aow_why_do_we_look_the_other_way

Article of the Week # 4
“Why Do We Look The

Due date____

Other Way?”

Student __________________________________________ # ______
Block
__________________
Instructions: COMPLETE ALL QUESTIONS AND MARGIN NOTES using the CLOSE
reading strategies practiced in class. This requires reading of the article three
times.
Step 1: Number the paragraphs. Skim the article using these colors and symbols as
you read:
-UNKNOWN WORDS/DEFINITIONS | PENCIL - questions/insights/impressions
(*) important, (!) surprising, (?) wondering [(+) agree, (-) disagree]
Step 2: Define the vocabulary that has been boxed for you. Choose an
appropriate
SCORE: ______________/4
synonym that has the same part of speech as the term. Write the synonym
Points above each
boxed term to help you better understand the excerpt.
1. Completion
Step 3: Read the article carefully, highlight text, and make associated
notes in
2.
the margin. Notes should include:
Vocabulary/Tone/Mar
• BLUE -strong connotation/denotation (diction/word choice) gin Notes
• YELLOW-big ideas (write a summary statement of important ideas for

each major section)
• PENCIL- questions/insights/impressions
List three things you notice
immediately.

List the main points or arguments that
this info graphic is trying to get across
to its audience. How are these points
being illustrated or portrayed?


What are some supporting details for
each main point/argument?

What is the author saying?

After reading this article, what would you title it?

What is the author doing?
________________________________________________________________
By Dr. Gregory Stanton President,
Genocide Watch Copyright 2012 Genocide Watch, Inc.

1 Dr. Paul Slovic, a social psychologist at the University of Oregon, has conducted path-breaking
experiments asking why we cannot sympathize with the suffering or even the murder of large numbers of
people in Sudan, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, or Cambodia.
2 In one experiment, psychologists asked ordinary Americans to contribute five dollars to feed Rokia, a
starving seven-year-old girl in Mali. About half would donate the five dollars. The same percentage
would donate to save Moussa, a little boy from Mali.
3 But when photos of both Rokia and Moussa were shown, the percent who would donate dropped. And

when the photo of Rokia was shown representing 21 million hungry Africans who could be fed by a group
of trusted relief organizations, the percentage who would donate dropped to less than ten percent.
4 Professor Slovic calls this phenomenon “psychic numbing.” He believes human beings are usually
unable to feel compassion for large numbers of people. The more victims, the less compassion.
5 Genocide Watch has developed an early warning system using our understanding of the genocidal
process to predict and recommend policies to prevent genocide. Through the International Alliance to
End Genocide, the first anti-genocide coalition (founded in 1999), we maintain close relations with policy
makers who can take preventive action. Rapid response by regional alliances has prevented or stopped
several genocides: in East Timor, Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia , and Sierra Leone.
6 We have created international tribunals to try genocidists in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,
East Timor, and Cambodia. And we finally have an International Criminal Court (the ICC). The UN
Security Council has referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC. It has indicted President Omar al-Bashir,
Abdul Rahim, and Ahmed Harun for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur. But al-Bashir has
just laughed. He even appointed Harun (one of those indicted) to be Governor of South Kordofan where
he is leading another genocide against the people of the Nuba Mountains.
7 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has finished 50 trials and convicted 29 persons. The
Cambodian Tribunal has sentenced Comrade Duch, the commander of the Tuol Sleng Prison that
tortured and killed 14,000 Cambodians, to life in prison. And the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge


are finally on trial, thirty years after I founded the Cambodian Genocide Project while still a student at Yale
Law School in 1982.
8 So as my hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior said, “We have come a long way. But we have a long, long
way to go.”
9 In thirty years of work against genocide, I have learned two things about genocide prevention.
10 The first lesson is the direct result of our own human incapacity to comprehend or feel sympathy for large
groups of people half way around the world.
11 Because individuals cannot do that, we need permanent institutions established that will watch out for
precursors of genocide, take action to prevent it, intervene to stop it, and arrest and prosecute those who
commit it.

