A glance at my housemate’s blog informs me that April is genocide prevention month. I shall of course, be doing my part, by suspending my usual genocidal activities next month. I urge you all to stop your wholesale slaughter of entire races of people in the month of April as well.

More seriously, I had a look at what they suggest one might do to help, if one is against genocide. Out of the 30 things they list, over 20 are “visit X website/read X book/watch X movie” so that you know more about various genocides. Most of the ones that aren’t are “educate other people about genocide”. And notably, not one of them is “write to your elected representative asking them to raise questions about/support measures against” any of the currently ongoing genocides. Not one is “organise a march/protest”.

Look, I appreciate that it’s possible I’m just a well-informed individual, and I know these people mean well, but seriously, perhaps step one in stopping something that I think we can all pretty uncontroversially agree on might be actually doing something, rather than just educating yourself and others. I mean, seriously, how much education about genocide does one need? Can we not assume that we all agree that people killing other people is bad, and proceed directly to doing something about it?