"How can i face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?"

This is the the rhetorical cry of Derek Walcott at the end of his poem, "A Far Cry from Africa."

We ought not face such slaughter and be cool. When we look upon tragedy and are not moved to help, we lose some of our humanity. It seems that we have found a simple solution to this problem: we don't face the bad stuff. We ignore it. If we don't know what is going on, we can't feel bad about it.

Today, my local newspaper's homepage featured a story on local high school baseball, an update on the latest news regarding American Idol, and a feature on local craftspeople making 3D quilts.

My local paper failed to address the fact that 6 year-olds are being exploited in Congo to dig up the minerals that make our cell phones work. Or that aid organizations, which are the only thing keeping people alive in Darfur, have been expelled by the Sudanese government resulting in further deaths. This stuff is happening today too, but for some reason the local news won't talk about it. See no evil.

Admittedly, this is unsettling stuff. It's the stuff that haunts your mind and strangles your heart. But it's real. We need to see it, feel bad about it, and do something.