Focus on Darfur
| April 29, 2007 | ||
| 1:00 pm | to | 4:30 pm |
Providing entertainment for the head and tail of this rally, hopefully another beautiful sunny day in the park. get thee and thine out to support a most important cause.
— MLK
Location: Cheesman Park in Denver, CO
Contact:
Jessica Nicholas
jnicholas (at) standnow (dot) org
Organizations: STAND: A student anti-genocide coalition in collaboration with the Save Darfur Coalition and Global Days for Darfur.
Goals:
To educate, motivate, and inspire the people of our nation to take a stand against the genocide in Darfur and demand that their elected officials do the same. Contrary to the commonly held belief that American citizens don’t care about what is going on outside of the United States, we believe that people have the desire, but not the means to contribute to the well-being of all the people on this planet. Through our rally, we hope to provide that means through which people can channel their collective energy towards the greater good. If we can convince our elected officials that the genocide in Darfur is an issue that the majority of their constituents care about, they will have to act. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this rally is to harness the power of the multitudes in order to send a message to our government that this situation requires urgent and effective action.
Background:
In February 2003, frustrated by poverty and neglect from the Sudanese government, two rebel groups in the Sudanese state of Darfur launched an uprising. In response to this rebellion, the government armed nomadic militia groups, called Janjaweed, to root out the opposing rebels, and they quickly began targeting civilians.
Four years later, over 450,000 men, women, and children have been murdered as the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government expanded their goals to the eradication of the native African farmers of Darfur and another 3.5 million forced into refugee camps. The international community has remained criminally silent on what Amnesty International has described as “the worst human rights catastrophe of our time.”
In spite of this, the international community has been slow to respond, and ineffective in its attempts to stop this genocide. Borne out of this failure to act, STAND, a student-run anti-genocide coalition seeks creative and powerful ways to end this terrible crime on humanity. Their spring campaign, “Making the Grade” targets elected officials who have been graded based on their support of Darfur legislation.
Objectives:
The main objective of this rally is to target Colorado’s elected officials who have been graded on their actions to stop the genocide by publicizing these grades to the widest range of people possible. It is our hope that by publicly pressuring these representatives to continue to support anti-genocide legislation, we will see a ripple effect encouraging congressmen from other states to support this legislation as well which will ultimately lead to a coordinated government action against the genocide.
We are targeting the following legislation as ways that our congressmen can improve their performance:
Co-Sponsor Federal divestment legislation to pressure those foreign companies
that are currently subsidizing the genocide (we also encourage private
institutions and individual shareholders to divest).
Sponsor a Resolution calling on the executive branch to enforce the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, including provisions related to sanctions against individual architects of the genocide and to the prohibition against
the US ports accepting Sudanese oil.
Sponsor a resolution calling the President to work with NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur.
Sponsor legislation calling for increased appropriations for African Union peacekeeping forces and humanitarian aid operations”.
Sunday, April 29th, 1:00-4:30
