More From Alder's Ledge

August 20, 2012

Screamers Wanted

What It Means To "Scream"
(Part of the Screamers post)


For a few months now I have been asking for people to share these post on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The nickname given to doing this simple act was called "screaming". It was the easiest way to be a "Screamer". Yet I have found it impossible up till now to actually define what a screamer is or what it means to be a screamer.

The term came to me after stumbling across a video by the rock band System Of A Down. Their movie entitled "Screamers" obviously gave me the terminology. And the reason to use it in connection with Alder's Ledge. But if you haven't seen this movie than you don't understand what I'm talking about. And that is where this post comes in...

The members of System Of A Down are Armenians and their ancestors are often remembered here on Alder's Ledge as the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Thus the movie Screamers focuses around the education of the general public when dealing with the Armenian Genocide and genocide in general. Yet even this most direct explanation for the term and the motivation doesn't really explain what it means to be a screamer.

A Screamer is a person like anyone else. We don't have some desire to gain anything from our actions. Not all of us are bleeding heart liberals who just need another cause to flaunt or make ourselves look bighearted by "carrying" about some fad. We are simply people who have seen genocide either firsthand or through other accounts of the events. Our eyes have seen the images, our hearts felt the pain, of these tragedies. And it is somewhere between seeing and believing that we find it in our souls an inability to remain silent.

Maybe screamers are just naive. Perhaps it is foolish to believe that our voices can actually change the way the world thinks about genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet a true screamer doesn't stop. We never forget.

So how do you go about "screaming"?

It is simple. It is almost ironically easy in comparison to the suffering and misery endured by the very people we scream for. After all, all we do is lift our voice so that not a soul will ever be allowed to deny the deaths of those who have suffered the horrific crime of genocide.

Here at Alder's Ledge that means writing this very blog. In using our words, written and spoken, we bare witness. In using our lives we stand as a living memorial to all who have perished. And that is why we wish to invite all who read this to join us.

If you would like to be a screamer here on Alder's Ledge we would like to invite you to leave you contact information below. All comments on this blog have to approved so you can rest assured your information will not be published. But you will be contacted and we will discuss what it takes to write for Alder's Ledge. For the rest of you, please share these post on your social media sites. Together we can lift our voices so loud that not a soul could possibly ignore us. Together we can scream.

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