VT Vigils Make Us Ignore Other Tragedies
Commentary
By Philip Grant
Dear Chancellor Drake,
My most heartfelt sympathies are also with those affected by the terrible events of last week at Virginia Tech.
I write to you nonetheless not merely to share my sympathies with you, but to express my anger. I am deeply disturbed by the message you have sent to the community of UC Irvine. My misgivings lie at two levels.
Firstly, I do not understand why the victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech are alone deemed worthy of special e-mail messages from the chancellor of the university, of candlelight vigils and so on. Consider the following statistics:
Wednesday, April 18, 2007, Baghdad, Iraq: 200 dead in six separate bombings.
March 6, 2007, Hilla, Iraq: 90 dead in two bombings.
Feb. 3, 2007, Baghdad, Iraq: 130 dead in a single bombing.
Dec. 2, 2006, Baghdad, Iraq: 50 dead in a single bombing.
Nov. 23, 2006, Baghdad, Iraq: 200 dead in a series of bombings.
These are only the major "incidents" of losses of civilian life in Iraq in the eight months since I have been at UCI. I do not recall any e-mail messages inviting us to candlelight vigils on their behalf. I do not recall that they were even considered worthy of a single second of serious reflection on any of our parts. Perhaps we are overcome by a surfeit of suffering: Whether one Iraqi dies or 100 is all the same to us, since there are just too many deaths for us to comprehend. What need solidarity, therefore? Yet the "families and friends of the victims" of the more than 60,000 Iraqi civilians (Iraq Body Count, reported deaths only) or the 100,000 to 150,000 Iraqi civilians (Iraqi Ministry of Health), or the 655,000 Iraqi civilians ("The Lancet") that have been killed since the beginning of the war - could we but speak with them face to face - might have something to teach us concerning what it means to be confronted with suffering on an unimaginable scale. Perhaps we can no longer muster the humility required to look on them and listen in attentive silence.
What happens to our sense of solidarity, our compassion, our shared humanity, when we turn our attention from Virginia to Iraq? No doubt: The candle-flame of our sympathies is quickly extinguished by the chill currents of the Atlantic.
Secondly, I am astonished that I am being told that "our nation" is in "stunned sorrow," that "everyone at UCI and across the nation" is affected by this tragedy. I remember being very impressed during my TA training when I first came to UCI by the instructors who taught us of the importance of being sensitive as teachers to the great diversity of the UCI community, to the wonderful variety of origins and backgrounds of the people we would be teaching or with whom we would be interacting during our careers here. I hope I have taken this lesson to heart and that I practice it during every waking hour of my time here.
Yet I find that the chancellor of the university is appealing to my sympathies as part of "our nation," and I do not know how to react, except with sorrow.
I am not of your nation! If I were in a minority of one, then perhaps I would shrug my shoulders and let these words pass. But I am not: There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of students, staff, and faculty at UCI who are not of "our nation"; we are grateful for the opportunities we have here, and we strive as hard as anyone to contribute to this community. Have you forgotten this? Am I - are we - not part of this community too? May we not express our sympathies and solidarity for the victims of the Virginia massacre, not because we are members of "our nation," but because as human beings we know that those who died in Virginia had faces like us, because we can imagine ourselves as others who are like us? "We are, on a fundamental level, all members of one community," you write. Does this truly mean "all" of us, or only those of us who are part of "our nation"? The answer must be the first: "Our nation" has no role to play in how we commemorate and mourn this tragedy.
Why is it, in this community that is so palpably diverse, in this country where people have as many origins as there are stars in the sky, that we have to resort to the exclusionary rhetoric of "our nation"? Why mourn those who died and commiserate with those who remain on the grounds that they too are part of "our nation," when we could instead speak in a spirit so much more generous and hospitable, so much more open and humane: We mourn those who died not because they were like us and of us, but because they were like us and yet different from us. Surely ethics starts not with ourselves, but with others.
