Here’s an April 24th story from my college days... a thread:

At Carnegie Mellon there’s an old fence that sits in the heart of campus. They told us it’s a portion of fence that ran through that very spot from the university’s first days. 1/22

Students started to paint this bit of fence back in the day for different events and eventually there were so many layers of paint on the old wooden thing, it had collapsed under the weight. But a ritual had been born. 2/22

The school rebuilt the fence out of concrete or something and the painting continues to this day. That may not be exactly how the legend goes but that’s what I remember being told... 3/22

The tradition was that to paint the fence you’d claim it at night and guard it as long as you wanted whatever you painted to be on the fence. People would bring tents and camp out for days. If it went unguarded another group could claim it and paint the fence the next night. 4/22

This way the football team could boast their colors during big games or some campus club could advertise a cause they were championing or event they were doing. Generally a fun distraction in the midst of college life. 5/22

Cut to me - a couple years in Pittsburgh now and missing all the Armenians I’d grown up around in L.A. I found out a random Armenian guy had started an Armenian club at Carnegie for the handful of us out there - maybe ten of us? ...and I joined. William Saroyan was right. 6/22

It helped the longing for home. We didn’t do much, but it was always fun to gather and hear my own language for a bit. Well, at some point the group decided - let’s take The Fence. LET’S TAKE THE FENCE FOR APRIL 24th! 7/22

We thought it would be a great way to spread some awareness - who, after all -in Pittsburgh!- knew about what had happened to the Armenians? We found out who was holding the fence AND that they were planning on leaving the night of April 23rd. Just our luck. 8/22

We gathered with our supplies in the middle of the night and “stormed” the fence. We coated the fence in black and with some red paint wrote something to the effect of, “Remember the Armenian Genocide, April 24th, 1915.” 9/22

It felt like a real night of camaraderie. Doing something to honor our shared story and the memory of ancestors. Spreading awareness. It didn’t even matter how cold it was or how late. 10/22

The plan the next day was to hang around the fence, handing out flyers with some cursory information about the massacres that had left so many of our grandparents orphaned. Maybe we could spark even one fellow students to learn about a thing they’d likely never heard about. 11/22

Maybe we could keep the story from being forgotten. I took a short shift between classes handing out flyers. It felt purposeful, harmless, voluntary. 12/22

We had no plans to guard the fence past that night. We’d been able to paint it for April 24th and that was what mattered. Well before the middle of the night we’d left the fence for whoever would take it next. 13/22

The following morning I walked to school. I wondered if maybe it had survived the night. Maybe the message would carry on for another day. As I hit campus and came over a little rise, the fence came into view in the distance. No such luck. It had been painted over. 14/22

It had been painted over completely white. There didn’t seems to be any writing on it... just the fence... painted white. 15/22

As I got closer I saw that there was a bit of red at the top of the posts at either edge of the fence. The nearer I got, the more my stomach dropped - as I began to make out the small crescent and star painted in red on either post. 16/22

There it was - the Turkish flag, and our message literally whitewashed. This really happened. 17/22

I don’t remember anyone being there. No one guarding the fence. It was abandoned, painted white, and marked with the Turkish flag. 18/22

I can’t understand the thinking of whoever had decided to respond in that way. It was ominous and threatening and eerie. Especially because the white didn’t do a particularly good job of covering over the black and red paint. You could still see it, just there, underneath. 19/22

Today might be a historic commemoration, where an American President will finally and for the first time call a spade a spade. While we know our history, and no counter-narrative holds any water among historians and most nations, this is still a significant moment. 20/22

It is the first time on this issue America will put aside a solely military prerogative for the region, which has typically relied on Turkish allyship, to name the actions of the long gone Ottoman Empire for what they were: Genocide. 21/22

It is inexplicably moving. As an Armenian-American I’ve wondered if this day would come. It is one more step in ensuring that no one can ever again whitewash our history. 22/22