A couple of years ago I used to scratch my head in wonder at those
nearly weekly full-page “Save Darfur” ads that appeared in the NY Times.
Even if they were discounted in moveon.org fashion, they still cost
$65,000. (The full price is about $180,000). My guess is that there were
probably at least 20 of them back in 2005 or so. That would add up to a
tidy sum, even at a discount: $1,300,000. Where the hell does that kind
of money come from?
I finally found out in an article that appeared in the March 30, 2008 NY
Times Sunday Magazine. Titled “Changing the Rules of the Game”, it is a
profile of some of the “activists” who are involved with the movement,
including Mia Farrow and her son Ronan Seamus Farrow (This is Woody’s
offspring. Woody named him Satchel Farrow after he was born in honor of
Satchel Paige, the legendary African-American baseball player, but Mia
renamed him after their famous split-up.) Much of their activity seems
to revolve around strong-arming their Hollywood pals who lent their name
to the Olympics, including Stephen Spielberg.
But I doubt that they could have gotten very far without the big bucks
that helps to keep Darfur on the front-burner, largely through very
expensive public relations campaigns. The article explains:
Around the same time, Savitt and Reeves connected with Humanity
United, an unusual grant-making organization in Redwood City, Calif.,
underwritten by Pam Omidyar, the wife of the founder of eBay, Pierre
Omidyar. It focuses on financing efforts to stop contemporary slavery
and mass atrocities around the world and is committed to spending $100
million over five years. The organization takes its cue from Silicon
Valley’s famed tolerance for failure, according to Randy Newcomb,
Humanity United’s executive director. He says his strategy is to make
big bets on game-changing ideas, a philosophy that “at best annoys the
elite policy community; at worst, it threatens them.” Newcomb was
talking on the phone from Richard Branson’s Caribbean estate, where he
was participating, along with Nelson Mandela and Peter Gabriel, in a
conference on conflict resolution. Newcomb drew a long breath and
changed his tone: “But frankly, where were they? Where has the
traditional foreign-policy establishment been in pressuring China in
relation to the Olympics about Sudan? A lot of people tell me that we’re
wasting our money on this kind of long-shot campaign. But our ethos is
the willingness and ability to take a greater risk for the ultimate
yield that will come from that risk. We aren’t saying that we do things
without rigor. But we’re willing to absorb greater risk.”
Last spring, Humanity United wrote Dream for Darfur a check for
$500,000. The financing followed publication of Farrow’s “Genocide
Olympics” article — Reeves and the actress were already closely
collaborating. “Now we had a campaign, a phrase and a target,” Reeves
says. As Ruth Messinger explained to me: “Maybe China’s vulnerability on
the Olympics is starting to look obvious to people now. But the amazing
thing about this campaign — and the genius of Jill and Eric and Mia —
was in making the connection. They were the first and for a long time
the only ones to make it.”
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/darfur-microcredit-loan-sharks-and-woody-allens-creepy-son/
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