“Work for the Save Darfur Coalition was created by GMMB (an ‘issue agency’), which swelled the number of e-activists for the non-profit to over 1 million just last July.
“David Mitchell of the Save Darfur Coalition shared some rules he discovered over the course of the campaign:
* “People want to see evidence: dead bodies, masked raids, murders. Unfortunately, ‘Despots don’t call in the photographers when they’re about to execute mass numbers of people,’ says Mitchell.
* “You can’t make genocide ads that look like other ads about issues in Africa (like Save the Children ads, par exemple). People don’t pay attention to them.
* “People want to know who the bad guy is. That’s not easy. Who do you blame? Investment houses? Omar al-Bashir? George-fucking-Bush?
* “There are standards for taste and appropriateness: If you want something to appear in The New York Times, you can’t throw in the dead bodies people want to see. There are also specifications for Pan-Arabic publications regarding issues like rape and murder.
“Campaign foci:
* “Prior to the campaign, most people didn’t know what or where Darfur was. First-person accounts about rape, torture, murder, various horrors were used, and often read out loud by American suburbanites in the ad work, to make the issue more personal.
* “Most muslims didn’t know this was muslim on muslim [sic] violence. Had to demonstrate this in a culturally sensitive way.
* “Darfur was compared to Palestine, Lebanon — this struck the agency as off-center, but research indicated it would drive the point home.”
* “Divestment efforts — the campaign waged war against Fidelity, which ended up selling over 90 percent of its petro China interests.”
