E-mail a friendJoe Madison
airdate April 10, 2008
Known as "The Black Eagle" by his WOL-AM listeners in DC and on XM Satellite Radio, radio activist Joe Madison has been jailed for civil disobedience, led voter registration marches and gone on hunger strikes in opposition to apartheid in South Africa, genocide and slavery in Sudan. He's also served in several positions with the NAACP, including on its national board. Recently, Madison led a delegation of U.S. radio talk show personalities in delivering "Sacks of Hope" for returning Southern Sudanese refugees.
Joe Madison
Tavis: Joe Madison is a long-time radio host on WOL in Washington, D.C. who can also be heard nationally on XM Satellite Radio. He recently traveled to Sudan for a firsthand look at the situation there. This was Joe's fourth trip to the region. Joe, always good to see you.
Joe Madison: My main man.
Tavis: How you been, man?
Madison: Well, you've been so good on this issue and I got to tell you this, I want America to understand this. Before anyone ever interviewed me or talked to me about Sudan, and this goes back, what, seven years maybe? You were the first, and I want to thank you so much because you've stayed on the case more than NBC, CBS, and all the other networks.
Tavis: Well, you're kind, but this -
Madison: No, you've done a job.
Tavis: Well, it's a mutual admiration society, because I've had (unintelligible) everybody on the show, from Don Cheadle to you name it who've been talking about this issue, but in the media every day - every day, every week - you've been the one person on national radio that continues to raise this issue. Give me your sense, to that point now, of where America is now in its acceptance of the crisis that is going on there, in its response to the crisis. For seven years you've been on this. Assess to me where we are now, seven years (unintelligible).
Madison: Well, look, it started off with the issue of slavery. A 25-year civil war, six million people displaced, two million people killed. War ended, comprehensive peace act, John Garang becomes vice president a united Sudan. He is killed a few weeks after that. Then the central government of the Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, decides we better go after the Darfurians because they might want the same thing that the southern Sudanese want, and that is not to be marginalized and a degree of independence and acceptance.
They're 20 percent of the population; they only have 1 percent representation in the government. So what do they do? They attack, they use the money they get - two-thirds of their oil is exported to China. They use that money; they buy weapons from the Russians. The Russians and the Chinese get at the U.N. Every time genocide comes up, they then veto. Russia vetoes or China vetoes, which is why the president cannot, cannot go to Beijing for that opening ceremony.
Tavis: But he is.
Madison: He can't.
Tavis: But he is.
Madison: He shouldn't.
Tavis: But he is.
Madison: And everybody who listens to Tavis Smiley and Joe Madison ought to be writing, e-mailing. There's not a decent leader in this world who should be sitting up there in the face of genocide. The United States Congress has declared it genocide. How can the president of the United States, who declared that genocide exists in Darfur and knows that China is complicit and involved and could end it overnight, or at least symbolically overnight, and at the same time sit next to a regime that's responsible?
Tavis: Obviously I'm acting right about now. Let me play the president's spokesperson and tell you what he would say or she would say if they were here. The answer is, in no uncertain language, no uncertain terms, that China is what it is in the world. It is becoming - not becoming, it is an economic bastion, it's an opportunity for us to do trades with a country that has become bigger than the U.S., quite frankly, in many respects.
And while they have some human rights issues, while they are on the wrong side of certain issues, while we disagree with their policies in a variety of ways, it would be wrong for us to cut them off as opposed to engaging in diplomacy with them, keeping the lines of communication open with them, so we can force China, help China to become a greater nation. You cannot just put your foot down on this country, wipe them off, refuse to talk or do business with them. That's not what is called diplomacy.
Madison: Well, I would say to him and remind him that character is more important than currency. That principle is more important -
Tavis: This is the U.S. you're talking about. Character is never more important than currency.
Madison: And that principle - principle - is more important than power. That's what I would say. I would say how would you like to wake up tomorrow morning and find that 200,000, 400,000, 500,000 people in your country have been killed directly due to the actions of your government and then have one of the most powerful people on the planet simply turn their back and be complicit with people who are responsible?
That would be my argument, and yeah, but at some point in time the president of the United States represents the character of the people and the government. It represents the principle of the people and the government. Look, we went over there to southern Sudan. You have people that have never seen a light bulb. You have people who right now have diseases that we thought were eradicated.
I saw a young boy who had developed an ulcer that had been so infected it had gone to the bone. This young boy had never seen a doctor, and that leg will either be amputated or he'll die. We met a man who had - he's an elderly man, probably in his seventies, had been taken a slave and had been freed while we were there.
