The Armenian Weekly Newspaper

NEW YORK and BOSTON—In an ambitious effort to synthesize Armenian issues with progressive politics and leftist ideas, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Armenians and the Left Conference drew hundreds of people to consider concepts and strategies that go beyond the conventional approach of Armenian political advocacy, and to explore new possibilities for understanding and advancing Armenia’s case for justice.

Scholars examined the Armenian genocide comparatively by arguing for reparations for dispossessed peoples, including Armenians, African-Americans and Native Americans.

Rather than simply applauding U.S. aid to Armenia, participants questioned the purpose of this aid and evaluated its effects on Armenia’s society by critically analyzing the current trend of globalization.

Human rights advocates discussed the state of civil rights and the condition of women in Armenia with sobering detail and weighty implications.

One of the world’s leading journalists, Robert Fisk, and one of the country’s greatest intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, explained to thousands of non-Armenians how the West has complied with Turkey’s insidious campaign of barring the Armenian genocide from history.

This supplement offers synopses of the panel discussions and lectures, which took place in New York on April 7 and 8 at City University Graduate Center and New York Society for Ethical Culture, and in Boston on April 9 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Whether it was the crowd of 1,200 at Robert Fisk’s Friday night lecture, the 200-person audience at the joint presentation of Fisk and Barsamian on “War, Media and Propaganda,” or the large contingent of Armenian Youth Federation members from the Eastern Region, Canada and Los Angeles, conferees came away with an experience that was unique and deeply enriching. “Not enough time” was the most common complaint throughout the weekend, which means that the work of Armenians and the Left has only just begun.

Fisk Addresses Capacity Crowd at New York Society for Ethical Culture, Blasts War, Imperialism and Media

On Friday, April 7, Robert Fisk—the award-winning, chief Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper, The Independent—flew in from Lebanon to address a crowd of 1,200 on the topic of War, the Middle East, and Journalism, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture auditorium. Fisk was invited by the Nation Institute and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to deliver the plenary lecture for Armenians and the Left, and to discuss his latest book, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Knopf).

This intrepid investigative journalist, who, in his more than 30 years of war reporting, has seen enough carnage to last several lifetimes, addressed global issues such as U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and Transcaucasus, and the implications for small, struggling nations like Armenia. As his publishers rightly describe, Fisk has earned the reputation for “being passionate in his concerns about the Middle East, and relentless in his pursuit of the truth—traits that have enabled him to enter the world of the Middle East and the lives of its people as few other journalists have.” He is a seven-time recipient of the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year Award and the author of Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Nation Books).

In his introductory remarks, Antranig Kasbarian of the ARF called Fisk “a man of integrity who has put himself in the line of fire in countless wars and invasions, including those in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq.”

The capacity crowd gave Fisk a standing ovation as they were told that Fisk “deserves our appreciation—even before he utters a word—for continuing to show a high level of courage in his factual, unflinching war reportage at a time when it is considered unfashionable, if not prohibiting, to criticize U.S. foreign policy.”

In his nearly three-hour presentation, Fisk spoke frankly, expressively and with sardonic wit about Western intervention in the Middle East, war as enterprise, the horrors of war, the dearth of U.S. journalists willing to question authority, and the challenges of war reporting in an age when official news reports are orchestrated by the U.S. government. Known for injecting historical context and trenchant analysis into his reporting and for advocating that it is the duty of war correspondents to report from the perspective of the victims, Fisk recommended that journalists and officials alike carry history books with them to better understand the regions they are assigned to cover—perhaps as a statement about collective ignorance and amnesia toward empires who tend to repeat odious crimes of the past.

As a young man, Fisk was inspired to become a foreign correspondent after watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie by the same name. “This sounds like a bloody good job,” he said at the time. He got at least one adjective right. In describing his mission as a reporter, Fisk quoted Israeli journalist Amira Haas, who said it is “to monitor power and the centers of power,” especially when they “tell lies” to advance their agenda.

By contrast and to underscore the repressive climate in which today’s American journalists work, Fisk spoke of how those writers with the temerity to report truthfully about the facts on the ground are painted as unpatriotic and therefore subversive.

He charged that mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times should be re-dubbed “American Officials Say,” as a nod to the unfair and unbalanced way in which today’s journalists rely upon state-sponsored sources to convey information to the masses. Fisk underscored how war correspondents do more than deliver the news when he described how the longer journalists stay in regions embroiled in war, the fewer civilians invaders can exterminate. He recalled how military occupiers evacuated journalists from West Beirut so that the reporters could not speak of the horrors they would have witnessed, and saw this technique repeat itself in Iraq.

Fisk is one of few journalists who covered the Iraq war from the field. He is a harsh critic of embedded journalism, which he calls “hotel journalism,” to explain a manner of isolation and skittishness with which correspondents report from confined quarters.

Charging that journalists who are embedded do the profession a great disservice, Fisk questioned the purpose of war reporting in Iraq: “Reporting for what story?” he asked. “When journalists report from within the heavily-guarded Green Zone, they may as well be filing from Minnesota.”

Fisk himself practices what he called “mouse journalism,” where he enters a danger zone for several life threatening minutes, gathers his requisite quotes and photographs, after which he scurries away to the confines of the Green Zone.

Fisk spoke frequently and forcefully about the Armenian genocide of 1915—a premeditated, governmental campaign to annihilate the Armenian people and drive them from their ancestral lands, now within the borders of Turkey. He expressed disgust that the Armenian genocide is today denied by not only the descendants of the perpetrating regime in Turkey, but by the United States and Israel, as well. Nevertheless, Fisk expressed certainty that Genocide recognition is on the horizon. And to emphasize his hope for future reconciliation, Fisk read passages from his book about an Armenian genocide survivor he’d met who, in his twilight years, prayed for Turks who suffered in the 1999 earthquake in Turkey.

“Until I was 23, I was filled with rage, but then when I was 23, I felt that this was not the right way to be a man. . . I was making peace with myself. Last year, when the big earthquake happened in Turkey and killed so many Turks, I prayed to God for those Turks, I prayed to God for those poor Turkish people,” the man told Fisk.

Fisk also observed how progressive Turkish intellectuals such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak are struggling to unsheathe the long-suppressed truth about the Armenian genocide, and said that today more than ever before, “the door is open—if Armenians can walk through it and encourage the Turkish people to walk through it, as well.”

