Save Darfur

On tuesday, a CD called "Instant Karma" will be released. It is part of a fund raising campaing called "Save Darfur". A great number of artists donated their time and talent to this project, singing both covers and original songs. U2 covers a John Lennon song, as does Green Day. If anyone watched the American Idol finale, you would have seen Green Day perform John Lennon's "Working Class Hero".

I STRONGLY encourage you to go out and buy this CD, all the money goes to supply AID to the victims of the genocide and violence in the southern Sudan region of Darfur. If you don't like rock, buy it for someone who does....finally, after all these years of me pointing to the Country and begging people to take notice of the crisis there, celebrities with gumption and influence are taking up the cause to save Darfur. Support this effort in any way you can.

If you are unfamiliar with the situation in Darfur, I also encourage you to check out Green Day's video for "working class hero". In it, actual victims of the war in Darfur speak about the pain and suffering and fear they have been enduring.

What is a working class hero? It's someone, like you and I who stand up and say "That is NOT right, THIS far and NO farther, NEVER again" who use their voices and hands and hearts to influence the direction of societies attention and AID efforts.
This is such a devastating situation, an estimate put forth by one aid agency alone suggests that more than 200,000 women and young girls have been raped, and that statistic is thought to be low, given the numbers of women and young girls murdered following their assault, and the numbers of women who suffer in silence afraid to speak of the horror.
Little girls gathering fire wood are regularly victims of the soliders (both rebel and gov't), who loiter around the refugee camps, preying on these people. They are accosted for money and material goods, limbs are hacked off with machete's if they don't produce, they are kidnapped to be soliders, sex slaves and leverage. Familes have been torn to pieces, fathers and young sons taken as soliders, young girls raped and mutilated, mothers dying of AIDS they contracted from their rapes.........no where is safe. Can you picture that? You can't go into your home and sit to eat your meal as a family and converse about your day. There is NOTHING to eat, and you have no home, it was burned to the ground by soliders. There is no where to hide, not the forests, that is where the soliders roam, not the cities, they are bombed and raided and have become death traps. There are no hospitals, there are no open schools, there are no services to be had because the AID agencies have been chased out by the lack of security. There is no where to go, no way to protect your children from being abused, no way to keep them from seeing your fear, no way to give them freedom to play and be children.
I can hardly bear that thought, if I were helpless to protect my little girls from being attacked, I would rather not have my little girls alive. I could not let them experiance that horror.

My heart was planted deep in the red soil of Africa about 11 years ago, (remember leanne, can't get the red stains off my white socks!!!!!) and my heart is aching to go there now and embrace these people who are in so much danger, so much pain.....so I'm asking you my friends and family to be a working class hero in what ever way you are able, make a difference to make a change in Darfur.

Working Class Hero Lyrics