On March 7, 2012, my Facebook newsfeed was bombarded with the name Kony. I was being sent requests to sign petitions and saw status updates with videos, posters and messages that said “STOP KONY!” I was confused and somewhat annoyed. I thought to myself, “Great, another Facebook fad.” Then I decided to sit down and watch the video that I saw everyone had posted. It was called KONY 2012. When I saw that it was nearly half an hour long, I planned to only give the video a couple minutes of my time, just to find out who this Joseph Kony guy was who everyone had been posting about for the whole day. I watched the whole thing. I was shocked and outraged at the things I saw and heard.
Joseph Kony is a Ugandan warlord and the leader of a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The group has kidnapped over 65,000 children in the past 26 years. Boys are turned into child soldiers and forced to attack and disfigure others and even kill their own parents to show their loyalty to Kony, while girls are raped and used as sex slaves. Although no longer in Uganda, Kony and his army have spread throughout central Africa, abducting more children and adding to their army.
Jason Russell is the co-founder of Invisible Children and director of the now famous KONY 2012 documentary. Invisible Children is an organization that started its work in 2005 in Uganda. Headquartered in San Diego, Ca., the group works “to spearhead [their] awareness and advocacy work internationally,” as reported by their website.
Through awareness campaigns such as KONY 2012, other documentaries and on the ground efforts to help build schools and communication towers for Ugandan citizens, Invisible Children has aimed to bring down Kony and aid the children and adults affected by the horrific and destructive path he has left behind him.
Russell has made several documentaries detailing the plight that these Ugandans have faced. He told CNN Newsroom that he had had enough. Despite all the videos and efforts they made, they were not getting the response they needed in order to get Kony arrested.
“This is the last one, I can’t tell another one. I’ve made 11 or 12 movies about Ugandan children or central African children crying,” said Russell to CNN Newsroom. “I’m so angry, I’m so angry, that thirty days ago when we set out to make this movie, it was birthed out of an anger. I was just like, I can’t do it anymore, I guess the world doesn’t care unless they look like you, because it’s their problem, it’s their problem, it’s not our problem, so that’s how the movie came up.”
Along with the rest of Invisible Children, Russell began the KONY 2012 campaign which included the famous 30 minute documentary that spread via Facebook. The video educated viewers on who Kony was and all that the Ugandan children had went through, focusing on Russell’s Ugandan friend Jacob who had once been kidnapped by Kony and who had seen his own brother die because of Kony. Russell made a promise to Jacob that he would take down the warlord, which Russell believed initially would take about six months, as he said in his interview with CNN Newsroom. Instead, it has taken nearly a decade.
The documentary sought to raise awareness about Kony, with the purpose to “make Kony famous,” in a bad way and make all the “invisible” Ugandan children “visible,” as seen in Invisible Children’s name.
Their goal? To keep U.S. soldiers in Uganda in order to lend their expertise to Ugandan soldiers to help them find and arrest Kony. Invisible Children has struggled for years to get a response from the U.S. government and aid Uganda, and when they finally did, soldiers were sent there to aid local armies in capturing the warlord. Their fear that attention would wane and that the U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Uganda led Invisible Children to start the KONY 2012 campaign.
What interested me most about all of the Facebook postings I saw was that the Kony campaign had created a divide amongst Facebook users. On one end, I saw people posting to sign petitions and raise awareness. On the other side, I saw a lot of cynicism with some people posting memes mocking the Kony craze and others calling it a scam. This group accused the former of jumping on the bandwagon and playing humanitarian for a day. That sounded terrible to me and entirely cynical, but it made me wonder, how long will all the attention to Kony last?
The KONY 2012 video has received over 70 million views since it was posted on March 5, 2012, but I noticed in the next few days after, that my Facebook feed saw less and less postings about Kony. I had predicted that it was possibly another fad, but deep down I had hoped that it wasn’t and that our generation was using all these great social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to help put an end to problems that are affecting our world.
I had hoped that maybe we could be a generation of doers and thinkers, leaving a legacy greater than that of an over-information age full of texters and tweeters. The video moved me, and I even wanted to buy one of the kits Invisible Children was selling to help donate and raise awareness myself. So when I saw the drop-off in support over the next few days, I was disappointed, and, unfortunately, proved right.
Though many people may have stopped posting about Kony 2012, the reaction to the video sent both print and broadcast media in a frenzy to provide overwhelming coverage of the campaign. All the huge feedback that the campaign received paved way for much criticism.
Invisible Children was accused of being naïve in their posting of their documentary, which many believed would do more harm than good.
