----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 1:57 PM Subject: [STOPNATO] Fadia Rafeedie: What I Wanted To Convey To Fellow Graduates STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM What I Wanted to Convey To My Fellow Cal Graduates Fadia Rafeedie Thursday, June 8, 2000 �2000 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/08/ED105443. DTL BEFORE I LEARNED that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would be sharing the stage with me as UC Berkeley's keynote speaker for convocation exercises on May 10, I had submitted to the Committee on Prizes a packet of application materials in competition for the school's highest honor, the University Medal. The last question that the eight-person panel of professors posed to me was: ``If you had a chance to address your graduating class, what would you talk about?�� I told them that I wanted my speech to have a global perspective and that I intended to impart a serious, but not somber, message to my colleagues that while we are living in an age of exploding dot-coms, ``stock options�� and outrageously high salaries out of college, the truth was the United States� tremendous wealth as the strongest superpower in world history comes at the expense of a great deal of human suffering elsewhere. By way of examples that I would draw based on my own interests as an Arab and as a history major, I would remind my fellow graduates that our world extends beyond Berkeley, and certainly beyond the borders of the country to which my parents immigrated from Palestine almost three decades ago. That Madeleine Albright would also address my class added an interesting, though not terribly influential, dimension to my plans. I could not imagine speaking at my convocation, in the spring of the new millennium, without mentioning what I consider to be the greatest human tragedy of our time: the obliteration of the modern state of Iraq and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people from preventable illnesses, starvation and bombing since the imposition of U.S.-backed economic sanctions after the Persian-Gulf War. Indeed, I would have used Iraq to illustrate a larger point about the arrogance of power. I also could not imagine that I would not take the opportunity to confront Madeleine Albright with the damning quote that has haunted her for four years ever since she appeared on ``60 Minutes�� and told Lesley Stahl -- who had just returned from Iraq -- that the ``price was worth it�� to advance U.S. policy in the region, even if it meant the death of half a million Iraqi children. Albright had suffered a humiliating political setback in February 1998 at the hands of Ohio State University students at a CNN International Town Meeting. Like me, the students were outraged that a genocide of this magnitude could continue unchallenged for nearly 10 years. And less than a week after she left Berkeley, she faced a crowd opposing U.S. sanctions at the more conservative George Washington University's commencement. Albright did not hear my own condemnation, because she fled from Berkeley unexpectedly after the university administration switched the order of speakers at the last moment when we were all already sitting on stage. It's unfortunate, but in many ways telling, that she could not bear to sit through my speech and give me an opportunity to say what all the hundreds of voices who met her -- black and white, Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and atheist -- were saying, as they ``spoke truth to power.�� I watched as the protesters were expelled one by one for speaking out about injustices in Iraq. By then, the speech that I had prepared -- which was not entirely political and had included a substantial portion about what I learned from my class on Sproul Plaza -- not only encouraged me to give the impromptu speech that I did, which was solely about Iraq, but dictated that I do so. I talked about how the sanctions were ``infanticide masquerading as policy,�� in the words of House Minority Whip David Bonior; that basic food supplies and medicines are blocked from entering Iraq in sufficient quantities and the U.S. government bombs Iraq still, nearly every day, with depleted uranium, which causes tremendously high cancer rates. Even though Saddam Hussein is a dictator, I told them he has historically been sustained by U.S. dollars and weapons and that innocent Iraqi civilians should not have to pay with their lives for that sordid relationship. Had I said nothing, the protesters would have remained a spectacle -- misunderstood, loud, irritating and disruptive -- instead of a brave and inspiring voice of justice. Some outspoken critics fault me for using the podium to advance my political opinions, and for ruining what in their mind is a celebratory occasion. Madeleine Albright's presence itself was a political statement, and her not mentioning the atrocities in Iraq was a more resounding statement still. It is crucial, too, to see a convocation as an event that challenges graduating seniors with issues that they will likely face as this country's future leaders. Celebrations and congratulations aside, I was talking about another holocaust. Though my focus might have been on an Arab country to which I am connected by culture, nationality, and, of course, humanitarian concern, by no means was the larger point I tried to communicate confined to any one region or any one people. My fellow students have causes of their own about which they are passionate, and there is no monopoly on the recognition of human suffering. Neither is there an inappropriate time to expose injustices wherever we might find them. Though Albright may not have heard my message, hundreds of supporters throughout the world did. The letters of solidarity that I received mean more to me than the University Medal itself, whether they came from classmates and professors, academicians at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford, or written in broken English from Germany, South Africa, France, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Iraq and Palestine. As one letter read, ``Sometimes the smallest victories vindicate the larger injustices.�� Fadia Rafeedie, who will begin pursuing her studies at Yale Law School this fall, served as a board member for the Bay Area chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The group is coordinating a campaign to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sanctions on Iraq this August. For more information, go to www.amaal.org. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________________________ Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com
