Invisible Children Follow-Up
This is a companion to the video I reblogged last night for Invisible Children and it’s Stop Kony 2012 campaign. I didn’t have time to do much research last night but this morning I took a look at some of the details of the situation in Uganda, IC and the campaign itself. Now, I still think it’s a noble cause and I think some people make a lot more out of administrative costs for non-profit organizations than are truly necessary (the whole “only x cents of every dollar you donate actually does y” thing). I’m not sure that people establishing charities should necessarily require charity themselves just to do their work. In other words, in some cases, haters gonna hate.
However, there are some genuine concerns about the simplification that IC’s video employs to get its point across, and there is a much deeper level of political and foreign policy consideration that is overlooked in favor of “let’s just stop the bad guy.” In particular the criticism that the voices of the oppressed (the Ugandan people) are largely ignored in favor of an obvious (but not, I don’t think, inherently immoral) play on class/status guilt is concrete enough. IC comes across as pretty paternalistic, too.
That being said, if IC wants to focus on awareness raising rather than action, I think ultimately that’s not a bad thing as it also opens doors for other groups and organizations working toward the same or fundamentally similar goals. I think the biggest concern for people deciding on whether to directly support IC or some other specific organization should be based on whether the favored approach is militaristic or not.
But what I don’t think the controversy around IC should do is stop anyone from helping at all, if they possibly can.
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