It is difficult to find a story on the Darfur genocide nowadays. While there are 7,141 articles on Michael Phelps on Google News, there are only 189 stories on the Darfur genocide. This does not surprise me as Anderson Cooper chose to cover the Terri Schaivo book deal rather than the 2006 nationwide Darfur rally. Luckily some journalists are still calling for action, as Raj Purohit and Howard Salter of the Baltimore Sun are calling for Obama to "act to end 'the' Darfur tragedy." They report that International Criminal Court, "is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on war crimes charges within the next week or two."
I wrote a diary a few days ago calling for Obama to act on the genocide, and called upon him to keep his promise of loosening the grips that tyrants have on their people. Several people replied to my diary saying that we should not focus on the genocide and that I did not care about domestic issues, and I want to use this opportunity to respond to their arguments.
Am I an elitist for opposing the genocide in Darfur? I hope not. Yet I was painted as an elitist for posting a diary on the genocide in Darfur. It is in my judgment and experience that true progressives should stand up for the rights of oppressed people around the globe. When women are being raped and when family members are forced to watch loved ones be murdered by militia, I am going to speak out against such atrocities. I do not write diaries about Darfur because "my life is going so well," as one commenter put it. I write them because there are people are suffering and dying in refugee camps and villages. Isolating myself from this atrocity would be wrong, so I wrote a diary saying that we need to hold President Obama’s feet to the fire when it comes to ending the genocide in Darfur.
I was told by a commenter that he planned to "keep Obama and Biden's feet to the fire on matters a little closer to home; you may have noticed that things are a little difficult these days for a lot of Americans, but perhaps you missed that memo." Oh yes, I am so privileged to have witnessed genocides and an economic meltdown unfold in my lifetime. What fortunes I have been bestowed!
Darfur Rally Highlights
George Clooney, Barack Obama, The Lost Boys and many more gather to bring attention to the Sudan genocide
In fact, I have received the memo. I am currently jobless and many of my friends see a bleak future ahead. Why does this individual try to convince me that because "my life is going so well" that I should not concern myself with a genocide in Darfur, that I should only focus on domestic issues? Didn’t Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. say that you should not be silent about things that matter? Do his words still ring true today, or have they been cast into history's forgotten tomb?
I do try to focus primarily on domestic issues. I read Crooks and Liars every day and always read Cagle’s political cartoonist page to keep updated. I am looking forward to Obama forging a new and improved domestic agenda, hopefully reminiscent of FDR's New Deal.
I believe that the bail out money should have gone to successful banks with New Deal safety nets, and they could have bought out the deregulated banks so that people had money in institutions they trusted. Instead, the money went to failing banks and the CEOs gave themselves lavish bonuses. The fact that there was no oversight or regulation in the initial bailout was shameful; politicians should have seen this coming and should not have trusted the politicians.
I do care when our local schools are failing because the state of California cuts school funding from the budget. What we need now is an investment in education, and yet education is usually the first thing to be cut from the state’s budget. California used to have the best education system in the country, now it is ranked 49th. That is pitiful. We need to fix our schools pronto.
We need to create new jobs and bring manufacturing jobs to America. We do this by setting benchmarks for other countries when it comes to human rights laws. What makes other countries appealing to big corporations is that cheap labor is abundant and unions are on-existent. How can American unions succeed when they have to compete with workers that make $2 dollars a day? It is clear that unions will play a bigger role under the Obama administration, but I want to make sure that the president brings jobs back to America and puts economic pressure on countries that suppress unions and hurt America’s middle class in the process.
Creating a green infrastructure will not only create green jobs, but it will make the nation carbon neutral. Innovations such as algae fuels, mercury free light bulbs and solar panels will help America wean itself off of oil supplied by tyrants, and will hopefully rid the world of companies like Exxon who make record profits while destroying the atmosphere.
We need to fix the city of New Orleans and make sure that people are not profiting off of the suffering of the citizens of the city. Big land owners are buying the land in the 9th Ward to put in hotels, casinos and tourist fare. This should not stand, not in America, and we need to work to put in a levee system to protect the city from hurricanes and rebuild what President Bush failed to.
Universal health care for all Americans should be a top priority. President Clinton did not make it a top priority and it failed because the American people did not know much about the plan. Having a universal health care system would be less expensive than having a privatized system. With 48 million Americans uninsured, it is essential that we make universal health care a priority.
Now one might ask why I brought up these topics in a Darfur diary. Well, because the commenter said that they wanted to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on issues that were "a little closer to home." I guess I just want to show him that we are on the same page on the domestic front. The commenter told me that I "missed the memo" when it came to solving our domestic problems. I hope that the commenter will not jump to conclusions like this again.
I did not miss the memo: I have been paying attention to everything that has been going on from America to Zimbabwe. Maybe genocide is not a pressing issue to the commenter, but it is a pressing issue for hundreds of thousands of refugees who have lost everything, their homes and in many cases their friends and family. I can still believe in universal health care and ending genocide: I do not think the two movements conflict. We do face problems in America and we need to deal with the financial crisis. 12 million Americans are unemployed and they need jobs to get our economy movie again, this is no laughing matter. I am one of the 12 million Americans who want a job but cannot find one, but I also care about the people of Darfur and what happens to them.
There is a good point to be made that Americans are suffering and cannot wait for help any longer, and this is true. I am glad that President Barack Obama is passing a stimulus plan that should encourage economic growth. I am concerned however that he said that "there is a time for executive bonuses, but now is not the time." I hope that he has learned his lesson and will cap CEO salaries. In the 1970’s, a GM employee may have received $40,000 a year by today’s monetary standards. Now an employee at Wal-Mart receives $18,000 a year on average while the CEO receives $23 million a year. The American middle and lower classes have suffered enough from tax cuts for the rich, layoffs and union busting.
The Bush administration ruined America and we need to fix it. But because President Bush ignored the genocide for five years, we as Americans have an obligation to reverse the past administration’s wrong-doings and end the genocide. I hope that the envoy that Obama sent to Khartoum will bring more stability to the war torn country, but we need action, not empty promises when it comes to Darfur. There is no excuse for the world to watch idly by as hundreds of thousands of people are murdered and millions flee. I will not stand idly by as suffering takes places, either in America or beyond our borders. That is why I wrote the diary that I did, and I still believe that we need to hold the president's feet to the fire to "shine a spotlight" on those who commit atrocities.
Rev. Al Sharpton: Darfur Rally