Uganda.
Okay. I understand the controversy about the Invisible Children organization. I’m not spreading their message. They’re just the ones letting us know about it, in my mind. I’m spreading the message of those little girls that are being raped by grown-ass men calling themselves “soldiers.” I’m spreading the message of that little boy that saw his brother’s throat cut. Those kids that are forced to kill their parents.
Somehow it’s been turned into a race thing. It sort of is. If this was happening somewhere else, if Canadian children, or Austrian children, Russian children, Chinese children were being abducted in these huge numbers, for two fucking decades, we probably would have heard something about it. But since it’s Africa, well.. It’s just another Wednesday for Africa. Between Darfur and Sierra Leone, we’ve heard some (very little) of the horrible things happening to people, and it’s just a damn trainwreck of a continent right now. There seems to be no order. How can we not have known about this? I’m so freaked out about it. I’ve never heard his name, I’ve heard OF the LRA, and my dad, who is very into politics and world events, didn’t know anything about it. It has nothing to do with them being black. And everything to do with them being children. Little kids. Babies. It’s so easy to just shrug off things when they’re not happening here, but the whole point of this “movement” for me, is that we need to open our eyes.
When I watched the video, I had already seen so many posts about Visible Children, the website trying to out Invisible Children’s shady business tactics, so I watched it with a grain of salt. With all of it in mind, what I saw were scared kids running for their lives, crying, saying that they would rather not live anymore because of how terrible their lives are. There are human beings over there being tortured, raped, murdered, and it is happening to and by a child army.
The reason why this is resonating so largely right now, why everyone’s “jumping on the bandwagon” and “becoming an activist” is because now is the time. We are finally in an era where the entire world is connected to each other. We are seeing the struggles of everyone else, and usually we’re okay to just let it happen, because we have our own shit going on. When I watched the video yesterday, 3 million people had already viewed it. Today, I went to check the numbers, and it was at 15 million. The reason why it’s “the cool thing to do” is because people are finally noticing. I cannot think of a single other cause that would be better for people to latch onto. The reason why it’s “the cool thing to do,” is because it’s the right thing to do.
I’m not talking about the Invisible Children cause. I don’t plan on giving them money. I’m broke as shit. What I got from the video, is spreading the word. Putting it in everyone’s faces so it can’t be ignored anymore. I don’t know exactly how to do it, but I know it has to stop. And the first step would rationally be, making sure as many people know about it as possible. Can you imagine what might’ve happened if we’d had social networking during WWII? Would the world have allowed it if they knew exactly what was going down in concentration camps? I hope not. And I hope that we’re all decent enough people to agree that no child should have to be a part of a massacre. Maybe I’m an idiot, and you can call me a dreamer all you want, but I have to believe in better world than this. Those kids don’t. They are all certain that they are going to die very soon, and most of them hope for it sooner than later. That’s their hope. They hope for a quick end. That should never, ever be on an 8-year-old’s mind. I have to believe in a world that cares enough to help out. And I have to believe that one day, an entire country’s population doesn’t have to fear for their children’s lives every single night.
Africa has a lot of problems. A lot. But the fact that this has been going on for 20 years, with tens of thousands of kids affected, and we, as a whole, did not know about it? Or to what extremes, at least? Unacceptable. Knowledge is power. Spread the power.
