ETHIOPIAN HERITAGE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
Invites you to the First Annual Ethiopian Heritage Festival (JULY 1-3/2011)
The first annual Ethiopian Heritage Festival will be held in Washington D.C. from July 1, 2011 to July 3, 2011. The Festival will be held at the {www:immaculate} and majestic George Town University multi-sport facility conveniently located in the heart of D.C. located at 3700 O St. in Georgetown with free parking.
This first annual Ethiopian Heritage festival themed “CELBRATE & DISCOVER” Ethiopia is one of a kind celebration and is organized by the Ethiopian Heritage Society of North America (ESHNA). The society requests the attendance and participation of all in the Festival. The Festival intends to proudly display Ethiopia’s rich heritage and diversity through its various three days event. The Festival includes historical exhibition, cultural shows, delicious food, contests, music, sports, symposiums, and workshops focusing on Ethiopia. What’s more, the Festival is family friendly and encompasses various events for children in our Children Amba. Simply put, the Board of the Ethiopian Heritage Society has worked tirelessly to make this Festival one that lives up to its name and is expected to be a memorable occasion for all.
From its inception to the successful ‘Kick-Off’ party on May 14, 2011 held in Washington D.C., the Society has made every effort to make the Festival an appealing and glamorous experience to all. The Festival and the formation of the Society is an answer to the public’s long, repeated and frequent call to have an Ethiopian Festival where Ethiopians from all different background, ethnicity, religions, beliefs, values, and political opinion gather and celebrate our common heritage and home – Ethiopiawent. Washington D.C. is selected because it’s a city where hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians reside, and is home to the largest number of Ethiopians outside of Ethiopia.
While the Society invites you to the Festival and hope it will be an unforgettable fiesta, the Society strongly believes that there is more work to be done in the coming years to make the Festival even more inclusive, more representative, and more closer to the goal and mission it set out to achieve. Accordingly, the Society invites all with skills, knowledge, or talent to join us in making a more perfect festival in the coming years. The Society, therefore, renews and reiterates its call to all Ethiopians with ideas and thoughts on how to better and improve the Society or the upcoming festivals to be a part of us.
The Society also wishes to extend its invitation to the business community to partner with us in promoting your businesses, take advantage of our limited vendor spaces, and showcase your products to the many Ethiopians who will be in attendance at the Festival. Further, historians, religious leaders from all religions and denominations, professionals, and community leaders are invited to share their vast expertise, experience, and skills in making the Festival and the society more effective.
Therefore, the emphasis of the first Ethiopian Heritage Festival is our common heritage, culture, tradition, and, celebration of our uniqueness. This Festival will be the first and major historical event and celebration designed to promote Ethiopia and Ethiopians the aim being to connect the past with the present and to pass it on to the future generation. Consequently, all roads should lead to Washington D.C., Georgetown University, beginning July 1 to July 3, 2011 to be a part of an invigorating and historical Festival.
For more information please visit our website www.ethiopianheritagesociety.org or contact us at [email protected]
Tel# 202-466-1677
Alemayehu G. Mariam
[This commentary is an expanded version of remarks I gave at the annual SEED Award Dinner (Society of Ethiopians Established in Diaspora)[1] held at the Georgetown University Conference Center, Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2011.]
I thank the Executive Board of SEED and its chairman Prof. Melaku Lakew for selecting me as one of the 2011 honorees.
The very acronym of the organization is inspiring. Seeds germinate, become seedlings, develop roots and grow. In time, they bloom and blossom into beautiful flowers and drop new seeds for the next generation. For the last 19 years, SEED has been growing and blossoming, and this evening we see the seeds of SEED in the faces of these extraordinarily accomplished young men and women we are honoring.
I am proud there is an organization such as SEED to recognize Ethiopians who have aspired to make their own small contributions to the cause of Ethiopianity and humanity. For that, we should all celebrate SEED and congratulate its Board and members for having the foresight to establish and sustain for nearly two decades a non-partisan civic organization dedicated to recognizing the contributions of Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia regardless of ideology, political affiliation, ethnicity, nationality, religion or race. SEED is a shining example of what individuals can accomplish by acting collectively through civic society institutions.
