MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Bec Hamilton, co-founder of the Harvard Darfur Action Group and a representative of the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net), discusses the movement to prevent genocide in Darfur, especially in regard to student activism, and her work to build a permanent political constituency against genocide and mass atrocity. Bec highlights two of GI-Net’s newest initiatives, Darfur Scores, which provides report cards for all members of Congress dependent on their level of action on the Darfur issue; and 1-800-GENOCIDE, a genocide hot-line that will connect you directly with your representative’s office.
This interview is the last of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. Bec Hamilton will participate in an online discussion on March 26th and 27th which you can join by registering here.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Rebecca Hamilton. She is co-founder of the Harvard Darfur Action Group and a representative of the Genocide Intervention Network. She has co-written with Chad Hazlett, a forthcoming essay, “Not On Our Watch: The Emergence of the American Movement for Darfur.” This interview is the third of three that we are producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. Rebecca Hamilton will participate in an online discussion on March 26th and 27th. You can find details about participating in that discussion on the Voices on Genocide Prevention blog: www.vogp.org. Today, we want to focus on advocacy and action. Bec, welcome to the program.
BEC HAMILTON: Thanks Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Let us start with the big picture. There has been, in some ways, an explosion of activism on Darfur. Why is that?
BEC HAMILTON: I think you can pin it down to a few key factors that worked well for Darfur. Part of the reason for writing this book chapter with Chad Hazlett was to see that you were not getting the same level of engagement with crises of comparable levels of severity, in Congo and in Uganda, and so why Darfur? Number one, I think, what has often gone unrecognized was that there were a full two decades of very intensive advocacy for South Sudan done by the evangelical community in this country, and what that did was to lay a groundwork that was very useful when Darfur came onto the agenda because they had developed these “Congressional champions;” the Frank Wolf’s and Donald Payne’s who knew Sudan intimately by the time the atrocities in Darfur started to arise and could understand what this government was capable of doing. It was really the activism and engagement of those people that got you the genocide determination in the summer of 2004. That in turn sparked off a whole different level of engagement from a much broader constituency. Jewish organizations got much more involved and it really peeked the interest of students. The other factor that is feeding into this is undoubtedly the impact of having come a full decade after Rwanda. As you saw Darfur start to hit the mainstream media, it was really around the tenth anniversary commemorations of the Rwandan genocide, and what that meant was that rather than—sort of a cognitive psychology concept—when we are starting to get information in about a new crisis, it is too easy to put it into the steamer that says, “intractable, inevitable conflict; don’t need to pay attention,” but because you had all these Rwandan tenth year anniversary commemorations, there was a different framework at the front of people’s minds at the time when the information about Darfur was coming in, and it was a framework of genocide, and it was a framework of this being something that people needed to pay attention to. Undoubtedly, the movies—the Hotel Rwanda’s of this time—were enormously helpful in pushing to help people get engaged.
JERRY FOWLER: I commented sometimes in the 2004 period when we were starting work on this that that was the only break that the Darfur civilians really caught, that their catastrophe happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary.
BEC HAMILTON: It honestly was, and it is ironic and tragic thing to say, but it undoubtedly made a difference.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the things that you referred to is the genocide determination that the United States government made in September of 2004. It has always seemed to me that this use of the word genocide in connection with Darfur has had something of a paradoxical effect. In one sense, it seems to have contributed to the momentum of Darfur activism, and getting people engaged, and a sense of what the moral stakes involved are—that is the public—but on the other hand, it becomes a source of dispute and discussion and debate and fruitless dickering at an international level; it does not really seem to mobilize governments.
BEC HAMILTON: I really think this issue of genocide is a double edged sword because as you say, it definitely got people engaged that would not have been engaged otherwise, and there is something that is disquieting about that, as if mere mass atrocity is not enough to peak people’s attention. It has to have the word genocide attached. Although, I will offer some sort of hopeful insights in that regard in that I have seen a number of students that got engaged purely because of the word genocide and are now educated through the entire spectrum of atrocities and say that in the future it would not take the label “genocide” to get them engaged. I think there is a potentially hopeful story to tell out of that. The other aspect of this double edged sword was of course that people had taken the wrong lesson from Rwanda; everybody being so self conscious about all those lexical gymnastics, so it went on the part of the Clinton Administration to stop using the word genocide and the subsequent policy failure. I think initially people fell into the trap that if we can just get them to say the word genocide, then the policy will follow, and that has not been the case either. I think what we will see over the next five to ten years is people really taking a step back and wondering how much we are really pinning on this word “genocide.” You are already starting to hear the rhetoric change so that when people say “genocide,” they say “genocide and mass atrocity.” There is a real need to educate the public that it should not have to reach the determination of genocide for it to be relevant to get engaged with this issue.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing, without getting too much into the legal details, part of the disconnect is that popular understanding of what genocide is, which is almost synonymous with mass atrocity, is not the same as genocide as a legal concept which requires a very specific intent to destroy a group.
