As this week’s posts have been articulating so well, advocates need both noise-making and policy-prescriptions in their toolkit – at varying degrees over different times and, I would add, depending on which kind of advocates we are talking about (grassroots vs. grasstops etc). Today Jill Savitt makes the important point that “the cost of having noise without policy is that you make it easier for policymakers to avoid taking action” (A brief side note: It seems to me that a contemporary version of this dilemma for Darfur advocates is how to translate the impressive  – and ever-growing- amount of “noise” generated by the Darfur FastforLife, spear-headed by Mia Farrow, to spur policymakers to take action). Meanwhile, Alex de Waal’s post forces us to take a step outside of the current Darfur crisis and look back at the way previous campaigns – HIV/AIDS and the banning of landmines – dealt with these issues.