When actor Ben Affleck first called Cindy McCain to express his interest in helping the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he was worried she might not take the call. “I was hoping she wouldn’t think it was a prank call,” Affleck told members of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights.
She didn’t.
“We are strange political bedfellows,” McCain remarked, as Affleck has supported numerous Democratic candidates. “But that’s the beauty of this.”
The duo spoke passionately about problems facing the DRC during a Tuesday afternoon hearing on Capitol Hill. The wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wasn’t originally supposed to testify, just tag along, but she ended up being a witness anyway. “Africa has haunted me in a good way,” McCain explained to the committee members. She has done humanitarian work in the DRC since 1994.
Affleck explained what piqued his interest in the DRC. The “State of Play” star and founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative said he was researching regions where he could lend a helping hand and started reading about the country’s brutal civil war that killed 5 million of its citizens.
“I was really in shock. … How could I not know this? I read the newspaper and I had no idea,” he said. “So I thought maybe this is a place where I could at least show up.”
He’s done a lot more than that. After outlining many of the atrocities that persist in the region, the actor asked House members not to cut aid to the country. “The federal budget may be the zero sum game, but our morality, our decency, our compassion for our fellow human beings is not,” Affleck implored.
The members were mainly impressed by the movie star. “We’d probably have a difficult time filling the room up; we’d probably only have a third of it covered,” said Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J. “So I think that people don’t realize the importance of people in your category, that you can bring attention to issues.”
