Rally to Stop Genocide
I'm a day behind the rest of the blog-o-sphere, but here goes... Yesterday I went down to the Rally to Stop Genocide, with 1 youth, 3 young adults, and 1 real adult. We drove down to New Carrolton station and took the metro in, which was exciting not only because I missed DC, but because we saw other rally people. By the time we got to Federal Center stop, the trains were full of people going to the rally. They made us wait a minute before they let us off the train, because the station was so packed, and when we got up the escalators, we saw that they had opened the ticket stiles, because of the crowds. The Mall was pretty packed with people, and it was so cool to see such a diverse crowd. The Washington Post estimated that there were between 10,000 and 15,000 people at the rally, and called it "one of the more diverse rallies the capital has seen in years."
It was so awesome to see so many people, especially since so much awareness has been raised in recent months. As I stood at the rally I remembered that about a year ago, a group on campus at UMD was having a moment of silence for the victims in Darfur. I got a flier and knew vaguely that something bad was going on there, and the flier said it was genocide, so I planned to go... and forgot. It didn't get much coverage and I think it was pretty small (although most of the rallies on campus where). Six months ago, I still didn't really know what was going on in Darfur. But over the last few months, the crisis has gotten so much more press. A few months ago, the Million Voices for Darfur campaign had collected about 8,000 postcards and their goal was go get 100,000 by the April 30th rally. At the rally yesterday, they told us that so far 760,000 post cards have been collected.
Among the speakers, my absolute favorite was Barack Obama... I think he got a bigger cheer than the Clooneys. He somehow managed to urge stronger actions, without attacking Bush, and quote the Bible without sounding like he was just doing the Bible thing. I did like George Clooney, though, and his father. There were tons of good speakers, and wish I had taken notes so I could write more about them.
The work is not over by any means, though. I made a Save Darfur t-shirt, and so many people asked me "who's Darfur?" in church. So, I'm going to start writing letters to elected officials, and educating people on the horrors of what is going on.
This problem has to be addressed. To quote one of the speakers: "Enough is Enough."
It was so awesome to see so many people, especially since so much awareness has been raised in recent months. As I stood at the rally I remembered that about a year ago, a group on campus at UMD was having a moment of silence for the victims in Darfur. I got a flier and knew vaguely that something bad was going on there, and the flier said it was genocide, so I planned to go... and forgot. It didn't get much coverage and I think it was pretty small (although most of the rallies on campus where). Six months ago, I still didn't really know what was going on in Darfur. But over the last few months, the crisis has gotten so much more press. A few months ago, the Million Voices for Darfur campaign had collected about 8,000 postcards and their goal was go get 100,000 by the April 30th rally. At the rally yesterday, they told us that so far 760,000 post cards have been collected.
Among the speakers, my absolute favorite was Barack Obama... I think he got a bigger cheer than the Clooneys. He somehow managed to urge stronger actions, without attacking Bush, and quote the Bible without sounding like he was just doing the Bible thing. I did like George Clooney, though, and his father. There were tons of good speakers, and wish I had taken notes so I could write more about them.
The work is not over by any means, though. I made a Save Darfur t-shirt, and so many people asked me "who's Darfur?" in church. So, I'm going to start writing letters to elected officials, and educating people on the horrors of what is going on.
This problem has to be addressed. To quote one of the speakers: "Enough is Enough."
posted by Unknown at 11:19 PM
1 Comments:
Another good chant: Shame! Shame! :)
The Bush administration needs to get its act together, fo' sure.
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