Sudan: Day of Conscience

FaithfulAmerica.org has organized a 'Day of Conscience' to draw attention to the refugee crisis in Darfur. Through private donations, FaithfulAmerica was able to send a camera crew over to Darfur to get some live video footage of what is going on over there on the ground. A live video fee was made available across the internet at 9 am this morning, and it's now available via archive.

This is pretty awesome stuff. Shoe-string budget, taking live questions over the internet from viewers of the streaming video, interviews with a representative of Doctors Without Borders, an interview with one of the refugees, talk about the current political situation, etc. Too cool.

I and about 3,000 other people are doing a little hunger strike today - no solid food during daylight hours - to join in solidarity with the people of Darfur.

This filming/video feed is apparently a joint project between FaithfulAmerica and TrueMajority.

Some of the humanitarian organizations out there include Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Red Cross, and Care. Global Nomads Group is the group of people helping out specifically with the technology and camerwork needed to make this interactive event happen.

Man, so many people helping out.

I used to think of the Red Cross as just an American entity, but I realize now that it's actually part of a global Red Cross organization - as seen through the link above. If you search for 'Red Cross' in Google, you'll first come across a link to 'redcross.org' which belongs to 'American Red Cross'.

A couple of other links here: Darfur Genocide, Save Darfur.

The most important thing you can do to 'take action' is to:

• Sign up with either FaithfulAmerica.org or TrueMajority.org - including their email newsalerts which will keep you informed of the Sudan situation.
  
• Ask your friends to sign up with one of these organizations.
  
• Donate money to any one of the organizations listed in this posting.
  
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper asking them to cover the ongoing situation in Sudan.
  
• Write your congresspersons, Senators, and President Bush and tell them you want them to do something to help solve the Sudanese refugee situation.
  

For what it's worth, I really like the FaithfulAmerica.org organization because it seems to embody many of the best aspects of religion (community, cooperation, compassion, etc.) without condoning the actions of corrupt politicians who use religion for politican gain (war, imperialism, racism, etc). They are definitely faith-based, but not in a scary, barbarian, psychotic way like I imagine many of President Bush's faith-based organizations are run.