I have some feelings that I would like to share with my Guinean brothers and sisters…

Here is a simple, yet powerful personal message: Clearly Guinea is in deep trouble at the moment (primarily between Malinké and Foula, but everyone else is involved as well).

Hate is what plagues us.

Hate is what is tearing us apart.

Hate is what is destroying us.

Hate is a disease.

Hate is like cancer: it must be completely eradicated, or it threatens to return and hurt even more, as it is currently doing with us. The question is, how do we cure ourselves from hatred? The answer is quite simple… through LOVE!

LOVE overpowers HATE. It really is that simple. No need for complicated theories or long explanations. Love is found in different forms all throughout human relationships, in families and in friendships. Clearly, I am encouraging everybody to build diverse friendships, but more importantly, I advise all Guineans to begin marrying outside of their tribe.

Families are the unit of society. The best way to build national unity is to build diverse families. Let us stop this close-minded business. Culture is not static, and in-breeding weakens the offspring. To avoid dying a slow, culturally stagnant and genetically defective death, let us foster national peace through love, literally. The middle ages are gone!!! The glorious empires of recorded history are never to return!!!

WE HAVE TO FOCUS ON UNITY.

The space-time continuum is four dimensional. Time is the measurement of the movement of an object in space. Everything is constantly moving forward. History is just that: history; the key word is STORY! There is never a singular version of a story. As long as they are told by the imperfect minds and tongues of human beings, facts will always have a degree of relativity, and stories will always come in different versions.

Emotions are powerful. Feelings define who we are, our character. If we continue to hate “the other” tribe, when we are no longer in contact with “the other” tribe, we will begin hating “our own people.” In allegiance to the need to hate, the mind will find a “valid excuse” for hating one group or another. Why? Because we will have fixed our nature on hate. We will have a natural pre-disposition to hatred… Vilifying people from another village, tribe, or region, will not solve those of our own. Each of us needs to take responsibility, as responsibility is a pre-requisite for independence, interdependence, and authority.

My fellow Guineans, I would like you to consider one small thought… as you entered this world, you were greeted with love by your mother. It is in fact love, in one form or another, that brings a man and a woman together to perform the most miraculous act of (pro)creation in the animal kingdom. Love is the mother of creativity, and creativity is the mother of all human genius. The comfort we enjoy, the technologies we have, the cultures we hold dear… are all the product of creativity, and the root of creativity is love. If you don’t believe me, observe people that are in deep love. They become forgiving, oblivious to the negative traits in the target of their love. People in love are creative, imaginative, open, quasi possessed. Love is who we are. In creating us, our Creator bestowed his love and mercy upon us. Literally, without love we are nothing. With hate (the opposite of love), we meet our doom and destruction.

Think for a minute… who wants a civil war, or the consequences of physical and cultural in-breeding? Which Guinean can guarantee that none of his/her family members will be affected if chaos breaks out in Guinea?

So, my dear Guinean brothers and sisters. I won’t lie to you all. Despite the many talents and potential of the Guinean people, many of us are still sick in the heart. Some of us have forward thinking views, but our families and friends are eager to infect you with hate. I did not have the opportunity to grow up in Guinea or to spend time around Guineans during my adolescence, but since I began meeting my people a few years ago, these have been my observations.

There always seems to be a “valid excuse” to nurse hatred. Elections, Nafissatou Diallo, rocket fire on President Alpha Condé’s house. Despite all logic, it always seems that you our public eventually forfeits reason to follow the doubtful philosophies of an uneducated uncle, or the manipulated emotions of the masses. EVERY TIME SOMETHING HAPPENS, OUR ANALYSIS IS ONE DIMENSIONAL: WHICH TRIBE DID IT????

All this is the result of hatred. A hatred that we have preached and practiced for decades. For this, there is only one cure, and our creator has equipped us with this cure deep inside us: LOVE. LOVE EACH OTHER. BUILD NEW FRIENDSHIPS. MOST IMPORTANTLY, MARRY DIVERSELY.

To those that are already married, help your sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles, and cousins and friends to find marriage and love outside of your villages, outisde of your tribes, outside of your regions. This solution will naturally correct all anger and hatred that we have built around ethnicity, political affiliation, etc. It will also teach us to love, and give us a predisposition to love all.

In the end, ask yourself: will love overpower hate, or will hate overpower love?

