Many of you are aware of http://passionofthepresent.org and the
work that some of us have been doing to bring awareness to the genocide
in Sudan. Unfortunately, things are not going well. Sudan
really really needs your help. Make links, call elected officials, ask for a peacekeeping force by way of the UN, the AU, and or other means. Ask for a formal declaration of genocide–not to quibble on terms, but because this is one way to spur action under international law.
As summarized in this and several posts, there is bad news all around.
1. The US seems ready to pull back from pressing for a strong
UN resolution on Sudan, as the Islamic, Arab, and African nations are
tightening their support for the regime in Sudan.
2. And meanwhile the regime in Sudan is
(a) doing ptemkin village shows of force
to create the illusion that it is taking action to stop the genocide
(such as ordering “reverse amputation” of arms and legs of ten
Janjaweed militia members, in a show trial yesterday) while
(b) at the same time continuing to bomb villages and work in conjuction with the same Janjaweed militias to continue the drive to genocide against black villagers in Darfur.
Lack of awareness is an issue
Over the past few days I have had many many conversations about why we can’t do more about the genocide in Sudan. Almost
everyone I talk to who knows about the situation–right or
left–Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist or New Age, hawk or dove,
recognizes both the tragedy on the ground and the denial reflected in
the world’s lack of effective response.
But most people are simply not aware of the situation,
or have only a vague perception of a problem “somewhere.” There is a
profound lack of general public awareness of the genocide in Sudan, and
this makes it hard to get the issue addressed in the political sphere.
I believe the US government is poised to take effective action, but is
hesitant to go forward without broader public support.
Now Eugene Oregon today
quotes a poll from the University of Maryland Program on International
Policy Attitudes that quantifies this profound lack of knowledge:
As you may know, in a province of Sudan called Darfur
there is a conflict between the local black African Darfur is and the
central government, dominated by Arabs. How much have you heard about
this situation?A lot…………………………..3%
Some………………………….11
Not very much…………………28
Nothing at all…………………56
(No answer)……………………3
As Oregon says, “So there you go. Of the 892 people PIPA polled
about the situation in Darfur, less than 27 knew a lot about it. I’m
assuming the 11% who said they had heard ’some’ about it probably
vaguely recall hearing it mentioned somewhere and most likely couldn’t
find Sudan on a map of Sudan.”
What more can we do?
The newspapers have been very active and helpful on the
issue. Newspapers in a vast range of cities have run editorials and
stories on Sudan. But so far there seems to have been little public
impact.
The blogosphere has been somewhat active, and is becoming more so.
We could do more. We can work together more intensely. We can add more
focus. We can join together on specific concrete actions, such as
contacting Congress in the US, and elected officials around the world.
And we can do collective actions. E.g. we might adopt a death counter,
based on both Eric Reeves’ figures–which I believe–as well as the
lower but still tragic UN death numbers
Television?
Finally, there is our sometimes nemesis, TV. One perhaps obvious hypothesis: What has been missing in regard to the genocide in Sudan is television coverage. For
better or worse, national television matters profoundly in terms of
gettting a situation into the public consciousness. Television
determines our shared “sensorium” — how we “experience” our wider
world. If it does not appear on TV, the collective mind–in contrast to
your or my individual mind–just does not experience something. If its not on TV, its not “real.”
Is there some way to get the genocide in Sudan on TV? Anybody know anybody influential in programming at Fox–or MTV?
By the way, a lot of newspapers own TV stations. Do any of you at
newspapers know friends you could call at your sister TV stations, to
bring attention to this story?
There is talk of building a giant LED screen, with numbers of dead
in Sudan, and mounting is somewhere visible to TV. Anybody know someone
at Sony who could run something like this in Times Square, right behind
the morning show studios?
And finally, can the blogosphere in part substitute for TV,
if we rethink our strategies creatively enough? Can we use RSS to
substitute for TV? Can we deliver images that will change the
consciousness of the nation? I’d love to get Rebecca McKinnon and Adam Curry and Dave Winer and Andrew Grumet and Armando Stettner, for example, working on this one.
PS: Oregon has a good current summary of the situation in regard to Darfur and Sudan.
Oregon also relays a vivid, full-scale version of the photo of a dying child that graced–and I use this word with intent–the cover of The New York Times Sunday.
