BLACK BLOGGAH

Image from Darfur: A Tinderbox of Trouble & Woe
by Renee D. Turner on the BET News Blog Week In My Life











Linda Mason, Gloria White-Hammond, and Liz Walker meet with Sudanese activists.
Photo by Susan Romanski




Listen Now: From WGBH Forum
Gloria White-Hammond, physician, minister, social activist
Liz Walker, minister, news anchor, CBS 4
Linda Mason, founder, chairman, Bright Horizons
Kenneth Sweder, lawyer, activist

In February, 2005, Mason, Walker and White-Hammond traveled to Darfur in the western part of Sudan to raise global awareness of the conflict and to raise funds to support the women and children of Darfur. Recent news reports peg the number of displaced people at 2.5 million and estimate 200,000 to 400,000 have died, mostly women and children, in what has been described as ongoing ethnic genocide. Over 200,000 people have fled across the border to Chad. Mason, Walker and White-Hammond discuss their experiences and thoughts about the future of Darfur and its people and what the United States can do. This lecture includes a presentation of video footage of the women's 2005 trip produced by Liz Walker.

Michael Eric Dyson, professor, theology, Georgetown

Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and a panel of black elected officials to discuss the possibility of electing a black president as we head into an historical election year.

Dr. Dyson is professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches theology, English and African American Studies. He is the best selling author of I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.; Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur; Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line; Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster and his latest book Debating Race. Dr. Dyson's powerful scholarship has won him legions of admirers.

Nicholas Kristof, columnist, NY Times, 1990 & 2006 Pulitzer Prize

From the WGBH Forum: The New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof discusses economic and human rights developments in Darfur and other African nations. Since 2004, Kristof has written dozens of columns about Darfur, winning his second Pulitzer Price in 2006, for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." Right on Brotha Kristof

You close your eyes, hoping for a dream of peace and are startled and frightened that the old night terrors return in force to route your calm and drive you into despair and fear. And so, it was exactly that feeling that overwhelmed my quiet Sunday morning in cold Minnesota as I read of the renewed violence in Darfur. The Sudanese thumb their noses at the International Criminal Court, unleash the merciless Janjaweed and murderous violence on unarmed villages and towns. Meanwhile, the vaunted strength of the "only superpower" is tied up in endless and questionable crises in Iraq and Afghanistan. I, for one, believe that if Hillary Clinton and other democrats had had moral courage in opposing the Iraq debacle, we would be in a better position, morally and militarily, to stop the genocide in Sudan. But, no. Now mired in Iraq's endless conflict (our very own 100 year war if we are to believe John McCain) and facing a renewed Taliban, we have neither the ethical authority or power to fight a truly just war. Shame on Sudan and on us.