For those of you who have not heard, there are children being abducted out of their beds in the countries of Uganda, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other nations in the area. These children are being forced to murder their parents and siblings, the males becoming soldiers and the females becoming sex slaves. The man behind this is a named Kony and he is number one on every international policing agency’s most wanted list. He has evaded capture for years and he kills children en mass when an attempt on his power is made. This is all bad, no one on Earth beside Kony and a few others will argue that it is not.
Recently, a video was posted by the charity Invisible Children Inc. to promote a day where young people will cover the streets in images of Kony to raise awareness about his atrocities. The idea behind the action is that if people see his image and look into what he is doing, they will pressure politicians into sending troops and aid into Uganda and attempt to “Stop” Kony. All these people have to do is either donate a few dollars a month to Invisible Children or pay 25 dollars to the charity to get an “Action Kit” that has posters, stickers, and bracelets with a serial number on them that allow you to tell the world that you care. This is where the skeptics, like myself, start doing research and forming their own ideas, and where the general populace begins to work into a frenzy.
I’m not going to critique the fact that Invisible Children devote more money to staff payments and film production than they actually devote to helping children (proven by looking at their financial records), I’m not going to comment on the fact that the money that they DO send is given to a corrupt Ugandan military for weapons that they use to destroy villages and terrorize civilians (pictures show these transactions), I’m also not going to comment that we have been tracking this individual for over 10 years, but cannot make a move on him because of the political climate surrounding him and the fact that if the coups are not successful, he murders children to assert his power. The problem with the movement that has arrived is that it ignores problems in America, and substitutes them for problems overseas.
America is a country where the people feel obligated to help the world, but not their neighbor. Every week, a new cause arises that gains steam for a week, month, year, whatever time slot, and is then forgotten until it arises again every few years. This new cause is a great one, I am not saying that Kony doesn’t need to be taken down, what I am saying is that the problems of that country should never outweigh the problems of our own. If we are to be the greatest force for good in the world, then why is our murder rate the highest? Why do we rank in the top ten in Unemployment in modernized countries? Why are over 800,000 children abducted every year, with 204,000 of them being taken by someone who is not a family member? Why are there still sex slaves in America? All of these questions need to be answered before we can even begin to help other countries. You don’t go help someone build a house while yours is burning to the ground. Invisible Children claims that Kony has kidnapped 30,000 children, which is an atrocity, but look at the number of children abducted in the US, we lose more kids in two months to abductors than Kony has enslaved, total. It may seem like they are two different things, since Kony is raising an army and abductors only strike a few times each, but think of which is more subversive. We know who Kony is, he can be stopped, but the abductors of these children off of our doorsteps are faceless. We don’t know who they are, what they are doing, or how many there are; and that should scare the hell out of us as a nation. We possess 204,000 invisible children right here in our own country, people are murdering each other for shoes, and over 9 percent of us can’t find a job. And our first priority as a nation is to go somewhere else and risk our lives to help other countries that have operated this way for thousands of years? Our way of life is not a cure all, hell, it’s sick itself. There is nothing wrong with giving to charities, especially ones that give money overseas, but the key to any movement or charity is perspective. Kony is not a super villain who is going to take over the world and the problem is not that America doesn’t know who he is. The problem is that we aren’t busy looking for our children in our streets, we are looking for other people’s children in their countries. People who have been killed over a tribal conflict and for power.
Several high ranking world officials have stated that nothing can be done in Africa to fix the overall state of things until all of the governments are settled and willing to accept aid. This hasn’t happened for hundred of years and won’t happen anytime soon. Our government is stable, we are willing to make a change, you see these children everywhere on missing person boards in super markets across the United States, the problem is that we keep looking at other countries and tell them that they are doing it wrong while we are doing the exact same thing on a larger scale. We are a nation of hypocrites, believing that we have different problems than the third world countries, we cover them up with a veil of jokes about how our ipads don’t support flash and how we have nothing to drink except for tap water; meanwhile our invisible children wait alone, each with their own personal Kony. Our neighbors need help building their houses, and we should help; but our house is burning down, and we need to get some water.
Sources: (please get informed yourself, My opinion is only my opinion)
Invisible Children original Kony Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
Abduction Stats: http://www.ygoy.com/2009/07/08/child-abduction-statistics/
CNN Report supporting Kidnapping Stats: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2007/01/raw-data-kidnapping-statistics.html
Unemployment Charts: http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm
Article showing Members of IC with Ugandan Military as well as other evidence: http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/
IC response to criticism: http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html
Comments From the Back of The Classroom 
thanks.very good blog and very good share.