Two Minutes on Cristina & Kony 2012

SIDENOTE:  I put "two minutes" because I have spent very little time thinking about this.  I thought that writing how I felt about the whole Kony 2012 thing would help me understand how I FEEL about it.  So this is not a well thought out, articulate opinion piece.  They are just my thoughts, and truthfully, I would rather stick to storytelling ... but I am happy that I am putting another post on my blog!

Two Minutes on Cristina & Kony 2012

I was one of the millions of people who watched the Kony 2012 video on Facebook, cried, and shared it on my profile.  If you have no idea of what I am talking about, you can see the video here.

I was not going to buy the kit, I didn’t quite understand or believe that by a specific date in April Kony will somehow be brought to justice, nor did it activate me into action.  But I related to it at several levels.  The first and most obvious was as a mom of two boys ages 4 and 6.  Having them taken away from me at night and the things they would have to go through is truly heart-wrenching.  That was enough to press click on the share button.

On a second level, as a “gringa” who lived abroad for 22 years and began a nonprofit (more on that later, I guess) I could relate to seeing things that you think “how can this be?” and feeling moved to do something about it.  And finally, I stayed in-country long enough to be highly annoyed by world bank Harvard types (sorry guys) who made funding conditional to their solutions even if local people didn't think they were solving the real problem.   Gross generalization … I know.

I half read the critiques about how the organization that did the video, Invisible Children, was shady on their finances.  Of how the guy who did the video ended up on drugs and half naked on the street.  Of how sharing a video and buying a wrist band does not solve a problem but that there are people who have dedicated years of theirs lives to solving them.  Yes, I get it.  But I felt differently.

My reaction was “so instead of focusing on what the movie is saying, we are focusing on its production”.  We are calling into question those who at least did what they thought was the right thing to do. 

Like I said, I was not moved to action.  In part, because I think I am at a point in my life that my action-capacity is limited and I am a “go big or go home” kind of girl.  But if I am truly honest with myself, I was a little envious.  When I was working in Chile, starting a nonprofit from my savings and working day and night to get funding … I would have loved to have a movie like this.  I would drool over the opportunity of making my cause so well known.  Because whether you believe in my solution to the problem or not, now you know there is a problem.  I cannot be so arrogant as to think there is only one possible solution to fix this and that solution is my own.  So it might make things more difficult for a little bit, the field may get cloudier for a while, my position as “expert” on my issue may be threatened by some young kids in the US who think they can save the world.  But eventually everyone who is serious about the issue will be talking and organizing and with a lot more support because millions of people now know the problem.  In this case who Joseph Kony is.

And I am sorry.  I just can’t see how that is a bad thing.