Year Objectives

Hey guys,

I hope this gets posted in the right area, I'm still not a blogging expert.

I first year objective is basically to second what Allison already said about US humiliation. We'd like to leave this open for discussion and get your feedback. I have a couple ideas about it. The first is that it's necessary. When Allison and I have talked about it we've brought up the fact that is an uphill battle, it will be incredible difficult (especially because the US political climate still holds that US safety is more important than Darfuri lives, lets just be honest) and yes there is a good chance that we won't get what we want. BUT, I think it's a tad hypocritical to call attention to all these other governments, groups and their roles and just ignore the role the US plays, either because it's just too hard or because we think that we're going to be lone voices in the fight. And if we do it, we probably will be. If that means that you guys think it's not a worthy effort that's okay too, we'd just like you to think about it and tell us what your ideas are.

I think that we did a fairly good job last year with making DAC more visible on campus, and one of my year objectives is that that continues. I think we need to re-evaluate our tabling methods (which has been discussed earlier) and I'm open to all sorts of advice/criticism about that Ashish and I will work on it together. Also, the publicity committee has 0 members right now (well, me and Allison but Allison also has another large position) so I'd like to see the committee grow and take some new approaches to publicizing events, ect. I think that instead of publicizing just DAC we should focus on publicizing how people can have a real effect on the situation, hands on. It's always more fun to actually do something and understand how it's going to help. So if someway we could find a way to use that to draw in new people that would be great.

Also, this isn't really so much of a year objective as, well, I guess it is a year objective. I'd like to see us become more efficient, and see our meetings in general (both general and board but especially board) function a bit more smoothly and quickly (especially quickly). So if we could find a way to do that and still keep things running well that would be awesome! Maybe we can allot certain amounts of time to a topic so that people stay on track? I know that sounds very controlled, but I think a lot of us have been frustrated by the meetings at various times.

That's it for me. I'll post more if it comes to mind.

Kristen

Ideas for DAC 08-09 Mission

Darfur Action Committee
Objective of the Year

Basically, I believe that we should join the ENOUGH Project in its plan to stop the genocide through peace, protection and punishment. Here’s an outline of ENOUGH’s plan, followed by ways DAC can join the plan:

- Mission: Ensure Peace and Security in Darfur

§ Appoint a single, empowered mediator

· Produce a comprehensive draft agreement

· Begin peace talks with key constituencies in Darfur over the draft agreement

· Involve the Quartet in peace talks

§ Support the mediator with coordinated international leverage

· US, China, France, UK

o US Special Envoy should have two full-time deputies working the Darfur and CPA issues as well as a field-based team with personnel in Khartoum, Chad and Juba

§ Address the Darfur conflict in its local and national contexts

§ Protection

· Deploy all 26,000 UNAMID troops by the end of 2008

· Ensure humanitarian access

§ Accountability

· Impose multilateral costs on individuals most responsible for violence targeting civilians or for obstructing humanitarian relief efforts

o UN sanctions on key individuals

o UN-imposed comprehensive arms embargo

o Addition support to ICC

o Ensure Khartoum implements the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005

- Ways DAC can join the plan

§ Educate the campus on the All-Sudan situation in order for them to understand the Darfur conflict in its local and national contexts

· EPC proposal in the making!

§ Continue to educate on the urgency of Darfur

· EPC proposal in the making!

§ Call on students to be active against the genocide through letter writing campaigns and phone banking

· Letters/phonebanking will push the Administration to be a serious part of the Quartet and to be serious with other policies (see: single, empowered mediator, protection and accountability)

Source: http://enoughproject.org/reports/creatingpeacedarfur

HSAOP goals: Anjana Puri

HSAOP had a meeting today in which we planned the budget breakdown for the CAC funding application. We want to expand HSAOP. We want to keep teaching students with the four week class, but we also want to offer a one hour presentation to be given to assemblies. we feel that teachers would be more willing to take an hour out of their lesson plan, rather than four days. This presentation is going to be similar to the presentation we gave at irvine high school. So we now have two options to offer the schools. we plan to go to two schools a quarter, every quarter. We want to offer two more programs to students:

1.) A Youth Human Rights Conference: at the end of spring quarter we want to hold a Human Rights Conference on campus. This conference is going to be open to any of the students who we have taught. we want to hold it on-campus, maybe in Kerkoff. The conference is going to be a 2 day (5 hours a day) event that will most probably take place over a weekend. It will start at 10am and end at 3 pm. Registration begins at 915. We made a tentative schedule.

Saturday: An interactive workshop that focuses on conflict zones such as Sierra Leone, N. Uganda, Burma, Somalia, etc) will be given to them. (2 hours)
Lunch (1 hour)
A film or documentary will be screened(2 hours)

Sunday: A "Take Action" workshop focus sing on lobbying, letter writing campaigns, and working with NGOs and NPOs will be given to the students. An interactive game will be played similar to the role playing game that we played at the GROW convention. After that we will have a guest speaker come and talk to the students. (Right now we are thinking of having the LOST BOYS of SUDAN and John Prendergast to come. I will ask John to invite Don Cheadle to speak. I think that if we can have a celebrity activist as a guest speaker many more students would come.

We will provide lunch for the students in the form of pizza and soda.

2.) A possible lobbying trip to DC: We want to take 3 students with us on the Lobbying Trip to DC that the DAC plans to make. in order for the student to go, they will have to write an essay and complete an application. Once all the essays/applications are turned in, HSAOP will go over them, and decide who the lucky three students will be.

