Author Archives

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Tomorrow’s my birthday

Tomorrow (August 17), I will celebrate another year ’round the sun. Accordingly, I am asking people, in lieu of a gift or card or anything else, to donate to a cause that I not only feel strongly about but one I work on every day.

As you may know, I work with No Business with Genocide. We work on a number of causes. We seek to raise awareness of the problem of genocide, which is as much a problem today as ever. One way we do this is by working with cities, states and localities to pass resolutions against genocide. Through our work, Gainesville, Florida passed such a resolution earlier this year.

We have also been working to free Hotel Rwanda hero & humanitarian Paul Rusesabagina. We have worked to raise awareness of his plight through traditional and social media; collected 12,000 petitions to President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the Rwandan Embassy in the US; got nearly 3,000 people to write their Congressional representatives on his behalf and organized a fundraiser for his legal defense.

Our main goal remains getting companies and governments to divest from nations that perpetrate genocide and other crimes against humanity. Working with a coalition, we were able to get Chevron to cut some of its payments to the brutal Myanmar military (there’s still work to be done here), Kirin Beer to cut its ties to the junta and we remain committed to getting Harry Winston (Swatch) to stop buying Burmese rubies.

For the Uyghurs, we are part of the #forcedlaborfashion coalition that is putting pressure on companies such as Nike to stop using cotton processed by slave labor.

We have a lot of work to do. We need your help. I need your help.

My birthday is tomorrow. If you can donate to this, I am asking you to. If you cannot, I am asking you to share it with your networks.

(No Business with Genocide is a part of the International Campaign for the Rohingya)

https://alysonchadwick.medium.com/the-rusesabagina-sham-trial-comes-to-an-end-54302934404f

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If you build it, he will come

Trump

This is the most personal thing I have ever written.

I just rewatched Field of Dreams. I am not sure how many times I have seen it before but enough to know large parts of it by heart. It has always choked me up because it is a beautiful film and I love baseball. My reaction was different tonight was different. For the first time, watching Ray Kinsella reconnect with his father, John, hit me on a very personal level.

My relationship with my father, John Gill, was the most important of my early childhood. I lived and died by what he thought of me. I was a Met fan because he was. I loved the Niners because he did. It is possible that I volunteered on Democratic campaigns (starting at age 8) because maybe it was what I thought would make him appreciate me. I am not going to lie. I am feeling a bit rudderless right now. Who exactly am I?

There is something that happens to you when the one person from whom you get your sense of self and self-worth rejects you completely.

It took years of mental and physical abuse for me to turn on him. I mean years. Even after he tried to kill me, several times, I wanted to go home to his house.

I took the hurt of that early rejection and I mummified it in a coating of anger. Anger is a secondary emotion, hiding something else. That hurt was so deeply buried that I thought my anger was a primary emotion. I had (and have) plenty of real reasons to hate my father. He beat me, tried to kill me, sent private investigators to follow me. He made me feel unsafe in my own head and when I had nightmares about him, I soothed myself with you never have to get married.

This facade fell briefly when I came back to his (and my grandmother’s) house. I found dozens, if not hundreds, of letters from writers he had helped. My first reaction was that old rejection he helped all these people and he never helped me. I went back to hating him almost immediately. How can you feel sad about his death? He was an awful person. He was but that isn’t the point.

When Ray reconnects with his father, I cried because that reconnection was something I have always craved. Something I have always longed for. Even if I didn’t know it. Watching that scene made all that anger and hate fade away.

You don’t forgive people because they deserve it, you forgive them because you do. This anger has been eating me up for most of my life and I just cannot hold onto it anymore.

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More coffee with do the trick

Sam Bee needed more coffee before her bogus segment on Rwanda

Coffee! It’s what’s for dinner!

No, not really. Dinner around here is usually salmon, sweet potatoes and veggies but I do consume a lot of coffee.

People always ask, “What’s new?” I always want to respond, “Not much!” but that isn’t true right now. So, what’s doin’ in Stony Brook?