I am proud and deeply humbled in being selected to be among a group of honorees that has made extraordinary contributions in the service of all Ethiopians. W/o Abebech Gobena has been called by many as “Africa’s Mother Teresa” for her life-saving humanitarian work with orphaned and abandoned children and abused women. Dr. Woldemeskel Kostre trained generations of Ethiopian Olympic gold medalists and other athletes who have set numerous world records. Professor Redda Tekle Haimanot has made singular contributions to the eradication of polio and helped improve health care access in one of the most medically underserved parts of Ethiopia. Ato Ezra Teshome is widely recognized for his extraordinary contributions to the eradication of polio and helping to empower poor women and children in Ethiopia.
There are two Ethiopians who are being honored tonight posthumously. Professor Hussein Ahmed was an outstanding scholar whose original research illuminated the role of Islam as a cohesive factor in Ethiopia. Dr. Melaku E. Bayen was the first Ethiopian physician to graduate from an American university. He coordinated a Pan-Africanist campaign against Italian aggression in Ethiopia in the 1930s.
When I find myself standing among these towering and heroic figures, I remind myself, in the words of the poet Robert Frost, that I “have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep”.
These individuals are great role models for me, all of us here tonight and the next generation of young Ethiopians.
Speaking about young Ethiopians, I am especially proud to share this stage and event with the high school and college graduates honored this evening. The academic achievements of these young people are among the absolute best in America. Their community service and extra-curricular activities are inspiring to all of us. I am so proud of these young people that my “cup runneth over.”
I am not only proud this evening but also blessed. I share this stage with my daughter Abigail who is being honored in her own right for extraordinary academic achievements and community service. What took decades for me to learn, she mastered in her teen years: True democratic citizenship involves taking individual responsibility to help one’s community and those less fortunate than oneself with a sense of duty, obligation, commitment and honor. I have learned from her that when young people look beyond themselves and their daily distractions and frustrations, they become a mighty force for good and humanity.
This evening I want to say a few words to you from the heart. Many of you know me for the things I have said and written from the mind. Every week in my commentaries, I speak in the language of facts, statistics and evidence. I try as best I can to weave facts through a fabric of persuasive analysis and argumentation to convey my message. But speaking from the heart is more difficult because one has to penetrate the inner crust of facts and statistics and speak from the bedrock of truth.
The truth is Ethiopia’s young people are Ethiopia’s future. Nearly 70 percent of the Ethiopian population of 80 million is estimated to be young people (50 percent of them under age 15). An old Ethiopian proverb reminds us: “Our youth are today’s seeds and tomorrow’s flowers. (Ye zare frewoch, ye’nege abebawoch).” For me, the most important question today revolves around these future flowers in Ethiopia and in the Diaspora.
We in the older generation often ask the question, “What can we teach and do for our young people to prepare them for the future? How can we guide them to a better future?”
The right question in my view is: “What can we learn from young Ethiopians today?”
I believe the vast majority of young people everywhere share one common virtue: Idealism. They believe they can change the world and make it a better place despite the endless wars, communal and sectarian conflict and human rights abuses. Young people want freedom, peace and equal opportunity. They are deeply offended by unfairness and injustice. They have little tolerance for dishonesty and hypocrisy, the principal reasons for their disengagement from politics which they think is all about lying, money and corruption. They despise those who abuse their powers. They have contempt for double-talkers. They are turned off by the older generation’s attitude of “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do.” They are disappointed when they see us lacking in courage and integrity and selling out for a few pieces of silver.
When I look across the proverbial “generation gap,” I see a gap in thinking, attitude and perspective, not age.
The young people have a “can-do” attitude; for most of us in the older generation, it is “no can do”. They find reasons to do things, we find excuses not to. When churn over old and tired ideas, they come up with innovative ones. When we wallow in despair over what could have been, they bubble with hope and excitement over what could be. We hesitate, they act. We brood, they think. We see the darkness in the tunnel, they see the light at the end. We drive looking through the rear view mirror; they cruise along looking through the windshield. Some of us in the older generation want things to happen. Many of us sit around and wish it to happen. Our young people make it happen! Such is the nature of the gap we need to bridge.
A long time ago, we in the older generation started out on the road to idealism, but somewhere along the way we took a detour to a destination called realism. There we began to worship at the altar of greed, power, wealth, fame and the rest of it. When our realism ultimately proved disappointing, we became cynical and concluded that in a dog-eat-dog world, only the strong survive. We became self-centered and indifferent to the suffering of the weak and defenseless, turned a blind eye to their plight, a deaf ear to their pained cries and muted our lips to the injustices inflicted upon them by the powerful.
