Day for Darfur

From the earliest days of rock-for-peace concerts of the Vietnam era, to hits of the 1980s such as We Are The World, Live Aid, Farm Aid, Feed The World and other pop music benefit crusades, concert events have proven to be the most effective means of raising awareness of desperate causes, and money for them too.

But, as has often been pointed out in this age of infotainment-as-news, only pretty crises get attention.  This may help explain why the world has largely turned a blind eye to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Darfur is not a pretty catastrophe.  Since 2003 when the conflict began, more than 2.5 million men, women and children have become refugees due to continued violence.  According to the Coalition for International Justice, between two and four hundred thousand are dead.

As the Government of the United States forced attention to oil-rich Iraq, creating a humanitarian crisis of their own with their bungled war on terror, the media, and therefore the world, ignored the ongoing calamity in Darfur.

Political scandal and celebrity sex, pop star wars and the antics of the notorious dominated our popular culture and collective conscious while the Darfur Liberation Front, the Janjaweed and the Sudan Liberation Army began a bloody conflict that has destroyed villages, taken lives, shattered families and scarred history.

In all that time, only a few references to Darfur were ever made in mainstream popular culture:  An episode of the West Wing sandwiched a mention of Darfur between soliloquies from President Martin Sheen; MTV ran an awareness campaign; Rapper Lupe Fiasco shouted “Peace in Darfur, Ladies and Gentlemen!” at the end of a 2006 performance on the Conan O’Brien show; Our Lady Peace recorded “Al Genina” after lead singer Raine Maida visited the region and the band 2050 released a music video and a single about the Darfur crisis.

The attacks of 9/11, in which 2992 people died, received and continue to receive more ongoing media attention than the tragedy in Darfur, which has a death toll nearly 200 times higher and has generated 2.5 million refugees.

But something’s changed: There’s a viral movement going on… national coalitions, advocacy groups, local student organizations and young musicians are banding together to raise awareness, gather aid and finally do something about the situation in Darfur.

The tactics that these organizations are using to spread awareness and to take action on behalf of the innocent victims of the Darfur conflict are as cutting-edge as they are conventional; and it’s slipping past the radar of mainstream media, a media set up that is out of date and being left behind as a new generation of young minds takes over.

One such organization is STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) Canada (http://www.standcanada.org), whose chapter at Montreal’s own Concordia University recently hosted a Rock Darfur Benefit Concert.  Many other STAND chapters across Canada, North America and the world have organized similar events locally, in order to spread awareness globally.