Falling Whistles

In Venice Beach California, there is a little garage behind a house with cars, surf boards, and bicycles. This little garage also contains an office where people are campaigning for peace in Congo and igniting dreams of change in this war-torn African country and also in our American society. Welcome to Falling Whistles.

Falling Whistles started with an individual on a journey who encountered the realities of the "world's largest war." The story is best told by its author at www.FallingWhistles.com but the origin of the name comes from the front lines in the Congo. Child soldiers who are too small to carry guns are given whistles and sent to the front lines of battle. The founders of Falling Whistles are hoping to turn their weapon of war into a symbol of protest and peace in the United States.

The Congo feels far away. It doesn't seem possible that over 5 million people have died in this conflict in the last decade. I cannot absorb that number and I'm not sure I want to. It is tempting to put this and many other facts into the part of my brain that tries to cope with the fact that Darfur, Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Burma still exist they way they do.

The truth of the matter is that a part of the Congo is in the computer that I am typing this on. It's in my cellphone. It's probably in yours.

Congo is one of the most resource rich countries in the world. In addition to having the capability to feed the world's population until 2050, it is rich in minerals. Gold, copper, tin, coltan. This last one is the one that ends up in the small electronic devices we buy, such as our cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, and laptops because it is able to generate a powerful electric charge. Illegal exportation of these minerals is funding the conflict in Congo.
What does this all mean? Easy answers are not available but people who can start thinking about these issues are. If we pay attention, we may discover new ways (however big or small) to use our privilege, power, mobility, and money to enact change. Holocaust survivor and peace advocate Elie Wiesel challenges us to do everything within our domain to stop oppression and injustice. this means in your backyard. Your backyard may be bigger than you realize.

The founder of Falling Whistles said something this past week that made me think about things in a different way. He basically commented that while the human death toll is horrible, the real tragedy lies in the loss of human potential and creativity. We will never know how our world would be different had 5.4 million Congolese people had the opportunity to reach their human potential.

What could have been...In a world where my cell phone contains a piece of the Congo. My liberation as a human is bound up with another.

The place to go from here is to start where you are. Visit Falling Whistles and read the story, learn more about the situation and how you can become more involved. In the future, you may be able to support a bill in Congress that would push for more accountability in conflict mines in Congo. You can start to think about how your life choices affects the human in the room next to you, or the house next to you, or the state next to you,or the country next to you.

You can buy a whistle and wear it as a symbol of protest against the atrocities in Congo. If you buy the whistle off of the website 100% of the proceeds go to an organization in Congo that is working to rehabilitate war-torn children.

You can tell the story of the Congo to others.

The world is changed by those who speak out. Whistleblowers. Rarely understood in their time, history looks back and calls them courageous. (Falling Whistles)

Peace as an Academic Pursuit and Hopefully More

Many people think of "peace" as an end goal. In some respects, I suppose it is. But the word peace is vague and loosely interpreted, often bringing to mind trite phrases spoken at beauty pageants like, "If I win the crown, my platform will be to advocate for world peace."

Aside from the complexities of the meaning of the word, what does one gain by studying peace? What does one "do" with a degree in Peace & Conflict Resolution? The latter question is probably what I get asked the most by people who learn that I am pursuing peace as a degree. Quite naturally, diplomacy and foreign affairs in a venue such as the UN is an option (which is what most people assume is THE path after this degree), as is my current field in international education, or even an entrance into the world of NGO's like Peace Brigades International, Invisible Children, or Oxfam, etc. (By the way, look up these organizations if you have time. Good causes for real change in the world.)

My future career, per se, is not my first concern at this point. In this next year, I simply want "peace" to become more than a feel-good word and something that spurs me to action, whether in my professional life, personal life, or both. I do not believe that someone needs a degree of any kind to become an advocate for peace. However, I have chosen to pursue peace academically so that I can begin to understand it in the context of history, politics, psychology and sociology. What parts of peace are a process, an attitude, a lifestyle, a delicate balance, a policy, a decision, a series of moments?

Regardless of what the future may hold for me in the field of peace, I remember studying abroad in Cyprus two years ago and looking forward to my Cyprus & the EU class every week. My professor talked about when he and his father escaped the division of Cyprus in 1974 and how he has devoted his life to understanding his country's conflict and being a part of its reconciliation. I listened to both Greek and Turkish Cypriots tell me of their losses as well as their hopes for the future. I met the people at the US embassy in Nicosia who shared how they develop programs for children to interact with the other community for perhaps the first time. I could easily see that peace for these people was not a singular moment or a vague goal, but a daily journey. Something in me sparked. I care about these things.

My journey into discovering the impact of the peace process has already begun. But the best, I suspect, is ahead.