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Jewish Community News

News: June 2006

20-year-old Jewish Stanford student shows fighting for Darfur is not futile

By Cecily Ruttenberg

Wearing faded jeans and a back pack hanging from one shoulder, Elissa Test, 20, looks like any other Stanford University student. The difference is that she spends most Friday and Saturday nights working to end the genocide in Darfur.

One of the founding members of Students Taking Action Now for Darfur (STAND), Test was a top event organizer for the April 30 Darfur rally in San Francisco that drew more than 3,000 people to a silent vigil on the Golden Gate Bridge and nearly 15,000 to Crissy Field. In order to organize this rally, Test says she had to give up playing alto saxophone in a school band, as well as her job at the Stanford Library and a previous volunteer position working with children of parents who have cancer.

Test grew up in Redwood City with her mother and father. She attended Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco, and her family belongs to Temple Beth Jacob. She has been very involved in Hillel at Stanford. Hillel sent Test to a leadership conference in Washington, D.C., where she learned how to start the local STAND chapter. The Stanford STAND chapter is now one of the most active in the nation.

In a recent interview with the JCN, Test explains why the situation in Darfur is not futile and how people can actually make a difference doing very little.

JCN: What would you recommend people do who want to help?
Test: Write your congressmen.
JCN: People are dying every hour. Three years has gone by. How does emailing or writing a letter really make any significant impact?
Test: Congressmen are not allowed to throw away letters. They have to save them and keep a tally of how many come in, and on what subject. Really, citizens don’t write their congressmen about very many things. And there definitely is progress being made. The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act recently passed in both the House and the Senate. It stopped short of calling for a multinational protection act and this is why we have to keep the pressure on.
JCN: So many people have already died, how do you reconcile taking such slow and small steps such as letter writing while these massacres are taking place?
Test: Elie Weisel said, “this is a cause where our humanity is at stake.” We cannot give up. There are currently 2.5 million people STILL living in refugee camps. If we stop now, what will happen to them? If people during the Holocaust had said it’s too terrible, we can’t stop it, then really an entire people would have been wiped off the face of the planet. That’s where this is headed.
My mom told me this last night, “Revolutions don’t happen over night. All processes of change are processes.” It’s sustained pressure, it’s dedicated compassion, and we can celebrate our small victories.
JCN: Like Martin Luther King Jr.?
Test: Exactly.
JCN: What inspired you to become an activist?
Test: My whole life I’ve been taught the values of tikkun olam and I’ve been told that we are responsible for the whole world. Once you see that you can make change, you ask yourself, ‘Why don’t I do this all the time?’ Even a couple of words can make a difference.
JCN: Did you encounter any age discrimination during the planning and organizing of the Darfur rally?
Test: A lot of the preparation for the rally involved calling communities and asking them to rally their people to come and support the rally. During the past year, I’ve done many presentations at Friday night services at temples. At first, people would ask me to bring an expert. The first few times I did, but then I started going myself. People seemed to want to learn even if it was just a student talking. I was also really impressed with the support from the Jewish community. Beth Am brought 200 people. Beth David brought 100 people.
JCN: What do you plan to do when you graduate? Will you continue your activism?
Test: My dream job is to work with Doctors Without Borders.
JCN: What else can people do who want to help stop the genocide in Darfur?
Test: People can donate to Humanitarian aid organizations. Recently the U.N. cut in half the amount of money they provide for food to Darfur. (Test recommends the World Food Program, as well as visiting www.savedarfur.org and www.ourpledge.org)
At the end of the interview Test pleads that the article should not be too much about her. “I’m not trying to be modest, but really I’m not doing that much. Anyone could do this,” she said. But not everybody does.