Activists Do Care About Darfur

Max Boot (“What Do We Do About Darfur?,” Commentary, April 14) chides the antiwar masses for being “silent” on Darfur and says “they don’t object to war crimes as long as they’re not committed by Americans.”

Most of the antiwar folks I know are concerned about Darfur, and the congressional investigation of it was bipartisan enough. Why does Boot think it’s incumbent on the anti-Iraq war masses to organize a rally about every single atrocity going on in the world?

While we’re protesting Darfur, why not protest the heinous crimes of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the continuing carnage in Congo, the never-ending war in Colombia, and other human rights violations that Boot doesn’t mention? Why don’t the evangelical Christians who he thinks are concerned about Sudan organize rallies, if he thinks that rallies “might spur Western governments into action”?

Frank Tamborello

Los Angeles

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For once, I was actually impressed with something Boot had written. Then I saw that he concluded with a partisan rant that is absolutely baseless. Boot writes that generally the only Westerners showing “sustained interest” in the conflict in Darfur are evangelical Christians.

He uses this to assert that the people in this country who oppose the Iraq war don’t care about helping people in the Sudan, and implicitly states that these people hate America. Typically, this has no basis in fact.

Boot does not acknowledge the type of activism that went on in December at Milken Community High School, a campaign that raised over $9,000 to build wells in Darfur and is expected to save thousands of lives. This is the same Jewish high school where walkouts were staged in 2003 in protest of the Iraq war. Similar campaigns occurred at other Jewish high schools in the L.A. area. Don’t let right-wing hacks like Boot fool you. Everyone who cares about helping those in need is in the battle together, regardless of political affiliation.

Micah Scheindlin

Los Angeles