Wanna hobnob with George Clooney this weekend?
posted by Melissa Waters
Then come join the crowds at the Save Darfur Coalition’s “Rally to Stop Genocide” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this Sunday, April 30. Other luminaries appearing at the event include Senator Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, rap impresario Russell Simmons, and Paul Rusesabagina (whose story was depicted in the superb film Hotel Rwanda, which you should rush out and rent tonight if you haven’t seen it yet). The Save Darfur Coalition brings together more than 160 faith-based, human rights, and humanitarian organizations, and the list of speakers at Sunday’s event reflects the incredibly diverse, grass roots nature of this effort. Here’s the blurb from the Coalition’s website:
“The rally is part of the “Million Voices for Darfur” campaign to generate one million postcards for delivery to President Bush, who recently pledged to push for additional UN and NATO help to protect the people of Darfur. We applaud the President’s leadership, but the work is far from done. We are urging President Bush to take steps necessary to end the genocide and build a lasting peace.”
Organizers estimate that around 20,000 people will attend the rally in DC, with smaller rallies to be held in cities around the country. Even if the crowds defy expectations and number in the hundreds of thousands, they will be dwarfed by the figures coming out of Sudan itself: According to the Coalition website, in just three years, 400,000 people have died and nearly 2.5 million have been displaced.
How many political issues out there can unite Barack Obama and Sam Brownback in common cause? Kudos to both Senators, and to the many other politicians, celebrities, and ordinary folk who have put compassion and principle above partisan bickering, in an attempt to shake us all out of our apathy.
April 27, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Politics
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Responses (3)
geoff manne - April 28, 2006 at 1:31 pm
It’s a nice idea, but the UN is, in this (as in much else, unfortunately), pretty useless. Of course NATO intervention is also contentious. My friend Seth Weinberger at the Security Dilemmas blog has been beating the drum for a while now. His latest is here:
geoff manne - April 28, 2006 at 8:39 pm
It’s a nice idea, but the UN has pretty clearly revealed itself to be useless in this, NATO’s involvement is contentious, and I bet Clooney, et al. don’t really advocate unilateral US action. So what is to be done? My friend, Seth Weinberger, at Security Dilemmas has been beating this drum for a long time. His latest (with links to several other posts) is here. Here’s a taste from an earlier post:
Maryland Conservatarian - April 29, 2006 at 2:44 pm
wait a minute – so it’s OK to sometime act unilaterally as a nation WITHOUT first building an international coaltion and receiving the blessings of the UN? and if we go in and don’t find WMDs, Clooney will be OK with that?
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