James McGinnis has an excellent and moving story in my local paper, the Bucks County Courier Times, about Simon Deng, a man from Sudan, who is walking from New York City to Washington D.C. to bring attention to the human rights catastrophe happening in his homeland. My only complaint is that I wish I had known about Mr. Deng's appearance in Bucks County earlier so I could have met him myself.
Here's some of the story:
He walked miles and miles along Bucks County highways Tuesday in the vain hope someone would take notice -- someone would care about mass murder and starvation on the other side of the world.
Speaking of the mass genocide in Sudan and millions of uprooted souls in the Darfur, Deng began to cry against the cold wind and the roar of traffic on New Falls Road.
Sold into slavery at age 9 and witness to extreme poverty, Deng has found his journey up to this point to be horrific and frustrating. After such a life, the 224-mile walk from his home in New York City to Washington, D.C., is hardly a struggle, he said.
"All anyone in the western world will do about Darfur is to continue talking and talking. I decided I will just start walking and walking," he said, heading south through Falls. "All I can do is walk. Nothing else has worked."
Clutching two American flags close to his chest, Deng crossed Route 413 and said: "I am living and loving the American dream." And he dreams of an America that cares enough to do something about genocide in Africa.
"The Americans should care more than anybody about human rights," he said.
I'm not going to pretend that I know what to do about the state-sponsored genocide in Sudan but McGinnis' story brings up an option I did not know existed:
In the United States, the Sudan Campaign, a nonprofit organization committed to cutting funds to the Sudanese government, is pressuring state and city governments to stop banking with firms that invest money in the Sudan. The organization estimates two government retirement systems have about $2 million tied up with firms that invest in the Sudan.
Pending legislation in Rhode Island and the city of Providence would prohibit firms that manage state pension accounts to invest in Sudanese businesses. On Monday, the lieutenant governor of Maryland called on that state's pension system managers to withdraw nearly $2 billion from investment funds that hold stocks in such companies.
There's a lot of pressure from people like Nicholas Kristof to go into Sudan with guns blazing. There was the same pressure back when the world was forced to finally confront apartheid in South Africa. Divestiture is slow and it doesn't have the Rambo glamour that no-fly zones and smart bombs do, but it works. That's because war is ultimately a money-making enterprise. Divestiture is the opposite. The government of Sudan will have to listen if enough of the world divests from Sudanese interests.
Sure, China, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will still be working partners with the genocidal regime, but every penny counts when it comes to expansion, as evidenced by Sudan taking out a big ol' ad in this week's New York Times. If the rest of the world publicly divests on moral grounds, Sudan will hear that message. And aren't we supposed to have some diplomatic pull with three of the four of those genocide-friendly countries?
The bottom line is that Sudan and specifically the situation in Darfur is not hopeless, which is something I forgot until I read Mr. McGinnis' story today.
Related: Zogby has an interesting poll that says that most Americans support a miltary intervention in Sudan in the form of no-fly zones. I wonder if they knew that that would be tantamount to starting a war with China if they'd still think that way.