Project sheds light on practice of genocide

Letter to the editor

Re: “Holocaust education offers timeless lessons” (My View, Feb 10)

Holocaust education teaches critical lessons of tolerance, justice, and human rights, as Ashira Morris demonstrated in her recent column. These lessons merit legislative funding — and community engagement — because genocidal violence, with its roots in discrimination and intolerance, is still occurring in places such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

One Million Bones Tallahassee is an art-action project shedding light on the ongoing reality of genocide. The project engages participants with their hands, their minds and their hearts. Making bones from clay, participants learn the facts of genocide while reflecting on the lives of its victims and raising money for development in post-genocide regions.

Florida State University, PACE Center for Girls, and Peace Jam Southeast have all participated in the project; events are being planned at LeMoyne Art Foundation, Lively Technical Center and Temple Israel. The bones we are creating — already more than 1,000 — will be the focal point of an awareness event in Tallahassee on April 28, and in Washington, D.C., in April 2013. The dramatic visual of thousands of bones — or even 1 million — has the power to call necessary political attention to this issue.

JANE MCPHERSON
Organizer
One Million Bones Tallahassee
janemcphers@gmail.com

http://www.fsunews.com/article/20120214/OPINION02/202140303/Letters-editor