We must now return to our idealist roots. George Carlin, the irreverent satirist, said “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” Maybe you have seen a glimpse of that disappointed idealist in yourself. But there is nothing shameful in being an idealist. The greatest political and moral leaders of the world over the past century have been idealists. They were great visionaries because, like young people, they could imagine and envision a much better future. Gandhi told the British colonial masters: “In the end you will leave India because 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate.” Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. “dreamt that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Nelson Mandela pledged, “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another…” These idealists were laughing-stocks in their day, but in the end they won and the world is a much better place because of their struggle, leadership and principles.
To be idealistic also means to be ready, willing and able to unlearn and change outdated attitudes, beliefs and fears. It took me a long while to appreciate Gandhi’s teaching, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Today I think in terms of humanity and not ethnicity or even nationality. I replaced my ideological rigidity with intellectual flexibility. I once kept silence in the face of brutality, today I champion accountability. I watched others relate on the basis of enmity, today I seek to promote cordiality. My ultimate hope is to mobilize global unity against inhumanity.
In 2005, I broke out of my hardened cocoon of realism into the mushy soft world of idealism. Following the May elections in Ethiopia that year, 193 unarmed protesters were massacred by government troops in the streets, and 763 shot and wounded. Over thirty thousand people were rounded up and imprisoned. The post-election events of 2005 plunged millions of Ethiopians into the abyss of cynicism and despair. It had the opposite effect on me.
My conscience was seared by the sheer brutality and inhumanity of that bestial and barbaric massacre. I thought of the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa in March 1960 where apartheid policemen killed 69 unarmed black South African protesters. I was too young to speak out for the Sharpeville victims, but not too old now to speak for the 193 Ethiopians and the thousands of other victims of crimes against humanity.
That is how I became idealistic. I came to believe that it is possible to have an Ethiopia where citizens can peacefully protest the actions of their government and not be massacred for it. No person should become a political prisoner or a target of government persecution because s/he dissents with those in power. I believe those who hold the reins of power in Ethiopia must bow their heads before the law and not sit on the throne as the deities of the law. In other words, they are not the gods of law but the law’s humble and faithful servants. I began to imagine that no person in Ethiopia should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. I even had the audacity to imagine that there must be an independent free press in Ethiopia to stand as a watchdog over government and expose corruption. There must be an independent judiciary to administer justice and hold accountable those who abuse their powers. Elections must be free and fair, and young people should be allowed to play a central role in the country’s future. Long story made short, I became, as some might say, a hopeless idealist.
When you become an idealist, you stand up for your convictions. You preach and teach what you believe in. So I do my best to promote democracy, human rights and freedom in Ethiopia and Africa and elsewhere. I try to be the voice of the voiceless, though some may think I am just a voice in the wilderness.
It is true that I am a relentless critic of oppression, injustice and dictatorship. No doubt, some will laugh and call me naïve for my efforts. Surely, I must know that a few idealists cannot possibly change the world. That may be true, but I am persuaded by Margaret Mead who observed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Idealism also means using ones misfortunes to help others in daily life. Several years ago, my wife developed breast cancer which was discovered in its earliest stages through an annual routine mammogram and successfully treated. Though my wife had an excellent outcome, so many Ethiopian women die needlessly by not doing regular mammograms and hiding the fact of that disease from their loved ones and friends once diagnosed. She decided to come out in public and write a “letter to my Ethiopian sisters” to raise awareness about breast cancer and how to prevent it from taking so many lives. Some well-intentioned people advised her not to make her condition public implying that there is something embarrassing about having the disease. She is an incorrigible idealist in her own right and believed that if more Ethiopian women knew the truth about early detection and treatment, they will be able to beat breast cancer every time. Silence about breast cancer kills more of our sisters and mothers than breast cancer itself. Let us all be whistleblowers against breast cancer!
We need to bridge the generation gap I spoke of earlier. We can do that if we speak the same language as our young people. We bridge the gap when we learn from each other. They can teach us about the future and the great things they can accomplish; and we teach them about the past, how to avoid the mistakes we made and the things we did right.
Some may think my bridge-building ideas are impractical, unattainable, fanciful and the stuff of dreamers. In my own defense, I will answer them with a question: After all, what do expect from a utopian Ethiopian?!?
In the struggle of all idealistic people, the outcome is always the same as Gandhi taught: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
We will assuredly win if we are on the side of our young people. If you don’t believe me, talk to the young people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya… I say, let’s join the Youthvolution in Africa.
If I have one message for all of you, and particularly the young people here tonight, it is that we all need to be the voices of the voiceless and stand up and be counted. In the words of the great Bob Marley, I say: Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights (and their rights too)! Don’t give up the fight! Make change happen one person at a time.
