Drumbeat for Darfur

As genocide devastates Darfur, we must be relentless in our efforts to end it. You can help.

At the 2007 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, UUSC will hold a full-day training to increase awareness and organize action to bring peace and justice to Darfur.

This event is cosponsored by UU-UNO and the UUA, Africa Action, Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, Genocide Intervention Network, and Fidelity Out of Sudan.

What: Join us to raise the Drumbeat for Darfur!
When: Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Ambridge Event Center, Portland, Ore.

Help spread the word! Download this flyer .

This landmark event will feature four inspiring speakers: Darfurian activist Omer Ismail, author and activist Frances Moore Lappé, UUA President Rev. Bill Sinkford, and UUSC President Charlie Clements.

In addition, small group workshops facilitated by experienced activists will help you build the skills necessary to help organize a Drumbeat for Darfur within your own community. We encourage each participant to attend along with one to two others from their congregation.

There is no charge for attending, and registration for General Assembly is not required. Lunch will be provided.

Space for this exciting opportunity is limited. To learn more, contact Rachel Jordan at volunteerservices@uusc.org or 617-301-4307.

More about our featured speakers

Omer Ismail was born in the Darfur region of Sudan. Ismail fled Sudan in 1989 as a result of his political views. He has spent over 20 years working both independently and with international organizations on relief efforts. He helped found the Sudan Democratic Forum, a think tank of Sudanese intellectuals working for the advancement of democracy in Sudan. Ismail also cofounded the Darfur Peace and Development Organization to raise awareness about the crisis in this troubled region. He currently works as a policy advisor to several agencies on issues of crisis management and conflict resolution in Africa.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or coauthor of 15 books. Her newly released Democracy's Edge has been widely praised. Historian Howard Zinn called the book “poetic and passionate,” adding: “A small number of people in every generation are forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Lappé is one of those.”

Frances and Anna Lappé lead the Cambridge, Mass.-based Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life. Together, they founded the Small Planet Fund which solicits and channels resources to democratic social movements, especially those featured in Hope’s Edge.

Lappé is a sought-after public speaker and has received 17 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions. In 1987 in Sweden, Lappé became the fourth American to receive the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the “Alternative Nobel,” for her “vision and work healing our planet and uplifting humanity.”

The Rev. William G. Sinkford was elected president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in June 2001. As president of this liberal denomination, he is responsible to the UUA Board of Trustees for administering staff and programs that serve its more than 1,000 member congregations. He also acts as principal spokesperson and minister-at-large for the Association.

Prior to becoming the seventh president of the UUA, Sinkford served as the association's director of congregational, district, and extension services, supporting the health and growth of UU congregations. He earned his M.Div. in 1995 from Starr King School for the Ministry, and was fellowshipped as a community minister and ordained by his home congregation in the same year.

Charlie Clements is president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Throughout the years, Clements has faced several moral dilemmas that shaped his life. As a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Academy who had flown more than 50 missions in the Vietnam War, Clements decided the war was immoral and refused to fly missions that were in support of the invasion of Cambodia. Later, as a newly trained physician, he chose to work in the midst of El Salvador’s civil war, where the villages he served were bombed, rocketed, or strafed by some of the same aircraft in which he had previously trained.

For two years in the late 1980s, Clements served as director of human rights education at UUSC, leading a number of congressional fact-finding delegations to Central America. In 1997, as president of Physicians for Human Rights, he participated both in the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the treaty signing for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Clements is author of Witness to War (Bantam) and the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary of the same title.

Posted February 20, 2007