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• About Not on Our Watch
• ENOUGH Campaign
• Op-Ed by Mr. Prendergast & Mr. Cheadle
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Tavis: Always pleased to have Don Cheadle on this program, and for that matter, John Prendergast; welcome him back to this program, as well. Don is, of course, an Oscar-nominated actor whose terrific acting resume includes "Hotel Rwanda," "Crash," and upcoming film "Oceans 13." John is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group and one of the leaders of the ENOUGH campaign.

The two have teamed up on a new book called "Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond." Don and John - I sound like Jesse Jackson now. (Laughter) Don, John, nice to have you both here.

John Prendergast: Thank you.

Don Cheadle: Thank you.

Tavis: How's everybody doing?

Cheadle: Good.

Tavis: I want to start this conversation - I thought about this walking on the stage a moment ago - I want to start this conversation at perhaps an unlikely place, John, because typically, a guy in my seat would talk about the issue, and over the course of the next 22 minutes or so build up to what you can do about it. I want to reverse that and start this conversation where these conversations rarely start.

Everybody knows what's happening in Darfur. We'll talk more about it in just a second, for those who are under a rock somewhere. But let me start this conversation with those six things that you lay out in the book that people can do. I want to go through them one at a time, 'cause I don't want anybody to watch this show and ask, "What can I do?"

Let's start with what we can do, and we'll walk down the list one at a time. The first issue, John, in the book for what people can do is to raise awareness.

Prendergast: Well, Reverend Jackson - I mean, Tavis.

Tavis: Yes (laughs).

Prendergast: There are so many things you can do. Once you learn, once you realize that genocide is being committed in the twenty-first century - it's not just something behind barbed wires in those grainy, black and white images from Germany and Poland, there are - and if you feel compelled that we must do something to stop it, then the first thing, of course, is to let other people know.

And there are so many new organizations and websites and sources of information that can allow other people to really quickly access. Google just teamed up with the Holocaust Museum, for example, and you can actually go on to Google Earth and you can go right into Darfur in your living room or at your computer screen, and you can see what's happened to some of these villages, you can meet some of the people who have survived this modern-day genocide, and learn about it that way.

And you can let other people know. So it's really just a matter of letting friends and family know, joining up with others who have the same kind of feelings that you do that in fact, we must stand up and try to stop this.

Tavis: The second issue on the list of what people can do who are watching right now is to write a letter.

Prendergast: I've worked in Congress and the State Department and the White House throughout my career and I'm telling you, the one way that politicians still can quantify citizen sentiment about a particular issue is through the way they get communicated with by their constituents. And the letter, the old letter, handwritten is best as long as it's not crazy, or an email or a call to the member of Congress, or bringing a group of people in to meet with that member of Congress or Senator.

All these kinds of things telling them hey, you're our elected official. You are a representative. You've got to represent what we care about. And just like with Social Security or veterans' issues or whatever other issue they're representing, they gotta represent people who care about human rights, who care about genocide.

Tavis: Third issue is to raise funds. And before you answer that, tell me what you say to people who ask what these funds are being raised for. So raise funds - how do I, as an everyday person watching this show, go about raising funds and what is that money going for, anyway?

Prendergast: Well in the book, we tell all these different stories. Don and I talked to all these different people across the country who - little kids who are having their bar mitzvahs and they raise $10,000 from all their friends and their family members because they care about this issue. People who hold fundraisers at bars and at town halls, in synagogues and in churches, who are trying just to say if we can get some of this money over, we might be able to relieve some of the suffering, or give some of the money to help organize the people who are trying to raise awareness; help support their efforts.

And I've found over the years - I've been going into war zones in Africa for about 22, 23 years now, I've found that over those last two decades we've seen much greater efficiency on the part of the organizations that are providing those resources.

Tavis: The flipside to raising funds is calling for divestment, which means what, specifically, in this case?

Prendergast: Yeah, in this case - remember South Africa, when Nelson Mandela was in prison, when the law of the land literally encoded racial discrimination and White supremacy. All across the United States, and for that matter throughout the world, people worked to try to get companies that were doing business in South Africa for mutual funds and pension funds and university endowments to sell - to divest from those companies, from the stock in those companies.

