8 posts tagged “darfur”
After my "brownbag" fundraiser for Darfur during last year's company Giving Campaign, I learned today of a swanky London party that I wasn't even invited to;). George Clooney, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johanson, Claudia Schiffer, and others raised a few million for the "Not on Our Watch" campaign.
Then I started wondering. I have a few books left over from my brownbag -- Not on our Watch by John Prendergast and Don Cheadle. Maybe one of these celebs would like to stop off in Seattle and meet some of my coworkers and neighbors who share their concern and passion over Darfur. After all, I'm encouraged to "think big" since it's a corporate value (and I do mean that earnestly.). I want to think really really big!
Now I have my favorite stars of course, ones I'd want to see more than others. I'm not saying who because I refuse to hurt anyone's feelings.
I wouldn't even need to block off the streets near my house because they're already blocked from a construction project that tests the limits of the City noise ordinance.
Talking about celebs, I did at least shake hands with Seattle mayor Greg Nickels this evening as he stopped in for our local Democats holiday party. He remembered me from the old days when I covered the county council and the courts for the local paper. Hopefully, he's forgotten the times I may have misquoted him -- not that I ever did that.
Okay. I'm going to be realistic. I'm going to try for Greg, or one of his staff, or even anyone who works at the city to headline my next Darfur brownbag:)
So we contributed $200 to support 2 Darfur activists at the Ronald Reagan dinner in Iowa last Saturday. Just got word back today that it went well for them and here are some comments I received:
"She and the friend who attended wore I CAUCUS FOR DARFUR shirts they talked to the people at their table and at the receptions. And they talked to some campaign staffers at the receptions after the dinner. They got a lot of questions about what their shirts meant. So it helped push our message to a new audience.
Events like this often provide the best opportunity to make our effort visible in a large manner to a crowd that does not always know very much about the a particular issue that a group is promoting (in our case Darfur)."
It's great we could help them out at the event.
Right now I am looking into moving our support effort up a few notches -- forming a Political Action Committee. So I've been looking at the FEC Web site and reading through the guidance. It seems easy enough to start: you just fill out a form and submit. It would certainly take a commitment for record keeping and reporting on a timely basis. But if we could start something small, watch it grow, and make an impact, it would be worth the tedium of filling out forms.
- The Reagan dinner, this Saturday, Oct. 27
- Jefferson Jackson dinner, on Nov. 10, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be the MC.
Last Monday, I took a personal day off work, settled into the reading room atop the spectacular downtown library, and continued reading the book, "Not on our Watch" co written by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. All was well until I fired up a browser to see what was happening now. I knew about Darfur from the headlines but less so about the Congo and Uganda. The news was bad, real bad. It wasn't a story about conflicts simmering over generations. As I looked at the date, I thought my PC must have inserted today's date. This can't be happening right now, can it?
As the facts sunk in on the situation in the Congo, I felt numb and sickened. This was worse than I thought.
"The atrocities perpetrated there by armed groups, some of whom seemed to have been involved in the 1994 Rwandan massacres in which 800,000 people were killed, 'are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape'," said Turkish lawyer Yakin Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, as reported in this Reuters news story.
Warning: Disturbing content
"Women are gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters,"
Erturk spoke Monday July 30th after returning from an 11-day trip to the Congo. The situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighboring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered.
"After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area, and survivors told Erturk that while held as slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives," the report stated.
Erturk added she was shocked to discover that police and armed forces respond to unrest with indiscriminate reprisals.
The tactics include “pillaging, torture and mass rape,” she said, citing a December incident when 70 police officers took revenge for the torching of a police station in Karawa by burning the Equator town, torturing civilians and raping at least 40 women, including an 11-year-old girl.
Erturk will issue a full report to the U.N. in September
Fighting Back with the Enough Project
The Enough Project, co-founded by Not on our Watch author John Prendergast has a mission to stop and prevent genocide and mass atrocities wih a three point strategy, the 3 Ps: Promote Peace, provide Protection, and Punish the perpetrators.
It's the toughest challenge facing the international community and leaves most of us feeling powerless to do anything about it. Most of us, including myself, are not going to stop what we're doing and spend all our time on a cause. We don't need to. Indifference is the enemy. By weighing in -- even in a small way -- we can help send a message that we are noticing what is going on. Enough is asking some of the hardest questions, laying a framework that might well lead to a tipping point that turns the tide against these tyrants. I haven't given away much of my money lately so I figured it was time to hand over the big 1K to Enough. And Microsoft matched it too. (Yeh Microsoft!).
Gordon Brown turns the dial
As globalization takes hold, we stand at the crossroads of community like never before. Lately, few have spoken about the possiblities better than Gordon Brown, the new British PM, when he addressed the UN this week. Brown spoke to a full slate of issues -- from climate change to education -- but he led with Darfur, which he called the "greatest humanitarian disaster the world faces today. Over 200,000 dead, 2 million displaced and 4 million on food aid."
Brown went on to summon the power of individuals, businesses, and organizations working together to face down these horrors:
"And so my argument is simple: the greatest of evils that touches the deepest places of conscience demands the greatest of endeavour....To address the worst of poverty we urgently need to summon up the best efforts of humanity. I want to summon into existence the greatest coalition of conscience in pursuit of the greatest of causes."
