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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.
KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.
Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.
Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”
Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.
If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.
Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.
watching the video was one of the saddest things I've seen in awhile. I wholeheartedly support this..
__________________
Quote:
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true; to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs..
-Carl Sagan
I'm not trolling, before anyone makes that assertion. I'm speaking my mind, because I find it absolutely pathetic that this information is new to people, and the strategy being presented by the video has been proven completely ineffective and short sighted countless times.
Quote:
KONY 2012 - a personification of the pathetic weak mindedness of mainstream society, and the eagerness of the population to passionately dedicate themselves to a cause when it becomes popular to do so for a moment. I hear the content of the video described as heart breaking, moving, emotional - people claim to be holding back tears. The video outlines the effect of Joseph Kony's rule over Uganda; outlining his use of child soldiers, rape, and his physiological enslavement of a people. Not one piece of the information delivered in the video should be new to any person who has piddled away their time on Facebook. The suffering portrayed in the video is awful, but it's far from isolated or unique; it has not been ignored by legitimate sources of media, it just hasn't been delivered so conveniently in viral social media form before. So, if the information is new to you, my Facebook friend, you need to reexamine the amount of time you dedicate to maintaining a status on your friends updates, and instead make yourself more aware of the world on which you exist. Joseph Kony is one man amongst a fraternity of men; Uganda is one country amongst our depraved global society. The suffering of children is not new, it is not especially more awful than anything similar that has occurred around the world for decades, and it is certainly not the only issue that requires more attention. Don't lend your support to a questionable charity advocating military action that has been proven ineffective, and most often detrimental, whose allocation of charitable funds is beyond questionable. I'll leave you with one thought, if you want to prevent this type of suffering, don't cut the head off the dictator, cut off his support. Without bullets, without guns, without fuel, without vehicles, without those willing to exploit an impoverished countrys' resources to facilitate cheap consumerism and finance all those purchases, men like Joseph Kony wouldn't exist to begin with. Get real people, get informed on something that matters instead of whose cramming for a paper or sipping starbucks, then form an intelligent opinion. We'd all be better off that way.
Last edited by MindBomber; 03-07-2012 at 02:50 AM.
While the Kony part of this is important. I am more interested in the process of the campaign. If this is successful it shows the population that they do in fact have some power over politics. In the future this type of population awareness could help bring to light many other important issues the general public is unaware of.
ew im so sick of people criticizing others for 'getting involved'. yes people were unaware, but it's not necessarily that they were indifferent to the sufferings. if you're criticizing the structure of the invisible children that's another story, but im getting heartbroken seeing people by snobbishly hindering what is clearly a positive progress. YES call it a trend, a fad or a propaganda but that should not undermine the sincere initiatives the video has provoked out of its viewers nor should any activist organization complain for people 'hopping on the wagon' because this ultimately endorses humanitarianism. really the end result of this project truly justifies its means despite that it might not have been partially a propaganda (arguably) so if anything this should be an eye opener for literally every person whether previously knowledged or ignorant to this issue the power of compassion instead of rendering every hopeful individual progress as shameful. when was it EVER necessary to put a value on the human experience of compassion if we're raising awareness, which is precisely what the video sets to do?
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