Someone tell Kanye West: George Bush does care about black people.

So does U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, actor Don Cheadle, Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, evangelist Billy Graham, actress Angelina Jolie, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Harvard President Larry Summers, Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek and thousands of students at OU.

All these individuals comprise a growing coalition calling for an international intervention to stop the genocide that has been taking place since 2003 in Darfur, Sudan.

For the past three years, the government of Sudan has conducted a scorched earth campaign of violence and terror against its own people in Darfur, a western region of Sudan the size of Texas.

The crisis bears striking resemblance to the Rwandan genocide that occurred in 1995, in which more than 800,000 were murdered in fewer than 100 days.

So far in Darfur, more than 200,000 have been killed by violence since 2003, and more than 2 million have been displaced from their homes and now live as internally displaced people or refugees in neighboring Chad.

In September 2004, Bush and the United States became the first to declare the humanitarian crisis in Darfur a "genocide."

He sent former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on separate occasions to the Horn of Africa to see if they could resolve the conflict through diplomatic means, which proved from the beginning to be a noble but futile effort.

Finally, when the United States took the presidency of the United Nations Security Council last month, they put forth a resolution calling for a broad U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur that would put at least 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur and give them the power to protect civilians who are threatened by violence.

Last week, Bush asked for $500 million for Darfur in a special budget request to Congress. He also issued a statement on Friday supporting "a NATO stewardship, planning, facilitating, organizing, probably double the number of peacekeepers that are there now, in order to start bringing some sense of security."

Though many, including me, have criticized the time line as painfully slow, the United States has led the international community in recognizing the crisis in Darfur and developing a plan of action for ending the genocide.

The president, who has been running low on political capital since the start of the war in Iraq and the mismanagement of the hurricane relief effort in the Gulf, needs to know that the American people care about Darfur in order to be effective.

This is where you come in.

As citizens of mankind, we all have a responsibility to work for a cause greater than ourselves and to ensure that universal human rights are protected in every corner of the globe.

Darfur presents an opportunity for the OU community to think globally and act locally.

This afternoon, Oklahoma's own Coburn will speak with Allen Hertzke, director of religious studies, in Beaird Lounge about how the United States and the international community can act to stop the genocide in Darfur.

I urge all readers of The Daily to attend this event to learn about Darfur and show the senator that we at OU are taking a stand against genocide.

This is the first time during the 2005-2006 academic year that a current senator has visited campus, and he is doing so for the explicit purpose of discussing Darfur.

The last time an acting senator spoke on campus, the remarks also centered around the crisis in Darfur. At the 2005 Spring Commencement, U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said to graduates, "The world is about to become your responsibility." He urged them to adopt that responsibility by taking action to stop the genocide in Darfur.

The student-driven Darfur movement at OU has brought back a culture of activism on campus while uniting several unlikely bedfellows.

Led by Students for Action in Darfur, both the College Republicans and the Young Democrats are sponsoring the event with Senator Coburn this afternoon, in addition to the Union Programming Board and the Office of President Boren.

In the past week, Phi Sigma Pi and the Pre-Law Club have held fundraisers for Darfur. The Women's Outreach Center organized the visit by Ruth Messinger last November. Amnesty International and the African Student Association have sponsored activities to spread awareness and call for action in Darfur.

If you are not already on board with the Darfur movement, you need not wait. Educate yourself. Speak to others about Darfur.

Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 to voice your concern.

Sign the petition requesting that the OU Foundation not invest in companies doing business in Sudan as long as the genocide is taking place.

Attend the Coburn talk this afternoon. Take part in the Camp-Out to Stamp-Out Genocide in April.

As photojournalist Ryan Spencer Reed said to student activists in December, "The people of Darfur are pinning their hopes on where our futures intersect."

Make human rights in Darfur your cause, and together we will save lives.

-- Carlo Romero is a letters senior. His column appears every other Thursday, and he can be reached at opinion@oudaily.com.

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