Alyssa Dalton photo
Markham District High School students perform on the patio of the Mug and Truffle Chocolate Cafe Friday evening to support Amnesty International.
Y-Files
June 20, 2007 10:47 AM
By: Alyssa Dalton, Youth Writer
The second annual Markham District Amnesty Café Night brought together students from across York Region May 11 to perform short acoustic sets and raise awareness on human rights violations.
A large white tent served as a makeshift stage, where each performer was greeted with cheers from the energetic audience.
Tables were set up for a silent auction, donation boxes and a raffle draw, with proceeds going directly to Amnesty International, the worldwide movement campaigning for human rights.
The event was held at the Mug and Truffle Chocolate Café on Main Street, Markham.
The café focuses on fair trade coffee and has earned itself a reputation of being ecologically aware.
Owner Brad Rapoport was approached with the idea last year by Lex Gill, current vice-president of MDHS Amnesty.
“We’d done café nights before, but we wanted to change up the location,” said the Markham student.
An activist himself, Mr. Rapoport jumped on the idea.
He felt the café night would add to “what Mug and Truffle has always wanted to accomplish — being a part of the community”.
After suffering a fall three weeks ago, which left him with a shattered elbow, Mr
Rapoport is glad to be back at work just in time to enjoy the performances.
He credits them as being well-educated and extremely open-eyed for their age.
“They’re really great kids, with great passion,” he said.
Under the leadership of the club’s president Anne Douris, the students hoped the café night would educate and motivate others in the community to advocate on behalf of victims of human rights abuses.
The central theme of the night was “Close Guantanamo”, referring to conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
The camp is used to detain individuals deemed a threat by the American government.
Short speeches were read by Amnesty members on different case studies from Guantanamo between performances.
The speeches shed light on the three stations at the base: Camp Delta, Camp Iguana and the now closed Camp X-Ray.
“Because this involves a First World country, it makes Guantanamo Bay more relevant,” Ms Gill said.
The facility has been recognized by many as a violation of international law, making it all the more necessary to continue raising awareness, she said.
Along with the annual café nights, letter-writing marathons are a large part of Amnesty’s efforts to educate others.
They are one of the best ways to speak out against the torture, Ms Gill said.
“Everyone always thinks that writing a few letters won’t make a difference, but when a bunch of students write a few hundred, it really does say something,” she said.
Especially with the Amnesty café, the club’s largest fundraiser of the year, the students feel like they’re really doing something productive.
The evening ended smoothly and was a great success, raising more than $500.
As Ms Gill’s opening speech read, “I want to look at this event as a celebration of the individual and what, can we call it, ‘the collective individual’ can accomplish.”
Alyssa Dalton has finished her first year of journalism at Carleton University and is a member of the York Region Media Group’s y-team. You can contact her c/o dteetzel@yrmg.com