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Before teacher May Zukauskas showed her students the photos, she warned the images would be disturbing.
The youths then gazed in horror at dead bodies strewn across the ground, individuals laden with cuts and flies (some embedded in the wounds), malnourished children with swollen stomachs and others so food-deprived their skeletons were visible.
"It looked like there was nothing to them but skin and bone," Albert Rementer, a sixth-grader at Sacred Heart of Jesus School, 1329 E. Moyamensing Ave., said.
After viewing the images taken from the Internet, classmate Alexandria Fagley couldn’t help but shed tears for the human crisis occurring in Darfur, the western region of the African country of Sudan. An Arab militia group known as the Janjaweed — allegedly backed by the Sudanese government — has targeted Africans of specific ethnic descent since 2003, leaving destruction and death in their wake.
The U.S. government has referred to the act as genocide.
According to the United Nations, more than 200,000 Africans have died and at least two million have been displaced since the conflict began.
Figures such as these do not sit well with Sacred Heart’s sixth-graders. Once unaware of the plight occurring on the other side of the world, they now have embarked on a home-front campaign to cease the violence.
With help from Zukauskas, the adolescents began writing to President George Bush and local senators in hopes of enticing the U.S. to take a more prominent stance on the issue. In the process, they have become young experts on the crisis, spouting off facts about Darfur that were foreign to them no more than four months ago.
The teacher, calling the dilemma a "21st-century Holocaust," said the time for additional action is now.
"We’re sitting here in a wonderful country, and there’s children that are being slaughtered [overseas]," Zukauskas, of the 1900 block of South Galloway Street, said.
A remedial-reading teacher for Sacred Heart’s sixth through eighth grades, Zukauskas was discussing the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed under the Nazi regime, with some of the sixth-graders during her class last year.
"The students said, ‘That could never happen again,’" the teacher recalled. "I said, ‘It’s happening now.’"
After the pupils were informed of the specifics of the Darfur situation, they began Internet research on their own time, where they saw videos of villages and homes being burned to the ground.
"A lot of people think this isn’t going on," Rementer, of Second and Fernon streets, said. "If you look at the … things we’ve seen, it’s happening."
Classmate Brandon Waddell agreed. "We can’t just sit back and say, ‘It’s not happening. I’m not worried about it,’" he said. "If America doesn’t get involved — since we’re one of the richest nations — than nobody else will."
Envisioning a strength-in-numbers approach, Zukauskas got the idea to begin a letter-writing campaign with the entire sixth grade. Sister Maryanne Bolger, the class’ instructor, agreed to the project.
In December, the 21 students mailed postcards to Bush’s White House address.
"I figured that would be the end of it," Zukauskas said, "but the students said, ‘Who else could we write to?’"
U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and Robert Casey were next on the list, and the students began penning letters a month later.
"[The senators] could get more word out [about Darfur] to Pennsylvania than we can," Rementer, 12, said.
Information on the Darfur conflict was mentioned in each letter, but the writers made sure to add their personal take on what resolutions might work best. Some said more prayers are needed, others urged for additional peacekeepers in the region.
Adding to the unity of the group, the classmates would belt out "We Are the World" while writing. The 1985 tune, sung by various pop artists of the day, was in response to another African hardship — the Ethiopian famine crisis.
The youths typed up their creations during computer time, sealed them, paid their own postage and mailed them — only to receive no reply from their representatives. This lack of response had the scholars wondering if the same approach is being played out in Darfur.
"We prayed that George Bush would read our letters and do something about it," Waddell, of the 900 block of South 13th Street, said.
Specter, in an e-mail statement to the Review, said he has cosponsored the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006. The endeavor would provide additional support for African Union peacekeepers currently on the ground in Darfur; calls for the mobilization of a U.N. peacekeeping force; and provide Bush with authority to sanction those individuals responsible for the genocide. A similar bill, he added, was passed in the House and signed by Bush.
"As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, I have worked to ensure that the U.S. provides the region with much-needed humanitarian assistance," Specter said. "Today, the U.S. is the largest single international donor to Sudan. I understand there is still much work to be done in Darfur, and I will continue to advocate for peace and security in the region."
Casey, who serves on the banking and foreign relations committee, said via e-mail he supports "legislation that will provide federal support for state and local divestment efforts in Sudan."
He will do "all that I can to help bring an end to the violence and bloodshed," he added.
The African Union peacekeeping force has had difficulty in controlling Darfur’s violence, according to various news reports. The U.N. is continuing a push for a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping entity in this region. Bush has stated he supports this endeavor.
Displayed on the inside and outside of Zukauskas’ room are Darfur-themed posters created by the students. One displays a quote from Mahatma Ghandi: "Be the change you wish to see."
When the sixth-graders tell their neighborhood friends about their efforts, some have been ridiculed.
"They think it’s funny," Rementer said. "They think we shouldn’t worry about it."
But for the students, who plan to write additional letters to the same officials in the future, they know they’re doing their part to change the status quo.
Fagley, 12, said history has the tendency to repeat itself.
"If [this type of violence] is in their backyard, it can easily come to our backyard," she said.