The choice is ours…

I would like to ask our leaders, both President Alpha Condé and Cellou Dalein Diallo to sit down together and talk, so that the citizens of Guinea will be inspired to follow their noble example and work for national reconciliation. I am also appealing to our elders, sages, and religious leaders to give the future precedence over the past, and the larger collectivity precedence over their small immediate circles.

As the holy month of Ramadan approaches, May Allah bless us, may he clean our hearts and fill them with deep love for all.

If you want to discuss more about unity in Guinea, follow me on twitter @MohamedToure or e-mail me at mohamed@allianceguinea.org

Building National Unity in Guinea Through Love is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Who do you call if you are in the middle of a polling station and tensions are rising? Who do you turn to when something has gone wrong with the mechanics of a monumental election, threatening your ability to vote? How do you get the word out when all has in fact gone well and you want people to know that for you these elections were free and fair? For many Guineans in today’s long-delayed and critical presidential run-off elections, the answer was Alliance Guinea’s crowd-sourcing initiative, GV10 Witness.

Since GV10 was launched during the first round of voting in June, Guineans have sent over 22,225 SMS messages in response to Alliance Guinea’s call for crowd-sourced information about the country’s first democratic elections.  10% of these were in the last 24 hours alone – with messages coming in from every corner of the country and some of the most remote places in between The wholly volunteer-run effort allowed the Guinean people to use the hippest form of cutting-edge open-source technology to participate in establishing democracy, with their eye-witness testimony providing a valuable tool for judging the legitimacy of the next Guinean government.

And for many Guineans, the results of GV10 today were much more immediate. In Conakry, Kissidougou, and across Guinea, when polling sites were missing materials or confronting other problems and tensions, Guinean citizens sent messages to Alliance Guinea, whose team in Conakry looked into the reports and flagged the most urgent issues for the CENI, the national electoral commission. As a result, a number of problems were caught early and remedied – and people were able to vote thanks to Alliance Guinea’s dedicated volunteers.

The behind-the scenes technical headquarters for GV10 was in New York City, with volunteers working together via Skype chat from Paris to Stockholm to Albuquerque to Honolulu and regular video check-ins with the team in Conakry. It was an international effort to support the birth of the newest democracy on the planet.

At the end of the day, citizens in Guinea had reported having witnessed a number of irregularities throughout the country, but the vast majority of issues appeared more logistical than nefarious. And while tensions have been mounting in recent weeks with outbursts of ethnic violence, today there were essentially no reports of violent altercations.  Instead, there were nearly 3 times as many reports of things going well as there was conflict of this kind.

GV10 Witness will continue as the votes are counted and as the country braces for the announcement of the official results. And all along the way ordinary citizens will be able to report what they are seeing – maybe a beginning of a kind of political engagement that can keep the democracy moving past the elections and into the task of growing a democratic society.

Raul Rothblatt

A historic election, and a triumph for citizen engagement to make them as free and fair as possible is a post from: Alliance Guinea

At the time of this blog post nearly 3000 SMS messages have been sent from Guineans all across the country into the GV10 Witness system in the last few days alone.  Many thousands more are expected tomorrow on Election Day itself. (Before, during and after the first round over 17,000 text messages were sent.) The SMS messages, texted to the number “8008″ in Guinea, along with emails and Twitter feed, are then received and processed by a team of nearly 100 volunteers in the U.S. and around the world. Many of these are Returned Peace Corps Guinea Volunteers as well as others with ties to Guinea and still others who simply wish to do something tangible to support democracy in a place that may be far away but where people share the same fundamental desire to choose their leaders themselves.

Ethnic tensions and conflict surrounding these elections in Guinea, as well as concerns about voting logistics, are serious and real. At the same time, representatives from both leading parties and all ethnic groups have expressed their deep appreciation for the GV10 Witness effort and citizens of all kinds are using the system to express what they are seeing and feeling. the transparency created by the system and GV10’s direct reporting of incidents to the CENI and the election security forces (FOSSEPEL) are intended to address these issues as much as possible and increase the chances at free and fair elections.

Volunteers are still needed to help these efforts, for Election Day and in the many days following when results will be announced and the population and party supporters respond, possibly with violence. To join with your fellow global citizens in making GV10 work, email allianceguineawitness@gmail.com.

