hear hear, keith ellison!

julia just read to me an article from the star tribune about some politicians who were arrested the other day for protesting the removal of aid workers from darfur. our representative, keith ellison, was one of them. here are some highlights:

Ellison said he and the other members of Congress who were arrested succeeded in bringing national attention to the Darfur crisis that they wouldn't have received otherwise. "I could have sent out a press release, but it would be, 'Yeah, so what?'"

With Ellison representing a Minneapolis-based congressional district that many analysts consider one of the safest Democratic seats in the nation, his arrest is unlikely to affect his standing at home.

"I think that the people of the Fifth Congressional District of Minnesota believe passionately in human rights," Ellison said. "They want me to lead from the front. They want me to set a moral tone."

"How many news outlets had Darfur in any of their story lines this morning?" he said. "There are 1.3 million lives that hang in the balance here, and nobody was doing a story on that until this happened."