On a morning in mid-February, the four staff members of Dream for Darfur sat in silence in what they call their war room, contemplating posters of Beibei the Fish and her four fellow Olympic mascots taped to the walls. In this cramped office in a shared space on the 16th floor of a downtown Manhattan Art Deco building, Beibei smiled welcomingly, as did Jingjing the giant panda, Huanhuan the red Olympic flame, Nini the green swallow and Yingying the horned orange Tibetan antelope: anime-style drawings that regardless of name appear strikingly the same, Medusa hair fused on teddy-bear faces with little-girl expressions. Once the Summer Games begin in Beijing on Aug. 8, Chinese Olympic officials plan to sell millions of the mirthful mascots; the Chinese government has planted them everywhere in the country, hanging like religious icons from the rearview mirrors of Beijing taxis, greeting guests as stuffed toys atop hotel check-in desks and buzzing above city skylines on huge billboards like hovering fairies.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Jill Savitt, Dream for Darfur’s executive director, as she scanned the posters, “but these cartoon creatures creep me out.” Scattered on the floor around her were boxes overflowing with Dream for Darfur’s own media salvo: white T-shirts emblazoned with “Genocide Olympics?”

Savitt, a peripatetic, hyperarticulate 40-year-old human rights activist, is the mind behind a long string of organizations conducting campaigns to pressure China to change its policies by threatening to tarnish this summer’s Olympic Games.

Thus begins quite an interesting article in the NYT Magazine from last weekend. The lengthy article is essentially an introduction to this particular organization and its efforts with respect to Darfur.

I know very little about Darfur and will therefore withhold any comments on the underlying policy. However, the nexus here with the Olympics is good to highlight. There are numerous international organizations and activists running around these days who are using the Olympics as a platform to get attention for their issues. This article is a window into one group and their strategy. The best part is that it is quite transparent.

I don't traditionally get along with activists of any kind. Ever since I went to college (a small, liberal arts school chock full of idealists), I find it difficult having rational conversations with fanatics, even when I occasionally agree with their policy positions. I have a feeling that if I had to sit down and talk to the people cited in the NYT article, I would not enjoy it at all.

That being said, these folks are having a significant impact on what is going on here locally, so I suppose it's worth paying attention to what they're doing and why they're doing it. The latest news is that Mia Farrow will travel here personally to push this issue. Remind me again of her foreign policy credentials? Oh, right, I forgot – she used to be an actor.