Does the Darfur Movement Need a Grassroots Revival?

The White House has gone silent on Sudan. After appointing Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration in March, President Obama has made it implicitly clear that the issue to which he pledged "unstinting resolve" during the campaign is barely a blip on his radar. The administration's policy review was rolled out by the State Department instead of the White House, and most recently, Obama ignored Congressional pressure to address Sudan on his trip to China.

For all of the criticisms levied at the Darfur activist movement, one thing is abundantly clear: Activist noise made Darfur a domestic political issue that attracted the attention of elected representatives, including the Bush White House. The huge disparity in aid dollars and media attention paid to Darfur, and more recently Sudan as a whole, over similar and possibly worse atrocities is a testament to fussy activists who latched on to the Darfur cause and refused to let go.

So is it time to take the Darfur movement back to its roots? To have a grassroots revival? Over the past couple of years, the movement has, in part, shifted its approach, moving towards more focused, policy-oriented work. This work is critical, and underappreciated by the movement's critics, and must, of course, continue. But as the conflict has dragged on, attention spans tapered off; the movement has an energetic core, but despite substantial efforts by national and local groups alike over the past year, their demands have not been quite loud enough to motivate their desired response from the Obama White House.

I often hear condemnations of "awareness raising for awareness raising's sake," but even the best targeted campaigns will go nowhere without an activist base ready and waiting for the opportunity to act. This requires constant engagement, even if that engagement does not have a specific, time-bound purpose. Even more, though, as I've argued many times before, the noise created by grassroots activists pushes the issue onto a rather competitive political agenda. The fuss is not pointless or without purpose: It is the grassroots activists that help garner attention for the more nuanced policy demands of the movement's leadership. If no one is paying attention in the first place, the best policy briefs in the world will do nothing but collect dust.

The push should be bipartisan, or perhaps even have a special focus on engaging conservative faith-based constituencies that have significant pull in many Congressional districts across the country. The Republican Party seems intent on attacking Obama from every angle possible -- why don't we give them something that's actually meaningful to harp on?

We saw several good examples of smart, combined grassroots/policy advocacy last summer with several campaigns around the Beijing Summer Olympics, such as Team Darfur and Dream for Darfur, which used the unique and timely hook of the Olympics to focus attention on China's support for the Sudanese government. More recently, the Pledge2Protect conference and an upcoming national canvass show signs of new momentum.

We could certainly do without the "Out of Iraq, into Darfur" signs, but some sort of new groundswell is in order.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Save Darfur rally, April 2006.]