The Humanitarian Hybrid.

A minor improvement? Or Delay... Peacekeepers from the United Nations is the appropriate action to take. A hybrid UN and AU team of Peacekeepers has been allowed to enter Darfur, Sudan. So far so good. We'll see if they make it there or not. And where these "peacekeepers" are actually coming from is another question entirely. But it does seem like a positive step.

However, as hopes rise, doubts do as well. Humanitarian aid workers who have been around long enough to see this strategy work its way out before raise doubts as to the genuine effort being put forth by the Sudanese government.

The hybrid connection between African Union workers and United Nations Workers is a noteworthy cause and even though the best interest of the nation may not be the most important concern for Kig Abdullah, it is beginning to be for the international community. Potential agreements cause stirs, stirs cause attention.

Attention will undoubtably cause actions or so we activists would like to hope. So whether the intentions of this agreement were met by honorable eyes on both sides is practically irrelevant in some sense. Should this agreement fail, I believe we would see an even larger momentous force brought about by the international community and the worlds people becoming more willing to sacrifice what we have to save the lives of the 2.3 million IDP's and Refugee as well as giving peace of mind for the lost lives of nearly 400,000.

The Lost Boys of Sudan

In the hopes that the American people will find a desire to overcome obstacles such as the inability for congress to do its job and our current administrations complete lack of ethical values.. And because it is something I believe to be a worthy cause, I have started a fundraising effort in which all proceeds (every last cent) is given to the people of Darfur, Sudan.

I'm only asking you to take a look at what we are doing to help. But even $5.00 is a contribution that no one would look down upon



Lost Boys of Sudan Medical Clinic



If you want to do more as I do, It only takes the amount of a couple of coffees, a pair of shoes, or a bottle of wine. If you'd like to join this DirectChange.org group, Just go to their website. You can join my fundraising effort or link to another one that you feel needs more contribution.

Either way, I think you'll find a few dollars here and there sent to the humanitarian aid world makes you day just a little bit easier. Not to mention those you've help support as well :)


You can help -- Same sales pitch as every fundraiser gives, but this is for human rights. This is to end genocide.



In the eyes of any American, it should not be seen as an option, but a requirement of our continuing freedoms we exploit and take advantage of while so many only wish for clean water and a place to call their home without the fear of persecution.


If you are ready to donate, there is no minimum you can give. 50 cents if its all you can afford is welcomed. It will buy a child a glass of water and give him 3 more days of life.



Donate to the Lost Boys of Sudan Medical Clinic
Take the time to , you'll find it gratifying, and they'll find it a miracle.

Fundraising for the Lost Boys of Africa

What is the level of your awareness of situations outside of our own lives. The lost boys of Sudan are famous in their own right and yet still exist in the same conditions as all other refugees and IDP’s. If we continue to think that millions of IDP’s and Refugees are the stereotypical “communist bastards” who shoot each other up via suicide bombs, people who ransack, pillage and burn fariks and other villages with the prized Kalashnikov rifles then, of course, no one would do a damn thing, but if the common American individual starts realizing that it is governments who are supporting their own military recruits to commit these atrocities… Did you know these recruits are just boys? Just children who know no better than to follow the word of their elders, walking into the hands of the manipulative and utterly destructive political agendas of the power hungry leaders.

Just maybe we might begin to do something about it. Begin helping now.

While relative peace has come to the southern Sudan, decades of civil war has left the region without the basic infrastructure for programs such as education and healthcare.

As the feature film “God Grew Tired of Us” has raised awareness of the issues of southern Sudan and of the plight of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” John Dau (one of “Lost Boys” featured in the film) created this project to both educate the public on how they can have an impact AND to provide direct financial assistance to improve the delivery of healthcare and education in the southern Sudan as well as provide education to the Lost Boys in Africa.

If you feel like you need to do more. I have my own fundraising page through Direct Change.org They are a great group of people who put every penny towards the refugees themselves.

The Sudan Project	$

United States Senate and House of Representatives.

The greatest country of them all. The United States of America and our faithful representatives that we elect in the freedom of our own democratic nation. Eh hem. Now back to the truth.

If it were only that simple. Our congressmen and women need our input. They are our representatives, not our dictators and thus they need to know the public opinion on all issues relating to legislation that is going through the congress in order to accurately place their votes. It is unfortunate that the American people have become so intertwined in their own lives that they fail to see the enormous void they have created between the people and its governing body.

