Too Young to Carry a Gun
written by COURTNEY KRAL
photographed by KELLY DORAN
We are the land of the free and the brave and seem not to notice that the brave [in the Congo] have never been free," reads the closing page of Sean D. Carasso's online journal entry from his experience in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Carasso is the founder of the Falling Whistles campaign.
The campaign is a result of Carasso's unexpected find while distributing shoes to those in need in Africa. His journal entry describes his habit of wandering around after dropping off the shoes, which is what he was doing when he made the discovery.
In the Congo, he met with boys too young to carry guns who had been captured by the rebel army. These boys were given only whistles."Their sole duty was to make enough noise to scare the enemy and then to receive—with their bodies—the first round of bullets," Carasso says in his journal entry. Those who tried to flee were fired on by their own armies.
"Lines of boys fell as nothing more than a temporary barricade," Carasso wrote.
One of Carasso's friends from the United States gave him a whistle upon his return home.
"Their weapon could be our voice," he said. He began to wear the whistle just over his heart and to share the story with all who asked.
New York Book Review contributor Adam Hochschild attributes the perpetual lack of peace in the Congo to four factors in his article "The Rape of the Congo." The four factors are tension among ethnic groups, the influx of rebel armies into the Congo after the Rwandan genocide, the presence of valuable natural resources in the region, and the density of the population without a functioning government.
On a spring break mission trip to Johnson City, Tenn., Ohio University students from Reach Out on Campus, which is described on OU's Web site as "a Christian student organization serving the Athens community through various service projects and abroad through mission trips," learned about the inhumane actions taking place in the Congo and the lives of the whistleblowers.
Sophomore nursing student Zachary Tumblin said he noticed people wearing whistles around their necks during the weekly meeting of a campus ministry at East Tennessee State University. One of the people at this meeting was parks and recreation management major Eric Ross.
Ross first got involved in the Falling Whistles campaign when his sister met one of the co-founders. The founders were in the middle of a nationwide tour, and the closest stop was in Asheville, N.C. When Ross contacted the organization, they told him that the Asheville stop had been canceled. The founders then asked Ross if they could spend the weekend in Tennessee with him instead, which ended up happening.
Ross founded a Falling Whistles group at ETSU with about 10 regular members. He has also started a Facebook support group. At the beginning of Spring semester, he began saving $5 from his paychecks to buy whistles to give away in order to spread awareness and gain support.
Ross said he has always been protective of other people. He was becoming frustrated with his inability to pursue this passion in Johnson City until his sister told him about Falling Whistles.
"There were people in the world who needed a helper, and I was able to step up into that position," he said. "I was actually accomplishing something."
When Reach Out on Campus came to visit ETSU, Ross was excited to answer Tumblin's questions about the whistles around his and his friends' necks.
Tumblin became involved soon afterward. "My passion came from Eric's passion," he said.
Junior biological sciences and pre-med major and Reach Out on Campus member Alex Anderson was also inspired by his interactions with Ross and other whistle-wearers at ETSU.
Ross gave a whistle to Tumblin, who soon gave it to Anderson and bought another through the Web site fallingwhistles.com. One hundred percent of proceeds from these whistle sales go toward rehabilitating children and attaining peace in the war-torn Congo, which are the main goals of the Falling Whistles campaign.
Anderson and Zumblin have both worked to share the story of this "whistle hell," as Tumblin described it, with the Reach Out on Campus community at OU. Zumblin expressed interest in also sharing the message with the Campus Crusade for Christ group, which is described on OU's Web site as "a staff directed, student led movement that desires to build the depth of character and the breadth of influence to get the love and message of Jesus to every student at Ohio University." He recognized that Invisible Children and the Bobcats for a Conflict-free Campus groups have similar agendas as well.
Both Anderson and Tumblin said that they embrace the value of word-of-mouth advocacy and conversation. Both have had conversations and have explained to curious observers why they wear whistles around their necks.
"That's their campaign," Anderson explained. "[To] be a whistleblower for peace."
The Falling Whistles Web site currently contains a petition asking President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to send an envoy to the Congo to support fair elections on Nov. 27, 2011, the day set for democratic elections.
The group Bobcats for a Conflict-free Campus supports peace in the Congo by addressing another of Hochschild's proposed causes of violence. It is an OU chapter of the conflict-free campus movement that has pledged to avoid buying electronic products that utilize conflict-causing minerals. Conflict-causing minerals are typically obtained inhumanely and then sold by rebel armies to continue to fund fighting in the Congo.
Tumblin and Anderson plan to continue wearing their whistles and invoking conversation in and around the Athens area.
Ross shared a couple of quotes that he finds inspiration from regularly.
The first, by Martin Luther King Jr., reads, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
The second, spoken by Abraham Lincoln, reads, "The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
Carasso's conclusion to his journal entry offers encouragement to those like Ross, Tumblin and Anderson who choose to wear the whistle, as anomalous as it may look to others.
"The world is changed by those who speak out. Whistleblowers. Rarely understood in their time, history looks back and calls them courageous. Be a whistleblower for peace," Carasso wrote.
Bobcats for a Conflict-free Campus recently changed their name to STAND Against Genocide