First, I heard that Samantha Bee did a segment in Rwanda with a focus on conservation and how they did with refugees. I wrote about that for Medium. The Human Rights Foundation had this to say:

On Monday, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) sent a letter to television host and executive producer, Samantha Bee, expressing concerns over how Rwanda’s dictatorial regime will likely exploit her show’s segment, “Rwandans and the UNHCR Are Treating Refugees with Empathy,” to whitewash its long history of grave atrocities against refugees and refugee camps, following the country’s 1994 genocide, as well as its ongoing deadly campaign of espionage, extrajudicial executions, renditions, and intimidation against Rwandan dissident refugees living abroad.

The Human Rights Foundation.

I used to really like Samantha Bee. She was great on The Daily Show. She did a segment about someone I wrote for and I was offended that she lumped the website I wrote for in with a bunch of satire sites (I do write satire but try to keep a firewall between satire and general opinion). I haven’t watched her show recently. I do think it is incredibly irresponsible to do a piece on Rwanda about how they deal with refugees without looking at all the people who have been displaced (or worse) by President Paul Kagame.

From critic to being complicit

The view Bee gave of Rwanda was not even close to accurate and the segment will be used by the government as propaganda. Nice job, Sam! You went from being a critic to being complicit.

In other coffee needing news, I have several shows coming up that will be great.

  • Friday, August 6 @ 8 pm (doors open at 6). Governor’s Comedy Club — the Lil Room. Levittown, NY.
  • Saturday, August 14 @ 5:30 pm. Greenwich Village Comedy Club. NYC (this is my favorite venue!).
  • Friday, August 27 @ 9 pm. Clyde’s (used to be Barton’s Place). Miller Place, NY.

Can you help keep me employed?

Ok. I am asking. I work for several non-profits. We work to get companies to not make money from or give money to governments that commit genocide and other crimes against humanity, we are also working to support the people of Myanmar in their struggles post the coup in February and to stop the genocide against the Rohingya. We are also working to free Paul Rusesabagina (Hotel Rwanda).This is important work but we need your help. If you can, please donate here.

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Will you help us end genocide?

Genocide is all around us but we can stop it

If you are like most people, you probably don’t think about genocide a whole lot. In fact, when the Pew Research Center looked into it, the general, American knowledge of the Holocaust is depressing.

According to the survey of almost 11,000 Americans, 69% said the Holocaust happened between 1930 and 1950. One in 10 people thought it took place between 1910 and 1930, and 2% answered between 1890 and 1910. One in 100 people thought it was later than second world war, answering 1950-1970; and 18% did not know or gave no answer.

The Guardian

After World War II, there were lots of calls of, “Never Again.” The problem is the world didn’t really mean it. Bosnia. Rwanda. Darfur. All happened after World War II. Today, Genocide Watch has alerts for 20 different countries.

Moreover, companies today are still making money from genocide and other mass atrocities. Just about every company that makes athletic clothing uses cotton from the Xinjiang region of China. This is where more than one million Uyghurs have been placed in concentration camps. Let me repeat that. Today, in 2021, more than a million people are in concentration camps in China.

Head south from China and you will find yourself in Myanmar. Not only has the Muslim, Rohingya minority been persecuted for years but in February, the military arrested the recently, democratically elected government and took over the nation. Since then, military forces have killed 914 people. Meanwhile, companies like Chevron and Harry Winston (owned by Swatch) continue to do business with the military, enriching it and allowing it to continue its crimes against humanity.

What can I do about genocide?

No Business with Genocide (NBWG) is a nonprofit based in Washington, DC. It puts pressure on companies to stop funding or profiting from genocide. Its work led to Kirin Beer cutting all ties with the Myanmar military. It lobbies national, state, and local governments to pass resolutions condemning genocide and pledging not to use taxpayer dollars to fund it. Just last month, Gainesville, Florida passed such a resolution. This is also a way to educate people about the problem and to get a dialogue going.

Today, I am asking for your help.

NBWG is running a summer fundraising drive. Donations are tax-deductible. Your support will allow the organization to keep doing its important work.

PS. This is not just an issue for other countries. It can happen in the U.S., too.