To anyone who reads this blog, please write your congress person regarding the following:
Fiscal Year 2006 Emergency Supplemental Funding Request - On February 16, 2006, President Bush sent to Congress a supplemental funding request for $514 million dollars for humanitarian and peacekeeping programs in Sudan, including $123 million for Darfur peacekeeping. The House of Represenattives has passed an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Capuano which added $50 million for Darfur peacekeeping. The Senate Appropriations Committee then passed an amendment offered by Senators Durbin and Leahy which added $50 million to the Senate version as well. The full Senate will consider the legislation in late April, but it now seems likely that a total of $173 million for Darfur peacekeeping will be included in the overall bill. It is vitally important that Congress maintain this number in the upcoming conference, and that it be passed as soon as possible. The final vote needs all the aye's it can get. Please write a letter -however short,
urging your representatives to vote "aye," and to exercise more interest and action on the behalf of the millions of African's who are being slaughtered, raped, and tortured minute by minute.
We need to remember that one of the reasons the United States invaded Iraq, and one of the reasons we were backed by the U.K., was because of the dictatorship and gross human rights violations that were occurring under Saddam Hussein - although it's not really fair to compare human suffering, what is happening in Africa, specifically in the individual countries of Uganda, Sudan and Chad, is equal to the atrocities which occurred in Iraq under Hussein. Please write to your representatives today, urging them to vote "aye" and urging them to force the global political community to turn a more active eye towards the crisis in Africa. I will post the letters I wrote to Senator's Durbin and Obama later on my blog if you want any ideas - every letter counts. Thanks.