Waging peace

International activist gets hyperlocal with Pittsburgh immigrants, activists

By Sean D. Hamill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

John Prendergast, left, Ismail Omar and Benedict Killang, right, discuss human rights issues in Sudan. John Prendergast, America's most influential activist in Africa, famously works with George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and other Hollywood stars to raise the profile on human rights issues in war-torn countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan.

Part of that influence stems from the fact that he is also America's most well-known activist in Africa, a rock star in the human rights world.

And yet, there he was, happily munching on a salad at the Panera Bread restaurant in Shadyside. He was there Tuesday for a two-hour gathering with 20 local high school, college and other human rights activists, and some local Sudanese immigrants, talking about the Sudanese peace process and the ongoing quandary in Darfur.

Although he met with President Barack Obama last fall at the White House, he sees no disconnect with talking with presidents, tracking down Mr. Clooney on a movie set or sitting in a Panera in Pittsburgh with local activists.

"We try to get people to do the things they can do to help," said Mr. Prendergast, 47, co-founder of The Enough Project, a leading anti-genocide and human rights organization. "Everyone has a role."

For President Obama, that meant trying to move his administration to action on Sudan. For Mr. Clooney, it meant asking his advice on how to keep the media and the public's eye on the war-torn country.

But for that group of activists at Panera, or the classroom full of 100 students, professors and activists he talked to at Pitt on Wednesday?

"People feel alienated by the political system. I want to prove to them by empirical evidence that their voices can have an impact," he said later in the week while walking to another gathering down Forbes Avenue in Oakland during his two-week stay as a Fellow at the Ford Institute for Human Security at the University of Pittsburgh.

He's here for a combination of private gatherings, public events, and, primarily, to educate students at the Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Taylor Seybolt, director of The Ford Institute, said he sought him for the visit for a variety of reasons, including his ability to explain to young people how they go from being students, to working in the field.

Those students will listen to him, Dr. Seybolt said, because "he's one of the major voices in the debate over what to do in the Sudan. There's no doubt about that."

Mr. Prendergast sees his university education efforts as a way to "deepen the bench" of future diplomats and full-time activists who truly understand how peace can be achieved in such difficult circumstances such as Sudan.

But, it turns out, Mr. Prendergast also happily agreed to come to town for two weeks because it is his ancestral home, of sorts.

Though he's often described as growing up in the Midwest or outside of Philadelphia, both his parents grew up in Pittsburgh, and he still has six aunts and uncles who live in the region, and several dozen cousins -- creating a packed weekend's worth of lunches and dinners during his stay here.

After his father left the monastery where he was training to be a priest, and his mother left the convent where she was training to be a nun, they met on a blind date. They married, and eventually moved, first, to Gary, Ind., where his dad began a career as a roving frozen food salesman.

Moving around as much as the family did, Mr. Prendergast said the months-long summer visits he made to Pittsburgh made it feel as much like his childhood home as anyplace -- even if, he confessed, he permanently switched allegiances from the Steelers to the Kansas City Chiefs in 1970 when he lived there and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl that year.

"And then for the last 40 years my cousins have laughed at me as the Steelers built the best team in all of football," he told his audience at Pitt, drawing knowing laughs.

His talk Wednesday was at Posvar Hall, famed site of the glass-enclosed Forbes Field's home plate -- a place he and his dad visited the last time he was in Pittsburgh before his dad died. "Walking around here, I feel a bit like I'm walking around with his ghost," he said of his dad. "So, no, it wasn't hard to get me to come here."

His visit put on display one of his chief skills: knowing how to craft his message to his audience.

So, Tuesday at Panera, a gathering organized by the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition, he talked at length about A Roadmap for Peace in Darfur, the document that The Enough Project released earlier this month.

The document -- which he hopes will get the attention of American policymakers -- proposes a combination of carefully crafted Darfur-specific talks with the parties from Sudan's government in Khartoum, similar to the talks that led to the agreement between north and south Sudan five years ago.

But, he believes, any move forward also has to ensure that the separate, but linked, secession of south Sudan from north Sudan is allowed to move forward.

"We've got to put the pressure behind the right answers," he told the gathering at Panera.

What has happened in south Sudan has created "amazing momentum that has been established by this peaceful referendum. We have to take that energy and create a peaceful Darfur," he said. "Darfuris don't want to wait for 55 years like the southerners did."

Then on Wednesday, when his crowd was heavily made up of college students, not all of whom were necessarily going to become diplomats or full-time activists like himself, he mapped out how anyone can get involved by simply calling or e-mailing legislators or the White House to let them know you care about an issue.

"The truth is, it takes just 15 minutes a week to be a card-carrying part of the anti-genocide movement," he said.

"I can go on and on about the crazy stories of people who thought the world is too big, and the problems too large to do anything about it, but who finally dipped their toes in the water and had an impact."

Mr. Prendergast has two more public appearances while he's in town over the next week: At 7 p.m. Monday at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium at Pitt, he will introduce a documentary, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," and then take questions afterward at the free event. Then at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Bricolage Theater, 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown, he will be part of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh's Political Salon titled, "Saving Lives: Responding to the World's Worst Humanitarian Crises." There is a charge of $15 for council members and $25 for the public in the fundraising event.


(2011-2-27/post-gazette.com)