Some saw the video as exploiting the plight of Ugandan citizens for the organization’s own gain. Others criticized the group for focusing on Uganda when the LRA had moved into central Africa, which led some to believe that retaliation would spring up in Uganda. Many believed that it was not the U.S.’s business to interfere in Ugandan affairs and that the U.S. has many of its own problems to deal with. What Invisible Children was targeted most with, though, were questions regarding their finances.
I saw several Facebook posts and news articles attacking Invisible Children for how they handled their expenses. I saw some people say it was all a scam and others say that the Invisible Children employees and management were gaining profitably from all the donations people sent in. This led Russell and Ben Keesey, the CEO of Invisible Children, to post an eight minute video answering all the questions and critiques aimed their way.
Keesey affirmed that the goal of the organization from the start was to always be “transparent” with their expenses, so on their site, visitors can view the breakdown of their expenses, their annual report and their audits.
From the breakdown, I saw that over 80 percent of the funds they receive goes directly towards programs or “the cause”, as Keesey calls it. This includes on the ground efforts like building schools, centers and communication towers along with work in the communities and awareness campaigns like KONY 2012.
Their expenses are also divided into travel and transportation costs (which they use to travel the world and screen their documentaries at high schools and colleges, as well as fly in Ugandans affected by Kony) productions costs (the costs of producing t-shirts, DVDs and posters which they sell to fund all their work), and management and general operation expenses (they say these typically come from grants they receive from private donors).
They have clearly provided the financial transparency they have promised and from the looks of it, I do not understand why people are complaining. The majority of their expenses goes directly to their programs and for those that criticize the portion devoted to management and general operation costs, I have this to say: these men and women have devoted their lives to this cause and they have to make a living too in order to expand their cause. They have not been made rich through all the donations, as they affirmed on CNN Newsroom.
I, like many, was initially skeptical of Invisible Children and the KONY 2012 campaign. As much as I wanted to buy one of their kits, I was not entirely sure of where all my money would go, but upon visiting their website, I saw the breakdown of their expenses and all the questions they had answered regarding the many criticisms they have received. I have seen so many people that are so cynical and against this whole campaign because they may not want to believe that what these people are doing is actually for good. Maybe we have been taught in this country to distrust people who promise us good things, and that distrust may have come from shady politics and economic duress.
Invisible Children is an organization I believe in. I even remember being visited by a few of their members while I was a junior in high school where I first learned about the troubles faced by Ugandan children. This organization is aimed at raising awareness and bringing down a malicious and evil man. They have worked in Uganda with the people, helping to build schools and do so much more. What they want is to help give these people and other Africans some relief that their children don’t have to go to sleep in fear that they may be abducted.
How can we sit in our comfortable homes here in America and criticize them for wanting to help troubled Ugandans? What have we done as individuals to help others and contribute to something greater than us? I know for myself, I have done nothing and I am ashamed of that.
I understand why some people think it is not the U.S.’s job to meddle in the affairs of other countries. We do have plenty of our own problems with war and the economy. But the efforts of Invisible Children is not to send thousands of troops and start a war with the LRA, but to merely keep the soldiers that are currently in Uganda there so that they can help train Ugandan soldiers to find and arrest Kony.
U.S. soldiers are already in Uganda. KONY 2012 was merely aimed at keeping them there for a while longer and raising awareness about this mastermind warlord. I don’t believe that that is such a terrible thing.
I’m not advocating that people go out and donate to Invisible Children today, but I look at all of the criticism they have received and it confuses me and sometimes angers me. They are trying to bring about good to a country and to regions of Africa that have faced great hardship, so maybe it is time to lower our fingers and stop pointing at them and accusing them of scamming us. Maybe the Facebook craze was merely a fad, but it did bring attention to this issue.
The world has many problems to tackle and this is just one of the thousands. In order to better this world for us and for our future generations, we need to eventually tackle them, not just as a country but as a global community and we need to start somewhere. Kony can be our starting point.
Jessica Keesee can be reached at jessica.keesee@spartans.ut.edu.
It seems to me that the initiators of the video clip have already achieved an incredible amount within ten days of going public to bring into the open both the crimes and the name of the Leader, Joseph Kony.
Previous attempts to get the world to take notice had little effect till in desperation they changed their strategy to “make him famous”. Now the publicity has exceeded everybody’s expectations.
It is so sad to hear of detractors moving in to discredit just about every aspect of the work. So sad to hear that even some aid agencies are adding fuel to the criticism that is beginning to sound like jealousy.