How did a group of blond haired, blue-eyed southern California surfer boys get more than 20 million people to watch a half-hour video on a twenty-year-old conflict in Central Africa--in just two days?
And why are some Africa experts, human rights groups and even actress-turned-Save Darfur activist Mia Farrow grumbling about it, while others in elite Washington circles are praising it as an unmatched accomplishment?
Invisible Children is a California-based advocacy group whose founders were San Diego college students who went to south Sudan and northern Uganda in 2003 at the height of the conflict between the Ugandan army and the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA), whose founder is Joseph Kony. Thousands of children have gone missing in the conflict, which has lasted more than two-decades. On Monday, Invisible Children released a powerful, slickly produced half-hour video on the clash, seeking a half million viewers. By Thursday morning they were well on their way, with over 20 million viewers. Their viral tag lines: #Kony2012 and #Stop Kony, along with Uganda and Invisible Children, were top 10 trending topics around the country.
"Where you live shouldn't determine whether you live #KONY2012", the group posted to Twitter Thursday. The result: a very successful campaign that has alerted the world to the issue.
But critics have charged that the group is raising awareness about a conflict that essentially has wound down a lot since its height in 2003-2004. Others charge that the group spends only a third of its revenues on advocacy programs, and not enough of the money goes to actually helping people on the ground.
"The argument now is that Kony and the LRA are no longer this massive threat," Cameron Hudson, former Africa director at the George W. Bush National Security Council, told Yahoo News Thursday. Hudson, now policy director at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, stressed that he doesn't share this critique. He praised the group for creating a campaign that reached 15 million people. "I just saw PDiddy Tweet about this thing," he said.
Hudson believes the criticism is mostly sour grapes. "I think that these guys are getting mercilessly picked apart by a bunch of intellectual elites who spend their days tweeting but never trending," he said. "If their aim is to raise awareness, they have done that in spades."
Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve, an advocacy organization that works with Invisible Children agrees this is nothing but a good thing. "You have to recognize that for more than two decades [Joseph] Kony and the LRA have been perpetrating horrific atrocities in remote parts of Central Africa, and nobody has been paying attention," he told Yahoo News in an interview Thursday.
Poffenberger said he and the founders of Invisible Children became obsessed with the Lords Resistance Army, its founder Joseph Kony and the plight of thousands of African children disappearing in the conflict back in 2003-2004. "They created this initial film that took off," he said. "And they have been connecting with an audience. The majority of their supporters - and they have 100s of thousands of supporters--are millennials." And he believes this new millennial audience could help foment political change.
In May 2010, members of Invisible Children and Resolve were in the Oval Office as President Obama signed legislation--the Lords Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Recovery Act. The bill, originally spearheaded by former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), ended up with the support or sponsorship of 267 members of Congress--more than any other piece of Africa legislation in history, said Sarah Margon, a former Feingold staff member.
Members of Invisible Children and Resolve were in the Oval Office when President Obama signed the LRA Disarmament …
"We have seen your reporting, your websites, your blogs, and your video postcards -- you have made the plight of the children visible to us all," President Obama said in a statement to the groups that had spearheaded the grassroots advocacy campaign, including Invisible Children.
Last year, Obama ordered a few hundred special forces to Central Africa to assist in the hunt for Kony.
While Invisible Children has helped raise awareness so that millions of Americans now know about the LRA, "at the same time, there are certainly cases where they have cut corners on some of the facts to get their message out," Margon, the former Feingold staffer and an Africa expert at the Center for American Progress, told Yahoo News Thursday.
Invisible Children does have programs on the ground in Uganda, including information collection and monitoring programs for tracking abductees. But, there's an inherent push and pull between advocating for a cause and explaining the actual complexities on the ground. "There is a legitimate debate about the degree to which the video oversimplifies a complex issue," Resolve's Poffenberger said. "But you can't present a documentary that appeals to the human rights professional crowd and also gets viewed by 20 million people...about something occurring in Central Africa. There's a trade-off that you have to accept and make very carefully."
Others note that the production value of the video sets it apart. "Ten years ago, the Stop the Landmine advocacy group got the Nobel Peace price because they used email," said Hudson, the former Bush White House aide. "This is the next iteration. Desk top movie-making, to create a video of such high production value, that you change the way these conflicts are viewed and understood." He also noted that most people on the West coast and in the Midwest had never heard of this issue before. And unlike folks in Washington and New York, they aren't fatigued by the Sudan conflict and other stories highlighting African atrocities.
Article from YAHOO NEWS