We started a new movement now for Sudan over the last year. Eight states now have divested fully their portfolios, including California - a large state. And now a number of universities across the country have divested, and even individuals are realizing their own pension fund, their own retirement funds, are full of some of these stocks that are helping to underwrite the genocide in Darfur.

Tavis: I'm going to get to Don in a second, I promise, Don.

Cheadle: No problem.

Tavis: While we're talking, John, about this divestment issue, though, help me understand so that the audience understands when we read stories in the paper where the Bush administration is stepping up Negroponte and telling Sudan it's now or never or we're going to start imposing some sanctions here, and we read in "The New York Times" and everywhere else that the secretary general of the U.N. says, "Not so fast, give us more time to work on this," explain what we're supposed to be - how do we juxtapose those two things?

Prendergast: Yeah, we should be outraged, because the time -

Tavis: At who, Bush or the U.N.?

Prendergast: At the United Nations secretary general and at anyone who now says that we've gotta give more time to the Sudanese to make up their mind whether they want to keep killing their own people. And at this point, we need to move very rapidly towards a policy that imposes penalties, sanctions, pressures on the government for what it's done and what it continues to do in Darfur.

Tavis: What's the secretary general asking for more time for?

Prendergast: Everybody that goes to Khartoum gets pulled in by these very good diplomats in Khartoum by the highest officials in the regime, and they believe that if they just are given a little more time, they see a window; they think they can convince them what's in their interest to do or not to do. And I just feel that the secretary general of the United Nations is the latest in many - Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, a number of people have gone over there.

And when they've left they've felt I think we can probably convince these guys; they're very reasonable, and then they ask for more This Moment on Earth. So we've just seen this cascade of wasted opportunities and wasted tie. The time to act is now.

Tavis: Two more issues, speaking of acting now, that people can do. Two more things people can do to affect change on this Darfur issue. You mentioned earlier the growing number of organizations dedicated to working on this issue. The next thing on the list is to join an organization.

Prendergast: It's a basic thing. We might, as individuals, have a tremendous feeling about how to respond to these issues, but when we're not part of a group, our voice can be very lonely. And there are so many organizations that have risen up over the last two years focused just on genocide. There's student groups - one's called STAND, another one's called Genocide Intervention Network.

Cheadle: Darfur Action Committee.

Prendergast: The Darfur Action Committee right here in UCLA. You've got the Safe Darfur Coalition, which is an umbrella of about 180 groups, faith-based and non-faith-based. There are just so many opportunities for people to get involved in their local communities and be part of your Amnesty International local chapter. There just is - anywhere you turn, you can actually find it, if you seek it.

Tavis: The last point, which you've kind of hit on already, but just to tie this all up in a nice package - although Darfur is not a nice package, obviously. Bad metaphor. To lobby the government.

Prendergast: Yeah, that's the basic. We as citizens have a right to tell our government, to tell our elected officials what matters to us. And it matters to us that the United States is standing idly by while genocide is being committed. And we need to raise our voices and collectively tell our government the time to act is now. And I think that's what all - it's a fancy word, lobbying, and all these lobbyists running around on K Street. But generally, it's American citizens telling their government what matters to them.

Cheadle: And we're at a watershed moment, obviously, with the upcoming elections, and John and I, when we were in DC, we met with Senator McCain, we met with Senator Clinton, we met with Brownback. Obama does a forward in our book. This is a time, I think, that is probably - we have a great opportunity to say while you are creating your platform, while you are about to stand and trot out what are the important things that you want us to know about you as candidates, that we make sure that this is a part of their platform. This has to be raised to a level of importance that they understand that their constituency are paying attention.

Tavis: Across the board, what kind of response are you getting from the persons running for the White House, to that question?

