Speaking to protect, prevent and remember
Her face was intense as her eyes recalled a room full of 6-foot-long tables with skulls on them.
Machete marks were still in the skulls, and Dr. Ellen Kennedy said she began to sob.
'I was overcome by what I saw,' her eyes focused on the present. 'There was a horrific loss of life.'
The interim director at the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will be at the Chanhassen Library this Saturday speaking about international peace building and conflict resolution as part of the library's Great Decisions series.
Rwanda
In 2005, Kennedy traveled to Rwanda, Africa. A professor, now retired, she had been teaching and speaking about the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 since it happened. Experiencing its effects first-hand brought the harsh reality into her life in a whole different way.
'In Rwanda I met a woman named Alice,' she said. 'Alice is an orphan survivor of that genocide. One day in 1994 her mother asked her to go to the next village on an errand to her cousin's house. When Alice returned home, she was the one to discover the bodies of her grandparents, her mother and her father, her 12-year-old sister, and her 9-year-old and 2-year-old brothers. She became an orphan as a consequence of that genocide, like literally hundreds of thousands of other children.'
In that hut full of unidentified skulls, down a dirt path in the jungle, Kennedy's heart was torn. She said, Alice told her, 'You don't need to see this. This isn't your problem. It's our problem.'
The statement was an indictment of the world's response to genocide, she said. It seared into Kennedy's conscience. She returned to continue teaching at St. Thomas University, but on the topic of the Rwandan Genocide she had a renewed sense of obligation and personal responsibility to increase awareness about what had happened.
One day after class a student asked her what could be done by ordinary people. Genocides happen for many complicated reasons. Was there anything immediate that people could do to stop the massive loss of human life? The student wanted to know, and Kennedy is still responding to that question.
World Without Genocide
In 2005 she founded a not-for-profit organization called World Without Genocide (http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/). The organization has a four-fold mission: to protect, prevent, prosecute and remember. The intention is to protect innocent people, prevent genocides from happening, prosecute the perpetrators, and remember the victims.
Her efforts have been recognized locally and nationally. In 2009 Kennedy was the recipient of the Anne Frank 'Outstanding Citizen' Award. She is driven by a mission
'Genocide is a global problem. It's our problem,' she said. 'We believe that knowledge plus action equals power.'
Now retired from the classroom, she herself is like a mobile classroom. She concentrates on educating people about the crises that go on in the world and about steps they can take to make a difference.
'Ordinary citizens can do a great deal,' she said. 'Former President Clinton was president in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide. He said that he could have saved probably a few hundred thousand lives, but he did nothing because he heard nothing from senators or representatives urging him to take action.'
The reason elected officials failed to take action was because ordinary citizens failed to take action, she said.
'We encourage ordinary citizens to contact their representatives. We encourage people to call 1-800-Genocide (436-6243). All you need to know is your zip code, and you will automatically be routed to your representative or senator,' she said.
The charge now for World Without Genocide is to alert people to contact their elected officials about applying pressure to stop the ongoing conflict between Africans and Arabs in Darfur, Sudan. The United Nations puts the death toll in Sudan at roughly 300,000, while up to 2.5 million Darfuris have fled their homes and live in refugee camps throughout Darfur, in neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.