Fisk also acknowledged civilian Turks who put themselves at risk to rescue Armenians during the Genocide, expressing the hope that Armenians will try to honor those brave Turks who saved Armenians from being murdered. He also remarked that there were other do-gooders during World War I, such as missionaries, who campaigned for indigenous rights and even a unified Arab confederacy in the Middle East. While some believe that missionaries were invited into subjugated regions to carry out humanitarian work for altruistic reasons, others maintain that their purpose was to promote the geopolitical and economic interests of Empire. Fisk did not make such a distinction, giving more weight to the former assertion.

“The crowd of hundreds outside the auditorium was abuzz with anticipation of Robert Fisk’s talk,” said Lalai Manjikian, an Armenian Youth Federation member who traveled to New York from Canada to participate in the conference. “Truly, Fisk did not disappoint and offered poignant facts, numbing images, surreal personal anecdotes and first-hand accounts of violence and destruction he has experienced and continues to witness as Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His talk was very engaging and thought provoking, leaving us to ponder about his points, astute observations, and truths well after the event.”

Conference Convenes, Participants Attend Panels on Progressive Politics

On Saturday, April 8, undeterred by the inclement weather, 175 people gathered at the City University Graduate Center to participate in the “core curriculum” of the Armenians and the Left conference: six panels devoted to synthesizing Armenian political and cultural identity with progressive, liberal ideology.

In the first session, participants were given the option of attending either “Armenian Political Identity” or “Reparations as Justice.”

Armenian Political Identity, featuring panelists Khatchik DerGhoukassian and Neery Melkonian, and moderated by Antranig Kasbarian, sought to answer the question, Exactly who are the Armenians? The panelists also examined whether, in seeking a progressive vision of Armenian political identity, a unified political orientation is a reasonable goal.

According to DerGhoukassian, Armenians need “a manifesto for another diaspora,” one which could facilitate or lead the ethics of engagement of the Armenian nation with the process of globalization. Armenia is already part of this globalization process, he said, even though the Armenian people failed to understand how this process began. Because of global connections, the diaspora needs to lead this synthesis, according to DerGhoukassian.

“Another diaspora is possible, because transformation is taking place, and this is leading to the transnationalization of the Armenian identity,” said DerGhoukassian, a professor of International Relations at the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. “It is threatening for the future of Armenia if we hold on to the old master narrative of the diaspora. We need something different from the so-far slogan ‘One nation, one land, one culture.’ Not to deny the truth of it, but to rationally find how to preserve diversity within unity.”

In closing, DerGhoukassian outlined five points central to this globalization synthesis: the restoration of Western Armenia’s cultural heritage; the acceptance of a multicultural diaspora; strategic access to globalization; integration of social spaces of diaspora; and redefinition of diaspora national interests.

Melkonian, an independent critic and curator based in New York City, discussed artistic displacement and the political orientation of artists as a result of living in the diaspora. She explained that progressive artists had no support from the Armenian community, because they didn’t fit into the political mainstream nor did they employ Armenian iconography in their work. These Armenian artists, she said, had allied themselves with broader causes, such as the Palestinians and the Native Americans, and the Armenian community chastised and marginalized them for the political side they had chosen. She questioned the Armenian community’s response to these artists—as members of a universal artistic community, the artists had been unjustly alienated for their international activism. She chided the Armenian tendency to visit Armenia and purchase artwork from there under the misguided fascination with “authentic” Armenian art.

“The contemporary art world is a game,” said Melkonian. “Just like politics, you have to lobby for these artists, because diasporan displacement has meant that there is a ‘lack of place’ for them.”

Arshile Gorky, for example, only recently became popular among Armenians because of the strong undercurrent of Genocide trauma in his works, she said. Charles Garabedian, now in his 80s, had been unconscious of how the Armenian identity got into his subconscious. “It’s about translation,” she explained, and looking closely at the images to find the iconography and Armenian identity when it may not be as obvious as Ararat. She also talked about Kardash Onnig, a contemporary New York-based sculptor, whose political leanings caused an uproar in the 1980s when he carried a poster proclaiming April 24 as the day to “Unhate a Turk”. Yet his groundbreaking architectural works, such as the mehyan (temple) he built, with perfect acoustics, have been largely unnoticed by the Armenian community, according to Melkonian.

Another prominent Armenian artist whose political identity figured into her work is Seta Manoogian. “She is one of the few, if not only painter, who depicted the Lebanese Civil War,” said Melkonian. “Others were escaping with flowers, while she was depicting the fragility of the environment.”

Melkonian emphasized that it was incumbent upon the Armenian communities in Los Angeles and New York to create a cultural center. “There is no place for art now,” she said, noting that while Armenia has such centers, there is no firm policy and not enough traffic moving in both directions—between Armenia and the diaspora.

Kasbarian closed the panel discussion with an overview of Armenian political identity as “how Armenians portray and represent themselves to others and to ourselves.” He discussed the Western orientation, wherein Armenia was politically inclined to be the Eastern outpost so that it could benefit from the umbrage of the West, while culturally Armenia would represent “civilization” among an Eastern “barbarian” people. “It made sense to be the Little Ally, because our people had lost everything—dignity, pride, entitlement—after the Genocide, after being erased from the world’s political map,” said Kasbarian. Armenians became regarded as the first Christian nation, they spoke an Indo-European language. He noted that this the Armenian adoption of a European or U.S. identity became problematic especially during the Cold War, however, when being a good Armenian meant being a good American. Armenia got little in return from the United States, whose policy had become imperialistic, and this Western identity began to fade.

Kasbarian also outlined the Russian orientation, wherein politically the Armenians in the diaspora, particularly the Social Democratic Hnchagian party (SDHP) and the Armenian Democratic Liberal party (ADL/Ramgavar) thought that Armenia’s best ally was Russia in defense of a pan-Turkic threat. The diaspora became absorbed with Russian identity, as Russia was seen as a cultural fountainhead of literature and art.

In either case, the inclination was to perceive the non-Armenian identity as superior to the Armenian culture, explained Kasbarian. The most natural tendency, he said, was to align Armenia with these political superpowers, forgetting that they had many exploitative genocidal impulses. Kasbarian suggested that Armenians should seek to align themselves laterally, with peoples that share similar geopolitical interests—Kurds, Cypriots, Palestinians and Native Americans. “Forging solidarities provides benefits, as the objective reality is that the small people of the world get the short end of the stick,” said Kasbarian. “The best allies are interested in solidarity the way that Armenians are.”

