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Darfur and the Power of Activism
By: Arielle Schwartz, Columbia Spectator (Columbia University)
October 10, 2006 4:15 PM

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK - It's easy to dismiss protestors as nothing more than rabble-rousers inanely chanting about peace and love and all that idealistic hippie brouhaha. Activists themselves often speculate as to whether protesting is an effective means of bringing about change. While some protests seem to have no impact and others fail to show their effects for years to come, the activism on Darfur does not fall into either of these categories.

If one examines the timeline of the genocide in Darfur, it is obvious that many positive steps taken by the United States or the international community have been influenced by activist outcry. In the spring of this year, the crisis looked as hopeful as ever -- the international community, led by the U.S., took an aggressive role in ensuring the enactment of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The U.N. Security Council voted to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur. All of this came within a matter of weeks of an April 30 protest in D.C. that drew 25,000 people. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that the rally was actually the culmination of a larger, more comprehensive campaign.

Most significantly, the rally followed a lobby day in which 850 students traveled to DC to lobby Congress on Darfur.
When the movement in the United States died down over the summer, the situation in Darfur reached what was arguably the worst period in the 3-year-old genocide. The government launched a new offensive, the number of rapes and killings rose, and African Union troops began to get pulled, with a looming threat that they would be completely gone by the end of their Sept. 30 mandate.

Sept. 17 was an international day of action for Darfur and rallies were held worldwide -- the one in Central Park, which drew a crowd of 30,000, was one of many. And just like the earlier rally held in DC, the day of action was also part of a larger campaign that included vigorous calling to the White House to urge Bush to take action.
In addition, the week following the protest was a lobby week in which delegations met with congressional representatives throughout the country.

Since the protest, two major developments have occurred. The African Union troops decided to extend their mandate until the end of the year. This is crucial: if they leave, the rapes, killings, and pillages will skyrocket immediately. In addition, Congress signed the revised version of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act.

This bill enables the U.S. to provide assistance to the Union forces and calls upon Bush to advocate NATO reinforcement of the troops. It also imposes sanctions that include specific travel bans and freezing the assets of members of the Sudanese government.

These important actions taken against Sudan by the U.S. and the international community have clearly been influenced by the collective voice of the world's protestors. Activism was not "vacuous and ultimately useless," as Christopher Morris-Lent alleged in an article last week ("The Futility of Protest" Sept. 27, 2006). While we can never claim to know definitive causes for political actions, and perhaps the activist movement is not the sole driving force, the evidence is irrefutable. The correspondence of the dates is not mere coincidence.

I agree with Morris-Lent that "no interested bodies are capable of successfully intervening, at least with force." Until the powerful politicians with the means and obligation to take action actually do so, Darfur is a hopeless cause; activism alone will never be enough.

But there is a further point. It is beyond the faculty of ordinary civilians to directly stop this genocide -- however, politicians often act in response to the voices of their constituents and when enough people cry out against a brutal genocide, politicians listen, as the effects of our efforts have shown.

While we are far from a solution to ending this genocide, every step in the right direction counts, and it's clear that activism has been and continues to be a viable way of pushing the government to take these steps. It is only when we as human beings neglect our duty and responsibility towards our fellow citizens of the world to save them from extinction that we have truly failed.

Elie Wiesel once said, "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." As everyday citizens our most powerful weapon is our voice. It may not be strong enough to block bullets, but it's all we've got, and we should all feel compelled to use it.

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