By now, none of us is a stranger to action. Throughout this campaign, we have all done things that seemed foreign and difficult to us. Walking door to door, each time working up the courage to knock once more to bring a message of hope and change. Calling strangers halfway across the country, when it sometimes seems hard enough to talk to our friends and neighbors. Dealing with frustrating computer programs, trying to bring order out of disorder, and putting in more hours than might seem wise.
We have done all this because we believe that Barack Obama speaks the truth when he talks about the fierce urgency of now. We believe that we must act now, or continue to watch our world spin out of control into partisan bickering, violence overseas, and environmental destruction. We believe that as Gandhi once said, we must be the change that we want to see in the world.
I'm writing this diary to ask that you follow this belief into yet another arena.
Tomorrow, the Olympic Torch is coming to San Francisco, en route to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. This symbolic event has become a nexus for the effort to shame China into taking responsibility for its acts in the world, by bringing light to that country's blatant violations of human rights in Tibet, and active economic and arms-supply support for the Sudanese Government in its perpetration of genocide in Darfur.
You have probable heard about the protests and disruptions taking place at previous Olympic stops. Though some of the actions taken have not been beyond reproach, the goal behind these activities is noble: To bring awareness to the human rights violations of the Chinese government and prevent them from using the Olympics as a whitewash to clean their hands.
It is not a comfortable thing, to protest anything related to something as revered as the Olympics. There is a great desire that they be kept free of politics. However, since this Olympics has been held up by the Chinese government as proving their place as a first world country, it is the responsibility of the world to demand that they live up to that claim in their actions as well as their words. The violence and repression that is ongoing in Tibet and the Sudan must be stopped, and China is the only one who can do it.
As Barack Obama himself said about the genocide in Darfur, "We can't say 'Never Again' and then allow it to happen again". There is a moral imperative: We must do what we can to bring these catastrophes to an end. That is why I ask you to join me, and other activists tomorrow in protesting along the route
of the torch.
The Save Darfur movement will be gathering at 11:00am in two locations:
3rd St. and Townsend St., near AT&T Park (with up to 2-3 miles of walking); or One Maritime Plaza, on Clay St. near Embarcadero BART (less walking)
You can find more details here.
The Save Tibet movement is meeting at 8:00am at Ferry Park (between Washington & Clay streets off of Drum. Near Embarcadero 4 of the Embarcadero Center).
You can find more details here.
Together, we can begin the end of these terrible deeds. Yes we can.