Hundreds of college students will protest the genocide in Darfur on the National Mall this weekend.
Ten to fifteen thousand people are expected to attend Sunday’s rally, said Jane Li (SFS ‘06), a member of the Students Taking Action Now: Darfur leadership group. The Save Darfur Coalition has confirmed that luminaries such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), George Clooney, Russell Simmons, and D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick will be attending.
Patrick Schmitt (SFS ‘06), executive director of the National STAND Coalition, said that he and others, including several members of Congress, plan to get arrested outside the Sudanese embassy by obstructing the entrance. Although he will incur a misdemeanor infraction, he said, he hopes to draw more attention to the actions of the Sudanese government.
Arab janjaweed militias directed by the Sudanese government have been killing and displacing people in the Darfur region of Sudan since early 2003. In July 2004, Congress declared the conflict a genocide. The United Nations Security Council has agreed to send a peacekeeping force into the region, the Washington Post has reported that no troops are expected until 2007 at the earliest.
“Over 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and 2 million have been displaced,” Schmitt said.
Georgetown’s STAND chapter, the first one nationwide, was created in September of 2004, and is among the most active in the country. Georgetown has run a national high school outreach program, and both the National STAND Coalition outgoing and incoming executive directors are Georgetown students, Li said.
“I’d say at least 75 percent of the campus knows that there’s a genocide going on in Sudan, which is more than most of the public,” she said. “We’ve raised thousands of dollars for a camp in Darfur, and this spring we collected more than 2000 postcards addressed to President Bush asking him to take more action in Darfur.”
There are over 500 STAND chapters at colleges and universities nationwide, executive director Schmitt said. The schools began to organize into a national organization at a conference at Brandeis University last December.
This weekend, STAND will host events for 800 students from colleges including Northwestern, Brandeis, Harvard and the University of Virginia. Students will meet with members of Congress and attend training sessions at George Washington University, Li said.
STAND chapters have been actively involved in increasing pressure on the Sudanese government through divestment, Schmitt said. STAND played a large role in convincing universities and cities such as Providence, R.I. and New Haven, Conn. to cease investing in companies that do business with Sudan. According to Schmitt, Georgetown officials said they had no Sudanese ties to divest.
Georgetown STAND events such as the Darfur fast have been mirrored nationwide, according to STAND spokespeople from several other campuses, many of whom credit Georgetown with helping them get started.
“Stanford STAND grew out of the first STAND conference at Georgetown in February 2005,” Stanford STAND spokesperson Ben Elberger said. Stanford STAND has raised over $30,000 for Darfur causes, he said.
The University of Virginia STAND group has pushed for divestment in their school and statewide, spokesperson Jessie Miller said. They plan on sending 30 students to D.C. this weekend.
Another large rally will take place Sunday in San Francisco, with over 2,500 people expected from as far away as Alaska, Elberger said. Many smaller cities and towns nationwide will also host events for Darfur, he said.
