Over the last several months, we’ve been based in both Albuquerque and D.C., applying for permits, securing event equipment, recruiting volunteers, publicizing the event, and coordinating boxes and boxes of bones from across the country to be transported to the National Mall. This week, we’ll be honest, it’s been a mix of utter chaos and anticipation as we’ve been working to pull this off! 

Yesterday, our friends at UPS picked up nearly 200 boxes from one of our storage locations in D.C., after loading up another 48,000 bones last week. We couldn’t be more grateful for their help during past few weeks, visiting each hub, meeting with the State Coordinators and volunteers who organized storage and making the entire process seamless. What seemed like endless number-crunching and unique logistical obstacles were welcomed by our fearless shipping heroes and it was so lovely to see pictures and hear stories from each unique pick-up location. There’s something beautiful about imagining those bones traveling thousands of miles, carefully packed, all headed for the same place, brought together to build something so much larger than themselves. 

It’s going to be quite a culmination come Saturday. Hours spent by individuals and communities crafting, packing and sending their handmade bones off to join others, each representing a voice, a story to be shared on the National Mall. We’ve been shocked to see how many members of the OMB family are traveling to D.C. to lay down their bones in person.  Some have been with the project since its inception, many from our home state of New Mexico, and have watched One Million Bones evolve from an idea into an international social arts practice. It will also be the first time we’ve actually met many of our most dedicated volunteers, coordinators and supporters from all corners of the country…we’re both excited and grateful for the chance to thank them all in person! 

We’ll also be welcoming the Students Rebuild On Tour team in D.C. after they’ve spent months on the road, visiting schools and community events, challenging those they met to make bones for hope and healing, resulting in thousands made for the National Mall installation. They’ll be parking their interactive trailer on the Mall for everyone to check out! 

If only every participant, every set of hands that crafted a bone, could join us on June 8, to physically lay the bones they made to rest. But we know that so many will be with us in spirit and it is truly a privilege to lay down bones in their name. We encourage anyone at home to tune in for our live stream on June 8 and 9 for a chance to virtually witness the bone-laying and listen to our speaker program and evening candlelight vigil.

We can’t wait to create this visible petition for all to see, to reflect on the visual that we create and what it represents to each of us, to listen to our speakers share the experiences that brought them here, to educate with workshops led by experts and activists, to advocate on Capitol Hill for a real change in foreign policy, and most importantly, to recognize the collective effort that carried this movement and the reality the bones represent.

Dr. Kapila is best known as the whistle blower on the genocide in Sudan. In 2003, he was the head of the United Nations in Sudan, where he was receiving information on a daily basis about the horrific crimes being committed. Alarmed and angered that officials were not paying attention or taking action, he knew he had to do something drastic. Dr. Kapila refused to be a bystander and decided to go to the media to let the world know what was going on in Sudan, knowing full well that this action would probably cost him his career. On a live television interview, he referred to Darfur as “the greatest scandal and tragedy of our time” and accused the Sudanese government of “ethnic cleansing on an inconceivably vast scale”.  He soon afterward resigned from the United Nations and continues today to raise awareness of ongoing genocide and mass atrocities. He is a Special Representative on Crimes Against Humanity at Aegis Trust and a Professor at the University of Manchester. Watch this amazing short, three-minute video of Dr. Kapila’s journey and be sure to watch him speak at the National Mall installation on June 8, 2013.

We are also so excited to announce Eva Kor as a speaker for Sunday's Candlelight Vigil!

Eva Mozes Kor is a survivor of the Holocaust, a forgiveness advocate, and a revered public speaker. Powered by a never-give-up attitude, Eva has emerged through a life filled with trauma as a brilliant example of the power of the human spirit to overcome. She is a community leader, a champion of human rights, and tireless educator of young people.

In 1944, Eva and her family were loaded into a cattle car packed with other Jewish prisoners and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Eva and her twin sister Miriam were just 10 years old. At Auschwitz, the girls were ripped apart from their mother, father and two older sisters, never to see any of them ever again. Eva and Miriam became part of a group of children used as human guinea pigs in genetic experiments, under the direction of the now-infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Approximately 1,500 sets of twins were abused, and most died as a result of these experiments. Eva herself became gravely ill, but through sheer determination, she stayed alive and helped Miriam survive. Approximately 200 children were found alive by the Soviet Army at the liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945. The majority of the children were Mengele twins. Eva and Miriam Mozes were among them.

In 1995, Eva opened CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana, with a mission to prevent prejudice and hatred through education about the Holocaust. Thousands of people, including many school groups, have visited CANDLES since it opened. In 2003, the museum was destroyed by a hate-filled arsonist. Eva vowed to rebuild, and with the help of a generous public outpouring of support, the museum was rebuilt and reopened in 2005.

