Mired in its fourth consecutive year of unchecked atrocities,
Sudan’s Darfur region still awaits a legitimate semblance of
international intervention. Unfortunately, the world’s collective
non-response has legitimized nothing more than the status quo —
which, for Darfurians, has translated to the slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of men, women, and children. With the Bush-led
government stalled in an apparent combination of apathy,
bureaucracy, and geopolitics, a number of US-based grassroots
movements are rallying their constituents to take action.
One of the most effective protests to date against the genocide
in Darfur was conceived, not surprisingly, on a college campus.
According to Sam Graham-Felsen of
The
Nation, not long after Harvard University bowed to
pressures from campus-wide protests and agreed to divest the
school’s financial investments from a Chinese-based oil company
working with the Sudanese government, other divestment protests met
with similar successes at universities across the country.
Ultimately, however, while these divestment movements continue to
chip away at the financial capability of the Sudanese government,
Graham-Felsen concludes that combating the crisis of Darfur
requires a much greater action.
Hoping to jump-start that requisite action are a number of
organizations reaching out to move the consciences of their unique
audiences.
Van
Jones and James Rucker’s ColorOfChange is specifically
appealing to black Americans and their allies, while faith-based
publications like
Sojourners and
Tikkun have called on
their respective readerships to confront Darfur’s plight via
letter-writing campaigns to everyone from Congressional
representatives to the president.
Million Voices for
Darfur aims to bring such groups together in a broad-based
campaign to bombard Bush with one million postcards, phone calls,
and petition signatures demanding increased humanitarian aid, if
not complete UN intervention in Darfur. Organizers hope to achieve
the ‘Million Voices’ tally by Sunday, April 30th, when the Save
Dafur Coalition will hold its
Rally to Stop
Genocide in Washington, DC. Speakers will include Holocaust
survivor and author Elie Wiesel, actor George Clooney, and Joey
Cheek, the Torino gold-medalist who donated his Olympic winnings to
Darfur charities.
Go there >>
Divestment
and Sudan
Go there too >>
ColorofChange’s
Stop the Genocide in Darfur Campaign
Related Links:
Related Links from the Utne
Archive:
Comments? Story tips?
Write a letter to the editor
Like this? Want more?Subscribe to Utne
magazine