Great Decisions Discussion
Who: Ellen Kennedy
Topic: Peace building and conflict resolution
When: 1 p.m., Saturday, May 8
Where: Chanhassen Library
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
6 days ago
- CNBC
Ivy League-trained psychologist: ‘A parent's job is never to make their kid happy'—what to do instead
Many parents' first instinct when their child is feeling sad, upset or frustrated is to try and cheer them up. That's a critical mistake, says Becky Kennedy, a Columbia University-trained clinical psychologist and mom of three. Constantly swooping in to boost your child's mood during difficult moments hinders their resilience, making them less emotionally and mentally equipped to see their tough circumstances through, she says. Instead, make it your job to give support or advice, and be a listening ear — not a superhero — when needed, Kennedy says. "A parent's job is never to make their kid happy or to smooth every bump in the road," says Kennedy, the host of the "Good Inside" parenting podcast. "Our job in those hard moments ... is to see a more capable version of our kid than they can access [themselves]."Children learn by messing up, getting frustrated and not getting their way, Kennedy says. If you're constantly focused on making them happy, rather than helping them manage their full range of emotions and act on their feelings appropriately, you're doing your kids a disservice. "Learning is very messy. Learning involves melting down. It involves saying, 'I'm so stupid,' and 'I can't do it,'" says Kennedy. Stepping in "deprives them of the ability to learn it themselves and to see themselves as a resilient learner." The next time your kid is struggling with math homework, for example, empower them to come up with solutions on their own, she says. They may cry, catch an attitude or beg you to do the problem for them. Kennedy recommends responding with something along the lines of: "You're right. This math problem is really tricky. It feels hard because it is hard. And I can sit near you, I can check on you, I can take a breath with you — but I'm not going to do it for you, because I know you're going to be able to figure this out. I believe in you. We can get through this together." An empathetic-yet-firm approach validates their feelings, and builds resilience and inner efficacy — an individual's belief that they're capable of meeting their goals, developmental psychologist Aliza Pressman wrote for CNBC Make It in January 2024. Both skills are essential for kids to become successful, emotionally intelligent adults, wrote Pressman: "When kids understand that their failures aren't due to permanent limitations, there's an opening for future achievement." If you have a history of yielding to your child's whining, crying fits or their puppy dog eyes, following Kennedy's advice may be easier said than done. But if you do, you'll notice more resilience — in your child and yourself — fairly quickly, Kennedy says. You'll find that you can tolerate their frustration more calmly, and that they're regulating their emotions more quickly, leaning less on your reassurance and more on their own, she says. Your child's "self-talk" will also improve significantly, adds Kennedy: "Our words to our kids become our kids' words to themselves. So when you say a couple of times, 'Yes, this is tricky. And you're a kid who can do tricky things,' there will be a moment where you hear your kids say it to themselves."
Axios
08-08-2025
- Axios
Think your plastic is recyclable? Think again
A West Des Moines family is displaying a year's worth of plastic waste that wasn't allowed to go into their recycling. Why it matters: Even if your plastic has the recycling symbol on it, it often still ends up in the trash. State of play: West Des Moines resident Natasha Kennedy used to recycle everything. At work, she would save her plastic Starbucks cups to recycle at home, going so far as to even take her co-workers' cups. That is, until a colleague told her she actually can't recycle the cups, despite them displaying the signature recycling symbol. "I'm like, 'This is ridiculous,'" Kennedy tells Axios. "I didn't believe her, so I went online and no, you can't recycle it — and there's a lot of other things you can't recycle." Driving the news: That prompted Kennedy to save her family's impermissible recyclables for a year, string them together and display them on her lawn and public right of way, including berry boxes, produce packaging and, of course, Starbucks cups. How it works: Recycling is a commodity, and if the processed materials can't be sold, they go to a landfill, says Joe Horaney, deputy director of Solid Waste Agency in Cedar Rapids and Linn County. Recyclable plastics are labeled with a number denoting their plastic type. In Cedar Rapids, recyclable plastics labeled 1-5 and 7 are allowed, but ultimately, only 1-2 are recycled because there is no market demand for the others, Horaney says. Solid Waste Agency works with third-party Republic Services to process their recycling. Once all the plastics are sorted through, items labeled 3-7 end up in a landfill that's not in Linn County. They plan on banning more plastics in the future. "I tell folks, it's kind of a waste at that point because it costs more to recycle," he says. "At my home, I only recycle ones and twos." What they're saying: Metro Waste Authority (MWA), based in Des Moines, tells residents to only recycle plastic containers with a twist-off lid, like laundry detergent, milk jugs and shampoo bottles. Berry and Cool Whip containers are not accepted because their packaging is thinner, making them more difficult to melt down and be repurposed, says Emily Grier, spokesperson for MWA. MWA opened its own recycling facility in Grimes in 2021 instead of relying on a third party, which has helped it take control and find more partners to purchase its recycling. Still, people are using too much plastic to make all of it sellable on the market, Grier says. Flashback: For 30 years, China purchased nearly half of the United States' exported recycling materials, according to NPR. But that ended in 2017, after Chinese officials banned " foreign waste," resulting in a national recycling stockpile that the country is still enduring today. Zoom in: Kennedy received notice from the city yesterday noting she can keep her signs in the right of way, but must remove the plastics from there. Her family said they are willing to move them back into the front lawn. The big picture: Plastic makers — including oil and gas companies — have spent millions marketing to Americans that their items could be recycled, but investigations have shown they knew there wasn't a market for it.
