George Clooney Takes on Darfur
To catch up those news-hatin’ post-teens like me who don’t know Darfur from Buffalo, Wikipedia has this to say about Darfur:
“By the summer of 2004, 50,000 to 80,000 people had been killed and at least a million had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis in the region…On January 31, 2005, the UN released a 176-Page report saying that while there were mass murders and rapes, they could not label it as genocide because “genocidal intent appears to be missing.”
Darfur: an incredible amount of raping, pillaging, murdering, and suffering most of us didn’t pay attention to until it was brought to life by a celebrity. Today when googling Darfur after Clooney’s appearance at the UN, two news headlines appeared immediately:
Blair: Darfur situation is unacceptable – Jerusalem Post – 59 minutes ago
Bush urges UN to act on Darfur – Seattle Post Intelligencer – 2 hours ago
A celebrity may have just changed the course of history. A celebrity may have just been responsible for the US stepping in on what has been going on for at least the past 3 years.
A celebrity.
It makes me feel kind of small to think that I cannot for some reason get my credit cards to budge much, or my weight to drop much, or my love life in line much. But it does make me feel better to think that in a world populated by billions of people, at least there’s one who can stand out.
One voice can change something, eventually.
And maybe it won’t change overnight, and maybe this is like the attention paid to the tsunami victims or the New Orleans hurricane survivors where it’s the focus one day, out the next.
But there remains hope.
And, as another voice once said, “Courage is like love; it must have hope to nourish it.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
