Friday, April 28
12 a.m.
It seems everyone has a list of things they hope to accomplish before they die. I find that most people want to write a book or at least have 15 minutes of fame'stand in the spotlight, let photons ping off their proud faces, then go back home to a spouse, a couple of kids and a micro-mansion in suburbia.
This weekend I plan to cross one thing off my list: I will participate in a rally to stop genocide in Sudan. In the company of 10 other Madison students, I will raise my voice on the National Mall and fight to fulfill the post-Holocaust promise 'never again.'
Saturday, April 29
3:30 p.m.
Presently, I sit in the backseat of a stick-shift Subaru. Between the window wipers, I alternately see blurry Mifflin partygoers darting across the street, then the clear 'don't walk' sign explaining their hurry. The crowds rush to the Mifflin Street block party with an urgency that raindrops cannot dampen. I hope the crowd at the rally tomorrow garners equal passion.
After mitigating Mifflin traffic and shuttling through the rain, we arrive at the Marquette Alumni Union where we board the Greyhound. Two men wearing navy-blue suits like ironed plexiglass stand in the doorway of the Union, opening the doors for banquet attendees. But with rain-matted hair and overstuffed backpacks, we enter the union without such chivalry'we open our own doors.
I forget something in the car, so as the other students register, I walk back through the doors. I hear the doormen talking:
'What are they doing'?
'Going to D.C. to rally about Sudan, to stop killing there or something.'
'Yeah, 'cause going to Africa would just be too direct.'
[scoffs all around]
Oh, how I desire to drop everything and scream! And, oh, how that comment resonates with me and will strengthen my resolve the entire weekend.
8 p.m.
As I sit on the Greyhound, muscles atrophying to sand, night falls. With 14 hours to D.C., my thoughts settle on one idea: sleeping arrangements.
In Darfur, over three million displaced, starving black Africans sleep in refugee camps or barren deserts every night, with nightmares less terrifying than reality. Women risk rape if they succumb to the vulnerability of sleep, while the slumber of orphaned and emaciated children invites easy murder. In troubled REM cycles, men of fighting age provoke knives to their nightmares to silence their throats before they can even cry to resist.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the question of sleeping arrangements holds a distinct connotation for sex. Tonight, blithe drunks will fearlessly pass out in strangers' beds on Mifflin Street, euphoric in their foreign surroundings. In Darfur, the Janjaweed (in English, evil men on horseback) will mortally punish thousands of black Africans in their foreign diasporas.
Back in Marquette, doormen will cuddle Stepford wives.
It seems that we only tend to measure freedom during daylight, but the moon conceals a freedom so basic'peaceful sleep'we do not recognize the dire implications of its deprivation.
Sunday, April 30
11 a.m.
In Washington, D.C.
Finally, we arrive in Washington, D.C. As the first bus of an expected fleet of 250 from different locations nationwide, we receive a warm welcome; Giant buttons, stickers and T-shirts shout the mission: SAVE DARFUR.
With a few hours to spare, we walk along the reflecting pool and climb the stairs of the Lincoln Monument. It feels oddly reminiscent of scaling Bascom Hill: Lincoln seated at the top, stone cold but ever present. I cannot help but recall Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legendary 'Dream' speech. That glittering speech lives in eternal virtue, but today Washington whispers of another rally for the textbooks.
2 p.m.
The sun beats fiercely; the crowd swells on the crabgrass mall and banners rise.
'Darfur today is the capital of the world's human suffering,' says Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, the first speaker. 'Darfur deserves to live. We are its only hope.'
Scores of speakers shout for justice from the pulpit. Religious leaders of all denominations call for action on behalf of humanity. Together, they invoke the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention and call world leaders to fulfill their promise.
'We said 'never again' again and again and again, and yet we're here again,' says Brain Steidle, former Marine captain and U.S. representative to the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Darfur. 'I don't ever want to ever come to a rally like this and speak to people like you again'ever again.'
The speakers do not wring their hands. They pound the podium and waste no time on feeble words. The diversity of the speakers is matched in the crowd. Elderly Holocaust survivors stand alongside college students and members of all ages, races and religions pack together. We worry not about demographic cleavages but about humanitarian unity.
'Silence, acquiescence, paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong,' says U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. 'If we care, the world will care, if we bear witness, then the world will know. If we act, then the world will follow.'
The genuine participants in this rally stay beyond George Clooney, the token attraction. The rally concludes with Joey Cheek, gilded Olympic speedskater of the 2006 Torino games, who donated his winnings to aid children in Chad and Darfur.
Cheek delivers the final plea for action and the crowd disbands, but not in silence. Nearly everyone leaves with a sunburn souvenir of their fight for social justice and a burning desire to end the ambivalence toward the first genocide of the 21st century.
10 p.m.
Bus ride home
Only 12 hours ago, in the cramped quarters of the Greyhound, 11 UW-Madison students slept with unified dreams of inspiring action in Sudan. When we awoke, we jolted Washington from its slumber with cries for social justice, action and the end of genocide in Sudan.
We now call on President Bush to quit stalling and abide by his post-Rwanda 'not on my watch' declaration. We call on the United Nations to make good on its 'never again' promise and electrify multi-national efforts to intervene in Sudan. And we call on the students of the UW system's crown jewel, Madison, to translate their passion for partying to a passion for action in Sudan.
In response to the Marquette doorman, going to Africa is 'just too direct.' I am only 20. I do not have the power to protect millions of endangered people. But I can raise my voice, and you can too. If we spread the word and pressure our politicians, we may initiate action in Sudan.
