A recent poll found 62% of Americans feel that the US action preventing the genocide in Darfur should be among our top foreign policy objectives. That’s more decisive public opinion than we have surrounding the next steps surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Israel and Palestine.

Yet we as a country and as individuals continue to move slowly to end and resolve a genocide that has erased upwards of 400,000 lives already, and the Sudanese government’s campaign is not waiting idly while we debate our next threat… among countless others that have yet to come to fruition.

Waiting for the Khartoum government to approve an international protection force is akin to waiting for the Nazis to approve an Allied force inside of 1940’s Germany to protect the Jews. Their goal is the eradication of the indigenous people of Darfur; such authorization will not come willingly, nor soon enough.

As such, if you haven’t already, please consider joining in one of the Global Days for Darfur events going on right now to spur international action (and show popular support to embolden our government’s leadership), as well as:

• Urge the UN to take more action,
• Divest yourself and your company’s holdings that fund the Sudanese government’s backing of the janjaweed and military support, and
• Lobby Congress for direct, immediate, and measurable action.

Most importantly, learn more about the issues surrounding the Darfur genocide, and talk about this atrocity with your friends and colleagues. While the movement to end this genocide needs its eloquent and moving speakers, it remains in a remarkable shortage of any speakers.

Please, help drum up enough awareness and outrage over the continued reality of rape, torture, and elimination of the people of Darfur. Four years, 400,000 people, and an immense amount of hope and potential have already been thoroughly lost. By forcing action now, there may not be a need for a fourth annual Global Days for Darfur.