Cheadle: Well, I think John kind of hit on it. There's a general kind of - well, I don't know. I guess it's individual, in a way, but what it all adds up to in my opinion is not enough. And still nothing is being done, and there's - I met with Condoleezza Rice personally, and one of the things that she mentioned was when there was this issue between Lebanon and Israel that in order to push the policy through that she needed, they sent someone to sit on the U.N. and push through the bureaucratic sort of red tape that happens whenever you try to get multinationals - all these different parties together to agree on anything.

Especially if it's something that's done different. Our argument is that the United Nations was created for this express purpose of dealing with things such as Darfur, so if it's not moving, that should at least have as much importance as what happened between Lebanon and Israel, and it needs to be pushed.

Tavis: To your point about Lebanon and Israel - and I'm not trying to make a comparison here, but I am asking unapologetically a question about race - to what extent, then, do you think that race has anything to do with the fact that it's Africa, has anything to do with the foot-dragging, for lack of a better word, happening as we speak on this issue?

Cheadle: Well, I always think where Africa is concerned - and we don't even have to talk about opinions, we can just look historically and say there's always been a level of, “Well, we'll get to it.” And if people don't believe that there's - if politicians don't believe that there is a political cost for their inaction, then they don't move.

And they have always been able to deal with Africa in that context. I believe that, well, if we don't do it, it's still not going to mean anything to me here. If nothing happens in Africa, people usually chalk it up to well, it's Africa. It's a quagmire; it's unsolvable. But that's not the case. And the media plays a large part in that, too, because of the preponderance of stories that come out of that region that make it look like it's a lost cause. And it's not, there's been a lot of progress, and John can speak very eloquently about that.

Tavis: Before I go to John and hear his eloquent speech about that, this may or may not be a fair question for John, I don't know, but it certainly is, Don, a fair question for the two of us, as African Americans. And that is what we think about the activity or inactivity of Black Americans on this particular issue. And again, I don't want to excuse Black folk on this issue, because this is our homeland. This is our issue, if it's anybody's issue. At the same time, Black folk have to deal with the most intractable issue in this country every day, called racism.

Cheadle: That's right.

Tavis: While trying to navigate activity on these other issues. That said, though - put that in the proper context - what's your sense of the growing concern, the growing outrage inside of Black America about this issue? What are our leaders saying about this issue?

Cheadle: Well, I think all of our leaders are - there was a lot of misinformation, so its' hard to get a lot of information out of that region because one of the main things you start doing when you do this is shut down any other eyes that could be a part of that. So a lot of it is relying on the NGOs that are there to get the information out, to see what is actually happening, to try and really track these numbers.

But I think what we're seeing, hopefully - what we're seeing at a grassroots level is a lot more awareness about it, and our leaders - Barack Obama being one of them, who writes the forward in our book, has been there, and he's made it one of his issues, and he's made it something that's very important to him to deal with. So while he has sort of made that entrée, we're trying to strengthen that and bolster that and keep pushing that agenda forward.

Tavis: And there are a lot of folk out there who are - Joe Madison has been raising this issue for many, many years on radio. So I don't mean to cast aspersion on Black leaders. There are a lot of folk who are out front on this. I was really just getting at whether or not you see that that interest is growing, and I'm glad to hear that you think it is, certainly at the grassroots level.

Prendergast: And the NAACP, too. They've taken this on now. In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus probably was the first bloc in Congress to really start hammering on this issue as early as early 2004 with Don Payne's leadership. And they forced that genocide resolution down the throat, basically, of President Bush, and that then led to his finding that genocide was indeed occurring.

So I think there's been a good - it is truly an issue of information and awareness-building in African American communities across the country, because you have it at the elite level with Congress and the leadership of the NAACP and other groups, but the trickle-down is the difficulty. So I think we've seen - and the NAACP particularly has started an educational campaign to try to help build awareness, so people can get more active at the local level.

Tavis: What are the politics around this issue? When you see something that even a Republican president calls genocide, you have to assume - you ain't gotta be a rocket scientist to figure this out - you have to assume that there must be some politics on this issue somewhere to keep people from moving with the kind of resolve and urgency that we want and need to wrestle effectively with this issue. What are the politics on this issue that would keep somebody on the sideline or moving at a snail's pace, as opposed to moving like a rabbit?