I remember only too vividly how, after Sept. 11, young people in Iran poured into the streets and held spontaneous candlelight vigils for those who died in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania, without it ever occurring to them that they should only mourn those who were of "their nation." Strange thought! It is the "Axis of Evil" that teaches the "land of the free" respect for others, and not the other way round, whatever we might expect. We know what follows, and perhaps now at last, however obscurely, we begin to glimpse an answer - a troubling answer - to the question a very great man posed nearly two millennia ago:
"What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?"
I did not attend the candlelight vigil on Monday, April 23, not because I do not wish to express my solidarity with the victims of the massacre in Virginia, but because I cannot express my solidarity with them while excluding those who are not of "our nation," those who die like cattle in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere.
However, from the time I went to bed that Monday night until the time I woke up on Wednesday morning, I abstained from all food and drink except tap water, as part of what the French call a "jeûne d'interpellation," an untranslatable phrase that means something like a fast designed to call people's attention to a problem. I wish to call our attention to the selectivity of our solidarity and compassion, to ask us all not to quench our candlelight in the sea but to bear it aloft in memory of all those who die a violent death anywhere, just as the young women and men of Iran have taught us. I am not expecting to change the world by this one tiny action; perhaps all I can hope for is to make people stop and reflect, if only for a second, on the fact that our community extends well beyond Virginia.
Philip Grant is a graduate student in the department of anthropology.
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Original Source:<a href=http://www.newuniversity.org/showArticle.php?id=5791>New University - April 30, 2007</a>
Philip Grant
New University
2007-08-19
Sara Hood
Zachary Gale <newueic@gmail.com>
eng
Iraq victims must not be forgotten
By: John Tuzcu
Posted: 4/24/07
In the week leading up to the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 people were senselessly killed, there also happened to be Iraqi people being massacred in the bloodbath of Iraq. Five hundred Iraqi men women and children that had nothing to do with the war were found dead in what is a "usual" seven days in the Iraq. These two narratives that both deeply implicate Americans leads us to ponder whose lives we choose to remember and of whose we are completely ignorant.
Monday, April 9, 45 innocent Iraqis were killed, many of them found tortured and decapitated. Tuesday, 85 were found dead, half from U.S. attacks. Wednesday a teacher was found shot in the head, a mother and a son were killed on the way to school and a pile of unidentifiable bodies were discovered to make 42 in all.
Thursday killed 50, including an explosion inside the "heavily-fortified" Green Zone. Friday, April 13, civilians were killed walking to mosque and a kid was blown up ... 70 more people, people just like you and me. Saturday brought 110 civilian deaths, 16 being blown up by a car bomb. Finally, Sunday, April 15, 100 civilians were murdered in and around Baghdad.
This one week of tragedy in Iraq is sadly not an exception. There have been 600,000 civilian deaths since 2003, and 3,323 U.S. deaths (and counting). Despite this, when was the last time we saw a picture of an Iraqi kid on television or read their story in the newspaper? When was the last time we were forced to remember that Iraqis too have rich and important lives or were forced to come face to face with the carnage taking place at the hands of the U.S. occupation?
Can you imagine invaders coming into the United States and precipitating massacres that kill 500 Americans a week? This bloody occupation has passed into its fifth year and it's getting increasingly bloodier.
Almost half of all the civilian deaths have occurred in the last year of the war, as mortar attacks have quadrupled and bombs killing more than 50 people at once have doubled in occurrence. Suicide bombs, car bombs and roadside bombs have doubled as well in the fourth year.
There are also many reports exposing the drastic conditions that living Iraqis are facing. Eleven percent of Iraqi babies are now born underweight, compared to 4 percent before the U.S. invasion, malnutrition has risen to 28 percent and Iraqi civilians are citing stress and anxiety levels that are untenable. The United States has permanently destroyed and ended the lives of millions of Iraqis, though they remain numbers to most of us.
Of course we must mourn and remember the loss of life in Blacksburg, Va., but we should also compare the endless coverage that tragedy has received in place of others - killings going on everyday in our name. The memorials accorded to the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings were moving, if only we reserved a fraction of that space in our hearts for innocent Iraqis as well. If we put human faces on those tragedies we might find the continued U.S. occupation to be unbearable. We might feel something again. Or maybe those days are over.