Well let me know what you think about our new ideas. thanks! -anjana

Re: objectives

i think that we should keep on pressuring china to stop funding genocide. i also think that Chris's idea about focusing a campaign on the incoming president is also a very good one.

Objective: Humiliation -- Allison DePasquale

Hey guys,

I definitely am an advocate of targeting the U.S. And when I say that, I mean in the same way that we targeted China for the Olympics: public humiliation. Our efforts towards the U.S. in the past have consisted of letter writing campaigns for no-fly zones, deployment of peace keeping forces, etc. I think its time that we get the U.S. where it hurts.

The combination of minimal media attention on the U.S. and Sudanese intelligence relationship and the absence of this fact from most anti-genocide organizations has kept this information relatively safe from the public. I think we need to really focus on this issue and make a ruckus about it.

Kristen and I have some ideas about serious sit-ins, tapping into our resources, like Prendergast, to make statements, etc. Not sure how plausible the ideas are, just thought I would throw them out there for now.

Basically, I think we should jump on the White House and stomp our feet over the president's bedroom while he is sleeping.

DAC's objective for 2008-2009--Chris Ah San

What should DAC's objective be for the 2008-2009 school year? (Post your thoughts in separate blog entries, for now, so they're visible to people who aren't as familiar with this forum).

My general feeling is that we need to focus our pressure on the next President of the US and the next Congress.

With regards to Congress, there are pro's and con's with regards to all strategies. For the House of Reps, most Congressmen are seeking re-election, and even though these Congressmen are supposed to be the most sensitive to public opinion (due to their short term limits) they still don't hear as much from their constituents on foreign issues (because their constituents don't usually know who their Congressmen is....). The Senate is a good target because it has more authority on foreign issues, but our targets (since California's senators are not gonna be new, and senators from other states without leadership posts aren't inclined to listen) should be the leaders of Congress. Here's the catch with an Obama presidency (and I'd be willing to bet money on the claim that Obama will win): many current Democratic leaders of Congress would likely be considered for leadership posts in the Obama administration. This means that we can pressure them (as they will be in a position to make policy in the next administration) and their Congressional successors (those senators who will takeover their vacated posts, whether they are Republican or Democrat). Those are some of my ideas on pressuring Congress.

For the next president, during the election (as soon as we decide that Bush is not getting anywhere fast enough to make a significant difference in Darfur before his term is over) we can pressure the candidates into promising specific action for Darfur while on the campaign trail. The presidential candidates did already issue a joint statement saying that they promise to take action for Darfur, but nothing specific was promised on how this would happen and what their end goal would be (besides ending the genocide, but there's more to this than that). Also, although they may have issued a joint statement, it's easier to hold them accountable for it if they say something while the media spotlight is on them. When we do this, the presidential campaigns need to understand that this is an organized effort (meaning, once the next prez gets into the White House, they should be prepared for us to be organized enough to hold them accountable for their promises). Otherwise, as the next prez becomes preoccupied with other things, they might forget that there's a political organization waiting for them to follow through with their promises.

We might also want to consider the message we want the presidential candidates to send. The fact that we've got an important War on Terror to fight, and the fact that we're very much bogged down in the Middle East, has been overshadowing this election, and because this affects Americans' views on their country's ability to effect meaningful change in the world, it can be a problem when it comes to taking on another huge issue. In this context, it will be hard for the Darfur issue not to look like a presidential tangent (like Iraq, for those of you who view it that way). But because the War on Terror is essentially a war of ideologies, Darfur is a litmus test for the concern of Americans over global commonweal. In other words, meaningful change in Darfur is a way to the moral high ground the US needs to truly win the War on Terror. Essentially, the message we might want to have the candidates send is that the US needs to renew its image as a global leader in the world, and helping Darfur is critical in doing that.

When the next president is elected, if we were successful in getting them to make a public promise, we can remind them of their promise to take swift action on this issue. For now, I'm out of ideas....

As far as DAC's chosen objective, just keep in mind that we won't be shoving our standard projects off to the side, like humanitarian issues and individual issue campaigns and such. We'll continue to lend a helping hand to other Darfur campaigns whenever we can, so no need to worry about us not doing that. Things like humanitarian issues and congressional funding issues will always be there, but these are much easier problems to address then our long term goal of ending the genocide. So our objective should fall under this long term goal.

Also, as far as pressuring China to come to the table, this to me is going to be an uphill battle with the Olympics being so temporally distant from the next Presidential inauguration. This goal of the SEAL campaign (to get Bush and China to come to the table at the same time, and to use the Olympics campaign to culminate in this effect) is not looking like it will come to fruition, and Allison and Rohan could tell you that it's been pretty disorganized at the national level. This summer, we can do what we can to pressure China via the Olympics. One thing is for certain--the US is the only country in a politically viable position to lead on this issue. And as much as I hate to make China and the world wait for new US leadership, hopefully we can reward China by redeeming its image (in a way) for having taken on this issue and for cooperating with our new leadership on this issue. Obviously I'm being vague and don't know exactly what activists can do in persuading China to come to the table, so perhaps we should consult with John Prendergast and the national leadership for this movement on how to go about this. Let me know if you have your own ideas. The question essentially is, on day one of the next administration, how do we prepare China to be willing to arrange meeting with our next administrative officials to talk about Darfur?