Connie Schultz: Athlete takes on Darfur genocide
Cleveland Cavaliers player Ira Newble had to do one thing before he went public with his fight to end the genocide in Darfur.
He had to talk to his father.
“I feel real close to this, and the way they’re being treated,” he said. “I’m not sure what impact this may have on my career, but I need to do this.”
His father, a retired production manager for the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit, didn’t hesitate. “You know our history, son. You do what you need to do. We’re there for you.”
This month, the 31-year-old announced his plan to collect NBA players’ signatures for a petition titled “Bring the Olympic Dream to Darfur.” Ultimately, Newble wants to stop the genocide against tribal populations in the Darfur region of Sudan, where Arab militia groups have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of non-Arab African civilians and created 2 million refugees.
Newble’s father, also named Ira, is proud of his son’s activism, but he is not surprised. The father is a veteran civil rights activist. He was born and raised in the South and participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters.
“Ira was raised to never be a follower, always be a leader,” his father said in a phone interview. “He’s almost an introvert, really, but this issue matters so much to him.”
His son feels called to help. “I get to play basketball for a living, and I love it. That’s my job, but it isn’t all there is to me. Women and children are being raped. Innocent people are being murdered or displaced from their homes. I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
Newble’s petition targets China, which is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics but also buys about two-thirds of Sudan’s oil. The Sudanese government uses most of its oil profits to buy weapons and aircraft, two-thirds of which are made by China.
China has blocked U.N. efforts to send a peacekeeping force into Darfur. Newble joins other activists in calling for China to pressure the Sudanese government’s Khartoum regime to allow peacekeepers into the region.
“China cannot be a legitimate host to the premiere international event in the sporting world. … while it remains complicit in the terrible suffering and destruction that continues to this day,” reads the petition.
An article about Darfur scholar Eric Reeves, an English professor at Smith College, ignited Newble’s activism. He talked to Reeves, did more research and then assembled two pages of facts about the genocide and slipped the sheets into his teammates’ lockers.
“I called them together and said, ‘Guys, I put some information in your lockers. It’s an issue I’m getting involved in. Read it, and we’ll talk about it.’ “
All but three of his teammates have signed it. David Wesley has been away for family reasons but assured Newble that he’s in. Only LeBron James and Damon Jones have refused to sign it. Both have business ties in China.
Newble withholds judgment. “Both of them respect what I’m doing. And when I was LeBron’s age, I didn’t care about this stuff, either.”
Newble is casting a wide net, reaching out to the 400-plus NBA players as well as athletes in the NFL and in Major League Baseball. He’s also hoping for the support of his childhood hero, Muhammad Ali. It’s a lot of work, but he’s in for the long haul.
“This is bigger than sports, bigger than basketball,” Newble said. “This is about human beings, and how they are dying at an alarming rate because we are standing by and doing nothing.”
Newble has found himself doing a lot of teaching these days, often one person at a time. The genocide in Darfur is in its fifth year, but he meets people every day who’ve never heard of the region and know nothing about the innocent lives lost there.
“People here in management have come up to me and said, ‘I didn’t know anything about this until you started talking about it,’ ” he said. “You don’t judge people for not knowing.”
But once they do know? He smiled softly and sighed.
“Well, that’s when you find out who you are,” he said.
His father would say there was never a doubt what it meant to be Ira Newble.