Ballers Against Genocide

The title is the name I would have gone with, but Aid Still Required works — and getting names like Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill behind PSAs, photo shoots, and other work to bring attention to the genocide in Darfur is a Good Thing, particularly when athletes are not viewed as socially and politically active people. The Darfur campaign (they also have pages for Katrina relief and the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami) also has Steve Nash, Baron Davis, Derek Fisher, Emeka Okafor, Matt Barnes,, Andrew Bynum, Ira Newble, Eric Snow, and Luol Deng involved.

I was watching ESPN’s Outside the Lines, in a rare break from the network’s day of Favre fellatio (they went right back to Favre in the next segment), and Hill was explaining why he and other athletes got involved, and much it harkened back to the old chestnuts we rely on and love: because players like Jim Brown got involved in these issues, and he felt like he was compelled to speak out and support it. Hill acknowledged that with how things are problematic in the U.S., we forget about injustices abroad — and he wanted to help put more notoriety behind it.

Hey, if the PSAs get enough traction, make it on serious TV rotation, and get more people to pay attention to brutality across the world, I’m all for it.