Sunday, January 31, 2010

Welcome to the Party of the Human Race

Pray the Devil back to Hell is a documentary about how Liberian women communicated their message of peace through the media. They knew the power of media, they spread the news all over newspapers, internet, and national and global medias. They prayed with handmade signs and printed peace t-shirts, they even threatened to strip naked in public. These women proved that peace is something you make, not something you can take for granted. They used less money/resources and time to make peace, and they earned honor and respect.

What made these women succeed? How are these women special from the rest of the world? Their gender, their color, their nationality, their citizenship… they are not just cartoon figures, they are mothers, they have the power and the guts to stand against men their sons’ age who refuse to share power. Men believe that women cannot be leaders of a political movement or a war, but all these women want is peace. “Peace is about every action we make every day, peace is the communicating.” But communicating leads to conflicts, and conflicts bring war.

Disney stated that women from other countries had much stronger reaction to the movie than anyone in the US. She questioned why Americans did not seem to care about the film while people from other countries equate the movie with their own political background, and are very affected by it. Do Americans really care about anything? When the earthquake occurred in Haiti, there were charity auctions everywhere in America, the Hollywood stars were answering phone calls for donation, and even Lawrence had the orchestra/arts auction for Haiti. But this war in Liberia has been going on for many years and the US doesn’t seem to care. All I could think about was the similar earthquake in China last year, the media did not cover it nearly as extensively as the Haiti earthquake. Hardly any people knew what happened, it is the difference of attention that I don’t understand.

What do we need to pay for justice? For instance, Google was threatening to pull out of China because China was using google to target human rights activists. Google pretended to care about the human rights, but profit was what they really cared about. After all Google is just a company, and a company places profit before free speech or whatever else. Similarly, some people like war because it makes more money than peace.

War is the parent of army. But if you are still proud of your military power, you should be careful, because you might be easily beaten by those Liberian women. They know what it is like to experience war every day, and they have nothing else to lose, which is more powerful than a weapon.

3 comments:

  1. "Peace is a Verb" says Abby Disney but does being peaceful alone solves the problem? No the verb must stand on its own with deeds to make peace loud. I agree with you that America as country is very selective as to how much information to offer her citizens and how to portray those information to make it seem as if there are only two things in on this planet earth. that is America and the Rest of there world. Then again, people invest where their hearts are and most times it is obvious that Rest of the world id out of the picture.

    There is is no doubts that these Liberian Women were brave and stood up for what was right and that is to "Speak Peace very Loudly".These women had no choice as mother, sisters and wives than to storm their world for peace because there is nothing painful than loosing a son, brother or a husband as a result of someones or a few group of peoples' selfish interest.
    I have been friends for over 8years with a a group of Liberians living in Ghana, and trust me I agree fully with Abby Disney that each Liberian has a story and they tell it with the same emotion and tears dripping down their cheeks as they unveil their history. But the good thing is they have moved on and the hope to which these people a rebuilding their country must send a signal to the rest of the world that the end to war must be NOW!.

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  2. Re:Zenabu
    "America as country is very selective as to how much information to offer her citizens"

    every country does...

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  3. Your comments point our attention again to how myopic US media can be with constant coverage of celebrity antics creating a haze of distraction away from ugly war and human rights infractions. Thank you.

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