Progressive Wednesday

Instant Karma’s gonna get ya…

Besides being the greatest tune John Lennon inked post-Beatles, Instant Karma is a campaign being waged by Amnesty International to help stop the genocide in Darfur. Officially called “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” the project is fairly simple in its action, fairly Incredible-Hulk-powerful in its aim.

As we noted on a previous Wednesday, the situation in Darfur, Sudan isn’t “a situation” at all: it’s a mass-killing, a raping and pillaging, and a starvation of innocent and helpless Sudanese people. In short, it’s one of the most horrific human rights catastrophe imaginable. And it’s happening while much of the world watches at best, ignores at worst.

So Amnesty International has teamed with Yoko Ono and 50 musical artists to record an album of Lennon’s songs. But it’s not limited to the music. The music is simply a vehicle calling for action.

According to the site:

The CD, “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” [was] released by Warner Brothers Records and [arrived] in stores the week of June 12th. Additional singles from the album [were] released leading up to the full album, along with special product offers coupled with opportunities to take action. Proceeds derived from the entire campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.

So you’ll get a disc with phenomenal covers of phenomenal songs, and you’ll help protect the innocent. Three of the songs — covered by Green Day, R.E.M., and Los Lonely Boys — are available for download through iTunes.

But if you swing by the site, you can do even more by taking simple actions of your own. From the Instant Karma “Take Action” page, you can sign a petition to President Bush urging him to use the UN to create a peacekeeping force that can protect the people of Darfur and of Chad, and to take the necessary actions to stabilize the region. You can also write your Senators and Representative in Congress to do several things in their power, not the least of which is funding the necessary peacekeepers. You can also join Amnesty International — it’s easy, trust us.

So, in short, look for the album in stores or in iTunes (I hear Regina Spektor’s cover of “Real Love” kicks some). Sign the petition. Write your members of Congress. Protect innocent people suffering atrocities we could only concoct in our worst nightmares. Let’s not wait a moment longer. It shouldn’t take another 300,000 people slaughtered to finally wake up.

Photo c/o this imaginative picture-clicker.

Genocide in Darfur: Write/Call

Editor’s Note: This Wednesday topic first appeared on May 23, 2007. To read our introduction to “Genocide in Darfur,” just click here.

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64% of American voters believe that their national leaders should consider intervention in Darfur a high priority. Options range from putting American troops on the ground as part of an international peacekeeping mission to freezing the assets of the Sudanese leaders to an embargo on Sudanese oil. Whatever your position, one of the most effective ways to make your voice heard in regards to this issue is to contact your elected leaders.

This is one of the biggest fish in the international frying pan, and the biggest difference can be made at the governmental level. It's so big that there is an entire website dedicated to making it easier to contact your local and national politicians: DarfurScores.org.

DarfurScores.org not only provides information on how to contact your legislators, it also gives them a grade based on legislation they have sponsored as well as how they have voted on prior legislation related to the genocide in Darfur. Just plug in your zip code and it gives you a list of your elected leaders, their report card, and contact information. This allows you to tailor your message to the past performance of your Congressperson, Senator, or Governor.

In case you were wondering, of the top four “Champions of Darfur,– two are conservative Republicans and two are liberal Democrats. This is not a “red– or “blue– , “left– or “right,– political issue; it's a “warm blooded– moral issue.

If a phone call is more your “cup of tea,– 1-800-GENOCIDE is a hotline that has been set up in a similar way. Just call and enter your zip code and they provide a list of talking points to use before they connect your call. Then they decide what is the best way to direct you and what is the most effective action that can be taken in your area. When I called they connected me to the state comptroller so that I could ask him to divest New York dollars from the worst offending New York companies in Sudan. Very targeted, very affective. It takes two minutes, so give them a call. It's a lot better than the phone number suggests.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you…

Besides being the greatest tune John Lennon inked post-Beatles, Instant Karma is a new campaign being waged by Amnesty International to help stop the genocide in Darfur. Officially called “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” the project is fairly simple in its action, fairly Incredible-Hulk-powerful in its aim.

As we noted two Wednesdays ago, the situation in Darfur, Sudan isn’t “a situation” at all: it’s a mass-killing, a raping and pillaging, and a starvation of innocent and helpless Sudanese people. In short, it’s one of the most horrific human rights catastrophe imaginable. And it’s happening while much of the world watches at best, ignores at worst.

So Amnesty International has teamed with Yoko Ono and 50 musical artists to record an album of Lennon’s songs. But it’s not limited to the music. The music is simply a vehicle calling for action.

According to the site:

The CD, “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” will be released by Warner Brothers Records and arrive in stores the week of June 12th. Additional singles from the album will be released leading up to the full album, along with special product offers coupled with opportunities to take action. Proceeds derived from the entire campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.

So you’ll get a disc with phenomenal covers of phenomenal songs, and you’ll help protect the innocent. Three of the songs — covered by Green Day, R.E.M., and Los Lonely Boys — are already available for download through iTunes.

But if you swing by the site, you can do even more by taking simple actions of your own. From the Instant Karma “Take Action” page, you can sign a petition to President Bush urging him to use the UN to create a peacekeeping force that can protect the people of Darfur and of Chad, and to take the necessary actions to stabilize the region. You can also write your Senators and Representative in Congress to do several things in their power, not the least of which is funding the necessary peacekeepers. You can also join Amnesty International — it’s easy, trust us.

