a few comments

Posted by parhad on July 13, 2001 at 02:33:49:

In Reply to: a few comments posted by Melody on July 12, 2001 at 23:24:37:

Your point about using this 800 pound American gorilla sparingly are well made. As you say, since any fledgling country needs US support, we might be able to win a sort of "protectorate" status...the US would check up periodically on how the beneficiaries of its largess were treating us. It isn't much, but we have no other leverage that i can see. It is impertaive however that we stop this foolish thumping on our hairy chests which serves no useful purpose but to antagonize those who surround our people and have them at their mercy.

NO ONE who seriously contemplates going back there and working for our people has any interest in this sort of posturing. It is reserved for those anonymouse heroes who drink tea in Chicago and Modesto to make these bold proclamations and threats against "enemies" of our people. I'd say these types rank right up there in any list of enemies.

As to the National Endowment, their money is reserved either for established super stars such as the Met and Ballet companies, or spread thin among community art groups. I also have an aversion to asking others to fund our "pride". There are 60,000 Assyrians at least in Chicago alone, but let's say there are that many working, breathing Assyrians in the US. If each one of them gave five dollars a year for ten years we'd have a fund of $300,000.00 a year to spend. I could have put a monument with our story on it in every major city in America and some around the world.

There are several other things we could do. This amount can be easily raised, once enough of our people think we are worth it. I don't want corporate sponsorship either, though it would make my job, and the efforts of those who help raise the funds, so much easier. These monuments aren't the "thing" in themselves. It is more important to learn the lessons we can through making them...far more effective than just plunking them down, paid for by someone else..it is WE who will ultimately have to rise to this challenge...these trials and hardships are the fire we must pass through...otherwise a monument is just a hunk of metal serving one man's ego. For that...I never would have been interested.