Okay, so people talk about live blogging as if it’s some special activity, so here I am trying it.
I’m sitting in the Red Cross Disaster relief training, and I’ve got an internet connection. So I guess I’ll live blog it.
Right now we are watching a video. The training is three and a half hours long.
There was mention at the beginning that there is a good chance that there will be four shelters opened in the area before this thing is over (there is currently one in the Nashville area).
This is about the Genocide in Darfur. There is a national call in happening right now.
Here is a link to info.
And here is the basic text:
As you read this alert, hundreds of activists are in Washington DC in front of the White House calling on President Bush to take immediate action to stop genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Please join us in this national call-in day and pick up the phone to place a call to President Bush.
Call (202) 456-1414
Message:
“I am calling because I am very concerned about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. To stop this genocide, there must be an urgent international humanitarian intervention in Darfur with a mandate to protect people, not just observe the violence. The United States has a unique capacity and clear obligation to take immediate action as the only nation that has recognized genocide in Darfur. I would like to ask President Bush to take every step necessary through the international community to ensure a multinational intervention to protect the people of Darfur.”
Background
One year since the Bush Administration declared that genocide was occuring in Darfur, little has been done to stop the violence and protect the people. Up to 400,000 people have lost their lives in Darfur since the government-sponsored genocide began in 2003. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced, their livelihoods and villages destroyed by government forces and their proxy militias. These forces have raped many thousands of women and girls. The humanitarian crisis that forms part of the genocide continues, as a government-engineered famine unfolds. Unless there is an urgent multinational intervention, hundreds of thousands more may die this year. Considering the powerful role that U.S. leadership can play in ending the crisis in Darfur, American citizens have a unique power to protect.
You have the power to protect. Your voice can move this nation. Will you join us?
In Solidarity,
The Staff @ Africa Action
Would you make a single phone call if it could stop the genocide in Darfur?
Would you be willing to make that same phone call – every day – until the killing stopped?
Take the ETHIC’s Darfur Pledge. Visit www.DarfurPledge.org.
As I begin my thoughts on war I found myself needing to venture another disclaimer before beginning the discussion.
I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!
Not only did I have one of those yellow ribbon magnets on the back of my car (until the winter weather disintegrated it, I guess most folks have a garage), but I actually do love and care about the folks in uniform. I don’t feel like I’m more holy than thou when I say that I disagree with war, I’m simply sharing what I’ve come to see in the scriptures and through my thoughts about this topic.
Are those who fight in the war no longer Christians? By no means. As we discuss this I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I think those in the military have some how fallen away or anything. I don’t claim to have the absolute truth, though I do think what I’ve read in the scriptures is accurate.
Shortly before I started becoming a pacifist I read C.S. Lewis’ “Why I’m Not a Pacifist” Essay in Weight of Glory and let me tell you it had me convinced. I read it again a little while ago and I’ll tell you again that it is quite convincing. Much of what he says in there I still agree with, and maybe that will come out in our discussion. I share that simply to say that I am open to the fact that I might be wrong.
There are people who are close to me that are in the military and what I share in these entries does not change my love for them at all.
If you hop over to NashvilleisTalking.com you’ll see a lot of folks aren’t real happy with Kanye’s words during an NBC benefit concert.
I’d like to offer a brief defense. First, I hope you folks have paid attention to some of the good things Kanye has been doing. Speaking out against homophobia and gay-bashing, writing a song and music video about Conflict Diamonds, and many here might appreciate his Grammy award winning song Jesus Walks.
I think maybe we all need to have a long talk about racism. I think Kanye spoke from a place of hurt and frustration during those concerts. I’ve heard some say that he is wrong, that this is not a racist thing, and there is a possiblity you are right. At the same time there is a possiblity he is right, and I think it comes from many other times when he was right, when there where situations he or others he knows faced that were inherently racist.
I’m done. I just want everyone to know there is a Nashvillian out here who understands Kanye a little and does not hate him for speaking what was on his heart.
As for those upset with the possiblity that it cost some donations I couldn’t have said it better than Aunt B on Sharon Cobb’s post:
“I mean, I don’t know if Bush hates all poor people or just black poor people, but I do know that if you’d withhold money from a charity because you don’t think how a black man behaves himself is “proper,” you’d better look long and hard at your own soul.”
Don’t get me wrong, I am SO impressed by the number of people that have signed up at Hurricanehomes.org and openchurches.com. I am amazed at people’s willingness to openly share one of their biggest and most expensive possessions to strangers in need. I pray that many many many more people do this and that there is not a single individual without a place to stay in the aftermath of the hurricane.
At the same time I wonder why more of us weren’t doing this before? I’m guilt of it myself. I was in Minnesota for a summer and I saw that each night about 17,000 people are homeless. I was sure there where at least that many empty guest rooms in “Born-Again” Christian homes in that state. Why don’t we open our homes to every person who needs a place to stay? Why are there homeless when there are empty homes and rooms?
I pray our hearts remain open to the needs of individuals in our own communities even after the hurricane is history. I pray we remember the people down the street in our own community. The one who needs and is looking for shelter and just a place to get their feet on the ground and start again.
I just watched a video of Bush talking about the situation in New Orleans on the BBC.
At the end he encourages all the people who want to help that what is most needed right now is money to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. It struck me that in my conversation with a very conservative friend that this is exactly how he thinks this sort of thing should be done. No government forcing us to give our money, no forced benevolence.
I guess I just think maybe Bush should have done the same thing with the war in Iraq. You know, if there was a real need for more funds to support that effort, why didn’t Bush do a press conference and ask us to send our money?
To me it seems backwards. If we need to give money for the relief effort after Katrina then by all means take some of our tax dollars to do it. In my opinion, if you need money to relieve people in Sudan, SE Asia, Niger, and Iraq, please take billions and commit billions to care for the needs of those people. But please don’t take our money to buy bullets and missiles and land mines and kill people. Please don’t.
So after watching The Corporation, I’m sure I’ll have a good handful of post related to it at some point.
This was one thing I saw on a weblink on thecorporation.com to RTmark.
It’s encouraging folks to make video games that are an alternative to the first person shooting game put out by our military.
What I saw on my Friday night bike ride:
-the last five seconds of a dinner concert at Belmont (I think for the new freshman)
-the Vanderbilt Girls soccer team beating some other team 4 nothing before half
-The beginning stages of some frat parties
-The Parthenon without much of anything going on
-Lot’s of live music on Broadway
-two college age guys having dinner with two gentleman who appeared to be homeless
-a gentleman handcuffed outside a bar while another was being written a ticket by a police officer.
…and that’s about all I had time for.
This morning I was driving in traffic and I noticed the gentleman behind me in my rearview mirror. He was probably in his late 40’s, white, dressed in business attire, and in a nice car. Outside the window there where 4 teenage boys, African-American, dressed in throwback jersey’s, baggy and sagging pants, on their way to school.
The gentleman in the car was starring intently at them obviously contemplating something in his head related to the scene before him.
What was he thinking?
Can somebody please explain this?
I’ll speak to my war supporting Christian brothers and sisters. I hear lot’s of “support our troops” from Christian organizations, and pulpits and the rest. Rarely do I hear a straight-forward acknowledgement of the fact that what we are “supporting” them in is often the killing of other human beings in the act of war.
That being said, I think there is also a proper and necessary place for a support of justice in regard to murderous abuses like the ones we know about here. Tell me please what your response is.