So, in short, look for the album come June 12th. Sign the petition. Write your members of Congress. Protect innocent people suffering atrocities we could only concoct in our worst nightmares. Let’s not wait a moment longer. It shouldn’t take another 300,000 people slaughtered to finally wake up.

Photo c/o this imaginative picture-clicker.

This Wednesday: Genocide in Darfur

Problem:

There aren't many that are bigger than this one. As many as 450,000 people have been killed in Darfur, Sudan by their own government and the Janjaweed militia group, in an attempt to eliminate all of those in the region that are not of Arab descent. That’s roughly the population of Wyoming. Two-and-a-half million more Sudanese have been displaced, driven from their homes. Women and children are raped and murdered every time the Janjaweed ambush their villages. More than 1,600 villages have been burned to the ground.

The Untied Nations defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

After the Holocaust, world leaders said, “Never again.– But then there was Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and now Darfur.

.

Make Progress:

It's easy to think of this problem as one that must be dealt with by the United Nations and other multi-national unions. And, in large part, it is. But there are things that you and I can do about it.

This is an insult to humanity. I’m embarrassed that it is happening while I’m alive. I plan to take some action. Please join me.

• Watch
• Write/Call
• Contact
• Sign

Picture courtesy of this photographer.

Genocide in Darfur: Watch

This genocide isn't happening on paper. It's impossible to comprehend the atrocities in the Sudan by looking at numbers as if solving a seventh grade word problem. Even pictures, video and literary accounts can't portray the horrors of being perpetually hunted because of race and religion. And these people have been living with those fears every day since February 2003. But we don't expect you to go and witness it firsthand either. So here are a couple of videos that give a glimpse into life in Darfur.

There are graphic images and depictions that are very disturbing in each of the videos. It's important to watch these videos because of, not in spite of, those graphic images and depictions. It is as close as we can come to understanding what these tortured and impoverished people go through without actually being there.

The first is a historical photomontage set to the song “One,– by U2 and Mary J Blige. It's about five minutes long, though it seems like 30 seconds.

If a documentary is more your style, this is ten minutes well spent.

Genocide in Darfur: Write/Call

64% of American voters believe that their national leaders should consider intervention in Darfur a high priority. Options range from putting American troops on the ground as part of an international peacekeeping mission to freezing the assets of the Sudanese leaders to an embargo on Sudanese oil. Whatever your position, one of the most effective ways to make your voice heard in regards to this issue is to contact your elected leaders.

This is one of the biggest fish in the international frying pan, and the biggest difference can be made at the governmental level. It's so big that there is an entire website dedicated to making it easier to contact your local and national politicians: DarfurScores.org.

DarfurScores.org not only provides information on how to contact your legislators, it also gives them a grade based on legislation they have sponsored as well as how they have voted on prior legislation related to the genocide in Darfur. Just plug in your zip code and it gives you a list of your elected leaders, their report card, and contact information. This allows you to tailor your message to the past performance of your Congressperson, Senator, or Governor.

In case you were wondering, of the top four “Champions of Darfur,– two are conservative Republicans and two are liberal Democrats. This is not a “red– or “blue– , “left– or “right,– political issue; it's a “warm blooded– moral issue.

If a phone call is more your “cup of tea,– 1-800-GENOCIDE is a hotline that has been set up in a similar way. Just call and enter your zip code and they provide a list of talking points to use before they connect your call. Then they decide what is the best way to direct you and what is the most effective action that can be taken in your area. When I called they connected me to the state comptroller so that I could ask him to divest New York dollars from the worst offending New York companies in Sudan. Very targeted, very affective. It takes two minutes, so give them a call. It's a lot better than the phone number suggests.

Genocide in Darfur: Contact

A few months ago we went to see Anderson Cooper give a speech at the University of Buffalo. While it was entertaining and informative, he gave an answer during a Q & A that bothered me, though I appreciated his honesty. When asked about who decides what topics to cover and to what extent. He said that the reporters decide, but that if they didn't show the things that bring in the ratings, they'd be off the air faster than you can say “Don Imus.– I might be paraphrasing.

The constitution gives the press the enormous power to tell us about important things going on in the world. In other words, they should make the news interesting, not make the “interesting– newsworthy. Lately, in the game of roshambo that is today's news, the “interesting– has become the rock and the newsworthy has become the scissors. When it comes to Darfur, the media has been borderline treasonous.

Whether it's one of the major broadcast networks, or the ubiquitous cable news networks, relatively little has been reported about the atrocities in Darfur. In fact, in June of 2005, at the height of the violence, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN ran a total of 6,248 segments about Michael Jackson. Darfur? 126. That's a ratio of almost 50:1. The TV show “ER– brought more attention to it than the media did.

BeAWitness.org is trying to change this. From their website you can send a letter to the major news networks expressing your displeasure with their lack of coverage of the situation in Darfur. More specifically, watch this television ad. Then tell them that you want them to run it on their networks. So far they have refused. I don’t wonder why.

So contact the major networks or write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Because genocide is newsworthy. You can't stop it unless you know about it.