Eva has delivered her message all over the world, including several times in Germany, Israel, and Poland, and was a featured speaker at the 10^th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Her story is documented in the award-winning film Forgiving Dr. Mengele and the popular young adult book Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz. Eva is an advocate for genocide prevention, having organized and participated in multiple projects dedicated to ending the genocide in Darfur and commemorating the Rwandan genocide. She has worked with fellow forgiveness advocate Kizito Kalima, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder of the Amahoro Peace Project in Indianapolis, Ind.

www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org

-On March 18, notorious Congolese warlord Bosco "The Terminator" Ntaganda, co-commander of the M23 rebel group, turned himself in to the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda, seven years after an indictment from the International Criminal Court. Read what Sasha Lezhnev, senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, thinks this means moving forward here.

-Former Irish president Mary Robinson was announced as the new U.N. Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa, and will be focused on supporting the implementation of the recently signed Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes region of Africa.

-Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) introduced a resolution in the House on March 21, 2013 calling for increased efforts by Members of Congress, the Administration and the international community to work towards achieving long-term peace and stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read the full text of H.Res. 131 here.

-The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted to send a special peacekeeping brigade to the DRC to battle rebel groups in the eastern region. The "intervention brigade" of 2,500 is unprecendented in its offensive nature and will join the larger MONUSCO mission, extended until March 2014, in the DRC.

-Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, announced an agreement signed by Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon on March 30 to address the rampant sexual violence rates in the DRC, following a ten-day trip. Committments in the agreement include fighting impunity for such crimes, offering support services for surviviors, ensuring better control over mineral resources, and working with the state, NGOs, and donors to prevent future gender-based violence, among others.

Our NYC coordinator, Monic Cohen, created an event in NY in late February that was, by all accounts, a most marvelous evening. Here's a video for you, and Monica shared a little about her feelings about the night below.

A Night of Bones and Music from Monica Cohen on Vimeo.

On February 28, 2013, One Million Bones partnered with 29Salon to offer a night of art activism and music. The event intended to create an community atmosphere of consciousness, connection, and deep meaning through art. While listening to music, participants were asked to make bones with clay and reflect on several survivor testimonies read before each performance.

29Salon is a monthly music and reading series that takes place at Sweet 180 in New York City, where artists perform, share and collaborate in an intimate setting. I curated the event and put together two incredible bands: Lisa Jaeggi <http://lisajaeggi.com/>  and T.H.E.M <https://twitter.com/THEMladies>.  We were happy to see 40 people attend this event, and were impacted and changed by the experience. I realized that night that sometimes it is not about the number of bones we craft that makes an experience successful, but it is the ability to transmit the message that the bones can convey. 

The outcome was a wonderful combination of two profound experiences: watching a live performance of beautiful music while taking part in a physical and mindful act of humanitarianism. 

We first heard about Neema by way of an organization called Maman Shujaa of Congo, but as we read about her, we learned that was just the very tip of her story.  This link will take you to her bio on the WorldPulse site, and this is a link to an interview with her.

Interestingly, Neema has many connections in Santa Fe (right in One Million Bones' backyard), and this is a link to a radio interview she did with SantaFeRadioCafe. You'll want to scroll down to September 12, 2012.

We hope, hope, hope you can join Neema and all the rest of us on the National Mall, on Saturday, June 8th. It's really not too early (or too late) to make travel plans.  We even have a webpage to help with that!

I missed an entire week. But there were reasons.  I was traveling on One Million Bones business. We were filming for a documentary. We were hosting workshops in the last run up to the National Mall.

Forgive me, and rest assured I have an amazing bit of information to share with you today.  I hope that makes up...

You know, we are 75 days out from the event.  Every day a little bit more of the programming gets put in place and confirmed.  Last week, the activities we've been talking about for Monday, June 10th -- the closing of the event, as it were-- were officially announced.

Act Aaginst Atrocities: an advocacy day.

It's going to be amazing!  It's organized in partnership with Enough! There is training and support to make it super successful.  You have to sign up ahead of time.  Do it here!  Do it now!

Sierra Leone!

Somaliland!

Romania!

Pakistan!

Japan!

And that's only some of the countries around the world!  Want us to share more?  Let us know in the comments.

Guest Blog Post: Shlomo Bolts is a Policy Fellow at Syrian Expatriates Organization. He is also a Research Consultant for the Orthodox Jewish social justice group Uri L'Tzedek, and holds an MPhil in Modern Society and Global Transformations from Cambridge University.

In the early 1900's, my great-grandfather bid farewell to his family in Europe, and left with his brother to make the long overseas journey to the United States. Little to their knowledge, this was the last time they would see their family. In July 1941, Hitler's troops invaded my great-grandfather's home village, Vitepsk, and killed 15,000 Jews in a single week. The rest of his family was never heard from again.

Seventy years later, I started elementary school, and began learning of the tragedy that befell my people in the Holocaust. At the yearly Holocaust commemorations, which were all-day affairs at my Orthodox Jewish school, I always went through a mixture of emotions. Sadness: So many good people were lost, so many happy communities wiped out. Why did they have to die? Disbelief: How did it happen? One day they had normal lives, the next day they were victims in a history book. Anger: Where was the world?! Where were they? They sat back and watched! I resolved that if I ever saw mass atrocities occurring, I would not just watch.

