April 24 thoughts

My 3 thoughts on April 24.

Yes I got your bulletin and I am now well aware that on April 24, 1915 there was a thing called genocide to a people called the Armenians or Hye’s as they like to call themselves. But here is my question to you- why were you not aware of this fact on September 24 or January 17 or maybe even July 30th? Contrary to popular belief, there are organizations that work on genocide recognition year round- that’s right I said they work on the cause all year long. Now you say you don’t like the politics of certain organizations? Ok fine then let me list you a bunch of options where you can work – if youre between the ages of 16-26 then there’s always the good ol’ AYF, if you don’t like them then there’s the Armenian Assembly of America, if they’re not to your liking then there’s the ESPN (worldwide leader) of the cause – the ANCA, if politics isn’t your game then there’s teachgenocide.org. Look, there’s a bunch of things you can do and its very encouraging to see that there is a fire within each and every one of you who want to get recognition for our people. I can see the impatience growing each and every year, and that’s a good thing because with the impatience comes more activism and the protests are getting bigger and bigger. My point is that imagine if we donated one day out of our lives, besides the day when its cool to do so, and help the cause. How about a random protest in the middle of August. Right now the Turks expect an outcry of Armenian Americans in the US and they dispatch their lobbyists at the exact same time to counter our actions. What if we kept them guessing and tried different things throughout the year, if we kept attempting different things at different times then we might actually be able to speed up this recognition effort and stop considering it a political issue so we can finally start mourning the actual victims and give them the proper recognition they deserve, not…

Ok look here’s my 2nd point- if you can’t wait for April 24 each year because its when you or your group/band finally gets to get some exposure to a large audience then you should rethink your strategy. This is not Showtime at the Apollo where every Armenian with a guitar or voice box gets to go up and put on a show “commemorating” the victims of the genocide, April 24 is not the date of your big break. But…

We have taken the political route and the anger route for so long and nobody would listen… we kept silent then we screamed at the top of our lungs but nobody listened. They killed all the intellectuals and the artists in order to paralyze our people for years to come and they almost succeeded. What is the most famous archive of the genocide that people can see? A painting by Gorky of him and his mother. Why? Because art speaks in a language everybody understands, art forces you to feel what you try to reject, and for that I applaud all of the artists who have taken the cause into their own hands. They may not listen to our lobbyists or our protesters but now we have found another channel to express the pains of our people. The artists are back and shouting at the top of their lungs with their paintbrush, their pen, their music, their lens… I have noticed this trend recently and it culminated in what I expected to be another random AYF event when I went to the valley chapter’s April 24 play. This was a bunch of kids who were not trained actors, directors or producers but they had a message they needed to get out… and boy did they get it out. It was an expression of what so many of us feel and a commemoration to those who fell, not an exploitation of some talents. There are numerous artistic events and the numbers are growing every year. This could be our new domain, this could be the purest sense of justice that we might find, timeless art that will forever express the words that the fallen could not. Yes, on this day they killed our leaders and artists but they also gave rise to generations more. (I just so don’t happen to be one of them but I hope you are)