Cheadle: No cost. I really believe this is what we're trying to drum home, is a lot of that responsibility lies with us. It lies with the constituents. It lies with the people who put these people in office, that if we do not say, "This is an important issue that you have to make important or we will not put you back in that office," then there is a political cost for inaction.

Until that happens, leaders - not just in America but across the world - don't usually respond. They're going to respond to things that show them in a favorable light to the people that put them in that office, and it's just a function, I think, of how politics work. But this is something that we're trying to say is beyond politics, and we can actually drive this train if we continue as the people to grow a collective movement.

Tavis: PBS announced some weeks ago, John, and we've been promoting it, of course, here on PBS every night, as we should, that on June 28, I'm honored to moderate a presidential forum with all the candidates already confirmed at Howard University in Washington live and primetime on PBS. Republicans, same conversation, September 27 on the campus of Morgan State in Baltimore. So we got all the candidates, Republican and Democrat, to two HBCUs to talk about issues that matter to Black people.

I say all that to ask this question: at a minimum, if you were moderating one of these presidential debates, you were standing in my shoes, at a minimum, you've got every candidate live on national television in primetime, and you want at a minimum a commitment from them to do something on Darfur. What are you putting them on the spot about? What's the minimum they have to commit to as a candidate running for the White House?

Prendergast: Yeah, I think - let's build on the theme that Don has started, is that there has to be a cost for committing genocide and crimes against humanity, and that means you, as the president of the most powerful country in the world, have to commit to leading the rest of the world and not just waiting to see what's going to happen to create that cost.

That means building the kind of coalition necessary to impose real financial sanctions that bite on a particular country. That means leading through the international community to help support legal measures against these people by getting involved in the international criminal court, the one place where accountability for these kinds of horrific crimes can occur.

And if necessary, you build the international will for military action if we need to do that. I think that we can use the financial and legal measures, and that will influence the government of Sudan to stop what it's doing. But if it doesn't work, then you need to be able to work the military side, as well - to do the no-fly zones, to go in and to protect civilians in the camps, and protect the humanitarian operation. So you gotta have the willingness to lead on a number of levels to actually bring an end to the scourge of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Tavis: I'm curious - and I know this because I read about it, but I'm not sure that everybody watching knows about this, and I'm always fascinated by what brings people to these stories. You've been going to Africa 22, 23 years. What happened in your childhood (laughter) that got you thinking, "I think I'll - "

Cheadle: He didn't actually know it was Africa that he was going to. (Laughter) He got Africa and France confused.

Tavis: Yeah, is that what it was?

Cheadle: And then he just stayed.

Tavis: What made you this kind of - I'm glad you are. What made you this kind of social advocate?

Prendergast: Mom, forgive me. No, I'll leave some of that stuff aside. No, the real thing was I'd started seeing pictures. Just like I go around to colleges today and kids who see these pictures of Darfur, they have the same look in their eye that I did back in the eighties when the Ethiopian famine unfolded. I simply couldn't intellectually comprehend that one million people, one million human beings, could starve to death as a result of the policies of a particular state, and the inaction of the world.

And so I just - my heart leapt at it, but more importantly, intellectually I was just so amazed that - and I just wanted to find out what the solutions are, so I felt I had to go. And you see this kind of phenomenon today. It's really remarkable. People talk about the selfishness and inward-lookingness of kids today; I see the opposite.

Kids are diving into this issue all over the country. In colleges, there are hundreds of chapters of this group called STAND, but now there are hundreds of chapters in high schools. I'm going around now to high schools and speaking in places - and hundreds of kids show up voluntarily 'cause they really want to know how they can make a difference in the world.

And it really was the same thing for me. I just wanted - I could not believe that this could be allowed to happen in our day and age with the kind of technology we have with the knowledge that we have, how could we possibly let this happen?

Tavis: Don, how did you come to this particular issue?

