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Opinion World is Indifferent to Missing Nigerian Girls “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ERNIE F OSTER Founder/Publisher B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER Executive Editor J ERRY F OSTER Advertising Manager L ISA L OVING News Editor H ELEN S ILVIS Multimedia Editor P ATRICIA I RVIN D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by O ne could not help but be impressed by the millions that turned out in Paris to stand against the Islamist terrorists who killed workers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and four others at a kosher grocery store. Two law enforcement offi- cers were also killed, bringing the total to 17. About 40 heads of state and more than a million others crowd- ed into Republique Square; even more rallied around France. In total, it is estimated that 3.7 rallied for freedom. They wore shirts and carried signs that said, “I am Char- lie.” Some said, “I am Muslim and Charlie” or “I am Jewish and Charlie.” Those crowds transcend- ed race, religious and political lines. President Obama got mixed reaction to his not attending the solidarity rally. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, someone with much less status, represented the United States. Critics said the president could at least have sent Vice President Joe Biden; Attor- ney General Eric H. Holder was in Paris and could have attended. The president may be doing something much more substantive by con- vening a summit on world terrorism at the White House in February. I wonder if these gatherings will address terror in Nigeria, where the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram abducted 276 girls, and still holds 219. A hashtag cam- paign, #BringBackOurGirls was joined by First Lady Michelle B ENNETT C OLLEGE Julianne Malveaux Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, British Prime Min- ister David Cameron and others. Few of the 40 who rallied in Paris have ever mentioned the abducted girls and those terrorists who took them. Indeed, the abducted girls have all but disappeared from the headlines and from the public con- those continuing to focus attention on the girls. People fear that Boko Haram may have sold the schoolgirls into slavery, forced some into mar- riage, or killed others. Given the fact that Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the UN Security Council have decried the Islamist militant terrorist group, it is alarming that the world communi- ty has been so indifferent to the plight of the abducted young girls. Some of the indifference does not start with the world, but in Nige- ria. Will Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president who is running for reelection, mention the girls at all before February, when voting It is alarming that the world community has been so indifferent to the plight of the abducted young girls sciousness. The girls were abducted on April 14, 2014. Since then, our attention has been riveted by other news from the African continent, as the Ebola virus killed thousands (we in the U.S. were mostly focused on our handful of casualties), and as ISIS has escalated its activity around the globe. While some have forgotten about the Nigerian girls, many have not. Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former Nigerian government official who is now vice president of the World Bank’s Africa Division, has been among takes place? Or, has the fate of 219 kidnapped girls been forgotten? Demonstrations have taken place daily in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, despite the fact that the police have ordered these demon- strations to stop. Meanwhile, Boko Haram continues its terrorist plundering in Nigeria, destroying villages and towns in the northeast part of the country and killing thousands. It is estimated that they have destroyed more than 3,700 structures – homes, churches, and public spaces. Tens of thousands of Nigerians have fled to border- ing Chad because they fear for their lives. I don’t know if it would be effective for world leaders to rally in Abuja to pressure Boko Haram to return the girls. I don’t know if T-shirts or signs saying, “We Are the Nigerian Girls” would do much more than direct attention back to these young students whose hopes and dreams have been stomped on by irrational ter- rorists. I don’t know if it would make a difference if Nigerians all over the world came together to demand return of the girls. I don’t know the efforts of feminists around the world would make a difference. I do know that about 219 Niger- ian girls are gone, and a terrorist group is responsible for taking them. I know that they are reputed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda and with ISIS. I know that while the world has rallied to show solidari- ty in the fight against terrorism in France, there has been no such gathering to show solidarity in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria. I don’t know (and I might be misin- formed) if offers to help contain or eliminate Boko Haram have been made by the world community. The war against terrorism has been embraced in Paris, with mil- lions there, and thousands in the rest of the world, taking it to the streets