DC Examiner

On Sunday, November 29th, CBS will air a feature entitled "Congo Gold" on it's 60 Minutes program. Congo Gold will follow renowned human rights advocate John Prendergast to the Democratic Republic of Congo and document the link between gold mining and the war atrocities that have taken the lives of over four million people.

Prendergast wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe on August 1, detailing part of his journey:

"Being held at gunpoint by 30 drunk and angry militia in the middle of the night on a deserted road in one of the most dangerous war zones in the world was not our plan when we started out the day. But my traveling companions and I were digging into the links between the illicit mining of Congo's "conflict minerals'' and a deadly war, and we didn't expect a walk in the park. We had visited a gold mine contested by some particularly vengeful armed groups, and this militia had lost out in controlling the mine and wasn't happy about the result. After hours of negotiations, guns poked into ribs, and death threats, we emerged relatively unscathed and $1,000 poorer. Congolese civilians, however, are rarely so fortunate."

Continue reading here.

On Sunday, November 29th, CBS will air a feature entitled "Congo Gold" on it's 60 Minutes program. Congo Gold will follow renowned human rights advocate John Prendergast to the Democratic Republic of Congo and document the link between gold mining and the war atrocities that have taken the lives of over four million people.

Prendergast wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe on August 1, detailing part of his journey:

"Being held at gunpoint by 30 drunk and angry militia in the middle of the night on a deserted road in one of the most dangerous war zones in the world was not our plan when we started out the day. But my traveling companions and I were digging into the links between the illicit mining of Congo's "conflict minerals'' and a deadly war, and we didn't expect a walk in the park. We had visited a gold mine contested by some particularly vengeful armed groups, and this militia had lost out in controlling the mine and wasn't happy about the result. After hours of negotiations, guns poked into ribs, and death threats, we emerged relatively unscathed and $1,000 poorer. Congolese civilians, however, are rarely so fortunate."

Continue reading here.

Playwright Lynn Nottage won the 2009 Pulitzer
Prize for Drama for her play, Ruined, in which
the ravaged women of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo do what they must to survive.

This past Monday, The Kennedy Center staged a
reading of the play in conjunction with The Enough
Project. Nottage was present and most of the
play's original cast and the musical director
took time away from other projects to participate.
Quincy Tyler Bernsteine, an actress DC audiences
may have seen in Stunning at Woolly Mammoth,
described Ruined as "one of the most important
pieces of art that I've had the opportunity to work on."

Continue reading here.