Reparations as Justice

There are two approaches to justice for mass violations of human rights such as genocide, slavery, and mass rape. The first is to punish the perpetrators through criminal prosecution. For cases of past yet unresolved violations, where the direct perpetrators are long dead, as in the case of the Armenian genocide, U.S. slavery and the development of Jim Crow discrimination, and the various Native American genocides, punishment of perpetrators is of course not an option. In such cases, the second option of reparations becomes the means of justice. Reparations as justice should be distinguished from other kinds of processes, such as truth commissions and perpetrator-victim dialogues, which aim at improved relations between perpetrators and victims and the healing of psychological trauma.

Professor Hayg Oshagan introduced and moderated the panel. He emphasized the importance of the issue of reparations in contemporary discussions of the Armenian Genocide and human rights more broadly. He highlighted the central role that reparations for U.S. slavery of Africans in the history of reparations and contemporary discussions of the issue. Finally, he commented on the great significance of this panel, in joining discussions of reparations for African Americans and reparations for the Armenian Genocide.

Henry Theriault, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Coordinator of the College’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, presented on reparations for the Armenian Genocide and the global movement for reparations. Theriault began with a look at the way the “international community,” including those genuinely concerned about human rights abuses, tends to look at violations. For most organizations and activists, as well as concerned bystanders, the concern is, understandably, on ending on-going violations of human rights. But, for Theriault, this leads to a very dangerous mentality: the entire focus of the human rights community and many others becomes ending violence and domination, which becomes an end in itself. The international human rights community has become convinced that if it can end an abuse it has solved the problem, but in fact all that it has done has stopped further abuse from happening. What of the damage that has already been done? Addressing it is just as important as stopping further damage from occurring, but it is a very low priority in the world today. Those who push for reparations recognize that real concern for the victims requires that past damage be addressed.

Theriault then asked how many in the audience knew what the first genocide of the 20th century was. While many assumed it was the Armenians genocide, one audience member had the correct answer: the Herero Genocide perpetrated by the German government from 1904 to 1911, against the Herero people of South Western Africa (today’s Namibia). Through this genocide, the Germans exterminated 65,000 of 80,000 Hereros. What is striking about the aftermath is that in the 1980s, descendants of the survivors began to call on the German government for recognition of the genocide and for reparations. They have continued a strong struggle for reparations since. Theriault added discussions of other cases. The so-called Comfort Women were about 200,000 teenage girls and women from Korea, China, and other occupied Asian countries, as well as some European women, forced into sexual slavery for combat troops of the Japanese military between 1938 and 1945. These women were typically held in prison-like conditions and raped sometimes 30 times per day. The brutality of the system was matched by the near total denial engaged by Japanese military and political leaders for decades, but in 1991 former Comfort Women, indignant after these decades, began to come forward to demand not only acknowledgment and an apology, but reparations for their suffering. Many are poor because of what they suffered and face tremendous physical and psychological issues today, and demand reparations in the first instance to pay for medical costs associated with what they suffered. The Afrikaner government of South Africa for decades imposed a brutal Apartheid regime of slavery and terror over the black majority. When international sanctions against the horrific practice eroded the South African economy by the 1980s, the government received billions of dollars in loans from countries such as Switzerland to buy military equipment and so on. Today’s South Africa, a democratic state granting blacks full rights, is now saddled with the more than $10 billion of these loans. What is more, it is required to pay further billions of dollars for pensions to the government officials, including police and military personnel, who imposed Apartheid, enslaving, terrorizing, torturing, and killing the black population with impunity. The victims of Apartheid are now responsible for paying the bills for the bullets used to assassinate their family members and the armored personnel carriers used to run over their children. And, to make these payments, today’s South Africa must drastically cut back on funding for healthcare and other crucially needed social services. Reparations for South African Apartheid is the demand that those who imposed and benefited from Apartheid actually pay for the system, rather than passing the costs on to the victims and thereby increasing their suffering today.

Theriault mentioned other cases as well, including the emerging reparations movement for Agent Orange spraying of Vietnam by the United States. He also touched on the important African American case, but deferred a treatment of it to his co-panelist.

The last part of Theriault’s presentation focused on land-based reparations movements, particularly Native American and Armenian claims. Explaining the basics of each case, he argued that reparations is not only just because it returns lands stolen through genocide and deportation that rightfully belong to the victims, but it is also the only way to rehabilitate the perpetrator groups, as well. While it has become fashionable for the progeny of perpetrators to express their regrets over past abuses, the engagement with the past ends there. But, as long as the progeny of perpetrators continue to occupy the lands gained through genocide without feeling any need to compensate the victim groups, they are expressing their tacit approval of the ideologies that justified the taking of the lands through genocide in the first place. To regret the killing of Native Americans but to believe in the sanctity of the borders of the United States today means that one approves of the results of the genocidal ideology of Manifest Destiny and thus of the ideology itself. Likewise, for contemporary Turks to see their lands as fundamentally Turkish—including historically Armenian lands depopulated of Armenians by the Armenian Genocide—is to embrace the Young Turk nationalist ideology that produced the Armenian genocide itself. Only by refusing to benefit from at least some of the gains through genocide can those in the United States and Turkey today demonstrate their genuine refusal to support the past genocides.

The second panelist was Kibibi Tyehimba, female co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA). Founded in 1987, N’COBRA has led the contemporary struggle for reparative justice for slavery and its legacy in the Jim Crow system as well as post-Civil Rights-era discrimination. Tyehimba previously served as the co-chair of the N’COBRA Legislative Commission, which lobbies members of Congress for passage of Congressman John Conyers’ H.R 40 bill that would establish a commission to study the era of enslavement and its effects on present day African American Life and to determine proper remedies. With a 30-year history of community organizing, Tyehimba sees the reparations movement as the logical and most important step in the African American struggle for human rights, justice, freedom, and self-determination.

Tyehimba began her presentation by stressing the importance of recognizing how much the United States has benefited from the intellectual and physical labor of people of African descent, though slavery and the subsequent systems of exploitation and discrimination down to the present. Without African American work, the United States would not exist as it does today. Yet, because slavery is “over,” we can easily forget how significant the contribution of African Americans has been and what they are owed for it.

