Fast for Darfur
| By Campus Progress - Oct 6th, 2005 at 5:32 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Today is the International Solidarity Fast for Darfur, sponsored by STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur).
Multiple events will be organized around the Solidarity Fast, including rallies and vigils. News of the event will be broadcast into Eastern Chad and Darfur via radio, to show the people of Darfur that they have not been forgotten.
Take a look at STAND's site and find out what you can do to participate, both with todays international fast for solidarity and beyond.
Multiple events will be organized around the Solidarity Fast, including rallies and vigils. News of the event will be broadcast into Eastern Chad and Darfur via radio, to show the people of Darfur that they have not been forgotten.
Take a look at STAND's site and find out what you can do to participate, both with todays international fast for solidarity and beyond.
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The reason?
They've run out of people to kill. All the villages are burned. The brutal atrocities are quickly becoming past-tense.
The lesson?
It's nice to talk about stopping genocide, have a march, have a rally. But sometimes, talk doesn't do anything.
STAND started at my campus, and they're good folks. But a bunch of kids volunteering to give up alcohol for one night in "solidarity" with genocide victims is feel-good pap. It changes nothing.
Gee, that sounds QUITE familiar to when the worldwide press after Rwanda just said "whoops, sorry, better luck next time" instead of actually educating the public to increase awareness and aid in prevention (or atleast better reaction) to future genocide.
I think it's also very bad form to dismiss talk as "not doing anything". At that point, what other options are you leaving students to make meaningful change? If you examine the student movements of the last century (the civil rights movement, the women's liberation movement, the anti-war movement, etc.), most (if not, all) involved extensive amounts of talking. The only real way to have a successful movement is to get lots of people involved - and the only way to do that is to raise awareness. If actions are continually dismissed as "not doing anything", then you end up with lots of nihilistic bullshit and no real change.
So, I say that even the "feel good pap" has a valuable place in a movement centered on education and awareness.
I'm sorry, but this is feel-good bullshit. To prevent things from happening, you need to get strong leaders into positions of power to make those difficult calls.
The sorts of things that you can "raise awareness" with the voters to hold their politicians accountable are constrained by human self-interestedness and proximity.
A genocide in the third world will not be prevented, in the sort of world order that currently exists, simply by "raising awareness".
Want to do something tangible? You have roughly three options.
1) Get in a position of power to change the policy.
2) Conduct extensive, K Street-style lobbying efforts to get the government to give financial contributions of aid (A government check will far outstrip anything you can get from asking college students to each drop a buck in the jar).
3) Go to Sudan and make yourself a human shield.
Short of those three things, each of which are non-trivial and would constitute the climax (or possibly end) of one's own life, there's not a whole lot you can do in a situation like this.
But everyone likes to think they're "making a difference". As I said, feel-good bullshit.
The people doing it are undoubtedly good people, but that's no reason to deny reality about what they are and aren't accomplishing.