Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

A group of musicians, African, American, European, came
together this week and recorded a song about one mother’s story in
Sudan.
It’s an amazing piece of work, by people who did not know each other
before, this week,  and were connected by a diverse set of musical
networks.  The resulting sound is Afro-Celtic, with lyrics in
English and background vocals in Bamanakan, a language of Mali.

It’s called “Sudan.”

Here is a link to a site hosting an MP3 of the recording
and a written copy of the lyrics. This version is hosted by the Berkman
Center. The recording is also being hosted by Music For Amerca, thanks
to Josh Koenig by way of Zack Rosen, but I don’t have the link yet. Will update when I get it.

The song and the recording have been released
into the “commons” by being licensed under a “Creative Commons”
license, which makes it free and legal to download and distribute the
recording in any creative way you can think of as long as the use is non-commercial and you make attribution to the artists.

..another way to get the word out.

At about 9:00 PM EST tonight (Thursday, July 22) the United States Congress House of Representatives voted
on the bill “Declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan” and the vote for the
bill was unanimous. At about the same time the Senate, in a unanimous
voice vote, also passed its identical version of the bill. These
historic votes were among the last of the congressional session, which
is now adjurned for six weeks. The full text of the bills is reprinted here.

The vote makes a non-binding recommendation to the President of the United States to, among other things:

call the atrocities being committed in Darfur, Sudan by its rightful name: `genocide’

lead an international effort to prevent genocide in Darfur, Sudan

seriously consider multilateral or even unilateral intervention to
prevent genocide should the United Nations Security Council fail to act

This is the first time such a move has been made by the US Congress during the actual committing of a genocide.