She then discussed the impact of slavery on its victims. Her work in reparations issues stems from her belief that all human life is sacred, and the system of slavery and its legacy were built on the opposite belief, that some lives—those of African Americans—are not. It is easy to forget just how brutal the system was and the ways in which it traumatized and harmed its victims and their descendants.

Slaves and those under the Jim Crow system, with its thousands of lynchings and its daily violence and discrimination against African Americans, lived under war-like conditions. They lived in constant fear of violence and destruction, as family members could be killed or stolen away and so much else. Twelve or 13 generations of slave women were regularly raped by white masters. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) impacted the slaves.

Tyehimba highlighted some of the ironies of how slavery reparations have been dealt with in the past. For instance, after emancipation, it was slave owners not the slaves who were compensated for their losses. In addition, there was a movement to “repatriate” former slaves back to Africa, particularly to destinations such as Liberia. But most slaves were not from Africa directly and were a century or two removed from their homelands. Indeed, the process of slavery was so devastating and broke the captured slaves’ communities so powerfully that most slaves did not know where in particular in Africa they had come from, as language, religion, history, and community had been stamped out by the slavery system. They had no place to “return” to. Even initial promises of reparations, such as General Sherman’s instructions that former slaves should be given 40 acres of land and a mule, were never put into practice or even reversed after some reparation had been made. For instance, some former slaves were given land, only to have it taken back from them shortly after, forcing them into poverty.

Tyehimba laid out the crucial aspects of reparations to African Americans. Payment of the tremendous debt of U.S. society to African Americans is, of course, essential, but compensation alone is not sufficient to address the wrongs of slavery and what has followed it. There needs to be a national dialogue to explain the history of abuse of African Americans and their contributions to U.S. society. Education of the majority population is important. There also needs to be an admission that huge historical crimes were committed. This needs to be followed by an official apology by the U.S. government. It is fine for individuals, groups, and corporations to apologize and give reparations, but slavery was a governmental policy embedded in the legal and political structures of the United States. It was a governmental crime, and the government must take responsibility for it. Affirmative Action programs and related programs must be seen as part of a process of reparation, not isolated programs or giveaways to African Americans and other groups. Specific Affirmative Action programs must be refocused on African Americans as part of reparations.

In the question and answer session, Tyehimba addressed the concern raised that pushing for reparations might alienate well-intentioned members of the white majority in the United States. Her response was that we can’t “let sleeping dogs lie.” She explained that the assumption of this fear of a backlash against those pushing for justice through reparations was flawed. If African Americans have to be worried about even asking for a public discussion of reparations—and that is all that, for instance, Congressman Conyers’ legislation asks for, a study of the issue, not for reparations—because that might evoke anger and resentment against them, then obviously racism against African Americans is still deeply entrenched in the United States and African Americans are still its victims. As long as African Americans “behave” and do not make waves, things are calm, but as soon as they ask even for a public discussion about social justice, the sleeping dog of racism awakes. If we “let sleeping dogs lie,” then we are in fact allowing people our society to remain racist without challenging them or the racist structures of society.

Theriault addressed the concern that reparations in all of these cases is an impractical goal and will never happen. “In 1850, many people were convinced in the United States that slavery would never be abolished. Important social changes always appear impossible until enough people decide to make the changes.” He added that, even if all of the goals of reparations are not attained, it is morally necessary to push for them. Societies that have benefited from slavery, genocide, and mass rape should still be confronted with challenges to hold them ethically accountable. Even if they are powerful enough to reject those challenges, the immorality of doing so needs to be made clear. They should not be allowed to enjoy guilt free with the benefits of horrific human suffering.

“As a young Canadian of Armenian descent, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend a conference that presented the left’s position on a number of important and decisive issues,” said Miran Ternamian. “Of particular interest were Kibibi Tyehimba and professor Henry Theriault’s presentations on Reparations as Justice, as I am convinced that the ‘Global Reparations Movement’ is where the leaders of tomorrow must invest in and prepare for. The inevitable cascade of events that will usher in the most critical phase of our quest for justice is looming. Let us not waste precious time ruminating, exclusively on genocide recognition, at the expense of forfeiting preparedness and know how on reparations and entitlement.”

Armeno-Turkish Dialogue

The first presentation on the panel on Armeno-Turkish Dialogue was by Marc Mamigonian, Director of Programs and Publications at the National Association of Armenians Studies and Research (NAASR), based in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Mamigonian noted that the three main areas of dialogue between Armenians and Turks have been on the academic, governmental, and grassroots levels. His presentation concentrated on the ongoing academic dialogue and the issue of genocide denial. Mamigonian also raised the issue of the danger of governments using scholars as pawns. He also pointed out how some academics try to compare what they term a “diasporan fixation on the Genocide” with the Turkish government’s fixation on the same subject, referring to their worldwide program of denial.

Mamigonian emphasized that not all Turks are deniers, as is the case with the Turkish state and its denialist proxies, noting that the Istanbul conference that took place after much controversy was “a beacon of hope” in the realm of Armeno-Turkish dialogue.

"It is no longer operable to say 'the Turks say' or 'the Turks deny' because courageous Turks, even if they are a minority, have rendered it inoperable. We should not speak about Turks as if they were all deniers. We should say 'the Turkish state' or 'Turkish denialists.' And we know that not all deniers are Turks, and not all Turks are denialists," said Mamigonian.

"Ultimately, change in Turkish society, whether we are talking about a more open and just Turkey that accepts its past, or about genocide recognition, or reparations of some kind, will come as a result of the activity of the academic grassroots activism and governmental realms. But, in the Turkey of today, the political powers are not a reflection of the other two realms," he said.

The second presentation was by Ragip Zarakolu, a Turkish publisher who has been arrested numerous times for publishing books on minority and human rights in Turkey. Zarakoglu stressed that for there to be true progress in Armeno-Turkish relations, the Turkish people must be educated based on facts rather than the governmental propaganda they have heard most of their lives. Such education is one of the goals of his Belge Publishing House, which has translated into Turkish and published many of the most important works on the Armenian genocide.

Zarakolu said Turkey needs to recognize the Genocide for both ethical and political reasons, the most important of which is that for Turkey to become a true democracy it has to change its state philosophy. The ongoing political struggle between the ruling AKP party and the ‘deep state’ [military apparatus] in Turkey has created some space that has allowed more freedom of expression on the genocide issue. But diplomacy with those connected with the ‘deep state’ will not produce results. That is why Belge Publishing has been conducting a ‘people’s diplomacy,’ according to Zarakolu.

