Darfur, Sudan and Park River, North Dakota

Seldom do we face opportunities whereby our actions would in fact save the lives of other people. Today we face such an opportunity. Today we could make choices that would not just improve the lot of others but would keep them from otherwise unavoidable death.

What the government of Sudan is perpetrating on its non-Arab citizens in the province of Darfur is nothing short of genocide. Dating back to 2003, casualty estimates number as high as 400,000. While 2.5 million were displaced due to the Darfur conflict, the nomadic peoples may be essentially extinct in as few as six years.

The out-of-sight, out-of-mind apathy about the brutalization, torture, rape and pillaging of the people of Darfur is a sad indictment of Americans and others around the world. A recent 60-Minute episode spurred this writer to take a risk and to advance a proposal to save two to three dozen people from assured death in Darfur.

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

Less than a day after walking around and studying a vacant three-story elementary school in Park River in northeastern North Dakota’s Walsh County, the “60-Minute” segment on Darfur spurred an intriguing concept: We could convert a school like the one in Park River into approximately 18 apartment units, each housing two or more family members. We could save 36 people of Darfur if we placed them in a school like the one sitting there vacant in Park River.

Or course, there are vacant school buildings across the state, so Park River is just a suggestion. However, that particular town’s slogan, “A Town With A Heart” does conjure up some interesting fodder for such action.

It is not a matter of filling every empty building in North Dakota with people facing brutalities and death, because quite honestly there are formidable challenges in bringing in anyone from outside cultures.

It is, however, a matter of doing something, of simply taking action. In this case, we could as a state embark on a plan to save a few dozen families. That should not that hard to accomplish. If we placed one family in each county, we’d be saving 53 families.

That’s no small effort. But it is life-saving.

More importantly, it would be a reflection on us. Showing you have a heart is not a bad thing.

There Is Only One Side: The Right Side

Gail Waffle, Rochester, N.Y, further fueled this writer’s idea of saving lives with the following impassioned letter just a week ago:

“Aren’t we all sick of watching and waiting for someone to do something about the Rwandas, Sarajevos and Darfurs?

Don’t we long for some action? Like the American woman who, all on her own, went to rescue children under siege in disintegrating Yugoslavia, and succeeded in saving scores of them where everyone else had failed.
“Decent people are NOT tired of hearing about humanitarian crises; they are tired of nothing being done about them,” Waffle continued in her letter. “One man stood up to tyranny in Tiananmen Square. How many will stand up for innocent victims of genocide? Sometimes there aren’t two sides to every story.

Sometimes there’s only one side: the right side.

If the situation cannot be resolved politically, we should at least do what we can to save the lives of the refugees who have escaped.”