He spoke specifically to businesses:
"Let me say to business: you know better than anyone that in the long run you simply cannot succeed in places where the roads are impassable, where people have no access to markets, where employees are under-educated or under-fed, where the rule of law is poorly established or poorly respected. Not only does business have the technology, the skills, the expertise for wealth and job creation that if fully mobilised for global purpose will help meet our goals, it is also in your best business interest to help poor countries develop."
Microsoft, Google, and other top companies come together
It may have garnered little more than an article in the inside pages of the Financial Times, but Brown announced how 20 business leaders including Bill Gates of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google have signed onto a commitment to battle poverty in the developing world.
With globalization, we have visiblitity. Day by day, minute by minute, we see the best of humanity and the worst. With globalization, comes responsibility. We cannot allow the horrors of rape and murder to go unchallenged. We must speak out and make good on our pledge of "Never again."
As Brown said, "when conscience is joined to conscience, moral force to moral force think how much our power to do good can achieve."
IBM's 2001 response to the book about its role in the Holocaust, as noted in my earlier post, sounds a lot like the beginning of language for a corporate pledge opposing genocide and mass atrocities. So a little editing on the fly is called for here:
Change:
IBM and its employees around the world find the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime abhorrent and categorically condemn any actions which aided their unspeakable acts.
To:
<Company name> and its employees find the atrocities committed in Darfur abhorrent and categorically condemn the unspeakable acts that continue to occur unchallenged.....
I don't know what the exact wording should be but you get the picture. If companies have issued press releases stating their view on the Nazi Holocaust, then it's a logical next step to sign a pledge of support for greater action over the genocide that has been occurring in Darfur.
You know when you find some compelling details online that you never knew before? It is one of the defining experiences of our times. Well tonight I searched on a topic that I've been reading about for a while. One that ranks somewhat high on the serious and sobering scale: the involvement of leading corporations in the holocaust and the genocidal crimes that have occurred since WW2.
One company had a critical role to play in the Holocaust. It was a technology company. It's name: IBM, the technology leader of its day. (Of course, IBM is a much different company today. I'm writing this post to ponder what we might learn from history.)
Silence Kills
No company in Germany dared oppose the systematic destruction of targeted groups after Hitler rose to power. To this day most companies remain largely quiet about the crime of genocide when it occurs in Rwanda, Darfur, and Kosovo. Why? Are they somehow ethically exempt? I don't think so because it is silence and indifference that kills. And as members and shareholders of today's leading companies, we can lend our voice to a very basic precept of human rights: Never again. Not on our watch. Not in our generation.
Responding through Corporate Global Citizenship
Genocide and the threat of mass atrocities is not just for human rights groups to care about. This is a matter of global corporate citizenship. It's simply stating support for the most basic of all human rights. As Hillary might say, "starting a conversation" about resetting the corporate footprint. I don't know yet what form this would take. But I believe something could be done here.
Now IBM is a good company and I have friends who work there. After the book was published in 2001, IBM issued a press release, stating that "IBM and its employees around the world find the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime abhorrent and categorically condemn any actions which aided their unspeakable acts."
Referring to this book is not intended as a slam on IBM. I simply believe it speaks to our responsibility as corporate citizens today.
Turns out that buried in my Roth IRA is a $1,200 investment in PetroChina, a sum that has risen by more than 300 percent since I bought the stock a few years ago. Only trouble is PetroChina does business with Sudan, effectively helping immunize the Sudanese government from international pressure over Darfur. I guess I'm a little embarrassed about having this stock in my portfolio and I don't remember exactly why I bought it. I had no idea it could be linked to Darfur. I need to trade it in for a Solar stock and hope people continue to go Ga Ga over harnessing energy from the sun.
Obviously, I can't go around urging awareness on Darfur and hold onto these petro dollars at the same time.
Time to divest. Time for a certain Warren Buffet to pull out too. Now that would be big.
Rudy Guiliani came to Redmond Friday, gave his stump speech mostly attacking Democrats, and fielded a few predictable questions about the war on terror and civil liberties. He showered the audience with his "goal" of fighting terrorists by staying on "offense." But when I asked him about the most serious humanitarian crisis of our time, his answer was a little muted and he admitted that addressing it didn't yet feature in his "12 commitments" for America.
"It's clear you're admired across the country for your leadership;). Thank you for coming to Microsoft," I said as I was handed the microphone. "There needs to be leadership to take on the Sudanese government who are are aiding and abetting genocide in Darfur. What would you do differently than the current administration?"
Guiliani acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis and suggested the U.S. military could be more involved as part of a multinational force, not a unilateral one. He finished his answer by referring to the U.N. as ineffective. (Guiliani comes across more like a character from the TV show 24 than a truly serious candidate)
I followed up by asking if addressing the crisis was included in his 12 commitments. He said it was not but then went on to say that it could go under his commitment to confront extremists around the world.
For me, I felt maybe I got Darfur more on his radar. It was the first time I asked a question at a political/community event in Redmond.
I give myself a ZiggitySplit rating of 7/10 for asking the question in a direct way (without stumbling or rambling on) as well as asking a followup question that led to the candidate publicly saying addressing Darfur could be incorporated in his manifesto of 12 commitments. What would make a higher ZiggitySplit rating? Connecting with others immediately after the event including the candidate. But Guiliani didn't mingle and disappeared out the back. Everyone in the audience just seemed to walk out on their own or with the one or two people that they came with. It would have been easier to connect with others if there had been post event refreshments.
Overall, I felt very positive about the event and I want to thank MSPAC for bringing so many influential leaders to Redmond.
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