"The Armenian genocide was a crime against humanity by the Ottoman Turkish state against part of their own citizens," said Zarakolu. "To deny it, is an insult to the memory of those who died and to those who survived. To deny it poisons each generation, not just the Armenians, but also the Turks who take part in denial," said Zarakolu.

The final presentation was by Dikran Kaligian, chairman of the ANC-Eastern Region. Kaligian described the three major attempts at dialogue that had occurred to date, including the academic dialogue, the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), and the attempts by the Levon Ter Petrosian administration and the Armenian National Movement party (ANM) to establish normal relations with Turkey.

Kaligian stated that TARC “was little more than an attempted continuation of the failed policy of the ANM government to establish dialogue with the Turkish government, only now sponsored by the US State Department.” Most of the Turkish commissioners were “indistinguishable from the Turkish government” while the Armenian commissioners were members of the ANM or its close allies, so that it was not true ‘Track Two Diplomacy’ as it purported to be. He also stressed the importance of engaging with members of Turkish society who are not genocide deniers. Without a common ground of understanding on this vital issue, true dialogue would prove to be impossible. And the Turkish government would exploit the mere existence of such a phony dialogue as TARC was used to undercut the European Parliament resolution on the Genocide.

Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Caucasus

Moderator Doug Geogerian framed the panel on Human Rights in the Caucasus around the ARF’s century-long year commitment to advancing the rule of law in the region. He introduced the panelists as belonging to organizations that remain impartial and concerned with the human rights of everyone, as opposed to being Non-governmental organizations pursuing geopolitical influence on behalf of the West. The first panelist to speak was Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch (HRW). She explained the mission of HRW as monitoring freedom of expression, election transparency, the treatment of detainees in custody, as well keeping track of other fundamental human rights.

“There is a real rise in authoritarianism in the Caucasus, where governments are maintaining a monopoly on power,” said Denber. Governments in all three countries employ various measures to limit opportunities for opposition candidates to challenge incumbents. The criminal justice systems in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan remain deeply corrupt while the hazing of young recruits in the military continues to brutalize young soldiers and empower corrupt government officials.

In focusing on each country’s situation, Denber began with Azerbaijan’s atrocious record of corrupt elections. “We have documented all three of Azerbaijan’s rigged elections in the way opposition activists are intimidated and how the government goes to incredible lengths to prevent candidates from waging effective campaigns. The government subjected hundreds of protesters to excessive force during the 2005 presidential elections,” said Denber.

Moving to Armenia, Denber indicated that there is complacency about its human rights record. According to Denber, the government often discredits NGOs and manages civil society, academia and the media to prevent the public from learning how state officials monopolize power. Government officials enjoy widespread impunity for torture and ill treatment of detainees as well as for demolishing private homes without following legitimate procedures or sufficiently providing compensation.

“What we’ve seen in Armenia in the past three to four years is an increased effort to stifle civil society institutions like the media, and the academia and increased attempts to control or marginalize, and discredit NGOs-particularly NGOs that work on human rights issues-and to prevent them from having a viable voice.”

Since the Rose Revolution, Georgia was considered to be the best hope for reform in the region. The government disappointed these expectations when it unilaterally fired judges deemed corrupt without following any legal procedures or transparent guidelines. “The government is using the same tactics of the Shevardnadze regime to silence its own critics. Prison reform as well as internally displaced persons remain big issues in Georgia,” said Denber.

Following Denber’s presentation, Nina Ognianova of the Committee to Protect Journalists portrayed the troubling environment for journalists in the Caucasus, where governments are generally intolerant of media outlets that are efficaciously critical of state policies. “CPJ remains very troubled by Azerbiajan’s failure to properly investigate the murder of Elmar Huseinov, who was the editor of Monitor, the most respected independent magazine in the country,” said Ognianova. Huge fines are imposed on journalists for criticizing the authorities, which leads to self-censorship on the part of journalists. The Armenian government has denied A1+, an independent television news station, its broadcasting license ten times under the guise of technical reasons. A1+ was recently evicted from its building by the National Academy of Science, which gave the station less than 24 hours to vacate the building.

Professor Robert Krikorian of George Washington University provided historical background for the human rights situation in Armenia. Krikorian pointed out that Armenia lacked a state for most of its history. “Armenia has often looked at human rights as group rights. During the Genocide, the great powers came with declarations of human rights, condemning the Ottoman Empire and threatening to punish it for its crimes. As we all know, those were only words. This has led to a lot of cynicism. Armenians came to tolerate the violation of individual rights as long as a government could secure their physical viability as a people,” explained Krikorian.

In reviewing the Soviet period, Krikorian recounted Stalin’s purges of Armenia’s intelligentsia in the 1930s. It wasn’t until the 50th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide that Armenians took to the streets in Yerevan to demand justice and the return of their lands. Under Perestroika and Glasnost, Mikail Gorbachev hoped to reform the Soviet Union partly by “opening a safety valve in the hope of letting off a little steam. He obviously didn’t know Armenians well because once he allowed them a chance to speak, they wouldn’t stop. This is what led to the Karabagh movement,” said Krikorian.

Following the massacres in Sumgait and Baku overseen by Azerbaijan’s Soviet authorities, the tacit agreement between the Soviet Union and the Armenian people was broken. This led to an independence struggle and the war in Karabagh, in which 30,000 lives were taken, with both sides committing atrocities. The authorities were now presented with a choice between stability and democracy with the government choosing the former. Krikorian quipped, “one of my friends in Armenia told me that there are no unexpected murders anymore.” In this sense, Armenia has become a criminalized state, where some parliamentarians are better known as organized criminals.

For Krikorian, this means Armenians abroad truly show their patriotism when they push for the advancement of human rights in Armenia, as opposed to unconditionally expressing support for Yerevan irrespective of its observance of the rule of law.

"Armenians abroad have a tremendous responsibility to push for human rights and accountability in Armenia. The pressure has to be built up on the Armenian government… We have to get over the feeling that we are airing dirty laundry, that when you talk about Armenia's human rights abuses you are somehow less Armenian or less patriotic."

