Student to educate church, school on genocide

Growing up in a small Jewish community in Ecuador as the grandson of four Holocaust survivors, Mark Hanis could not fathom the atrocities his ancestors endured. His only comfort was a promise of “never again.”

But many years later, as a political science student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, he stumbled upon an article about the situation in Darfur and quickly realized it was happening again, this time in the western region of Sudan.

“First hearing about it, I was speechless that something like this was actually happening in the 21st century,” said Hanis, 25, who went on to found the Genocide Intervention Network in Washington.

“We’ve been able to send people to the moon, to considerably diminish slavery, to put an end to piracy on the high seas — how can we not stop human beings from systematically exterminating other human beings for who they are?”

On Sunday, Hanis is scheduled to visit Fairview Community Church in Costa Mesa to educate the public on the genocide and encourage it to take action.

Later in the week, he will make a presentation at Sage Hill School in Newport Beach, where a growing group of students are organizing on the issue, he said.

His two major goals for the trip are to persuade constituents to hold their members of Congress accountable for their actions surrounding Darfur — where he estimates 500 people die each day — and also to ask presidential candidates campaigning in the area to divest from companies funding the Sudanese government.

“Right now, the government is responding to the genocide like it’s a humanitarian crisis when it’s actually a man-made security crisis,” he said. “It would have been absurd if during the Holocaust, the Allied Forces responded to the Jews by giving them bags of rice.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing in Darfur.”

As the leader of a church “with a heart for social issues,” Fairview’s Rev. Sarah Halverson hopes Hanis’ coming will bring more consciousness to Orange County.

“I really think we are so consumed by ridiculous matters of Hollywood and whether or not our politicians are gay,” she said. “I have a real frustration with the apathy that exists in our culture.”