Boston Globe
26-07-2025
- Boston Globe
The Coast Guard wants to remove hundreds of buoys. Local boaters say: Don't take mine!
But we no longer need to navigate the way our ancestors did, and so the US Coast Guard says it's time to update it for the present, launching a massive review of nearly each buoy along the New England coast to determine how many can be removed. 'We're several decades into the GPS era,' said Matt Stuck, the Coast Guard's chief of waterways management for the Northeast district, who explained that the buoy system has never undergone a wholesale review in the turn-by-turn-world. Advertisement In May, the Coast Guard put out a proposal to review 4,700 buoys, which it classifies as 'Aids to Navigation,' that dot the coastline from New Jersey to the Canadian border in Maine. That proposal listed all buoys under consideration for potential removal, and it was shockingly long, sparing no corner of the Northeast district in the first round of discussion. Big-boy ocean buoys — there are 1,700 of them in the district, serviced by a fleet of just six buoy tenders — are certainly on the list, but so are a surprisingly high number of buoys in recreational areas. Advertisement 'To get good feedback, you have to give the public something good to chew on,' said Stuck, whose agency received 2,800 comments — from yachts and paddleboarders, jet skis and sailboats, aluminum Lunds and skipping Boston Whalers. 'It's fair to say that few to none said this is a great idea,' he said. The first round of nominees made news first in the boating world, with everyone agreeing: Don't take mine. But it's happening, and so a smaller list will be released later this summer, with the Coast Guard getting more specific about what it is thinking and why. 'It's a fair question by the Coast Guard to ask,' said David Kennedy, the manager of governmental affairs for the 700,000-member Boat Owners Association of the United States. 'What do we have out there, what do people need? They are resource-constrained like everyone else.' Kennedy said there are some that make sense to eliminate, like the 10 deep-sea buoys lining the straight-line channel into New York City, primarily used by giant boats that just crossed an ocean with sophisticated electronics. We can get rid of some of those. But so many of the nominees were in smaller harbors that are primarily used by recreational boaters, including notoriously rocky entrances like Woods Hole. 'We are not there yet. You really need to be in the channel,' Kennedy said. 'It's a challenging place based on the tide.' Nine of the Woods Hole buoys that currently allow for that to happen safely did not escape the first list. But it doesn't mean all or any of them will go, just that this is a Northeast-wide conversation, the Coast Guard insists. Advertisement 'We need to right-size the system for the way people are navigating,' Stuck said. 'This is not a cost-cutting measure. This is the first time we've looked at it from a wholesale perspective. The buoy system will never go away. This is about targeting the resources to the buoys that reduce the most risk for mariners.' On the elbow of Cape Ann, there are six in a row along the coast connecting Rockport to Gloucester, whose harbormaster, Christopher Lucido, rallied local input with an email that argued good seamanship emphasizes avoiding reliance on one system, and that there is still significant value and reassurance to confirm a vessel's proximity to underwater hazards such as ledges and rock piles. The Coast Guard has emphasized that it's not interested in getting rid of buoys that mark a danger hidden beneath. 'Eighty-five percent of the buoys we have do the highest-level risk reduction for mariners,' Stuck said, 'like directly mark a rock or shoal, or the inside of a channel so people don't cut a corner.' There are some hazards that GPS already navigates better, and this, he said, is a conversation about those. But for some boaters, it's a conversation about erasing parts of a map across our oceans and into our harbors, built over the centuries. About undoing a system that's a gift from the past, whispering to just remember 'red, right, returning,' and all will be safe. An interactive map showing all the buoys under consideration can be found at: Advertisement Billy Baker can be reached at