There have been numerous instances of mass atrocities since the Holocaust. In each instance, the world intervened too late, or not at all. No action was taken to stop the Cambodian Killing Fields or Rwanda's Hundred Days of Hell. Instead, millions suffered until local actors (the Vietnamese Army and the Rwandan Popular Front) finally overthrew the perpetrators by military force. During the Bosnian Genocide, the world failed to intervene as the Milosevic regime indiscriminately shelled Bosniak civilians. Only after the Srebrenica Massacre of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims was the world finally shamed to act, launching a NATO bombing campaign until Milosevic stopped the killing.

I was personally involved in a great deal of activism surrounding the Darfur Genocide. While I am proud of my work there, and of the impressive mobilization that took place, ultimately, we failed to catalyze international action to protect civilians. The perpetrator, Omar al-Bashir, still sits in power; his hold on Darfur is most likely stronger because he used mass civilian slaughter as a military strategy.

In March 2011, residents in Deraa, Syria began protests against the torture of detained youths from the city. Police forces of the dictatorial Assad regime cracked down with tanks and gunfire, but protests only grew stronger, and soldiers defected rather than shoot their own people. Soon, pro-democracy demonstrations had engulfed all of Syria, and defected soldiers were organizing into the Free Syrian Army to defend civilians from their government. Then the regime escalated its crackdown, first with artillery bombardments, then with airstrikes, then with house-to-house killings and mass rapes. Now, at least 70,000 Syrians are dead and over 2 million have fled their homes. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has called Syria a "bloody center of history," and the death toll of Syrian civilians rivals that of Bosnian civilians during the Genocide.

The Torah states, in Leviticus 19:16, "Do not spread gossip amongst your people; do not stand idle as your fellow bleeds. I am the Lord." The great Medieval scholar Rashi interprets this passage to mean that one should not watch his fellow die if he capable of saving him. A subsequent scholar, Choshen Mishpat, elaborates that in responding to the danger of another, one should not be overly zealous to preserve his own safety. Can we honestly say that, with regards to the slaughter in Syria, the world has done all that it could for the Syrian people? How much longer can we sit back and watch? How many more excuses can we make?

There are many interpretations to the situation in Syria today. Some call it a civil war. Some call it a democratic revolution. Still others call it a sectarian conflict. However, if we do not act, I believe that when our great-grandchildren open their history books to the section on Syria 2011-2013, they will read first and foremost about the mass atrocities that we allowed the Assad regime to commit during this time. And then they will ask: Where was the world?!

We do not need to be mere spectators to history, watching mass slaughter pass us by. There are concrete steps, large and small, that every person can take to raise awareness of the crisis in Syria, and they need not even be political. Syrian Expatriates Organization has sponsored a wide range of arts and culture projects inside Syria. I am working with members of the American Jewish community to develop a Syria-themed supplement to the Passover Haggadah. There is lots you can do. Every little bit helps.

The situation in Syria looks grim. In fact, the killings we see now could be the blackness that heralds the dawn, or they could signal the start of a still-darker chapter in Syrian history. To an extent, we can decide which it is, with our action or with our silence. Let us make the right choice.

He said, "When you make something with your hands, it changes the way you feel, which changes the way you think, which changes the way you act."

Remarkable words from a remarkable man.  

This is what our Nevada State Coordinator, Misty Ahmic wrote about him:

Human beings as a species have evolved oven tens of thousands of years into a group of organisms that have the highest levels of intelligence on the planet earth. Through this intelligence we were able to domesticate wild animals and crops, develop into stable settled societies, learn to govern in ways that allow for everyone to have a voice, conquer the high seas, and develop means of communication to allow each person to express their individuality to one another in their own personal way.  This intelligence has also lead to some of the more atrocious acts one species has ever visited upon itself…
             

 Many of us have chosen to take an active role in doing whatever we can to bring attention towards the cessation of the murder and mutilation of people based on their birth race, religious beliefs, or inability to choose their sex at birth, or for any other reasoning the perpetrators would use to justify their unspeakable acts.  Many magnetic and amazing people have come together across a myriad of organizations to help one another to accomplish this goal.

In the beginnings of the genocides in Rwanda, Carl Wilkens witnessed the pleas of help to the UN, and the rest of the world in the midst of merciless slaughter by the Tutsis of Rwanda as they watched all of their American and European friends evacuate and flee for neighboring African Nations. Carl Wilkens is an individual who personifies a group of amazing humans.  He is a person who has stared genocide and poverty in the face without backing away from it.  In Rwanda when all foreigners were ordered to leave the country he alone stayed behind to assist those who were directly in the path of danger, people he had grown to love and care for.  In a situation where he was “ordered” to evacuate the country Carl chose instead to exist as a FREE human being, in order to help others become the same.  As a result of his efforts in Rwanda after the genocides began, he helped save nearly 500 Tutsis. His “shoes” are ones that many of us would be honored to fill for even just a moment and the number of lives he has touched through his efforts and ministry are almost unimaginable. That one man can give so much of himself and his life to the service of others is a shining example to all of humanity. If we can just learn to live our lives outside of our own shoes we may learn what it takes to live in the shoes of others.

Carl's website is World Outside my Shoes.  Please spend some time there, read his book, and come to see this amazing man at the Installation in DC.