Giving Names

“Giving names is the first act of poetry”  -Yehuda Amichai

 

Today, there are five million internally displaced people living in Colombia: and in Atlanta there are five guys doing something about it.

You’ve heard of the U.S. drug policies, and you probably know something about them. You may even know about some of its entailing legislation, or maybe some grassroots-level actions like the “Just Say No” program initiated in public schools the late 1980’s. We’ve seen the good things that this can do, but there’s a lot to these policies, and lots you may not know.

Here’s what happens:

The U.S. government, in an effort to check illegal drugs at their source, sends American tax dollars to countries with high drug production to aid those governments in preventing drug stuffs from even being cropped. Colombia is one of those countries—remember 1998’s “Plan Colombia”? The Colombian government uses these funds to enforce drug policy, specifically with methods of aerial fumigation. (Think huge crop dusters spraying herbicides.) While this does knock out a lot of illegal drug harvesting, it also ends up taking down a lot of legitimate crops with it. This means completely admissible farm operations being forced out of their means and farmers forced to move off of their land.

Now add this: Colombia has been in the midst of a civil war for nearly half a century, and there have formed a number of guerilla revolutionaries whose aim is to topple the Colombian government. Smaller groups who cannot defend themselves pay militia-types to defend them from these guerillas, and these too have evolved into paramilitary organizations with their own agendas, also getting involved in the drug trade. And that’s just a scratch on the surface.  This means that Colombia is supporting a tremendously tense social and political climate, which as fostered fear in its citizens, and this fear has given birth to self-serving and unchecked violence.

“We’re dealing with a very paranoid country, and rightfully so,” says Caleb Collier, one of five behind Give Us Names—an operation out of Atlanta, aimed at bringing an end to this human crisis.

Three years ago, a handful of guys in Atlanta decided to get busy affecting change; “We wanted a way to fuse our passions and gifts through storytelling, and give a face and a name to issues pointed toward a specific cause in a specific country. We started researching and the situation in Columbia just kept coming up.” So, in 2007, they started splitting time between Atlanta and Colombia, hoping to find out more about the people caught in this crossfire. During a short stint last November, they asked what is the one thing is that they could do for the Colombian people.  The answer:  “Tell our story.”

While still working their day jobs as bellmen, waiters, engineers, and film editors, Michael, Caleb, Dan, Justen, and Zach travel back and forth to Columbia to visually capture the stories of the families and farmers who are internally displaced. These guys are finding ways to tangibly tell the stories of the internally displaced, and giving us here at home tangible ways to help.  Give Us Names gives a face and a name to people who are caught in the middle and have no way out.  “American citizenry is an important tool, and our main focus is to pressure the American government to stop spending tax dollars on such a cause.”

The fact is, the problem does not lie in the United States’ mission to end illegal drug production, but in the manner in which it is being carried out–the system needs to be tightened and more closely monitored. By naming proactive legislation and identifying congressmen who are in favor of human rights action in Colombia, Give Us Names hopes to equip Americans with the knowledge to make change happen.

Give Us Names is currently working on a series of short films, each focusing on a different cause of displacement, and if everything goes according to plan, we’ll be seeing the first by October 2011. I spoke with Caleb just before he left to join the others in a Northern Colombian city (undisclosed for safety’s sake), where they’ll be looking for their first story. “Our role now is to honor this mission of giving names,” Caleb says, and in the meantime will share their day-to-day encounters via blogging. Here, the guys share stories from their everyday Colombia: paramilitary groups evicting families at gunpoint, a mother forced to watch as her children are slaughtered, orphaned children left without protection.

This is the status quo, the everyday life, just another day for a Colombian.  The civil unrest in Colombia stretches back two hundred years even, when in 1810, riots erupted that would eventually gain them their independence from Spain. “They’re still stirring in the streets, heading to town squares, demanding a voice in the future of their country.  Theirs is a liberty not yet attained,” reads a recent Give Us Names blog post, “a dream that has yet to be realized.”

But there is no room for a defeatist mentality here. They’re also telling the stories of families who are victoriously reclaiming their land, children laughing playing in the streets, old men who still dream of peace for their country. The Colombians refuse to succumb to circumstance and the seemingly impossible task of shaking a nation. Not losing heart—that is the next great hurdle, and, to continue to foster this mustard seed of hope.

Zach asks, “What if, in spite of our surroundings, we can give hope to those who wake up every day in despair?…In my heart, I believe it can be done.  It won’t be easy or convenient, and it won’t happen overnight.  But if we can unite people to help us fight for change, I will one day sit back down with my friends in Colombia and can look them in the eyes without flinching.”

“We’ll blog. We’ll tweet. We’ll make movies and write articles and take pictures.  We’ll shout and whisper. We’ll paint cave walls and chisel stone.  And maybe, just maybe, our stories will shake the world.” -Caleb Collier, Give Us Names

Here’s what you can do:

Give

Simply go to www.giveusnames.com/getinvolved and sign up for a recurring donation. Your money makes it possible for Give Us Names to tell the stories of the Colombian people and present them to voters (that’s you) and politicians (that might be you too!) who move and shake. If you can’t give monthly, sign up for a one-time gift.

Tell someone

Cash not there? Tell someone about Give Us Names.  Facebook it, Tweet it, Digg it, Stumbleupon it. Post one of their videos on your wall, or send it to a friend. Buy a rad t-shirt for $20 and wear it around.

Write

As an American citizen, you have the privilege and obligation to be involved in the way your nation is being run. Write to your legislators and tell them what’s going on, and demand something be done about it. You hired them, now tell them what to do. Click here to find your representative and contact them.