Because of this reason, I felt it was necessary to put forth a very strongly worded example of the conditions that most Americans have never even imagined.

As I look back at this letter. I realize I have so much to learn! Getting angry and writing a letter are two things that generally should not be done at the exact same time.. perhaps learning to take a breather first before writing would be more benefitial. :) Live and learn.
Written: April 4, 2007

The Honorable Brian Baird
United States House of Representatives
2443 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4703

The Honorable Maria Cantwell
United States Senate
511 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-4704

The Honorable Norman D. Dicks
United States House of Representatives
2467 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4706

The Honorable Richard (Doc) Hastings
United States House of Representatives
1214 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4704

The Honorable Jay Inslee
United States House of Representatives
403 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4701

The Honorable Rick R. Larsen
United States House of Representatives
107 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4702

The Honorable Jim McDermott
United States House of Representatives
1035 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4707

The Honorable Cathy McMorris Rodgers
United States House of Representatives
1708 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4705

The Honorable Patty Murray
United States Senate
173 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-4701

The Honorable Dave Reichert
United States House of Representatives
1223 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4708

The Honorable Adam Smith
United States House of Representatives
2402 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4709

RE: Darfur and Other Genocide Atrocities.

Dear Representative/Senator:

Paul Rusesabagina recently told me that words were the most powerful of abilities that are within each reach of every individual. As he has spoken in many lectures across the world, these words can save lives. They can also kill lives. Nothing is better suited to describe the situation that has arisen in the Sudan due to the catastrophic failure of the United Nations, the United States and the world’s supposed leaders.

You are given a choice. Your children are to be slashed apart by a machete or shot in the head with a Kalashnikov, which all the while is being waved in front of you and your family. You first instinct upon reading this murderous sentence is undoubtedly, “How does this help the people of Sudan, and how could it possibly better my understanding of what is happening in Africa?” This is a letter formed with no intent to rouse grief, but rather guilt. There is no comparison in the American culture for such atrocities that occur on a daily basis in the Sudan and surrounding countries. The answer to the sentence above is simple. You have three choices, whether willing or unwilling, you will do one of these three actions. One, to not speak at all due to the inability to comprehend the situation you are facing and your children are massacred in front of your eyes, or two, you attempt to garble words out of your mouth, a plea perhaps, or a desperate conversation that would attempt to distract the rebels/militia murders from their task. At best, the distraction lasts a few agonizing moments, your children look you in the eyes and then are shot due to a loss of interest on part of the demander.
The third reaction, probably the most common to this hypothetical question by a post-colonial reader in the modern paradigm with no true understanding of genocide would be to fight back. It sounds like a strategy, a plan C in the case of all other options failing to provide security for your family. Ultimately, you are powerless to defend yourself and your hand is stopped before it rises above your head to strike due to the lack of strength from malnutrition in your body and you are forced to watch your children slashed apart piece by piece, their screams inaudible through the pain, and your wife then raped as a bonus, because of your inability to answer a simply question.
This and other situations even more incomprehensible are occurring or have occurred on a daily basis in more places than one around the world... The list below has been added to remind yourselves of these atrocities, or perhaps to educate you on the places where this has occurred resulting in the deaths of billions of human lives.

Genocides or Alleged Genocides from 1500 to 1915

The Americas. Argentina. Native American Populations. Canada. Native American Populations. United States. Native American Populations. Native Hawaiian Populations. Armenia. Australia. Congo. German “South-West” Africa. Ireland. Tokugawa, Japan. Philippians. Russia. Genocides or Alleged Genocides from 1915 to 1950. Croatia. Nazi Germany. Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Soviet Union.

Genocides or Alleged Genocides from 1951 to TODAY.

Communist China. Bangladesh. Burundi. Rwanda. Cambodia. East Timor under Indonesian Control. Shabra-Shatila. Afghanistan under Soviet Control. Iraq. Tibet. West New Guinea, West Papua. Turkish Kurdistan

DARFUR.

And there are MORE: The list continues for pages.