BEC HAMILTON: Right, and there is also a huge disconnect in the public’s mind between what counts as a real genocide, in that I think you always have in the background the rubric of the Holocaust to measure everything else against. As we know, genocide looks different in different situations. I am really in two minds, as I am about to be graduating as a law student, I am really in two minds in the use of the word genocide because I obviously see the value from an international law perspective of having a very tight and legalistic definition, but there is a disjoint to how that translates into the public realm, and if genocide is going to be this word that is going to motivate action, you do not want that only happening after you have been able to make your legal case, however many years after the fact that actually gets at the issue of intent; you need something that is going to be useful as a preventative measure. The timelines as genocide as a preventative measure and popular concept versus genocide as a legal determination, they do not run along the same track, and I think because of that and because there is a need to preserve the word genocide to its legal definition, that just speaks to the need to educate the public to respond to things more broadly, to find not just genocide.
JERRY FOWLER: Turning to this movement, the American movement for Darfur, one key aspect of it which you have alluded to is the tremendous involvement of students and young people. First, a big picture question is why is it that young people have gotten so engaged with this issue?
BEC HAMILTON: First, I think it is fairly obvious if you look over just the course of history; students have always been agents of social change. No matter what kind of movement you look at, you see that students are the key driver. I think on this particular issue, there was a real sense of, “We can do this better.” There are a number of interviews that I did, again focused on seeing Hotel Rwanda, and while the generation of parents would have looked at this in horror and gone, “Where was I?” and had a certain level of guilt attached to that, students were able to look at that film and say, “You guys really screwed up,” and then there was this notion of, “On our watch; we can do it better.” There was a real taking of the phrase, “On our watch,” and making it really the mantra of this generation of students. I think students naturally have a level of idealism that is necessary to conceive of a better future world, or a world in which mass atrocity and genocide can be prevented. This is not to say that they are idealistic; certainly when you look at how students have engaged with this issue, they have done it with a very healthy dose of realism and many cases cynicism, but you still have at the very core a willingness to believe that things can be different and things can be better.
JERRY FOWLER: To what extent has education had an impact on the way young people have looked at this? I ask this, obviously in the context of Facing History and Ourselves promotes education about the Holocaust and genocide, as does the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
BEC HAMILTON: I think that the education part is critical, and when you look at some of the individuals who have really been key in taking this movement in interesting and innovate ways. There are the college students who are doing courses in International Relations and had exposure to past genocide, and so it was really their understanding of history that enabled them to relate and engage with the current issue. The second aspect of that, and it is I guess less commonly thought of, is that I invariably end up thinking along the lines of basic civics education because it is one thing to know your history and to care about a situation that is happening; it is quite another thing to know how to translate that care into an effective political voice, and I think that unless we are developing with each generation of students people who know how to work the political process and are excited to engage in it. That is when you can really see change happening.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that is most interesting when you talk about students and young activists is on the one hand, having a sense of how you translate your engagement into effective action as you say; and then the other is just this remarkable creativity, in terms of how they define effective action. Could you highlight a few examples of particularly creative things that young activists have come up with?
BEC HAMILTON: There are some lovely ones, but all of them though I would say are driven by a very strong, kind of thoroughness of thinking through an issue. For example, I think when we talk about being creative; it is not necessarily things that have not occurred to anyone before, but things that have not been applied to a situation of genocide before. For example, when students saw that the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act was being held up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—this was back in November of 2005—they thought, “How do people normally move domestic legislation that is being held up in Committee,” and they looked to the sorts of groups that do these sorts of things very well, the NRA for example, and so what they did was that they wanted to find out who the key donors were for Senator Lugar who is chairman of the Committee. They went onto opensecrets.org, got his top donors, then went to White Pages, found their contact information, divvied up call sheets across the different colleges around the country, and started getting students calling these donors and saying, “This is what is happening in Darfur, and this is the legislation that we really need to pass,” and the donors themselves—I was on some of the calls—the donors themselves were quite taken back that students would be interested in engaging with this issue. There is always something slightly different when a pitch comes from a student as opposed to somebody else. There is often a willingness because student have traditionally been seen in this role as social change agents. There is a willingness to give them the five minutes that it takes to make the pitch. That was one example of applying something that is fairly common in other realms to the situation of genocide.
JERRY FOWLER: Did it have an effect?
BEC HAMILTON: Right, it got out of Committee two weeks later; it was remarkably effective. None of this really counts unless it is effective, although I think there is an extent to which you have got to try a few ideas and have them turn out to be duds, just as part of the learning process. Divestment has obviously been another one that has been truly driven by the student movement. What is interesting is the way these ideas have been picked up and really upscaled and taken to the nationwide level. You now have the students that were working on divestment at their college campuses, then graduated, and then instead of thinking, “Well, that was something we did as students; now we are moving off to Wall Street,” they took those skills with them and formed the Sudan Divestment Task Force that we now have operating outside of the Genocide Intervention Network, and they are introducing legislation in twenty states this year.
