Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 4:33PM Pictures have been flowing in since Saturday's Road to Washington Installations and we're so excited to share some of them with you all today!
Albany, New York
Little Rock, Arkansas
Austin, Texas
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Springfield, Illinois
Monday, April 30, 2012 at 4:12PM Our blog posts for the next two weeks will be dedicated to highlighting stories from our Road to Washington Campaign.
Saturday was an astounding day for me. I’ve mentioned numerous times over the past year that one of the most profound aspects of this project is watching individuals and groups embrace this project and selflessly give themselves to this cause, but Saturday was really out of the ballpark.
All day Saturday I was attached to my cell phone, anxiously awaiting pictures and updates from our amazing organizers. When I did receive a picture all I could do was show it to everybody. The events were absolutely breathtaking. Check out a couple of the pictures so far from Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Florida and Arizona:
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 
Austin, Texas
Tallahassee, Florida 
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Phoenix, Arizona
Starting Saturday night I began receiving a slew of “Thank You” e-mails and while I do appreciate them, I honestly believe that this entire campaign was a success because of our fantastic organizers. This morning I came in to the office and the first e-mail I opened was one from Kelly Himsl Arthur and Liz Overheul Curry Co-directors of the ThinkPeace Workshop for Girls, where they shared stories from both their installations in California and New York. The stories were so moving that we’ll have to dedicate an entire blog post to them. But, one sentence about the girls resolve, that really stood out to me was “When they say they want to 'be the change' they mean it!”
This comes from Ghandi’s quote “Be the change you want to see in the world” and when I think about Road to Washington and more specifically, the journey we all took leading up to this campaign, all of our organizers and participants were being the change. These organizers didn’t just make bones, they galvanized their communities and brought the issues of genocide and apathy front and center. They’re changing the face of what we think of as “activism”. They’re proving that indeed one person can change their community, their country and ultimately their world and I can not help but feel incredibly lucky to know them. They are the ones that deserve our biggest THANK YOU!!
Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 3:01PM Written by Kathleen McEuen, One Million Bones National Liaison
This Saturday, April 28, 2012 is a really big day for us here at One Million Bones. We get to witness 34 capitals across the nation stand together in unity against genocide and mass atrocities by participating in the Road to Washington Campaign.
If you haven’t heard the story about how the Road to Washington came to be, it’s actually quite endearing. It was about a week or so before the Albuquerque 50,000 Bones Preview installation and Susan, Naomi and myself were making bones and just chatting about “what’s next” for One Million Bones when Susan replied “I really think having a mini installation in every State Capital would be so powerful”. Naomi and I obviously thought she was crazy, after organizing the one installation, we couldn’t even conceptualize organizing fifty.
We took away a lot from that first installation last August. I think one of the biggest surprises we encountered that day was how much participating in an installation can change a person and community. Suddenly, Susan’s fifty state campaign didn’t seem so crazy, it actually seemed like a good idea and thus, the Road to Washington Campaign was born.
What has been most amazing for me is to see these groups of leaders transform their communities. There have been so many success stories and I wanted to take some time to share a couple of them here. The International Studies Student Club at the University of Wyoming is a smaller student group but they have poured their hearts into creating an amazing event this Saturday for the Cheyenne community. They brought in Carl Wilkens to speak to their campus and coordinated bone making events across the state of Wyoming. What really touched my heart was this quote from Allison Beaufort: “We also won outstanding Student Organization of the year this year for our efforts, which was amazing – our club has never been recognized for anything!” To witness a small student group engage their campus and educate about these atrocities and then provide them with a direct action, the making of an artwork bone is so powerful and then for them to be recognized by the university for their efforts gives us an immense pride and inspires us to continue this work.
You can’t talk about a community embracing this project without mentioning One Million Bones/Tallahassee organizer, Jane McPherson. Through her leadership, the Tallahassee community has not only participated in this project but have accepted it with open arms making the Tallahassee installation the largest Road to Washington event. Jane started out with the goal of having 2,500 bones made for this weekend and now, because of the community support they've had, they’ll be laying down 6,547 bones. She has been featured in Tallahassee.com, ABC, the FSU College of Social Work Students on FAMU TV and many others!
On April 7, Naomi with a New Orleans based volunteer team organized another amazing 50,000 bones installation. One of the volunteers from that event, Dana Nguyen helped start the One Million Bones Baton Rouge Chapter based out of Louisiana State University who will be organizing the Baton Rouge event this Saturday. The chapter’s president, Firan Chauhan, and Dana have worked tirelessly, not only through the 50,000 bones installation but have continued on to create another meaningful installation for the greater New Orleans community featuring 5,000 handmade bones.
There are many other schools, groups, chapters and students who have made this journey memorable for us and we hope to speak more to that in the weeks to come. We consider ourselves so lucky to have such supportive and dedicated volunteers. We hope everyone can make it out to an event this Saturday!
I'm so thankful to be able to share these stories with you and hope to share many more!