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Original Source:<a href=http://media.www.miamistudent.net/media/storage/paper776/news/2007/04/24/OpedPage/Iraq-Victims.Must.Not.Be.Forgotten-2876305.shtml>The Miami Student - April 24, 2007</a>
John Tuzcu
The Miami Student
2007-08-14
Sara Hood
"Skotzko, Stacey Nicole" <skotzksn@muohio.edu>
eng
So it goes
After reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," my 11th grade English teacher asked us, "Is death meaningful?" The question forced us to think about the line that appeared over and over in Vonnegut's book, the line that appeared after anyone died: "So it goes." My classremained silent, thinking.
"So it goes," sounds light, almost casual. It would describe the feeling most of us get when we read some headline "30 dead in Iraq," or "Tsunami Claims Countless." Vonnegut's line seems fitting for some far off death, very distant from us, almost unimportant. But would I say "So it goes" after I learned my mother died, or my wife was killed? Would I say that casual line after yesterday's events at Tech? The death I once thought was far off, remote and alien, has now struck my life, my family and a campus just two hours away.
Yesterday people said things like, "It could have happened to us," and "I have a close friend in that dorm." Yesterday people were "shocked" and "humbled." So if the university were to answer my 11th grade teacher's question, "Is death meaningful?" We would all shout, "of course it is!" Butsadly we only answer this now because of a vicious reminder. Death has become real, close and tangible. Only now do we recognize it.
Of all the hypothetical questions and "what ifs" that plague our minds everyday, we seldom reflect on the one possibility that is certain -- our own deaths. We worry about Arab history midterms, internshipapplications, and getting a date for semi-formal, but we never think about the only thing in our lives that definitely will happen.
Vonnegut's 'so it goes' was not meant to cheapen life, but was a useful reminder that death will happen to us all. Do you remember that angry wind yesterday? The wind that burned your face and made your eyes water? We should carry a little bit of that wind with us every day, not to makeus hurt and weep, but to remind ourselves that we are all fragile and finite. If we do that, we won't need tragedy to wake us up. We will carry a vigor for life wherever we go. Because now we know each day has meaning, and we will strive to live each moment to its potential.
Hamza Shaban
CLAS II
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Original Source:<a href=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/letters.asp?pid=1583>The Cavalier Daily - April 18, 2007</a>
Hamza Shaban
The Cavalier Daily
2007-07-31
Sara Hood
Meggie Bonner <meggiebonner@gmail.com>
eng
From Out of the City for April 22, 2007: Death and Memory (April 22, 2007)
128Kbps MP3 12.5M
The poet presents three works; the poem "April 16, Blacksburg, Virginia" about the Virginia Tech shootings; the poem "at a former lover's graveside" about the death of those we have loved and "the taste" a new song by his band, the Gods of Love.
This item is part of the collection: <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio">Open Source Audio</a>
Author: <a href="http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator:%22William%20F.%20DeVault%22">William F. DeVault</a>
Date: 2007-04-22
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/City20070422">http://www.archive.org/details/City20070422</a>
Creative Commons license: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/">Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0</a>
William F. DeVault
2007-06-15
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0
eng
Weeping At The Mount
Weeping At the Mount
The Lord is weeping at the mount
What has happened to his dreams?
He prayed and prayed for a single purpose
That we would live in peace
After generations and generations we have forgotten
That little thing called love
While God chose his Son, one and only begotten
So that we may simply come
Instead we choose to see ourselves
Instead of looking out
Light turns a dark shade of greed
We have turned from love, without a doubt
Taking what isn't ours, what others need
Lives, money, property and jewels
Like honey to our eyes
We turn from wisdom, and become great fools
While the Lord is weeping at the mount
What happened to what we shared?
Everyday is new, let's turn around
Let's show each other extra love and care!
*Every time a murder or robbery happens, we're throwing stones at Jesus on the cross! Don't brush this off, because hate, jealousy and anger we hold on to are also forms of throwing stones!
Kelly Warren
2007-05-02
Kelly Warren
eng