Blog

Please take action today to ask Obama to make Darfur a priority.  The inauguration is one week away!  

First, please vote before Thursday at Change.org . 

Then, sign a postcard to President Obama .  

Finally, keep taking action - the people of Darfur can't wait!  

Thanks!

Team Darfur President Joey Cheek has been nominated for Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year award. 

Jack McCallum nominated Cheek because:

Cheek last made headlines for something that happened off the ice -- the Chinese Embassy revoked his visa shortly before he was set to leave the U.S. for the Beijing Olympics. What prompted China's action was Cheek's involvement in Team Darfur, an organization of international athletes he co-founded to bring awareness to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Cheek's intention -- and he made no secret about it -- was to talk to athletes, the media and the public in Beijing about China's financial support of a government that has brutalized Darfur's people.

An inspiring profile of Team Darfur athlete Emanuel Neto from the Stony Brook Independent:

Growing up in Angola, Emanuel Neto can remember the gruesome images that had him and his family living in fear. A fear that one day a soldier might force you to cook and eat your own child. It’s these experiences that have Emanuel Neto appreciating the very air he breathes.

Neto, a 23 year-old senior at Stony Brook University, has lived a life that very few college students have, and seen things that most Americans can not even begin to imagine. Neto’s upbringing has made him sensitive towards the war and genocide in Darfur, a situation that a lot of Americans fail to recognize.

“People will only pay attention when something happens and it involves the integrity of American values,” says Neto. “Not enough is done to raise awareness about what is going on.” Neto’s mother had a vision of her child one day studying in the states, playing basketball and using his image to help people. Neto has used his image as a college athlete and member of the Angolan National Basketball team to help raise such awareness.

Because 9 American Team Darfur athletes were listed as such by the Chinese government in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics.  Yesterday, USA Today broke the story that:

China's government was so concerned about the possibility of athlete demonstrations in the Beijing Olympics that it created a list of nine U.S. athletes and one assistant coach it thought might cause trouble at the Games, according to an internal U.S. Olympic Committee e-mail obtained by USA TODAY...

The list was given to USOC officials in a July 8 meeting by Shu Xiao, minister counselor for cultural affairs at the Chinese embassy in Washington, according to the e-mail.

You can read the whole e-mail here, but apparently

Team Darfur triathlete and Special Representative to the UN World Tourism Organization ST-EP Foundation attended the Beijing Games as a supporter of the US Team and a high-level panelist.  

On her website, Tracy describes her experiences:

Tracy was proud to be attending the Beijing Olympic Games as member of Team Darfur, a coalition of professional athletes committed to ending the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Although athletes faced significant restrictions to speaking out about human rights at the Olympics, Team Darfur athletes still ensured that the Olympic dream reached out to the people of Darfur.

Dominic Luka is a senior at Norfolk State University where he has excelled in Track and Field. One of the "Lost Boys" Dominic is now the reigning cross-country and 1,500-meter champion in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Dominic has also excelled in the javelin. Dominic is majoring in management information systems and will graduate next December.

We asked Dominic why he joined Team Darfur and this is what he had to say:

It has now been 5 years since the Genocide in Darfur and there is no change happening there. We need a change in Darfur. The reason why I joined Team Darfur was to put my effort and support to help put an end to the Genocide in Darfur. I was always disturbed by the Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir for denying the Darfur Genocide.  Reading everyday on the news at www.sudan.net, "The United Nation says up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003. But the Sudanese Government says only 10,000 have been killed."

I thank God for helping me come to the great land of opportunity. I was once like those who are suffering in Darfur. But God help me through and brought me here. I'm pray that one day one time God will do the same miracle to the people of Darfur. He will show them the way and the bright light to a better future.

Team Darfur swimmer Adrian Turner has a piece in this month's edition of Voices of Tomorrow.

My newspaper today is quiet. Sat on the train trundling towards the north of England, I go through the usual inconvenience of a two-minute wrestling match with a broadsheet. The other passengers loll silently in unison in their seats, as I noisily fold the epic pages of the paper and try my best not to elbow my innocent neighbour repeatedly in the chin.

My newspaper today is quiet. Among the quotidian stories, my newspaper murmurs of four multi-millionaires who have decided to stop funding the country's (mis)leading political party, the sale of a Monet for £40.9m (US$70m) and a new yellow-card cautioning system for cricketers behaving badly on the field of play (...for slurping their tea perhaps?).

For more, click here.