Globalization and Imperialism

Professor Levon Chorbajian opened the panel on Globalization and Imperialism, by explaining what Western nations stood to gain by conquering the third world: possession of natural resources, control of markets, trade routes and exploitation of cheap labor. By the time the United States had become the “king of the hill” at the end of World War II, the third world was going through a process of de-colonization to be distinguished from “de-imperialization.” “While small nations held all the putative symbols of independence: there own rulers, parliament buildings, national anthems, flags, membership to international organizations, and so on, the range of choice available to them was very narrow. They had to open their countries to international investment and provide access to cheap labor and recourses. This became known as neo-colonialism,” said Chorbajian.

He explained that the imperialist process has always led to resistance. “Any nation whose leader resisted this process has found itself under attack by the United States and these attack are dutifully reported back to the American pubic through the mass media. They find themselves subject to various forms of destabalization and eventually possibly direct invasion,” said Chorbajian. Pointing out that its neighbors posed no military threat to the United States, the real purpose of the gargantuan U.S. military has to do with gaining access to cheap labor, resources and trade routes throughout the world.

Turning to the phenomenon of globalization, which is often described as the promotion of freedom of movement of goods, resources and labor, Chorbajian said, “Globalization calls for a political prescription as well, often referred to as Neo-liberalism. Poor nations must restrict spending on education and other essential government expenditures to make themselves more attractive to foreign investment.” For small countries to please the all powerful International Monetary Fund and World Bank, they must preserve and exacerbate conditions for widespread poverty.

Markar Melkonian followed by focusing on how programs like the Millenium Challenge Grant (MCG), which will provide over $250 million to the Armenian government over the next five years, will in fact reduce rural poverty by making it less viable for small farmers to sustain a livelihood. The real effect of MCG is “further consolidation of big land owners.” In addition, the World Trade Organization will require Armenia to pay a 20 percent value added tax on non-processed farm good, which will be very bad for small farmers. This is partly why so much of the population now resides in Yerevan, where the next move is often emigration.

Melkonian gave critical analysis of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), which in many cases are massively funded entities dedicated to engineering the societies and economies of small nations to the specificities of big capital. “Most NGOs receive money from foreign state and non-state agencies, which promote the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department. Many NGOs in Armenia qualify as grant eating organizations, who hire a stratum of clients composed of young, educated, multilingual individuals who are dependent on the NGOs for their livelihoods. This relationship of patronage allows the funding agencies to elicit ideological loyality from the very stratum that under other circumstances might organize working class opposition,” explained Markarian.

Professor Leontina Hormel concluded the panel by examining the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Hormel joined a delegation of observers for the 2005 Karabagh parliamentary elections and has done extensive research in Ukraine. She began by posing a number of essential questions. Hormel asked, “Is the Orange Revolution a revolution in the sense of a popular uprising, as was reported in the press, or was it a tool for building global empire?” While she acknowledged that the rise to power of Victor Yushchenko inspired many Ukrainians to be politically active, she noted that Ukrainian elites and transnational corporation were served much more than the people. “By employing the techniques of mass-marketing, foreign based organizations like the National Endowment of Democracy (NED) are worked behind the scenes to fund political campaigns,” said Hormel.

Hormel also discussed the change in political culture brought on by the demise of the Soviet Union. “Western tendencies to favor individual initiative over collective will appear unchallenged. This enabled the transnational class to be more persuasive in convincing societies to open up to international markets. Their message: the free market is the only means through which individuals are free to choose their work and what they consume. Common sense now dictates that in no other system can you have choices,” said Hormel.

After looking at whether the Orange Revolution did in fact usher in a free market, democratically based system, Hormel was skeptical about how much choice is really made available. “Some have argued that the various color revolutions, which have swept the former Soviet Unioin are really examples of Western branding, mass marketing that has been used to salvage rigged elections. The organization working behind the scenes are the Democratic Party’s National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. State Department, USAID and others,” said Hormell. Her critical analysis along with Chorbajian and Melkonian’s called into question the notion that West has undoubtedly arrived at the answer for making the world’s population free.

Women and Political Power

Moderator Lucine Kasbarian opened the panel on “Women and Political Power” by saying, “Let’s consider it a given that there is a power imbalance between genders, and that men hold more power than women in most societies around the world. In the case of the Armenians, we are not an exception, though perhaps our panel will argue that our case is worse than most.” Kasbarian then posed essential questions, which would be addressed by the panelists.

She asked, “How can power be shifted downward so that power relations between men and women are more equitable? Why is such a move critical for achieving a just and sustainable global and Armenian society? What are some inspiring examples of women taking the lead in organizing progressive social change? How is the Armenian Cause and the cause for social justice currently hindered by problems of sexism, and how can just causes be advanced by addressing these problems? How are these issues similar when speaking of global issues, the Armenian Diaspora and the Republic of Armenia, and how are they different? And finally, what kinds of activism will make gender relations more equitable?”

Nancy Kricorian began this segment of the conference by discussing the work of Code Pink, a grassroots network of mostly female, anti-war protesters, who are especially known for employing “direct action and street theatre to break through the wall of propaganda.” As Code Pink’s New York City coordinator, she has been responsible for organizing large protests against the war effort in Iraq. In explaining the rationale behind Code Pink’s tactics, she said, “It has been shown that chaining one to a bull dozer has a greater impact than lobbying Capitol Hill in fighting for environmental protection.”

Code Pink struggles to “disrupt the corporate state and corporate control of the media” by drawing attention to injustice with dramatic, eye catching happenings. Code Pink’s founder, Medea Benjamin, while fully garbed in pink held up a banner before Bush’s acceptance speech during the Republican National Convention, shouting “End the Occupation Now.” Benjamin’s action, like many of Code Pink’s, got the media’s attention in spite of its typical modus operandi of protecting the Bush administration from embarrassing publicity.

The next speaker was Maria Titizian, President of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s Women’s Committee. Titizian explained that the committee was founded in 2004 at the urging of women inside the party, who wanted to address the abysmal amount of political participation of women in Armenia’s political processes. “There can’t be real democracy in Armenia if the largest part of the population has little or no representation in decision-making bodies,” said Titizian. She connected the traditional role of women in Armenia to the paucity of women in position of political power. Within a 131-member parliament, only 6 are women. There is neither one female minister in the national government nor one mayor of any of Armenia’s cities or towns.

