Olympic Athletes and Bloggers on Darfur

Last month, Yobachi, of Blackperspective.net and the Afrosphere Action Coalition held a conference call with Team Darfur co-founder and Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek, who is working hard to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur. I was supposed to be one of the participants, but due to work and technical difficulties, I didn’t get a word in until the very end, and I’m not sure I said or asked anything of import. Anyway, here’s the official press release and podcast of the event.

On July 9th, the Afrosphere Action Coalition hosted a conference call with Team Darfur co-founder and Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek about activist advocacy for ending genocide in Darfur Sudan; particularly as it relates to the Olympics and China’s role in Sudan. Team Darfur boast “360+” former and current international competitive athlete.

The podcast page for the conference call is located at www.utterz.com/u/utt/u-NTExODkxNQ#utt-NTExODkxNQ

Yet also, bloggers and website editors can post this podcast directly to ones own site, as can be seen here: www.blackperspective.net/index.php/afrosphere-action-coalition/aac-on- darfur-and-humanitarian-issues/ by posting the following embedded code just as with a youtube video or other embedded media:

Many bloggers participated in the call with 2006 Olympic speed skating gold medlist Joey Cheek; who donated his “$25,000 gold medal award from the U.S. Olympic Committee to refugees from Darfur.” – npr.org

Team Darfur world class distance runner Jon Rankin called in as well, though we were not able to get him into the conversation.

In Team Darfur we see athletes standing up for doing right in the world based on their values, passions, and convictions. Such an effort by those in the spot light should be lauded in view of the behaviors we often hear about our athletes.

Joey Cheek discussed with bloggers Team Darfur’s call for an Olympic Truce and how it is, base on the Olympic’s own charter, that such an issue does indeed belong in the discussion with the Olympics

From Olympic Truce letter: “In our common aspiration to realize the ideals of the Olympic Games, we, the undersigned, urge the international community to convince the Government of Sudan to observe an Olympic Truce for Darfur before, during, and after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Through this letter, we issue an urgent call to the conscience of the international community. The violence in Sudan has gone on for too long. We hope you will use the opportunity of the Olympic Truce to work to end it.” This is discussed starting about the 10:42 mark of the podcast.

Relevant websites: Afrosphere Action Coalition google site: sites.google.com/site/afrosphereactioncoalition/Home – Team Darfur: teamdarfur.org/

Afrosphere Action Coalition,

Coordinators:
Daz Wilson purplezoe.blogspot.com/ * Yobachi Boswell www.BlackPerespective.net * Francis L. Holland francislholland.blogspot.com/

In Memory of Aimé Césaire

On Thursday, 17 April, the Martinique poet, activist, politician, and post-colonial theorist Aimé Fernand David Césaire died.

Césaire was a central figure in what can be considered the French version of the Harlem Renaissance. While in school at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand , he helped found L’Étudiant Noir (The Black Student), a literary journal dedicated to the cultivation of black pride and which also birthed the Négritude movement, a literary and political movement that sought the “affirmation that one is black and proud of it”. His most famous works are his book-length poem, Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal (Notes From a Return to the Native Land), and the essay, “Negro I am, Negro I Will Remain.” Thanks to Professor Black Woman, I also found excerpts from his play, Une Tempête (adapted from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest), which you should most definitely go and read.

Truth be told, I had meant to post this on Thursday, but it slipped my mind until I read this,

I believe that there should be canonical works. I believe that those works should be just that, CANONS. Open salvos in ” battles”designed to literally grapple and destroy and rebuild them . Text that lives an breathes and is on it’s feet, on it’s back, on it’s toes. How we take theory and make art. And how that is CONNECTED eternally through performance and history.

Most importantly how that performance is SPECIFICALLY and practically located in POC bodies and there interactions with personalizing and culturing various artforms , both intentionally and SIMPLY BY THEIR PRESENCE.

which, by coincidence, I feel perfectly sums up the life that Césaire led.

And so, I take the sad passing of a great artist and activist and choose to make the most positive I can out of it. I choose to renew my commitment to art, activism, and the life of the mind (not that it ever went anywhere, it’s more like renewing one’s wedding vows). I encourage those so inclined to do the same.

From Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal

ma negritude n’est pas une pierre, sa surdite ruee contre
la clameur du jour
ma negritude n’est pas une taie d’eau morte sur l’il
mort de la terre
ma negritude n’est ni une tour ni une cathedrale
elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol
elle plonge dans la chair ardente du ciel
elle troue l’accablement opaque de sa droite patience.

my Negritude is not a stone, its deafness dashed against
the clamor of the day
my Negritude is not an opaque spot of dead water
on the dead eye of the earth
my Negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky
it pierces opaque prostration with its upright patience

[cross-posted at The Unapologetic Mexican]

In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur

Today is the blogging Global Day for Darfur, as organized by Danielle at Modern Musings. There are 25 bloggers participating today, so head over to Modern Musings for a list of participants and please read what they have to say.

The mission of this blogging day is to Educate, Motivate, and Activate.

See also great sites like Human Rights Watch, Dream for Darfur, and Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth for up to date information.

The genocide in Darfur has been going on for five years now. This from Save Darfur:

After five years of conflict in Darfur, children are reaching school age having experienced nothing but armed conflict. A million Darfuri children have grown up displaced, living in camps for refugees and internally displaced persons, many without opportunities for education, without knowing the meaning of home.

