Never Again-- and Not Now

from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Washington -- Young and old, rich and poor, black and white, students and retirees, Muslims, Jews and Christians, nearly 100,000 people from all stations of life rallied Sunday in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other U.S. cities to urge the Bush administration to take decisive action to stop the genocide in Sudan.

The rallies nationwide were the most emphatic and symbolic expressions to date of growing outrage over the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Sudan's Darfur region since early 2003.
Speaker after speaker at the National Monument in Washington -- including Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former pro basketball player and Sudanese expatriate Manute Bol, and actor-director George Clooney -- called for the deployment of international peacekeeping troops to Darfur and implored Americans to make their voices heard.

"Silence helps the killer, never his victims," Wiesel said. "Darfur today is the capital of the world's human suffering. Darfur deserves to live. We are its only hope."

"The U.S. policy, the U.N. policy, the world policy is failing," Clooney told the crowd. "Well, fortunately, this is not a dictatorship. You make the policy." Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, a survivor of the Holocaust, said America's "patience is over. ... We shall no longer mourn this genocide. We shall stop it."

"Stand up, America, and protect Darfur from the longest-ruling genocidal regime in modern history," San Francisco activist Elvir Camdzic, a survivor of the Bosnian genocide, told the Washington rally.
There were several Darfuri and Muslim speakers. "Most of us can easily recognize racism in others. It is difficult to acknowledge that it exists within our own Muslim ranks," said A. Rashied Omar, a coordinator for the Program on Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. "We need to purify and heal our souls and rid our communities from the scourge of racism. ... The teachings of Islam leave no doubt about the importance of peacemaking."

In San Francisco, some 15,000 people turned up at Crissy Field for an afternoon of political speeches on Sudan. There also were rallies in Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, Toronto and Wellington, New Zealand.

Many participants came with Jewish groups, including two dozen who flew up from a temple in Los Angeles, but Bay Area Christians and Muslims also turned out in steady numbers, and San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer was a featured speaker. Jews feel a special connection to the situation in Darfur because of their own experience with genocide, said Rabbi Sydney Mintz of San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-el, the Bay Area's largest Jewish congregation.
"After the Holocaust, people said, 'Never again.' As Jews, you can't sit idly by now," said Mintz, whose congregation has been working with the American Jewish World Service, an aid group sending money, supplies and workers to help in refugee camps in Sudan and nearby Chad.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has twice visited refugee camps in Sudan and Chad, called the situation a "humanitarian disaster." "This is a moment of truth for the world," Lee told the crowd at Crissy Field to wild applause. "You are the conscience of America. Not on our watch will we remain silent while genocide takes place."

The liberal organization MoveOn.org had collected 95,042 signatures by Sunday afternoon for a "virtual march" of people who want U.S. foreign policy in Sudan to change.