giving without reservation
i ordered a documentary that i had heard about on some news program (nightline, 2020, one of them..) called “darius goes west”. i was so intrigued by this documentary because it was people who gave and loved this boy who has a form of muscular dystrophy that little boys get and won’t live past their early twenties. they become wheelchair bound around 10-12 and there presently isn’t a cure for it.
he wanted to get his wheelchair pimped on “pimp my ride” so i think it was 11 or 12 of his friends took him on a road trip across the country (from athens, ga to los angeles, ca and back) so he could experience the world before the disease takes his life. he never left his county prior to the trip, he got to see the ocean for the first time, see the grand canyon, go on a hot air balloon and so much more. they treated him as an equal not a sympathy case.
honestly i can’t give it any justice writing about it, i am at a loss for words. here’s the vehicle (not the trailer). and one last thing… for all twelve of my readers, i ask that you say a prayer or something for the cause and just for there to be more people like this in the world.
never again should mean never again
darfur
the reason i declared my major in international studies with an emphasis in political studies was largely fueled by a crazy passion that i had to change the world after watching a documentary on the genocide in rwanda. i couldn’t understand why no one did anything… almost a million people died in 100 days! after learning about this i wanted to change this, i wanted (as many others did) to never let this happen again.
president clinton said, “genocide can occur anywhere. it is not an African phenomenon. we must have global vigilance. and never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence.”
tonight i finally sat down and watched sand and sorrow, which is a documentary on the present genocide in the darfur region of sudan. i knew there was a genocide going on there, i knew part of the history of it but really wanted to learn its origin and current state which is why i rented it. genocide is real and it’s happening there. there are many conflicting reports on the actual statistics of the atrocities that are going on there and it’s impossible to really have a number of people affected but the movie said deaths are around 400,000 and there are over 2 million people displaced from their homes because of state-sponsored murdering. in watching the documentary, it’s amazing to learn how politics plays such a huge role in why the world (particularly the UN) hasn’t lived up to what it stands for.
in the convention on genocide, the UN basically says that those who are responsible will be held accountable and will be stopped. (fyi – the united states has signed this convention) on september 9th, 2004, secretary of state collin powell said that genocide was being committed. like many i was excited to hear this because once its declared, action was soon to follow. unfortunately declaring it did nothing. peace agreements were signed with northern and southern sudan with inclusion of darfur, but murder is still happening. the UN has their hands tied because china and sudan are strong allies.
so does that mean that because the UN can’t do anything we should just put a blind eye to it? my mind doesn’t work like that.
so, here’s my plea… write. write EVERY person who may represent you. my letters will be in the mail on monday and i hope yours will be out soon too.
click here to find out who is your representative in congress
click here to find your senator
write to john mccain, sarah palin, barack obama and joe biden.
in the end, one person probably can’t make a difference but neither does one wave on a cliff. but that one wave is accompanied by several which can errode a cliff and make it disappear eventually. do something to improve the quality of life for a person that had it taken away.
music within
“many people die with their music still in them. why is this so? too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. before they know it, time runs out.” – oliver wendell holmes
this was quoted by a teacher at the beginning of the movie “music within“. as i mentioned before, i am not a huge movie person but when i like one, you’ll hear about it 
thanks to netflix i am able to keep up with documentaries, music dvds and based on true story type films. this one is a based on a true story of the man who is the main force behind the americans with disabilities act which eventually passed in 1990.
people with disabilities have always had a place in my heart, i think most of this comes from growing up with a first cousin who has cerebral palsy. he has emotions, he communicated in his own ways… he is a person and i think many people forget that about those less fortunate than us. while in junior high i was a teachers aide to the special ed class and those kids were so full of love and would light up when you said hi to them. it’s amazing how they have few dumb stresses like we overwhelm our lives with.
the movie documents the life of richard pimentel, who grew up poor and never had a stable home but was an amazing public speaker. when he didn’t get a scholarship, he joined the army and got sent to vietnam. there he lost his hearing, but he still did amazing things! he worked to get disabled vets jobs and then trained dozens of companies on hiring disabled people.
there was one scene in the movie that killed me, it’s shown in the preview below where they get kicked out of a restaurant because they were different. this breaks my heart because we are all created in the image of God and it is so frustrating we think that somehow we are better than others. because they don’t deserve that, no one deserves that.
here are some stats from the worldbank:
* 750 million people in the world are disabled, according to the world health organization (WHO)
* 80% of disabled people live in developing countries
* 10% of the population in poor countries is disabled
* 1 in every 10 children around the world copes with a disability
* only 2–3% of disabled children in poor countries go to school
i completely recommend this movie, it’s based on a true story and you get a tiny sense of what it would have been like for a disabled person before the americans with disabilities act. here’s the trailer.
