By JACKIE HANUSEY
Staff Writer

EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP – “Some people say, ‘How could we ignore the Holocaust?’ Well one is going on and it is not even on the front page of any newspapers.”

That is what Jennifer Bleznak, a senior at Egg Harbor Township High School, can’t understand and wants to change.

This Saturday, May 10, Tony Canale Park will be a hot bed of fun, music, food, and students striving to inform people about the genocide going on in Darfur.

Students have become expert spokespeople for the thousands without a voice who are being persecuted, at first because of their non-Arab culture, and now with even more being hurt and killed in the process.


“They deserve a voice and we can be that voice,” said junior Samantha O’Brien who is one of the students at the forefront organizing “Tunes Against Turmoil.”

Student members of the Darfur Committee have been working on this music festival for a while now, scheduling the bands, planning food and setting prices while making sure their message gets across loud and clear – we need to help and everyone can.

“You can build an entire hospital for $30,000,” Bleznak said to The Current after school at a meeting of the committee May 1.

“That includes medicine,” said O’Brien who wants to become a doctor and travel to help those in Darfur.

“Everything I do is for the future of others,” said O’Brien who is one of about 130 volunteers organizing thousands of little details necessary for the upcoming event.

Last year O’Brien attended a lecture by Holocaust survivor Alice Gold; she left wanting to help more in Darfur.

“I asked her about Darfur,” O’Brien said about the encounter a year ago.

In the end she realized we are not learning from our mistakes in history, but they can try to do something about it.

Junior Lindsay Wolf said she was unaware of the atrocities until a traveling exhibit with artwork from the children in the devastated regions was brought to the library last school year.

The aspiring journalist wishes to go there one day and bring their stories to the front page while also working as a humanitarian to help those suffering.

Now the school is full of posters and T-shirts about the cause.

O’Brien said T-shirts from St. Augustine Prep have infiltrated the school reading, “Smoke the Janjaweed.” 

The shirts get attention from people thinking that Janjaweed is a drug-related reference when in reality they refer to the murders in Darfur that they want to stop.

The project is not just for the Darfur Committee; the entire school has chipped in participating in movie nights, a “Die for Darfur” rally that attracted more than 350 students and now the concert.

Other clubs and groups are also pitching in with different facets of the event.

The group is hoping to attract at least 600 guests to the six-hour concert.

“We have 998 tickets,” senior Amanda Flick said, but if they exceed the number of wristbands they will not be turning people away.

“The aim of this service-learning project is to raise funds for various relief efforts in Darfur, particularly Doctors Without Borders, an organization aiming to provide medical care to the victims of the atrocities,” said advisor and teacher Steven Marcus who credits the students with making this a reality.

The concert will have music for all ages and tastes with some high school-age bands playing and some bands with older members chipping in to help their children who are helping put the event together.  The concert will feature the sounds of headliners Patrick Droney, Hand Me Down Buick, and Marc Ribler and performances by Identical Twins, Last Try, Striving for Better, Global Chill and Warranty.

Even when the concert is over Sunday, these students are prepared to start working on their next big project for Darfur knowing a group in Egg Harbor Township can make an impact half way around the world.
Learn more at www.savedarfur.org.


If You Go
Tunes Against Turmoil is scheduled for noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, May 10 at Tony Canale Park off Dogwood Avenue.  Rain location is the Fernwood Avenue Middle School auditorium. Tickets are $6. Food will be available for additional cost.