12 Institutions are necessary to overcome the fleeting nature of our concern. That is why in 2000, I proposed
and the International Alliance to End Genocide lobbied, and in 2004 the UN Secretary General created the
UN Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide. It is why we support President Obama’s U.S. Atrocities
Prevention Board and the creation of similar institutions in Britain, France, Germany, India, Nigeria and
other nations around the world. But warning is not enough.
13 We must also create institutions for action. Unfortunately, President Obama has not matched his promise
of “Never again” with any concrete action to stop the Sudanese government’s genocide in the Nuba
Mountains and Darfur. President Obama should impose a NO FLY Zone over the Nuba Mountains. Any
Sudanese bomber or helicopter gunship that attacks a Nuba village should be allowed to land and then
destroyed (when their crews have left at night) by cruise missiles fired from American warships in the
Indian Ocean. And their runways should be destroyed. NATO airstrikes in Libya took control of the skies
from Gaddafi. The same should be done with al-Bashir’s Sudan.
14 The UN has completely failed to prevent or stop genocide, largely because of paralysis by threatened
vetoes by one or more of the permanent members so the Security Council, but also because of the UN’s
continuing unwillingness to offend member states. Regional alliances like NATO, ASEAN, the OAS and
ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States, led by Nigeria), have been effective
interveners. The UN Charter specifically authorizes regional intervention.
15 The International Criminal Court needs an Optional Protocol to create an international police force with the
sole mandate to arrest leaders indicted by the ICC. This police force could be created without any action
by the UN—through a treaty among the Assembly of States- Parties to the ICC.
16 The second lesson I have learned is that genocide prevention must start and be led by people from
countries at risk. It cannot be led by an American organization in Washington D.C., led by a pacifist
Director, that is unwilling to advocate the use of force to stop genocide. Prevention must especially begin
from the ground up in countries at risk of genocide. A true International Alliance to End Genocide can
support such local efforts and create an international mass movement to end genocide.
17 The best example is Liberia.
18 Leemah Gbowee, a fish seller in Monrovia, Liberia had a strange dream one night. She dreamed that the
market women of Monrovia should begin each week with an hour of prayer for peace in Liberia, a country
then torn apart by civil war between Charles Taylor’s government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
Both sides cut off arms and hands, raped women, conscripted child soldiers and turned them into killers on

drugs— they committed every war crime. She told her dream to a Muslim friend who also sold fish in the
market, and they began the weekly prayer meetings in the fish market. More and more women joined until
five thousand women were praying every week. Charles Taylor’s entourage drove blithely by in their
Mercedes limosines.


19 Then Leemah Gbowee and the other women
demanded a meeting with Charles Taylor and with the
leaders of the RUF. When they met them, the women
demanded an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to
end the war. Both sides agreed; and talks began in
Accra, Ghana. But the women didn’t trust the men to
make peace. They pooled their nickels and quarters,
rented buses, and went to Accra themselves. They
slept outside, sometimes in the rain, while the men
slept in four-star hotels. The talks between the men, led
by a former Nigerian President, went nowhere.
20 Finally, fed up, the women walked into the building
where the talks were underway and sat down in the
hallways. The Ghanaian police threatened to arrest
them. One of the senior women said she would make it
easy for them by removing all her clothes. (One of the
most humiliating things that can happen to a man in
Ghana is for a grandmother to disrobe in front of him.)
The police backed off.
21 Finally the Nigerian ex-President told the men that if they didn’t c ome to agreement in three days, he
would turn the talks over to the women. The agreement they reached included the exile of Charles
Taylor to Nigeria.
22 Peace returned to Liberia and in the next election, with the women’s crucial votes, Dr. Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf become the first woman elected President of an African country.

23 Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the Yemeni woman human rights activist, Tawakkul
Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
24 Charles Taylor was tried for his crimes and convicted. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
25 To end genocide, it will take love that transcends all boundaries—that allows us to feel the suffering of
people in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.
26 To end genocide, it will take justice that tries the serial killers that commit genocide.
27 We should never lose hope in the power of love. Because love is God’s force personally expressed.
28 We must never lose faith in the power of justice. Because justice is God’s force socially expressed.
29 With love and justice, together we can end genocide.
1 Genocide Prevention Advisory Network Conference Report: March 14 – 15, 2012, Guiding Principles of the Emerging
Architecture Aiming At the Prevention of Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity, George Mason University,
Arlington, Virginia: Genocide Prevention Program, pp. 144 -147.


List the main points or arguments that this info
graphic is trying to get across to its audience. How
are these points being illustrated or portrayed?


Create a bibliographic entry/MLA citation of this article and one of the infographics
(use your reference book/the internet for help). Don’t forget your HANGING
INDENT!

9/10.RL.1-6 *Don’t forget to record your bibliographic entry on your AOW final assignment sheet.*

Answer each question in one or more complete sentences.
Twelve Word Summary: Summarize the entire article in twelve words. (think: who,
what, when, where, how)

What is the underlying tone of the article? Use the tone reference sheet located in

your handbook. What specific words or phrases develop that tone?

Based on what you’ve read and seen, what incident of genocide do you think was the
most significant? Explain your opinion.

Explain what you think is the theme of this article. Create a thematic statement
based on the word chosen from the list of abstract thematic ideas (in your reference
handbook).

Based on the thematic statement you created, what pieces of evidence in the text
support this idea or theme? (use in-text citations)


Fragments Directions: Change the sentence fragments into complete sentences, adding correct capitalization and
punctuation. Do not copy sentences from the text.
1. because individuals cannot
________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
Scrambled Sentences Directions: Rearrange the words below into sentences. Add punctuation and capitalization.
(Hint: the first word of the sentence is in bold.)
also create we must action institutions for
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Consider all that you have read about genocide. How are genocide and other acts of mass violence possible? Why is it
important to learn about the Holocaust other acts of genocide? Explain using evidence from the text to support your
answer. (ICE/TAG).
TAG/ICE TEMPLATES/Examples

Step 1: Restate the question insert your opinion/argument/answer.

Step 2: According to (the author) in his/her (genre), “(title)” introduce quote “copy quote” (cite page/paragraph).
Step 3: Explain the connection from your opinion/argument/answer.

9/10.RL.8,10