KONY 2012

For anyone who hasn't heard about KONY 2012 yet (where have you been!?), it's a campaign by Invisible Children Inc. to make Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, famous, in the hopes of getting him arrested and stopping his campaign to make Uganda a theocracy based on the Ten Commandments using violent tactics such as kidnapping children and making them sex slaves or forcing them to kill their own parents. 

I'll admit, I had never heard of Kony before last night. I knew that there were children in Africa that were kidnapped and forced to kill, but it was so distant, so easy to ignore. Now we can't ignore it. It's everywhere - on every social media site. 

But as it always goes on the internet when something becomes popular, there are an army of critics there to tell everyone why they're wrong to support Invisible Children. The arguments can be summarized in this link everyone is using.

Here's the problem with everyone bashing Invisible Children right now: IC's main goal is raise awareness. Which they've done. Better than I've seen in a really long time. A lot of people went to sleep last night with no idea who Joseph Kony is. Today, everyone's talking about him - demanding action. He is becoming a household name.

I want to get away from this, though, because by focusing so much on the integrity of Invisible Children, we are completely shifting the focus away from what should matter - the horrible atrocities being committed by Kony. The people putting so much focus on the "legitimacy" of IC are simply proving that they care more about talking 

One of the articles criticizing Invisible Children ended with a series of (mostly sarcastic) questions about IC but this one stood out: "Is [this] all just pompous hypothesizing by Westerners with enough freedom, information, and education to look down on a simple, kind act?" To which I have to answer, yes.

Regardless of how IC functions as an organization, they are making an incredible impact (and doing a lot more about the problem than sitting on their computers criticizing the people trying to change things).