I'm not saying these things are your fault or my fault. I'm not saying we're bad people. I'm just saying we need to act. We need to move.
I dare you.
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