Cheadle: Well, I was fortunate enough to be cast in "Hotel Rwanda," and -

Tavis: That was so modest of him. What do you mean, cast? You carried the movie. (Laughs)

Cheadle: And I was fortunate to be cast, 'cause at one point it was somebody else. (Laughter)

Tavis: Oscar-nominated, and by the way, it's on cable. I'm watching it, like, every other night. It's a hard movie to watch, but it's a brilliant film. It's on, like, every night right now on cable.

Cheadle: Yeah. And that sort of obviously pulled me into not only what had happened in Rwanda and opened my eyes to that, but also a place that I heard about that had similar echoes or was definitely reminiscent of people en masse killing another people, and it was Darfur. And we had a screening at MGM out here, and one of the people who attended was Ed Royce, a California congressman who had been trying to raise awareness and worked with Donald Payne in the White House.

I'm sorry, not the White House, but as another congressman on this, and wanted to give people an idea of what was happening and said, I think that your movie is a perfect example. It's a way to talk about this issue that I've been unable to get any sort of interest. So I wanted to work with you and see if there's a way that we could do something together.

They had planned to go on this congressional delegation to the region, asked if I would go along. I said of course, I would love to. I got in touch with John, we were able to get the ABC cameras to follow us and have "Nightline" come along and document this. And once that began, it was - once you go there, as John said, once you see it and touch it and experience it and see these children you go - and I have a 10-year-old. I have a 12-year-old daughter. And you wonder how this is allowed to go on.

Tavis: Let me ask you both the same question. I've been on a number of these trips around the world to places like this, and had the experience of having cameras there and microphones in your face, as well. There's always something - there's always some thing, sometimes some things, that the camera just can't capture. That the microphone just can't capture. You have to see it to really be moved by it in the way that you were seeing it. What was that for you? The one thing that the cameras just couldn't -

Prendergast: I think maybe it's the way, when you're sitting with a refugee or displaced person, somebody who's survived things that we could only - I don't think we can even imagine happening in terms of violence and destruction of a life and a livelihood, and they look at you in the eyes, just burning and just pleading, will you do something?

That can't be captured on the camera, I can't write about that. It just goes straight into your soul, gives you your mandate for your life, and then you just go and fulfill it.

Tavis: A similar experience for you, Don?

Cheadle: Well to me, really, it's funny, because to me it was the interaction mostly with these children, and you would see something happen with the youngest ones there. First when you get to the camp, they're very unsure of you and not sure what - you reach out and they're like hey, don't touch me. (Laughter) They don't know what's going on.

They slowly begin - once you slowly begin to start to interact with them - I don't speak their language, they don't speak mine, but there's an unwritten and unsaid sort of understanding that we're both kind of people trying to reach to each other and connect in some way. Then that connection starts to happen, and you see they're smiling and they're laughing, and you imagine what they've just come through and what they've just experienced, and you go how does this person still laugh? How does this person still have this lightness where if you imagined if it was me, I don't know how I would survive this?

And as they get older, as you see the teenagers and then the 20-year-olds and then the adults and then the grandparents, that light, you see it dimming and dimming and dimming, and you see that they start to understand what has happened to them, and where they are, and what's happening, and what's likely to not happen for them in the foreseeable future, which is any sort of salvation, any sort of rescue, any sort of aid. And you go, "Wow, I've just seen the light go out in a group of people, and that's just being allowed to happen." And it's just hard - that's where I get connected.

Tavis: It is hard to sum this kind of conversation up with a quote, but as Don and John were just speaking now, I thought about those words of Dr. King. Dr. King was always fond of saying that "Cowardice asks, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks, 'Is it right?' And every now and then, we must take positions that are neither comfortable, safe, politic, nor convenient, but we take it because our conscience tells us that it's right."

This, I think, is an understatement to suggest that this is the moral imperative of our time, to do something about Darfur, and I thank Don Cheadle and John Prendergast for coming on. The new book is called "Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond." John, nice to have you on the program.

Prendergast: Thank you, sir.

Tavis: Good to see you. Don, "Oceans 13," I'm looking for it.

Cheadle: (Laughter) (Unintelligible)