Kony 2012

So last Monday, Invisible Children posted this 30 minute video called Kony2012. "KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice."



The goal is to raise awareness of Joseph Kony. He's a a Ugandan guerrilla group leader, head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). In 2005 Kony was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He's been at large for over 25 years.

They posted the video and then got people to tweet it to popular Twitter and Facebook users like Oprah, Rihanna, P Diddy, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Mark Zuckerberg, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, etc. They retweeted it and it went viral. Six days later, 67 million people have seen it.

The video is part of a complete marketing campaign. They make it easy to contact targeted policy makers, get an action kit with posters and bracelets (better than a ribbon) and a plan to get thousands on April 20th to blanket communities with posters. All to raise awareness to force policy makers to act. They've built in ways to make it easy for people to act, report, and for them track the activity. It's pretty clever.

I guess I'm not as connected as I thought. I didn't hear about it until Friday. No it wasn't via Oprah's or Rihanna's twitter stream. CBS This Morning talked about their campaign which had managed to get 50 million views in 5 days. Then I saw it on Up with Chris this morning and again on Melissa Harris-Perry's show. They all talked about the social media campaign, exclusively.

I found it really odd that none of these news organizations reported on the substance of the message. I didn't know the name Kony but I have heard about the Lord's Resistance Army. Mostly via the Vertigo comic series Unknown Soldier. I also knew that Eliza Dushku was active in an organization founded by her mother, THARCE-Gulu which is trying to help African war survivors. I hadn't realized it was about LRA survivors or about Kony.

Dushku commented on the Kony2012 campaign. "There was new awareness, but we certainly hadn't moved the needle the way Invisible Children did this past Monday night. I have met Jason Russell and fellow actress Kristen Bell over the years and we have shared our passion for Gulu and the Acholi people devastated by Joseph Kony and the LRA. I believe they have honest and true intentions, in spite of some of the negative press that has since exploded on the Web about Kony 2012. And, they have trail-blazed in the area that we hadn't quite been able to cover, creating a worldwide awareness through social media and young people, making Joseph Kony a virtual celebrity almost overnight. This heightened awareness of the 26-year trail of wreckage left by Kony is a good thing. And now, more than ever before, countless people are asking how to help the victims and not only how to help catch Kony." That sounds like exactly the right response.

I have heard some of the critiques against Invisible Children, particularly on CBS This Morning. Particularly that only a third of their money goes to programs in Africa. But I have to say, if the rest is going to this kind of campaign, it seems pretty reasonable. Invisible Children has impressive responses to the various critiques they've received this week.

So what about the administration? I was surprised to learn that "On May 24, 2010 President Barack Obama signed the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, legislation aimed at stopping Joseph Kony and helping the countless children whose lives are at risk as long as he roams free."

"The bill passed unanimously in the Senate on March 11th, 2010 with 65 Senators as cosponsors, then passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on May 13th, 2010 with 202 Representatives as cosponsors."

Also last October, Obama sent "100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord’s Resistance Army."

"A senior Pentagon official underscored that the American military personnel would not be operating independently nor carrying out unilateral operations. The official also said the United States had provided about $33 million in support to regional efforts to battle the Lord’s Resistance Army since 2008, an effort that has not been sufficient to guarantee that local security forces dismantle the group."

I wonder how they've been doing?

Here's a fun tidbit. Last October when there was some reporting about these 100 troops, Rush Limbaugh talked against the move (because he has to be against everything Obama does even if he knows nothing about it), defending the LRA because they're Christians fighting Muslims. Here's the transcript from Rush's own site. Just not a good couple of weeks for Limbaugh I guess.