Getting to the Mountaintop

Published August 06, 2009 @ 07:33AM PT

[Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speech]

Recently finished Adam Hochschild's book Bury the Chains, about the movement to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself within the British empire - perhaps the first mass human rights campaigns in history.

According to Hochschild, the movement began with a meeting of twelve men in a London printer's shop in 1787. They established an anti-slavery committee which, for the next few decades, helped foster and then drive a burgeoning anti-slavery movement. In 1807 Parliament voted to band the slave trade; in 1833 Britain finally abolished slavery throughout its colonies.

Success.

Yet what struck me, more than anything else, was the incredible patience required - 20 years before the slave trade was banned, 46 years before emancipation.

From 2005 to 2007, I spent a fair amount of time working on Darfur-advocacy issues for CARE; one of the reasons I eventually left was the feeling that nothing ever changed. Now I'm beginning to think I was unrealistic to expect change - fundamental change - in such a short period of time.

There's been a great deal of debate as of late about the success of the Darfur advocacy movement. Yet is the Darfur movement an end in itself? Or is it simply another small step forward in a broader, longer-term movement to end mass atrocities? Obviously the answer is both, but sometimes I wonder if we lose sight of the latter.

All of which makes me think of Martin Luther King and the mountaintop. I just hope we get to the promised land, someday.

(For excellent analysis of - and updates about - the Darfur advocacy movement, please see my genocide co-blogger.)

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On a mostly related note, I recently visited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL. The exhibit and multimedia extravaganzas on emancipation are impressive. They have a similar moral: change don't come easy.

Posted by Cindy Huang on 08/06/2009 @ 09:09PM PT
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Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.