Darfurious

I have shoes.\nEvery time I sit around and try to get depressed about situations, I have to force myself to remember the simple fact that I have shoes, and in many colors, too. Blue and brown Air Maxes, grey New Balances, blue old school Pumas and so on. \nThe people in Darfur, Sudan, don't have good shoes. Many of them don't have shoes at all. A good pair of Air Maxes would make their long walks a little easier and might alleviate some of the reason they are walking in the first place.\nThey're walking because they are forced to. They're walking away from their homes and into refugee camps under orders from men with guns. Those who don't walk fast enough will be shot. They must keep moving, despite the lack of food, good water and constant exposure to the elements. Many, just because of who they are and what family they're from, will be shot anyway.\nThey're being bullied by men who call themselves Janjaweed. Thugs, they are shooting, killing, raping and pillaging whatever there is left to pillage. \nAnd they're doing it with the blessing of the Sudanese government.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell called the Darfur atrocities genocide, and on a grand scale, over 30,000 people killed, and the number still rising. MTVU has taken notice and has been airing commercials featuring Francis Bok, a former Sudanese slave, talking about his experiences.\n"I ask my master why I was treated this way, and he said, because you're an animal ..."\nIf you watch TV on campus, I'm sure you've seen and heard Bok talking about his ordeal.\nAlso on TV, the two presidential candidates right here at home got together and had a friendly debate at the University of Miami. At the debate, Darfur came up for a short time. Kerry said the Bush administration hasn't done enough about Darfur, and Bush shot back that the U.S. has given millions, if not billions, of dollars in aid money to the African Union to help the cause.\nGreat, now the poor people of Darfur are not only getting shot daily, but they're drowning in money they'll never see or be able to use. Pouring money onto the situation obviously hasn't helped. Giving money to the African Union is like giving a compulsive gambler extra chips. Because once the money gets to Africa, it is rich dictators and monarchs that decide how it gets spent. \nThe Darfur situation is an indicator of a larger American problem: We just don't care about Africa. Aside from post-apartheid South Africa and the tourist destination that is Kenya, most Americans could care less about the continent (yes, it is a continent, with more than one country). The American government both before and during the Bush administration spent millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours on intelligence, surveillance and sanctions for Iraq. Still, we found no weapons of mass destruction, and the people there hate us just as much now as they did during the era of Hussein propaganda. So much for making the world a safer place for democracy. All that money and time were spent on Iraq, and the suffering in Darfur continued to roll on. \nIf I can coin a new term for this kind of neglect, I guess I'll call it continental genocism. Americans have seen Feed the Children ads on TV for years. Some people even donate the 78 cents per day to sponsor a hungry child living somewhere. Those pennies, however, would have much more impact if the leader of the free world (i.e. the president) gave a damn about the suffering of the darker people on the "dark continent."\nYou can't buy democracy. You have to fight for it. But our next commander in chief has to be willing to put the gloves on.