Yamomani
Guatemala
Kashimir
Genocide of the Deaf
Genocide of the White Man
Norfolk Islanders
Azeri
Tamil
Khojali
Bosnia
Mongol
Nuba
Transylvania
Genocide of the Christians
Herero
Assyria
Nanking

Our current administration has been described as a dictatorship, a perfect example of what can be done with power when it has fallen in the wrong hands. My family and friends, coworkers, bosses and professors have all in some form or another made the comment that “I just hope we can survive this administration…” A helpless comment made by people who can no longer expect their country’s representatives to accurately represent the people’s interests.

I prefer the description of power being controlled by idiocy and his disgruntled administration. A president who will now, because of the prior sentence, probably tap my phone and dictate people’s time and thus my tax dollars towards investigating a crime that prior to 6 years ago in November would have been considered a healthy investigation of our administrative’s activities.

Financially, I have no ability to help the organizations that risk their lives every day to bring food, support and simple medical supplies to the people who have fled their homes to avoid such horrific genocidal situations as the one described above. The lucky ones walk hundreds of miles on foot to live in refugee camps with nothing more than the torn clothes on their backs with no hope of their few animals surviving neither the trip nor the harsh conditions of the place they have traveled to. Some have shoes, some do not. When you walk on the hot sand of a beach during your employee vacation days, do you ever begin to feel the burn in your feet? Do you put shoes on or go barefoot until the blisters force you to collapse. Do you ever just have a cold? No medicine, no aspirin, no Bayer once a day pill to save your bleating heart from dying. A simple game of patty cake with a foreigner who came to help a refugee camp would be more stimulating to a child than a trust fund baby finding her keys replaced with those of a Ferrari.
There is simply no excuse for the neglect the United States government has shown to the people of Sudan and other countries around the world that suffer from genocide and other human rights violations. What are laws and peace agreements if we fail to uphold them? Why are we wasting billions of dollars to create and ultimately sustain a war that no one supports when we could use that money to save hundreds of millions of lives? What possible explanation can you give to the organizations like UNICEF for your neglect when you fail to put a stop to our president’s war time dictatorship powers?

I find it difficult to write such words because it deters my time from my college studies. The sooner I graduate, the sooner I will be able to join an organization like the UNCHR, UNICEF, Amnesty International, A Student’s Anti-Genocide Movement, Student Movement for Real Change, or one of the hundreds of NGO’s that provide the much needed attention to villagers, civilians and innocents around the world suffering from such neglect and human rights violations on massive scale.

When will you do something about the tragedies we have caused and supported by allowing the genocide in Sudan to continue unscathed? The ignorance of the American people is no excuse for the neglect our country’s government has shown to these human lives. It is our responsibility to fight for the people who cannot fight for themselves, and by not fighting for the rights we hold in such high regard, what better are we than the militias who are actively defying the world without consequence?

I sincerely hope you are able to take away from this letter a message of urgency and the need for action to begin immediately. It is heartbreaking to know that I can speak my mind as a citizen of this country, but that as my elected representative, you will more than likely throw this letter on a pile on your desk and forget about it.

You can forget, you can be ignorant, but it will only give power to those who kill and death to those who cannot fight.

Regards,



Sara Lori Cartwright
1440 10th Street #207
Bellingham, WA 98225
United States of America

Western Washington University Student Activist

Introduction to Ending Genocide.

Our time is limited on this beautiful planet and the daily lives of a few individuals are keeping the rest of the world from enjoying what small bit of peace we may have left within it.

What follows here is a collection of my letters written to elected officers of our nation and nations around the world as well as anyone who I have found that may have even the slightest of influence in reshaping the political atmosphere that has arisen in the poorest countries of the world. The people of these countries like Darfur need a voice and I will not rest until each and every one of them has the ability to voice their needs, their wants, their desires to whom they either elected, or show loyalty to in their country.

But Darfur is only one of many. There is much work that needs to be done.

I encourage anyone who wants to start writing activist letters to these people - To take their names, take their addresses, find out the current status of the pieces of legislation going through our congress and show your support or if necessary your dismay. Our elected officials need your voice to shape their votes. They are asking for it, so give it to them.

As for the international letters, please review who is currently in those positions as they change often and are on a different time table than our own elected officials. If pushed hard enough they can make a strong case and become of the most influential support for ending genocide.

Discover what you can do and use wisely the time that is given to you.

Sara Cartwright
5:20 pm
4th of April 2007.