This from Human Rights Watch:

(New York, April 7, 2008) – Five years into the Darfur conflict, women and girls need protection from rape and brutal attacks still being committed by government forces and armed groups throughout Darfur, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Neither government security forces nor international peacekeepers have provided sufficient protection for women and girls, who remain extremely vulnerable to rape and other abuses during large-scale attacks and even in periods of relative calm, Human Rights Watch said. Survivors of sexual violence face numerous obstacles to justice, leaving them without meaningful redress. Where the perpetrators are soldiers or militia, the chances of prosecution are still more remote.

The Olympic Games being held in Bejing this year has brought a renewed scrutiny on China and its human rights record. Senators Clinton and Obama have called on President Bush to boycott the Olympics Opening Ceremony. I applaud their stances, but I also think it is important to remember the role that U.S. imperialism often plays in its attempts to “help” countries in need. So yeah, what about the Congo? It is important to stand in solidarity with the Darfur victims, to aid them as best we can, but we must be careful to insure that any U.S. involvement in this crisis is not just another profit oriented excursion at the expense of dark-skinned folk’s lives.

What can we do to help?

Email Corporate Sponsors of the Olympics

Turn it off

Petition the International Olympic Committee

Ask the Candidtates

Ask President Bush and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to take immediate steps to stop the killing in Darfur.

Explore all of the other options of what you can do

Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971)

April 13 in Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur

Danielle Vyas, of ModernMusings.com leads the charge:

The Mission is to build upon Amnesty International’s global efforts within the blogsphere.

The Strategy is to Educate, Motivate and Activate toward ending the genocide in Darfur.

Educate through analysis of reports and news materials, compilations of facts through viral multimedia like podcasts and videos posted on Youtube and linking to articles, blog posts, and viral media to expand public knowledge of the Darfuri genocide. Any and all aspects can be focused on; such as the root causes of the murder, who is behind it, and what the international community has done to promote the murder and to end it.

Motivate through the capacity within humanity for empathy. Motivate through love. Pull at heart strings, communicate the sameness of Darfuri families and your own, and share the simple, common fact that we are all the same and the suffering of the Darfuri people is felt within our hearts. Motivate through the anger for the greed, the murder, and the lack of action.

Activate through petitions, open letters, letters to all our elected officials as well as U.N., Sudanese and Chinese officials, and speaking out to the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics as China plays a key role.

I will be adding some facts, links and viral media in the coming days which anyone can grab and use. I will also have some fact sheets and other materials to spread. Since we are building a movement, I will prominently display all participants’ contributions and continue with the link love.

I’ll be taking part on the 13th, along with

Blackperspective.net
Electronic Village
Eddie G. Griffin
Black Women Vote
The Jose Vilson
Musing of the Night
Trav’s Thoughts
Ultraviolet Underground
Vanessa Unplugged
A Political Season
Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth
Black and Missing but not Forgotten

and hopefully many more. If you’d like to participate, drop a line at ModernMusings so you can be added to the list of participants.

And check out this nifty slideshow she created.

Link Love: Asian American Feminism

I’m deeply stunned and saddened at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, one of my Asian feminist heroes, and am rendered speechless. Except to say it’s George Bush and his various puppet governments’ fault.

Filipina poet Barbara Jane Reyes muses on a theme I’ve written about lately. That APIA women are their own worst enemy.

Reappropriate: Helen Zia: Be The Change. Zia, a Baby Boomer, was affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (father), I’m a Gen Xer affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (mother), the commenter I’m assuming is a Gen Yer was affected by both Asian/Confucian and Western sexism (father) and Jenn is a Gen Yer affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (father) and so Zia was right when she said at last year’s NAPAWF conference APIAs should get rid of their Confucian thinking.

Asian American Action Fund: Why APAs Should Vote Clinton. AAA does not endorse any candidate but it’s interesting to see Clinton is the first choice in California and first choice among the elderly, poor/middle class (<$40,000), APIAs, Latinos and women in California.

Reappropriate: Podcast on Asian American feminism

Reappropriate: A Question of APIA Feminism: Introduction. Jenn is starting a series on Asian American feminism. Huzzah!

Happy New Year.

**Cross-posted at my place.**

Benazir Bhutto, R.I.P.

Heartbreaking news.

Many people have been writing about her death today, and so I’m not sure what I can add, other than that my heart goes out to her and her people, and to point you to Sylvia, who has collected a bunch of the amazing testimonials to a truly wonderful and brave woman.

I think Nezua sums up how I feel about her death:

PERHAPS the most obvious admission that a person can make stating that they are personally incapable of changing the world’s destiny with their own abilities and gifts and unique vision is to simply take the life of those who make it their mission to do so.

And Shark-Fu on the future of Pakistan:

Freedom requires opposition…dissent and the passionate defense of the right to voice dissent…not religion, or constant agreement or any of the love it or leave it bullshit those who fear the masses toss out as if an argument where a terroristic threat.

Silence the opposition and you smother freedom.

Smother freedom and the will of the people will struggle to catch fire.

I think that’s why Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan despite all the risks….because of the risks…to nurture the fire.

May Benazir Bhutto always be remembered and may her work, her courage, her hope continue on.