A global citizen’s election: Showing solidarity for Guinea from all corners of the country and the globe is a post from: Alliance Guinea

The event will be a rare coming together of a broad spectrum of actors from the Guinean community and friends of Guinea in the U.S., including members of the two leading political coalitions in Guinea, civil society activists, and religious and other community leaders. With the first democratic presidential elections in Guinea’s history possibly just two weeks away and tensions running high, there is no better time to remember what September 28 means to all of us and how we can honor this memory together in the name of freedom, peace, and a better future for all Guineans.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010
5:00 – 8:30pm
Institute for African Studies, Columbia University
Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd St. (btw Broadway & Claremont Ave.)
Hosted by Alliance Guinea

All are welcome but space is limited – RSVP to allianceguinea@gmail.com required. Event is open to the press with prior notice.

September 28: A Community Reflection is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Marchers in front of the White House

With a huge showing of women in the lead, an estimated 5000 people from at least 11 states across the east coast and Midwest – Guineans and friends of Guinea – marched in front of the White House and to the US State Department today to increase awareness of the atrocities of September 28 and to demand justice for the victims and help for a transition to democratic elections in Guinea.  The marchers highlighted in particular the horrific violence committed against women that day and made it clear that these sacrifices must not be in vain.

In addition to the march, members of the Movement of Guinean Women in the United States and the Guinean Forces Vives in the US met with staff at the State Department where they fully briefed the African bureau on the current situation in Guinea and discussed strategies for continued U.S. support of an end to military rule in the country.  In addition, a second delegation of Guinean civil society members and American friends of Guinea met with the staff of key offices on Capitol Hill to raise awareness of the situation in Congress and garner additional support.

Meeting with Marissa Doran, staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

Submitted this letter in the name of the Movement of Guinean Women and Guinean Forces Vives in the US and Alliance Guinea, clearly making the case for why action is needed now and what further steps the United States in particular can take to accelerate the transition.

In addition to people residing in Washington DC, marchers came in from Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Ohio, Indiana, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, with 17 buses from New York alone to show unity and solidarity for the people of Guinea and demand that action be taken now in the name of human rights and democracy.

Were you at the march? What was it like to express your views in front of the White House, State Department, and US Congress? Share with us your experiences here.

Thousands in Washington call for justice, with women in the lead is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Organized in particular as a women’s march in protest to the horrific violence against women and girls committed that day and the need for peace and unity in Guinea, the march is expected to bring together thousands of women and men – Guineans and other friends of Guinea – from around the United States that day to express their outrage and demands for justice and democracy.

The march will begin at 10am at Lafayette Park, with stops at the State Department and Capitol Hill. Detailed itinerary forthcoming.

If you are in the greater Washington DC area, we plan to see you there. If you are elsewhere in the country and would like to connect with others from your area who will be travelling to Washington, please email allianceguinea@gmail.com.

Our goal: to make the 26^th as big a show of solidarity as possible – demonstrating that Guinean tragedies and dreams are everyone’s tragedies and dreams.

March on Washington planned for Monday, Oct. 26 is a post from: Alliance Guinea

Today in Guinea, the new millennium has signed a mature political consciousness of the people of Guinea that is enriched by years of bloody dictatorship. Since the time of independence until today’s multiparty system, militaries have been and are still present in the Guinean politics. The recent advent of the ruling CNDD in the eyes of the international community is a symbol and confirms a living reality in our country.

The movement of people who wanted to fight demanding better living conditions, the affirmation of identity and ensuring a bright future has always turned to the massacre of demonstrators.

It is in this context that the Guineans living in Guinea and abroad, gathered in a patriotic Guinean alliance and a non-profit named “Droit Pour Tous en Guinée” ( Law for All in Guinea), and aware of our place and our responsibility in the present and the future of Guinea and Guineans, we say and reiterate that the CNDD absolutely must leave and let the people of Guinea elect its president on the basis of universal democracy. Poor people have long been suppressed in his political aspirations and the expression of its expectations. Nevertheless, the Guineans and friends of Guinea have emerged as crucial players in the social and political transformation of Guinea. While Guineans and friends of Guinea rally to pay tribute to the illustrious victims of the events of  September the 28^th, the National Council for Democratic oligarchy (CNDD) continues to get rich on the back, tears and blood of people who live miserably and shamefully.

Gassimou Diallo
Droit Pour Tous en Guinée

A Guinea fractured by the military junta is a post from: Alliance Guinea

How do we create a united alliance for a united and democratic Guinea? is a post from: Alliance Guinea