Revolution, protest and public action dissidence have been integral components of the formation of the current state of our country. In the beginning we were founded by political radicals. As time went on we started to fight for the rights of those treated unjustly. In the twentieth century, rallies and marches and revolutions were held to solidify the rights of blacks, women and people of all religions. It’s obvious we love to make our voices heard to fight for what we believe in, and we are lucky to live in a country where we are free to do that without fear of severe consequences.
About a week ago, social media websites and news organizations exploded when the Invisible Children organization posted a 30 minute so-called documentary about the war crimes of Joseph Kony . The documentary is up to nearly 78 million views with thousands of events organized on Facebook, millions of likes for Invisible Children, and tons of reblogs on tumblr . So what’s the difference between this surge of support and those of past generations who rallied for their cause?
The difference falls in a lack of action, a lack of true desire of caring, a feeling that was developed by the millions of supporters solely from the click of a button. Here’s the problem: clicking a button does nothing to stop the wrong in the world.
Kony 2012 has done a great thing in raising awareness of the atrocities that have been going on in Uganda and the surrounding areas. However, Joseph Kony has been committing war crimes for nearly 20 years. This is not recent news either. BBC, CNN, Fox News and innumerable other news agencies have been reporting on the most recent atrocities committed by Kony and the LRA for years now. In 2011, President Obama sent 100 Special Forces units into Uganda to help combat the LRA . Where was the rage of support then? What Invisible Children has done is great. It has at least made people aware something bad is happening. It also made unintentionally evident the pandemic of ignorance of the American youth to world news.
In March 2011, a group of school children in Syria were arrested and tortured after vandalizing a wall with the phrase, which became popular during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, “The people want the downfall of the regime.” In retaliation, the Syrian people began to peacefully protest their government for the handling of the situation. The government was not happy with the people’s protest and sent the military to put them down. Since then there has been a lopsided war being fought against the people wanting to be free of oppression.
In the past few weeks the military has been shelling civilian homes resulting in the deaths of children and the deaths of their mothers standing next to them. Unfortunately for those children, Invisible Children didn’t see them or make a movie about them, and Americans can’t be bothered to be outraged about injustices unless someone tells them to be.
The Syrians aren’t the only ones forgotten about. Until last year, Sudan had been in the middle of a civil war between the north and south. In Haiti, since the UN has moved in to help rebuild the nation, there have been at least six cases of sexual assault on Haitian boys by UN soldiers. No group was there to publicize the injustices to these countries.
Bottom line is, don’t wait for the bandwagon to come around to realize bad things are happening. Get yourself involved. You can’t help in every case but the more you know the more you can actually help.
