Human Rights Club Calls Washington

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:03:00 GMT

By Jeanette Ban

Photo by Jeanette Ban

Natalie Juarez and Diana Yu in front of their Darfur awareness poster.

On Wednesday October 24th, a Venice High School club dedicated to the bettering of human lives did the unthinkable and called President Bush during the school day. In February of 2003, rebel groups stationed in the western region of the African country of Sudan known as Darfur began to attack government forces of the same area, resulting in the deaths of approximately 400,000 innocent people. Ever since the turmoil of that first, telling month, the story of the Darfur genocide has been preached all across the world. In particular, the message of wrongdoing and panic has been pitched to an assembly of young adults who have taken the time to care about the mistreatments of the world’s people. A gathering of such people, known as the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force (HRWSTF), can be found at Venice High School in room 131 on Mondays at lunchtime. This club is just one high school’s contribution to a larger non-profit organization stationed in Los Angeles whose network of schools all across the county are working together to bring about awareness in their communities about the Darfur killings. The Human Rights Watch has two major campaigns for the year of 2007-2008: the conflict in Darfur, and the use of child soldiers in nearly every continent except Australia and Antartica. They recently completed their first major actvity of the semester when they called Washington, D.C. on October 24th to protest America’s inaction towards Darfur. “We got permission from Ms. Davis to allow kids to use their cell phones for the first 5 minutes of their History or Social Science class to call the White House to protest the situation in Darfur!” exclaimed Student Task Force secretary Diana Yu. “Although the new ban on cell phones made this difficult to carry out, we managed to convince the principal that this was an important issue.” The club members purposely arranged for this call-in to the White House to coincide with United Nations Day, which falls on October 24th of this year, because the whole of the Human Rights Watch, the largest nation-wide human rights organization in the United States, recognized October 24th as the day to call the White House. “If we get enough people to call Washington, D.C. at the same time to complain about the same thing, the government will take notice,” said organization president Natalie Juarez. “In fact, if we override the phone lines with people complaining of Darfur, it’ll attract more attention.” The process of calling into the White House to get the President to raise a concern higher on his or her agenda is a fairly simple one, explained a Task Force representative. The caller dials the phone number for the White House, on which he or she will be connected to a live worker. This worker will ask what the purpose of the call is, whereupon the caller will state his or her wish that the President place higher priority on gathering help for the people of Sudan. At this point, the worker will record the object of the call, and send the data to the White House for processing. “We got 4 or 5 people from each class to call the President,” said Yu. “Unfortunately, people weren’t too excited about this activity, but I still consider it a success.” Due to the comparative time differences of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., the White House hotline, reachable at (202) 456-1111, shuts down each day at 2:00 pm Pacific Standard Time. After 2 pm, concerns can be raised by emailing HYPERLINK "mailto:comments@whitehouse.gov" comments@whitehouse.gov . “It’s our job to investigate, expose and change atrocities against the human race,” said club member Stephanie Diaz-Sandoval. “There’s so much we can do for other people.

The Oarsman

Human Rights Club Calls Washington