Ordinary Americans try to relieve the pain in Darfur

When Mark Crane organized a rally last summer to protest the genocide in Sudan, only 15 people showed up. When several of them left after seeing the tiny crowd, Crane was not deterred. He stood with the others outside the Sudanese mission to the United Nations and prepared to lead the chants he had adapted from labor union Web sites the night before.

Then Crane, a 42-year-old motorman who works the midnight shift on the New York City subway, realized he had the wrong address. The mission had moved several blocks away. Banging on an upside-down cement bucket, he led his group down the avenue, chanting: “Khar-toum! Boom boom! The whole world is watching!”

Individuals across the country, from activists like Crane to two teenage sisters in Illinois, are working to raise awareness about the genocide in a region of Sudan called Darfur. At a time when a U.S.-led war continues to focus attention on Iraq and the aftermath of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia has also claimed public attention and compassion, activists have faced a challenge in raising awareness about Darfur and explaining how people can help.

“It’s very easy to avoid dealing with something that is so complex, so challenging and so unclear as determining who the bad guy is and how to fix it,” said David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition, a group of 100 organizations that has led American activists in fighting the genocide with the help of its Web site, savedarfur.org. Though he doesn’t like to compare the crisis in Darfur with the devastation caused by the tsunami, Rubenstein said people “shy away from things they can’t fix by writing a check.”

An estimated 200,000 Africans have died in Darfur, according to savedarfur.org. The Janjaweed, a government-backed militia, has razed villages, raped women and children, and displaced 1.6 million people. Many more people are being killed each month.

Rubenstein said that although the U.S. government has done better than other countries in calling for action against the Sudanese government, it has not done enough.

“The way the genocide will end is when President Bush lets the public know and the international community know that this is very important to him," Rubenstein said. “And we as Americans have to let him know that this is very important to us.”

He said the American public is slowly realizing the magnitude of the genocide. In the last month and a half, savedarfur.org has seen a large increase in the number of people writing letters to government officials and organizing activities to help direct attention to Darfur.

The success of the Oscar-nominated movie “Hotel Rwanda” has fueled much of this interest. The movie tells the story of a hotel owner who saved 1,200 lives during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which the ruling Hutu tribe killed 800,000 Tutsis in a 100-day massacre. The movie infuriated one New York couple and spurred them into action.

As Joshua Greenberg, a contract lawyer who also studies film at Columbia University, and his fiancee, Karen Wight, an actress, watched the movie in January, they couldn’t stop thinking about the atrocities happening in Darfur.

“Here we are as citizens wanting to do something, but feeling powerless to do anything ourselves,” said Greenberg, 29. “We needed to get the people in power to watch the film.”

With the guidance of savedarfur.org, they helped organize the “Hotel Darfur” campaign. On the Web site, groups post upcoming gatherings in which people stand outside of theaters showing "Hotel Rwanda" and ask moviegoers to sign letters to President Bush and members of Congress.

The Web site also urges people to send their ticket stubs to the president, with the message “Not On My Watch” written on the back. The phrase is meant to remind Bush of a note he is said to have scribbled after reading a report about President Clinton’s much-criticized response to the Rwandan genocide.

In Batavia, Ill., two young people are taking a different approach. A fifth-grade research paper assignment first sparked Riley MacDonald’s interest in Sudan. Now a junior at Batavia High School, Riley recently watched a documentary by her mother’s cousin called “Rwanda: Do Scars Ever Fade?” She had the same reaction to the documentary that many had to “Hotel Rwanda.”

“Everybody wants to do something,” she said, “but nobody is doing anything.”

Riley’s mother, Amy, remembered that after the movie she told her daughter, “You’re only 16 years old and sometimes you just have to care about people and that’s enough.”

But for Riley, caring wasn’t enough. “I’m not an adult,” she said. “I’m not the one causing the problems, but I’m just as responsible as anyone else.”

Riley began talking to teachers at her school about organizing discussions about Darfur. Her sister, Hannah, who is a middle-school student, did the same. Together, the two have given presentations about Darfur to about 200 students and teachers at Hannah’s school. They said community leaders, including the mayor and the head of the local Rotary Club, have expressed support. And about 95 middle-school students signed a volunteer list to help the sisters set up larger campaigns.

Crane, who organized the small protest outside the United Nations last summer, is not giving up either. The Darfur genocide first grabbed Crane’s attention when he read a magazine article about it on the subway last summer. The article motivated him to look for a group that would be rallying on the issue during the Republican National Convention. When he couldn’t find one, he organized his own.

Crane also has organized a loose affiliation of activists called “World People for Peace” and has an e-mail list of 300 names. Later this month Crane is planning a protest on Wall Street to condemn corporations supporting the Sudanese government.

“To think that there are little boys or little girls out there living in horror,” said Crane. “I have three little kids and it just eats me up inside.”

E-mail: jeo2102@columbia.edu