Titizian argued that women in Armenia face other major problems because they are so deeply marginalized in the political sphere. “There are no state statistics on violence against women. There is a widely held traditional notion that a man has the right to beat his wife,” said Titizian. She went on to describe a growing crisis as it relates to women’s reproductive health. “Armenian women, and I’m talking about married ones with children, can have up to 25 abortions in their life time. This is because abortion is used as a measure of fertility regulation. The birth rate has halved from 2.6 to 1.1 while 31 percent of women are infertile.”

Titizian concluded by saying that in spite of these many obstacles, she remains hopeful for seeing the situation improve. “As the only socialist presence in the region, the ARF has seen within its ranks growing advocacy on behalf of the rights of women and children,” she said. The ARF’s women committee is providing training for potential female candidates and is holding consultation with women in other political parties to build a women’s advocacy across party lines.

Los Angeles-based journalist and environmental activist Maria Armoudian gave the final presentation by providing comparative analysis of women in Armenia with other countries. “Even here in the United States, at a progressive station like Pacifica radio, where I work, male voices tend to dominate key decision making,” said Armoudian. While showing that western nations still had significant progress to make, she pointed out that European democracies enjoy an average of 40 percent female political representation as opposed to Armenia’s, which stands at 5 percent. Armoudian posited that the media plays a significant role in reinforcing low expectations of what women can do in Armenia’s political sphere. “There’s a deep cultural problem of women not being considered good enough to be effective in politics,” said Armoudian.

“The ‘Women and Political Power’ panel was especially eye-opening,” said Lalai Manjikian. “The three panelists, including the moderator, humbly shared with us the significant contributions they are making on social, political, humanitarian, and cultural grounds in society. Through their respective talks, many ideas and issues arose regarding the lack of women, namely Armenian women within politics. The ensuing discussion was heated and lively, but unfortunately was cut short, due to time constraints.”

Robert Fisk, David Barsamian Discuss ‘War, Propaganda and the Media’

Saturday’s events concluded with a plenary panel featuring Robert Fisk and David Barsamian, who discussed the topic of “War, Propaganda and the Media.” Professor Levon Chorbajian moderated the panel and gave opening remarks relating to how major U.S. media outlets have twisted and distorted coverage of the Karabagh conflict. In offering examples of this bias, Chorbajian discussed the repeated characterization of the conflict as “senseless ethnic violence” ignoring the century long legacy of Azeri persecution of Armenians.

He pointed out that the media’s bogus claim of territorial integrity trumping the right to self-determination simply didn’t square with international law. These and other examples led Chorbajian to conclude that the media didn’t see it in the interests of its elite constituency to accurately and fairly cover the Karabagh conflict.

Robert Fisk began his comments by raising his concerns over what he witnessed in Nagorno-Karabagh. He found some Armenians there to be “supremacist and unforgiving to their Azeri counterparts,” which was a departure from what he had usually found to be an Armenian situation deserving of great sympathy. Several members of the audience disputed his claim. David Barsamian began a critique about Armenians relying too much on conventional strategies of influencing politicians, who will not deliver on issues of justice and challenge the agenda of corporate power, calling the Bush administration "one of the most jingoist, bellicose, xenophobic, and imperialist regimes in modern time." The U.S. government's unwillingness to recognize the Armenian genocide was offered as only one case in point.

Barsamian explained why the pubic cannot “rely on the U.S. corporate media.” He used the example of PBS airing a panel, which afforded genocide denier Justin McCarthy the credibility of a sound researcher on the Armenian genocide. “Can you imagine PBS, the ‘Petroleum Broadcasting Service,’ airing a panel on the Holocaust and including David Irving? This is the kind of moral depravity we’ve come to expect from the U.S media.”

Both Fisk and Barsamian explained that Western governments work hard to control how the public perceives the darker episodes of their foreign policies. When Saddam Hussein was committing his worse atrocities against the Kurds and the Iranians, he was a valued client of Washington. At this time, a senior delegation of U.S. Senators visited the dictator and said, “I think your problem is with the press, Mr. President.” Washington’s determination to shape how journalists inform the public has left few reliable U.S. media sources for Fisk. “You need to read Doonsbury to get an accurate representation of what’s going in Iraq,” quipped Fisk.

To Fisk, the threat of civil war in Iraq is more rhetoric than reality considering that the country is not sectarian, but tribal. “Sunnis marry Shiite, and Shiites marry Sunnis. You don’t see us dividing up the United States into Jewish, Irish, black and Italian regions the way we are with Iraq. I think we want to threaten the Iraqis into obedience with the prospect of civil war.”

While both provided stinging criticism of U.S. Foreign policy, Fisk and Barsamian disagreed on some issues. Barsamian had participated in a mock tribunal in Turkey, where President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were found guilty of crimes against humanity. Fisk questioned the relevance of such tribunals and of the American left in general, as it has lost touch with the basic needs of the ordinary people it is suppose to represent and empower. Barsamian felt there was great moral value in holding the tribunal, which attracted thousands of ordinary Turks with progressive, anti-imperialist leanings.

Booksigning by Fisk

Following the lecture, many in the crowd converged on the Maya Lounge for a book signing by Fisk and Barsamian, featuring a performance by the Nour Band, and Maria Armoudian. Nour, whose name means ‘Divine Light’ in Turkish and Arabic, and ‘Pomegranate’ in Armenian, has taken on the project of arranging and recording the lamentations and songs that were sung by Armenians during the Genocide and subsequent deportations in the Der Zor desert. As such, the members of Nour—Ayda Erbal, Bedross Der Matossian, Mark Gavoor, Ozan Aksoy, and Ohannes Berin—include Turkish and Kurdish songs in their repertoire, explaining that historical analysis of these lamentations has shown that they were sung almost exclusively in those languages.

“We are the first multi-ethnic band that makes Anatolian music without polishing or belittling the historical dimension,” said singer Ayda Erbal. “We are not subscribing to a superficial narrative of plain brotherhood that can be caricaturized in the saying of ‘Oh, I have Turkish friends’ or ‘I play with Kurdish musicians.’ But on the other hand I do not want anybody to think that we are a political band, because we are not. None of the songs that we are singing are politically motivated—we are basically singing folk songs and composing in that tradition,” she explained, noting the band’s similarities to Onno and Arto Tuncboyaciyan, Ara Dinkjian and Garo Mafyan—artists and arrangers Erbal called “pioneers” in the field.

Maria Armoudian, recently nominated for a 2006 Armenian Music Award as Best Newcomer, has fused her political activism with her love of music to create Life in the New World, a mélange of powerful lyrics and inspirational melodies. She performed several songs from her debut album during the book signing.