to express their outrage. Where is the outrage for the more than 200 Nigerian girls? Nine months after they have been snatched from their school, who remembers? Who cares? IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ- ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2014 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To see The Skanner News on your smart phone go to theskannermobile.com or scan this QR code with your app. • • • • • • • • Local news Opinions Jobs, Bids Sports Entertainment Music reviews Bulletin board RSS feeds Selma and the Folks at the ‘Back of The Line’ I wasn’t surprised that Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” was near- ly completely snubbed for the Oscar nominations last week, as were several “White” films and White actors and directors. I never thought that, after last year’s breakthrough for “12 Years a Slave,” the Oscar voting academy was going to make another power- ful drama that put Black Americans at the center of Ameri- can history the focus of this year’s Oscar ceremonies. Yes, some of the Oscar voters may have used the controversy over DuVernay’s portrait of Presi- dent Lyndon B. Johnson as fig-leaf protection to vote against it. That’s more despicable than the snub itself in my book. Although DuVernay’s depiction of Johnson is wrong, I never expect any film about a historical moment or per- son to be completely accurate – precisely because every film, no matter how deeply fact-based, is a fictional interpretation of the real story. “Selma” still stands out as supe- rior story-telling. It poignantly recounts one of the great moments – a triumph, laced through and through with tragedy – of 20th century American history. The film especially recalled for me one of the questions I obsessed over growing up in Boston in the 1960s. That was: who were the folks at the back of the line? I was fortunate in growing up in Boston, where the Black and the liberal White communities had Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner January 21, 2015 L AST C HANCE Lee A. Daniels very active ties to the Southern Movement. In the early 1960s, my brother and I joined an Episcopal church-based “freedom choir.” Later, we attended the Baptist church where Martin Luther King, Jr. had been a co-junior pastor while at theology school at Boston University. Nothing dramatized my obses- sion with that question more than the movement’s stand at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In the film, and in the real-life televi- sion films of that moment, we see the marchers as they stand, facing the storm troopers of the state. We know they know they were facing men who had no com- punction about killing Black people and their White allies, be they men, women or children. When I saw the television news reports of “Bloody Sunday,” that long-ago night in March, 1965, it made everything plain: Not just the movement’s commitment to nonviolence even in the face of Every film, no matter how deeply fact- based, is a fictional interpretation of the real story I was “wired” into the move- ment in a way few Northern teenagers were. But I didn’t kid myself. I knew I was many steps removed from the danger faced daily by the real civil rights activists and the Black Southern teens who involved themselves in the movement there. That was why, as much as I was inspired by the movement’s local and national leaders, whose names appeared in the news dispatches from the civil rights’ fronts, I always wondered about those who were there but out of the media spotlight. imminent danger. It also made plain what those in “the line” at Selma and elsewhere on the civil rights trail had done and were doing. They were protecting me – transforming the blows meant for me into a force that would expand the boundaries of opportunity for me all my life. Thankfully, I was also able to realize it wasn’t only all about me. I understood the movement’s other meanings, too: That intellectual keenness and “smarts” weren’t limited to the formally educated and the socially prominent. That rough-hewn speech could be just as powerful, if not more so, than polished oratory. That the ability to inspire and lead people existed in and was exercised by all sorts of people, and that participation in communal affairs and collabora- tion with others was vitally important if the community and individuals within it were to advance. I’m glad for the controversy about Ana DuVernay’s “Selma.” For it may provide another reason for some viewers of all ages to read some of the considerable number of significant nonfiction books that provide a more com- plete factual account of the movement in Selma and across the South and North, and of America in the 1950s and 1960s. That will not only give them a fuller understanding of the racist fury the freedom struggle in the South faced; it will also make even clearer the values that forti- fied the civil rights activists in the struggle, and why those values proved more powerful than the willingness of the region’s racist power structure and its henchmen to do evil. Embedded in that understanding is another powerful lesson that’s always worth re-affirming. It’s not only the leaders; it’s those at the back of the line, too, who make movements for social justice work.
