Ezra Klein has joined Matt Yglesias’ pretentious and primarily uninformed opinion on protesting the Olympics as not valuable. – and for Ezra, he doesn’t even seem to see the irony that its caused one of the first times he has ever even mentioned Darfur. So it’s aggravating me the white, hipster magazine bloggers are throwing shit up about a topic that they seem to do very little writing or research on.
The ramifications of their view runs against a basic understanding of media messaging as well as international progressive values. Here is a basic response to Ezra Klein’s above post:
I can’t speak for all human rights activism but I can say a few reasons as to why it’s incredibly important that we are protesting the Olympics:
1- There is a media strategy here that is incredibly effective. It already has bloggers who rarely blog about Tibet and Darfur mentioning Tibet and Darfur. And since the blogosphere does indeed hold some influence in people's consciousness and that affects political lobbying campaigns to get our politicians to act that means something.
2- Also, this could get the UN Security Council to make a very important decision come June. If you go to http://wantedforwarcrimes.org you will see that the ICC prosecutor has put out two indictments for war crimes in Darfur. However, the UN Security has not taken any steps to make arrests, mainly because China keeps slowing them down. The next vote on this, however, is in June. Watch China try to do that while we have the "Genocide Olympics" spotlight on them. If they don’t stand in the way of our efforts to make arrests and the Sudanese government does not hand over the two men indicted (in fact, one of these men is being promoted right now in the government) then we will freeze the assets of folks like al-Bashir and this will be one of the most effective steps in pushing for a stop to the arming, killing, and attacks that have persisted for five years.
3- China had not lifted a finger as far as Darfur goes. Then Mia Farrow wrote an NY Times op-ed coining the phrase "Genocide Olympics." Then China sent a diplomat to Sudan. This exposed a sort of Achilles Heel for China. They are playing an image game and the Olympics are how they are touting that image.
4- Governments don't act until citizens do. And the Olympics because they are so symbolic is an awareness raising campaign to get citizens to care enough to push their governments. And it’s happening.
5- Steven Spielberg dropped off as Creative Advisor to the Olympics after Mia Farrow and Dream for Darfur pressured him to and for him to state publicly that he's concerned about China's role in Darfur. President Bush immediately began talking tougher around China's relationship to Darfur when previously he had not. If get any of the Corporate Sponsors to do the same it puts enormous pressure on our governments to lobby harder. It puts pressure on Fidelity to release its holdings from PetroChina and Sinopec.
6- While the “One World, One Dream” symbolic spirit of the Olympics is taking place in a government that is actively working against this spirit, we by voicing our concerns around this are coming together with the authentic hope for “One World, One Dream.” And by my saying this, I mean that this campaign is not just against China’s policies, it’s in vocal grassroots SUPPORT of people's movements and the concerns of oppressed people's in Tibet, Burma, Darfur, and within China as well. This kind of action is lifting morale to both people's movements (and many movement leaders throughout history have said that morale is one of the most essential ingredients to victory) and and to people who are desperately feeling abandoned by the world….getting the message to refugee camps on the Chad/Darfur border that the world has not forgotten them. This means something for people who feel cut off and forgotten. It means that they can get up another day and know that there are good people out there fighting on their behalf.
No comments:
Post a Comment