Thank you SEED and all of you who have come to honor us tonight!
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Barack Obama
[1] SEED is a non-partisan civic organization established in 1993 dedicated to the recognition of Ethiopians and Ethiopian friends who have demonstrated outstanding achievements as educators, scientists, artists, religious leaders, high school and university students and community leaders. http://www.ethioseed.org
Previous commentaries by the author are available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ and http://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/
The Obama administration, anxious to deny al-Qaida’s most dangerous offshoot more space in which to flourish, urged Yemen’s wounded president on Monday to immediately step aside and clear the way for a transfer of power aimed at averting all-out civil war.
The administration’s call came as U.S. diplomats worked with Saudi Arabian and European officials to revive a plan to replace Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh with a national unity government and end violence that has killed scores of people and splintered the regime, the Yemeni military and the country’s powerful tribes.
There was no sign that Saleh, who was in Saudi Arabia being treated for a wound he sustained Friday in a rocket attack, was ready to step down. Vice President Abed Rabbo Masour Hadi told European diplomats that Saleh’s “health is improving greatly and he will return to the country in the coming days,” according to the state-run news agency.
The return of Saleh, 68, who has held power since 1978, could lead to further bloodshed, something the Obama administration is anxious to avoid. U.S. officials have soured on their onetime ally after a tumultuous four months in which pro-Saleh gunmen attacked anti-regime protesters, top military officials and diplomats defected, and street battles erupted in the capital, Sanaa, between Saleh’s forces and those of a rival tribal sheikh.
Washington is worried that al-Qaida’s local branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, could exploit the growing unrest to expand a sanctuary in Yemen from which to launch attacks on neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, and U.S. targets.
“We are calling for a peaceful and orderly transition, a non-violent transition that is consistent with Yemen’s own constitution,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday. “We think an immediate transition is in the best interests of the Yemeni people.”
Members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, an amalgam of Yemenis, Saudis and others, including Americans, were behind the 2000 USS Cole attack, as well as the failed 2009 Christmas attempt to bomb an airliner over Detroit and a failed 2010 plot to ship bombs disguised as printer cartridges to the U.S.
A leading member of the group is Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, who has been linked to the bomb plots and who allegedly helped radicalize a U.S. Army major accused of killing 12 people and wounding 31 others in a 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas.
Some experts think that the danger posed by the group has been overblown, especially by Saleh, who they contend used it to squeeze out U.S. financial assistance – which rose to $217 million in 2010 from $102 million 2009 – and to bolster his image as a strongman indispensible to the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.
In his latest use of that tactic, several experts said, Saleh withdrew security forces from several areas in recent weeks, including the south-central coastal town of Zinjibar, allowing Islamic extremists to seize them.
“He’s willing to do anything to stay in power,” said Princeton University professor Bernard Haykel, who pointed out that Saleh employed Islamic radicals in the past to fight political threats.
Many experts, however, agreed that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula would benefit from a prolonged civil war that splintered Yemen, which was already embroiled in a northern tribal insurgency and a separatist movement in the south when massive protests demanding Saleh’s ouster began in February.
“They have the capacity to mount attacks against American interests. They’ve said they’ll do it again and the bigger the space that (the group) has to plan and mount operations against international targets, the more dangerous they become,” said Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“A failed state right next to the world’s biggest oil producer is bad.”
Until recently, the U.S. closely cooperated with Saleh. It dramatically increased U.S. aid and training for Yemen’s security forces in a bid to stabilize the impoverished country of 24 million at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Nearly 40 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
But in the face of ever-widening popular protests, U.S. officials threw their weight behind an Arab-drafted transition plan that called for Saleh to turn power over to Hadi, the vice president, within 30 days, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Hadi would lead a government comprising ruling party and opposition members until elections were held within two weeks.
Saleh refused three times to sign the plan, and the White House last week dispatched John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, to the region for consultations.
On Saturday, however, Saleh was evacuated to Saudi Arabia for treatment for a wound he suffered in a rocket attack on his palace, allowing the U.S., Saudi Arabia and European countries to revive the power transfer scheme.
Experts warned that even if he were to agree to the plan, the country’s dire economic straits could derail any chances for political stability.
“Yemen’s collapsing economy, that’s the big story,” Boucek said. “That is the source of all instability in Yemen.”
(By By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, McClatchy Newspapers. Special correspondent Adam Baron contributed reporting from Sanaa, Yemen.)
