"The photo of the young girl has always remained with me."

by Katie-Jay Scott

Published March 13, 2009 @ 03:11PM PT

Here is the first installment of a two-part guest post by  super-activist Katie-Jay Scott, who will soon depart with the i-Act team for their seventh trip to Darfur refugee settlements. Read on for Katie-Jay's story on how she became an anti-genocide activist, and visit i-Act's website to find out how you can get involved.

I wish I could tell you that I started my Darfur activism for my friends Adam, Mansur, Fatna, and Selma, who are now like the brothers and sisters I never had. But I didn’t know them in March 2005 when I was a student and so deeply struck by a single photo taken by a short, loud, and very direct Ruth Messinger. “Isn’t it cute that they have red hair? They have red hair because they are malnourished. “

It may be cliché, but when Ruth’s words bellowed through the room with such authority and intent to make us act for Darfur, it was then I remembered the feelings that rushed through me the summer before my freshman year of high school in Amsterdam with my soccer team. I told myself, “if I had been alive, I would have done something to help.”

The bags of green wristbands were passed around and I didn’t even have a dollar. My friend Brian paid for my first one. And it was then that I began my journey as an anti-genocide activist. I’ve worn many wristbands since, and always two. One to give to away when someone inquires about Darfur – most recently at the Redondo Beach Public Library.

The photo of the young girl has always remained with me. The long nights of preparing for Genocide Awareness Week in 2006 and 2007, through the emails, the house parties, the disappearance of my personal savings account for the sake of Darfur activism.

She, like the brothers and sisters I have met in the camps, keep me going. The numbers are large and intimidating to many. Every time we build Camp Darfur I see them all over again: Armenia 1,500,000; Holocaust 11,000,000; Cambodia 2,000,000; Bosnia 200,000; Rwanda 800,000; and Darfur 450,000 killed and counting. Almost 16 million people (and these are only estimates) have been brutally killed because of who they are.

I have worked with many grassroots communities and organizations. I even lived in the wetlands of Thailand and returned home to join a wonderful network called ENGAGE to bring Fair Trade Jasmine Rice to the US. I was an AmeriCorps VISTA member with an organization working to provide long-term mentoring and educational support to at-risk youth. There are so many causes and issues that I have put my energy towards over the years, but nothing has been more life-effecting than fighting genocide. Because there is not greater crime than taking a persons life because of who they are.

So I sit here in front of the Los Angeles Federal Building, at 1:32am in a Camp Darfur tent, writing this message to anyone who will listen. I depart for the Chad/Sudan border as part of my fourth i-ACT mission for Stop Genocide Now in a little over a week on March 21st.