The National Mall echoed with chants of "Never again," "Enough is enough" and "Save Darfur now" yesterday, as tens of thousands of people rallied in front of the Capitol in Washington D.C. to call for government action to bring a stop to genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
"Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century, and it will be the last," emcee, radio talk show host and activist Joe Madison proclaimed. His hopeful attitude was matched and complemented by others' calls for urgent action.
"What I have seen in Darfur is exactly what was going on in Rwanda," said Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager whose tale of heroism during the Rwandan genocide was depicted in the recent movie "Hotel Rwanda." "Darfur is a disaster, a shame to mankind," he said.
The gathering in Washington was the largest of a series of rallies planned across the country and world to coincide with the U.N.-imposed Apr. 30 deadline for parties in Darfur to end three years of open conflict that has already cost almost 200,000 lives and displaced 1.8 million people, according to Human Rights Watch estimates.
The Save Darfur rally was sponsored by over 50 human rights, religious and political grassroots organizations, and was headed up by the Million Voices for Darfur campaign. The three-hour program featured a host of speakers, including elected statesmen, religious leaders, survivors of various genocides (including Darfur) and celebrities.
That deadline was extended by 48 hours last night, after Sudanese rebels rejected a final peace deal.
"Right now, refugees in camps are listening on short-wave radios for news of protests around the world," Samantha Power, Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and author of the Pulitzer prize-winning book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," told the audience.
Fighting in Darfur began when ethnic Africans rose up against the Arab-dominated government in 2003. Since then, government-sponsored Janjaweed militias have engaged in a systematic campaign of murder, rape and the burning and destruction of rural villages throughout the region.
The crisis has been further complicated in recent months by the forced return of thousands of refugees who had fled to neighboring Chad in earlier stages of the conflict.
The events drew a mixed crowd from various parts of the country.
The largest representation at the rally by far was from high school and college age students.
"You are the backbone," Simon Deng of the Sudan Freedom Walk said, addressing the many teens and 20-somethings in attendance.
Nearly 30 Tufts students helped form that backbone.
Freshmen Aliza Sandberg, Dena Greenblum and Candice Montalvo interrupted studying and cut short their Spring Fling weekend celebrations to attend the rally.
The Tufts contingent, which scheduled a full 36-hour itinerary of travel and Darfur-related activities, faced a bit of a setback when the Hillel-subsidized bus it had chartered broke down in New Jersey, stranding the ralliers for four hours in a mid-state diner. They rolled into Washington - with the help of a Jewish Community Center in New York - just in time for the rally Sunday afternoon.
"I'm really happy to be here," Greenblum said. "There's nothing else I could be doing back at Tufts that's more important than this."
Amy Levavi came from New Jersey with members of the Jewish Community Relations Council, one of the many religious and ethnic organizations that showed up in large groups to support the call for action in Darfur. She brought her three daughters to the rally.
"We've talked about genocide, but I wanted to show them that words are not enough," she said. "It's important that people take action as well."
"It's about time this got this kind of exposure," said Glover Kebe, a resident of Washington, D.C., who said the years of atrocities in Sudan should be of global concern. "We can't be ignorant for so long, or let ourselves live in a secluded bubble just because we live in America."
The sense of historical moment was pervasive throughout the crowd and stressed throughout the rally.
"Today, every one of us is Sudanese," announced Former Marine Captain Brian Steidle, who advised African Union forces in Darfur from 2004 to 2005, echoing the words of President John F. Kennedy in his 1963 speech in West Berlin.
Other speakers drew on timeless phrases borrowed from Isaiah to Bono to Martin Luther King. "I have a nightmare," said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, as he detailed for the crowd the additional atrocities he said would result from continued inaction in Sudan.
While condemnation of the ongoing genocide has been practically universal throughout Washington political circles, concrete action to stop it has not.
"This genocide can be ended immediately," said John Prendergast, Senior Adviser with the International Crisis Group, stressing that the U.S. government urgently needed to protect the people of Darfur with U.N. forces, punish the perpetrators of the genocide and promote peace with a presidential envoy.
Currently, the African Union is the only international body with troops operating within the Darfur region, and though its Peace and Security Council has promised to hand over peacekeeping functions to the U.N. after its mandate ends this September, the AU has not yet given its final approval.
Attempts at U.N. intervention thus far have been stymied by, among other diplomatic snafus, the threat of a Security Council veto from China, which has invested heavily in oil in the region.
Many of the calls for action were directed specifically at international leaders. "George Bush...Kofi Annan...Hu Jintao...Omar al-Bashir...we're not going to give in until the genocide stops and peace and justice reign throughout all Sudan!" said Gloria White Hammond, chairwoman of the Million Voices for Darfur campaign.
The rally marked the end of a weekend of Darfur-related events, which began on Friday with a day of lobbying various members of Congress and divisions of the State Department.
Sarah Bettigole, a freshman from Tufts who met with representatives from the State Department on behalf of the student group Pangea, said it was an inspiring end to an educational weekend.
"I honestly came today without much hope," Bettigole confessed, explaining that the pessimism and pragmatism of government officials had made her question how much could really be done until she saw the passion of the crowd.
Though she has been working on responses to Darfur for a year, Bettigole is still a relative newcomer to the campaign for ending atrocities in Sudan. Yet even the most war-wearied in the crowd seemed to share the enthusiasm she drew from the rally.
Mukhtar Taha, who said he left Sudan after his father was killed for criticizing the government in 1985, smiled as he surveyed the scene in front of the capital.
"I'm very pleased," he said. "Look at all these people - we're going to have peace."
Karoun Demirjian is a student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