You have people who have nothing. We took fish hooks, we took sorghum seed, we took plastic tarp, we took mosquito nets to prevent malaria, pots, pans, and this is all these people have. Tavis, I say to you right now, as we talk, these Africans, these Black people, live the way they did 400 years ago, and they live on top of one of the richest oil reserves on the planet.
Tavis: And the U.S. responsibility in that is what? We're not the world's policemen.
Madison: No, we're not the world's police, but our responsibility is to put pressure on China, to put pressure on Russia, to put pressure on the United Nations. We have the ability to provide them satellite reconnaissance so that the folks can return, so that humanitarian workers can go in there. And I'll give you another example.
Look, China drills oil. If you can drill for oil, you can drill for water. So we've made the recommendation to Congress that for every oil well you drill, you should drill a water well. I was in a village where there were 40,000 people and one well. For 40,000 people. The same equipment that can drill oil can drill for water.
Tavis: You've not just gone all by yourself, you, as you mentioned earlier, taking supplies over, but you've also taken over other radio talk show hosts. So when you go over and you take other media people with you, what's the end result of that? Have you been pleased with what happens when they come back? What do they do when they come back?
Madison: It's a life-changing experience. When they come back - again, I can't explain it to Tavis Smiley. I can't explain it to your audience. But if I took you there and you look in the eyes of a 14-year-old who was taken slave, who lived in Darfur, by the way, and was raped by the son of his slave master, your whole life experience changes.
My wife, when I first came back, she didn't know what had happened to me. She just did not know. I was sitting there and just trying to debrief my mind and my soul and my conscience. I've heard George Clooney and Don Cheadle say the same thing. You come back an entirely different person, because we can't explain to you what it's like there on the ground.
Tavis: You've been there four times. How are you different, what do you see - maybe, hopefully in terms of progress, maybe not - over those four trips?
Madison: I will tell you I met for approximately two hours with the president of southern Sudan in Juba. He said to us, emphatically, that all sides - Khartoum, capitol of the central government, southern Sudan, and Darfur - all sides are preparing for war. 2011, a referendum is going to be before the people of southern Sudan to vote either for a united Sudan or they will vote for a succession.
Since the civil war has ended, they've not realized any peace dividends and they expect that millions will return in order to vote. I suggest to you that once that vote is taken, and they will probably vote to divide Sudan. There will be secession, and I suggest then what will happen is that the Khartoum government will probably once again invade southern Sudan. Civilians will get caught in the middle and Darfur will look like a picnic.
Tavis: You know from doing radio every day that language is terribly important, and you refuse to use the word R-E-F-U-G-E-E. Instead, you use R-E-T-U-R-N-E-E. You won't say refugee, you say returnee. Where'd that come from and why is that?
Madison: Well, because first of all these individuals were forced out of their country, their region, by their own government. These are people who are now being asked to return. They're not refugees in a foreign land. Now the Darfurians are. The Darfurians had to escape because what they're not telling you, for example, the Khartoum government will argue and say only 10,000 people have been killed.
And do you know what they're counting? People who have been killed with bullets. What they don't count are the people who are dying because of disease, lack of water, just through attrition that is taking place. And the figure of 200,000 that was given by this government and some international governments two or three years ago they now admit was an underestimation and it's closer to 400,000 to 500,000.
They are returnees, because in southern Sudan they're being asked to return. They think that there are probably anywhere from eight million to 10 million who will end up in southern Sudan. They are trying to get a census done. And in addition to that, part of the agreement is that they're supposed to get anywhere from $1.5 billion to almost $2 billion in oil revenue.
And what is the government of Khartoum doing? They have a line of demarcation that divides the south from the north. In the north, all oil that's discovered, the Khartoum government gets 100 percent. They get 50 percent of all of the oil that's discovered in the south. So what do they do? When they discover oil in the south, they move the line and say, "Oh, this is north."
And the southern Sudanese now have to hire the Norwegians to count the barrel of oils that get pumped through the port of Sudan. It is a mess and this country can play a major role. We've got to take it from the margins to the center or else we're going to see a genocide like we have never seen. You cannot simply say it's genocide.
It is an action word, Tavis. It's an action word. Once genocide is declared, you must, according to the United Nations do something about it.
Tavis: He's back from his fourth trip to Sudan. He's been talking about this courageously not just for months but indeed years on local and national radio in this country. This issue in Darfur and the issue, more broadly, in Sudan. His name, of course, Joe Madison. Joe, nice to have you here.
Madison: My pleasure, always, brother.
Tavis: Glad to have you back home safely.
Madison: Thank you; God bless.
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