Opinion
World is Indifferent to Missing Nigerian Girls
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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?
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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.