Stopping the genocide: questions and answers
By
WASHINGTON — The thousands who attended Sunday's Save Darfur Rally to Stop Genocide and concurrent events around the country joined to oppose the genocide being waged by Arab militias against black Africans in the poor desert region of Sudan known as Darfur. Since 2003, the government-backed militias have been decimating towns and raping, torturing, and killing hundreds of thousands of Darfuris, leaving behind scorched earth.
Famine and disease are now endemic in the region, where refugees subsist in makeshift displaced persons' camps. Officials in Chad nervously monitor the conflict, which they worry will spill over into their country.
The situation in Darfur, which some estimate has claimed more than 400,000 lives, constitutes the first time the United States government has recognized genocide while it is still occurring.
What were the concrete goals of the rally?
Those behind the Save Darfur Coalition say Sunday's rally aimed to galvanize a multinational peacekeeping force to stop the attacks and ensure that humanitarian aid be delivered.
David Rubenstein, a coordinator of the coalition, elaborated on these goals in a memo to the White House. It called for guaranteed access to food and medical aid in the region, a beefed-up force on the ground from the African Union, a more effective United Nations peacekeeping mission, and a presidential envoy focused on Darfur.
Addressing the sea of faces in Washington, Saperstein challenged listeners to realize these goals.
"An 'A' for effort doesn't do it," he said. "Your legacies and ours will be measured not by efforts alone but by whether, in the end, we stop or fail to stop this genocide."
On Monday morning, volunteer lobbyists descended on Capitol Hill seeking intervention to stop the genocide. Meanwhile, the Million Voices for Darfur campaign, also launched by the Save Darfur Coalition, deluged the White House on Sunday with one million handwritten and electronic postcards. The cards urged President George Bush to use "the power of your office to support a stronger multi-national force to protect the civilians of Darfur."
Bush met with representatives of the Save Darfur Coalition last Friday. In a press conference afterward, he called upon the government of Sudan to allow the UN to send in another 20,000 peacekeepers. "We're very serious about getting this problem solved," he said.
What was the turnout for Sunday's rally?
Rally director Chuck Thies estimated the day's turnout at roughly 75,000 people.
Participants came from more than 90 synagogues in Washington. One hundred buses came from New York City, up to 25 from Boston. Other substantial contingents came from Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Jersey, and the New York City suburbs.
Is this a "Jewish" issue?
Activism on Darfur has been a rallying cry among socially conscious Jews for months, in part as a reaction to U.S. inaction during the Holocaust. In February, the issue topped the agenda of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs' annual plenum, which sets national priorities for local Jewish community relations councils.
The American Jewish World Service has taken a lead role in the effort, with its head, Ruth Messinger, making two trips to Darfur. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a genocide alert for Darfur even before the government did. The AJWS and the museum formed the Save Darfur Coalition in 2004.
How involved are other faith and ethnic communities?
Among the organizations on the Save Darfur Coalition's 11-member steering committee are the American Society for Muslim Advancement, National Association of Evangelicals, National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Last week the Forward reported that black churches in Washington had mounted a participation drive, Presbyterian churches in New York directed congregants to buses charted by the Manhattan JCC, and black ministers have partnered with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. Still, many in the Jewish community took note of the disproportionate Jewish presence among organizers and rally participants. "I wish the Jewish community weren't the only ones and that we weren't alone," Renee Chelm, a volunteer with Cleveland's Jewish federation, said Sunday.
The Washington rally wasn't the only such event on Sunday, though it was by far the largest. Other rallies were staged in Somerville, NJ; Portland and Eugene, Ore.; St. Paul, Minn.; Austin, Texas; Tucson and Prescott, Ariz.; Boca Raton, Fla.; San Francisco; Seattle; Toronto; and Boulder, Colo.