JERRY FOWLER: To get the states to divest?
BEC HAMILTON: Right, because that is where the big money is, in the state pension funds. Using what is happening at the college level really as just the catalysts to create the domino effects for much broader change, and also in terms of thinking through these issues really systematically, one of the problems that we kept seeing happen over time was that you could get people to care about the issue, and they say, “What do you do?” and one of the conventional responses is, “Well, talk to your representative,” but people may face a few hurdles to do that. Number one, they need to know who their representative is, but even once they know that, it is sort of an added handful to work to find out what their phone number is; if you have not spoken to your representative before, it takes a fair level of confidence to pick up the phone, and then there is the question of exactly what do you say. The Genocide Intervention Network have just launched this toll free number, 1-800-GENOCIDE, where you can call it up, put in your postcode, it will take you directly through to your representative, give you talking points before you speak to them on whatever the biggest legislative push is around Darfur for that person, so just ways of removing the obstacles, removing the barriers of communication between constituents and their representative.
JERRY FOWLER: Can I just get more details on that? You are saying that people right now can call 1-800-GENOCIDE; and what will happen when they dial that in?
BEC HAMILTON: Then they will be asked to put in their zip code, and then they will be asked whether they want to speak to their governor, senator or congressperson, and depending on which person they choose, they will then be given talking points relevant to that person, and over time we will change those talking points depending on what legislative issues there are.
JERRY FOWLER: How are they given those talking points?
BEC HAMILTON: It is just a voice recorded message.
JERRY FOWLER: They either have to have a very good memory or they should have a pen and paper when they call.
BEC HAMILTON: It would be great to have a pen and paper, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Okay. Another thing which I wanted to ask you about which was another—not an innovation at all, but something that was brought to this issue by Genocide Intervention Network that has been used successfully is a score card for congressional representatives.
BEC HAMILTON: Right, that is also in that realm of looking at what people really want to get serious political traction on the issue, and one of those things is to make sure that our representatives are accountable for the decisions that they are making on Darfur, that they should be accountable on this issue, just as they are on every other. You can now go to www.darfurscores.org, and again put in your zip code and see exactly what your senator or house representative, how they have voted across all the different Darfur legislation. It was just a fascinating process to see this come online at the end of last year where suddenly we have graded every representative from an A+ to an F, and you would be surprised at how much people care that they get an F. I guess there is something quite confronting about seeing that you have really failed to respond to a situation that the government has declared to be genocide.
JERRY FOWLER: I guess one thing that is worth pointing out; first, those two things can be done in conjunction; Darfur Scores cards, and then call 1-800-GENOCIDE, and even in your representative gets a high score, it is also useful to call and thank them for doing that and then ask them to do more.
BEC HAMILTON: Absolutely, and I think it is equally important, if not more important to be perfectly frank. Part of this issue is to be really fostering and praising those representatives that are working hard because they are the people who are taking this to the next level.
JERRY FOWLER: We have been talking about influencing the United States government, and of course, as American citizens that is what we have the most direct access to, but in some ways if you look at where things stand with Darfur, the United States government has been relatively more active than other governments, and there is a sense that we need to get beyond just working with the United States government.
BEC HAMILTON: That is absolutely right, and it is a real issue for the Darfur movement at the moment. I think we are starting to get a sense of how to pressure the United States government on this issue and that a lot more needs to be done, and the pressure needs to be kept up just because, obviously, Darfur is competing against so many other key foreign policy issues at the moment; but at the same time as doing that, there need to be people giving some serious creative thought to how to pressure governments. Imagine if you really had China on board with this how different the situation in Darfur would look. I think it is something people have much less of an understanding about how to do. American citizens are at their greatest level of legitimacy when they are pressuring their own government, so part of this is engaging the citizenry worldwide, as opposed to it just being Americans trying to pressure other governments. One route to this, certainly in terms of China, is through divestment. There is now talk about really doing some campaigning around the Beijing 2008 Olympics, but it is not just the sort of sticks; it is also the carrots of how to really build coalitions with allies in countries in Africa and across the Arab world. It is not clear to me that Americans are necessarily in a prime position to do that at the moment, but it needs to happen.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that one of my students mentioned to me the other day that she is working on here, which I thought was a fascinating idea, was holding workshops for college students who will be going abroad for a semester or a year in order to take the issue of Darfur to whatever country it is that they are going to.
BEC HAMILTON: That is a great idea. The other thing that strikes me so much when I am speaking to students is just how globalized we all are. Invariably, there is someone who has been studying abroad, or who has a friend who has. You do not have to look very far within a student’s network to find someone who has international experience, so just to be making the most of those connections even on a personal level.
JERRY FOWLER: Rebecca Hamilton is the co-founder of the Harvard Darfur Action Group and a representative of the Genocide Intervention Network. She will be discussing these issues further online on March 26th and 27th, and you can find details about participating in that discussion on the Voices on Genocide Prevention: www.vogp.org. Bec, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
BEC HAMILTON: Great to speak with you.
