Saving Darfur

If you haven't already sent your postcard to Bush on behalf of savedarfurg.org please do. It literally takes a few seconds online.

I went to the rally on Sunday. It was interesting to see people from so many religious denominations coming together. (I walked in just as the Sikh represenative was saying a prayer from the Guru Granth Sahib...I couldn't see the stage to see who was up there delivering it but I think it was a rep from the Intefaith council.) You saw lots of people carrying different religious symbols, particularly Jewish and Christians representing their church or synagogue. I think its important that people from different faiths can come together on an issue like this where it could easily be turned into Islam vs the "good people" instead of Genocide vs Humanity and the presenters recognized this in their selection of speakers as well.

One thing that was interesting was when I was leaving I came across a few gentleman essentially protesting the rally. They weren't running around with flyers or signs -- just sitting quietly at a table w/an newspaper article clipping and several copies of a text they were selling. They claimed that labelling the atrocities in Darfur a genocide was hurting more than it was helping because the Janjiwid and the Sudanese government basically doesn't want to be told what to do by anyone else and that butting in with words like 'genocide' and using the United States international power is keeping the rebels from a peace agreement. An all inclusive agreement was not reached today when talks were set to take place and the so-called deadline has been extended another 48 hours. Perhaps its possible these "protesters" have a valid argument but even after reading the small article they were advertising I wasn't convinced. If anyone knows of anything related that goes beyond this article feel free to educate!