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New Jersey Jewish News Story
Mixed reviews as Darfur advocates seek aid on Capitol Hill
by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer
A team of four New Jerseyans working as part of a national lobbying effort to save the embattled people of Darfur from genocide said they returned home somewhat energized and somewhat disappointed by the receptions they received from members of Congress and the Bush administration.
Organized by the American Jewish Committee, the event had delegates from 75 organizations across the country spending Feb. 15 and 16 in Washington meeting with people at the House of Representatives and with foreign policy experts from the White House and State Department.
They came to ask for more humanitarian aid and military support in a land where hundreds of thousand of Darfurians have been slaughtered, raped, wounded, driven from their homes, and attacked again while struggling for survival in the refugee camps of neighboring Chad.
Delegates met with NJ Reps. Steve Rothman (D-Dist. 9) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Dist. 11), both of whom signed on as sponsors to the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, a bill the lobbyists believe is vital to the salvation of the Darfurian people.
At the office of Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-Dist. 7), the delegates were seen by Amanda Tharpe, the congressman’s legislative aide. Ferguson has not signed on as a sponsor of the bill.
Describing Ferguson’s aide as “very cool” and not “terribly sympathetic,” Linda Kohl of Short Hills, president of AJC’s Metro NJ chapter, said both Frelinghuysen and Rothman were “very positive. They are really on our side. That was obvious from everything they said and everything they did.”
Responding to complaints that Ferguson was not available, Abby Bird, his press secretary, told NJ Jewish News that he had a prior commitment at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee at the time the lobbyists came to call.
Bird added that the congressman does intend to become a sponsor of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act.
“He certainly has a record of concern for countries responsible for genocide and human rights violations,” she said. “This is an issue he cares deeply about.”
The Rev. Luke Davis of the Greater Harvest Baptist Church in Newark, a delegation member who serves as vice president of the North Jersey Committee of Black Clergy, told NJJN he was “pleased with most of the responses that we got, but I understood that we were dealing with politicians, and you cannot always put your full weight on what a politician says. It is a matter of listening to his words and reading his body language all at the same time to see if there is any indication they mean what they are saying, or if what that are saying is politically correct.
“For the most part we got some honest responses.”
Davis said he “felt a bit that we were put off by the fact that we did not actually get to see Mr. Ferguson. The aide did not give the impression a real interest was there.”
Davis wryly described the group’s meetings with Robert Zoellick, U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Mike Gerson, assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning, as “politics at its best. They both responded in a very diplomatic way. They showed less of a concern than we would like to see.”
The minister said he was frustrated by the delays in getting what he considered vital legislation passed by Congress, where “everything happens at a snail’s pace. The whole concept of slow response is annoying for everybody concerned. Why can’t there be action right away?” he asked. “Why can’t there be a move right away that would put an end to the violence?”
The lobbying efforts ended a day before Bush proposed $500 million for Darfur as part of a larger special budget request to Congress.
On Feb. 17 the president delivered a speech in Tampa, Fla., calling for 7,000 or more troops to be placed in Darfur under United Nations command, along with the 7,000 African Union troops already stationed there. Bush did not indicate whether he believed American forces should be part of the peacekeeping effort.
Kohl said that “now is a crucial time” for the Bush administration to act. “The United States is now the president of the Security Council for one month. It is an opportunity to get a resolution from the UN to get troops in there, and that could take eight or nine months. What do we do as a gap between now and when the force would be in place? We could also get NATO to bridge the gap.”
Unlike Davis, she was pleased with what she heard from the administration spokesmen the delegates met with.
“I thought the State Department and White House speakers were very good,” she said. “They were handing us everything, but their general viewpoint was very sympathetic.”
Kohl described Gerson as “Bush’s man. He is very conservative, but he is compassionate. I don’t think he is a fake at all.”
“We put through a valid effort. We were very much organized,” said Blanche Foster, chair of the Newark-based Darfur Rehabilitation Project.
To her, the State Department and White House representatives “followed the party line, which is to say, ‘At this moment we are doing all that we can do,’ but they are backing away from saying, ‘This is what we can do.’”
Foster said she did not feel Ferguson showed her group any disrespect by failing to meet with them personally.
“We all have our expertise. He is currently involved with what is going on in Israel and Palestine, so it is very possible that he does not want to sign on to something that he doesn’t know all the details about.”
She said the group plans to send Ferguson a letter suggesting that “he respect the opinion of his colleagues who have studied the area well.”
Rather than criticize politicians others said were less than responsive, Foster said, “These are the people we really need in order to get things through. What I would say personally is of no consequence.”
Susan Shapiro, the associate director of the American Jewish Committee’s New Jersey chapter, who led the delegation, said, “When we met with Amanda Tharpe, she started out by telling us that Ferguson was very supportive of Israel. We told her, ‘That’s not the issue we’re discussing.’”
Shapiro said she returned to New Jersey feeling both optimistic and frustrated.
“I think optimistic in terms of there were a lot of people who are very active in coalitions all across the country, and we did get a chance to meet with people from Congress and members of the administration — to ask questions and to push them. But we got from administration officials ‘Yes, yes, yes. We are doing something.’ But not enough is being done, and that’s the frustrating part.”
“There were plenty of questions from this group. Were all the answers satisfying? No. Was it a worthwhile two days? Absolutely.”
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