For First Time, Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky Share Podium to Discuss Middle East Conflict

The Armenians and the Left Conference concluded with a groundbreaking lecture, “War, Geopolitics and History: Conflict in the Middle East,” by Robert Fisk and Professor Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

Chomsky began his introduction of Fisk by recounting his answer to an interviewer, who wanted to know where Fisk’s columns were published in the United States.

To the interviewer’s total disbelief, Chomsky told him, “Regretfully, I had to tell him that I did not know one within the mainstream.” After searching the Internet, the interviewer learned to his amazement that it was true.

“He was right to be amazed for two reasons. For the past 30 years, Fisk has been the most respected journalist reporting from the Middle East with incomparable depth and understanding and also extraordinary courage. The second reason is the Middle East is the primary concern of the American public, especially now. According to the Gallup poll, the most important problem facing the United States is the war in Iraq. The most serious threat perceived is Iran. That doesn’t mean that the public is concerned about Iran. It means that the media and journals and so on tell them they should. There’s a strong correlation between the most unpopular country and the one that receives the most defamation in the doctrinal system,” said Chomsky.

Chomsky concluded from this and other observations that, “Americans are carefully protected from the most respected and valuable voices on the topics of their primary concern, something that should concern us today.” He raised the example of how the media had completely excluded the reports of Dennis Halliday and Hans Von Sponek, the United Nations diplomats who ran the Oil for Food Program after the 1991 War in the Gulf. Halliday resigned in 1998 after reporting that the U.N. sanctions, which Chomsky noted were really implemented at the behest of the United States and the British, were genocidal in nature. Von Sponek, who replaced him, came to the same conclusion and resigned as well two years later.

Chomsky praised Fisk’s book as an invaluable source for knowledge, which remains largely unavailable in major U.S. media outlets. Describing the work as “monumental,” Chomsky noted “it goes into the Armenian genocide and the way it has been barred from history.” He shared three examples from Fisk’s book, which especially demonstrate how distorted and militant U.S. foreign policy is in the Middle East.

For example, when official naval reports condemned the U.S.S. Vincennes for shooting down the civilian airliner, Iran Air 655, and killing all 290 people on board, President Bush was quoted as saying, “I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”

Chomsky closed his comments by bringing up Robert Fisk’s inclusion into the “Idiot List” of an editor at the New Republic. Fisk was included for empathizing with the angry Afghanis, who mistakenly took him to be an American and badly beat him. Many people in the crowd had just lost family members to U.S. bombing during its invasion of Afghanistan. Chomsky said, “For full disclosure, I’ve made it to the same list. You have the privilege of hearing one leading idiot introduce another member of that august company.”

To standing applause, Fisk addressed the audience in a way quite similar to his talk at New York Society for Ethical Culture. Fisk further delved into the Armenian genocide during his talk at MIT. He related how the Toronto Globe and Mail had reprinted his article, in which the words ‘Armenian Holocaust’ were substituted with ‘Armenian tragedy,’ “as though what hit the Armenians was a flood or some natural disaster.” The Independent in London followed up and held the Canadian-based paper to account.

When asked about the fate of Armenia in light of the current geopolitical climate, Chomsky gave a sardonic reply: "If Armenia decides to become a great democracy like, say, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, and so on-meaning it follows orders from the White House-then it will be treated just like them. If it doesn't, it will be smashed… That's the way the world works, and it will work that way as long as we allow it to."

Participants Respond

“These are very important voices—Noam Chomsky is one of the greatest voices, yet the mainstream media never utilizes his perspective. These are people who support Armenia and Armenian issues, but from a very different perspective. We are looking to get more money from the U.S. government and support on our issues. But once you do that, you are in their back pocket and they control you. The issues with the IMF and World Bank, as sponsored by those interests in the U.S. government, are going to serve their own geopolitical interests, which are not necessarily Armenian interests. We have to decide—is it my country, right or wrong?” posited Dr. Carolann Najarian. “What Chomsky says is that a lot of these policies aren’t good for the United States, either. I was really thrilled to see Robert Fisk and Chomsky on the same podium, to hear them, to see them—they’re such great and brave people—to see them together was wonderful. The organizers—the Armenians and the Left—should be highly commended for their work, and I hope that it will become a movement that more Armenians will become involved in.”

The youth who attended came away with similar impressions of the conference. “What I valued the most about the Armenians and the Left conference was the constructive and successful effort to address Armenian issues within a contemporary and broad socio-political scope,” said Lalai Manjikian. “I returned to Montreal with a renewed sense of commitment towards achieving social justice and an even stronger conviction in progressive ideals that can at times be easily overlooked due to stagnant status quos. I commend all the organizers for their vision and their hard work and I really look forward to being part of more events of this nature.”

One movement that has been growing within the Armenian diaspora and Armenia has been that of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) community. Two members of HyeQs, an Armenian GLBT association based in New York, had an informational table at the conference and attended Saturday’s panels.

One participant, Suzanne, was initially nervous about the prospect of having a table at the conference, yet was comforted by the welcome she received from the organizers and attendees. Suzanne said she anticipated a confrontation, but was pleasantly surprised at the preponderance of progressive Armenians whom she met at the conference.

“For the most part, the only Armenian community that I’ve experienced is the one that my family has introduced to me. I’ve always felt like the black sheep, but not because I’m gay since I’m not out to my extended family, rather because my ideology has always leaned towards the left,” she said. “I’ve held my own in political discussions, despite being outnumbered in a large, very Republican Armenian family. But, I have always know that to come out as a lesbian would mean the loss of my family. Through attending the conference, I’ve learned that I don’t need to anticipate the loss of my culture and that there is a progressive, intellectual community of Armenians that I may consider to be family. I thank the organizers for what they’ve done to help me feel and know that there is an Armenian community that is warm and welcoming. I’m incredibly happy to feel the hope that my future will not be without the culture that I was raised with and that I love.”

“I think the conference brought out a lot of energy from speakers and participants alike,” said Antranig Kasbarian. “The topics and viewpoints were fresh, and the politics were boldly critical and often defied conventional approaches. Most importantly, there was a broad spectrum of people, many of who were new to me. Now, we need to build on the momentum that was created—not just through more conferences, but through new forms of discussion and activism that can galvanize the energies of these people.”