Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Kony 2012

Has anyone else seen this video? It's gone pretty viral. I'm pretty passionate about Africa and it used to be one of my biggest goals/dreams to go to Uganda to do journalism and make documentaries about the genocide and the child soldiers. Given that, I thought I'd help spread the word because it's all I can do right now, so here's the video.

There's also a 55min documentary called Invisible Children that you can watch made by the same group of people who made this 29min one about Joseph Kony.

Kony2012

Invisible Children

Yeah, a bunch of my friends linked to it on facebook. I was apart of the Invisible Children's Club at my high school a couple of years back. It's a sad and awful truth that people don't seem to know anything about the situation out in Uganda. It seems impossible not to know it, once you've learned of it. It's as terrible as any sort of war that's ever occured before- I think worse than the genocides in Rwanda even. It's been going on for years, and it hasn't attracted nearly enough publicity. And that despicable monster Joseph Kony has been getting away with it. With maintaining a war. With kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers. With mass murder.

I hope this will finally get the attention it needs. I'm glad you brought this up.

I've only seen it yesterday. I was aware of the situation but until I saw the video didn't know there was a face and a name in particular to whom responsability could be attributed for that tragedy. This whole movement is a great way of spreading worldwide awareness and hopefully stop more children from being denied their rights, including the right to be with their families and just be children.

EDIT: I made some research in the meanwhile and while I still believe that awareness should be raised I found that there isn't enough information in the works of the "Kony 2012" campaign. They're mostly selling bracelets and stuff. I'm not sure if that's something I agree with in terms of methodology - only if that money is directly reverted to help victims from the conflicts that spanned throughout Africa, but I'm a little skeptic about this, since the campaign clearly had production costs, even if most work was done through social networks. I'm sure most people are extremely well intentioned and believe this is the best way to identify and bring to justice a mass murderer, but maybe for those misinformed it still won't be enough.

I only recently learned about what's happening in Uganda. It's appaling.

However, concerns have been raised regarding the legitimacy of this campaing/organization. There are articles on the web. (Here's one from Yahoo! News .) I don't claim to know anything certain about what's going on, but I think it merits some research before giving any donations.

I agree with you on the points of legitimacy. The fact that it's such a small community, there's no way of telling for sure where all the proceeds go. That being said, I think the publicity of it is probably the most invaluable thing. The more people know, the more the world will be able to ask its leaders why they aren't doing anything about it... And hopefully this problem can get a fix sooner rather than later.

I agree, for a non-profit/activist organization they have some interesting points against them. At the same time though, I think at its core their cause is important. They actually release a response to all of the claims against them. You can read it on their website.