Invisible Children | Kony 2012

This week, Invisible Children launched their latest campaign: Kony 2012. Please watch the movie if you haven't already (or watch it again if you have). Ready go!

It has overjoyed and humbled me to see the popularity of this campaign. It's completely taking over my news feeds on social media unlike anything Invisible Children has done before. All that time and effort towards awareness is finally paying off, and it's amazing to be apart of it!

Nearly 6 years ago I was invited to a screening of Invisible Children: Rough Cut. At the time I never imagined what I was getting myself into, but when the lights turned up at the conclusion of the presentation that night, I knew my life was forever changed. I'm not sure I've ever been so effected by any piece of information in my life than that of the existence of Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the child soldiers. I was heartbroken and angry. How was this happening? How were we letting it happen? I knew at that time, because I had gained knowledge of that indescribable horror, I was now responsible for it.

At first I felt hopeless, like I was just another bleeding heart white kid who could only wear an activist t-shirt to make themselves feel better about their privileged life. Many of my family and friends scoffed at Invisible Children's efforts, and wrote it off as a scam. Others simply didn't want to hear about another tragedy in our world. It's quite easy to rationalize and justify your apathy when it seems too big or too complex to care.

But I stayed with it, and with the help of a few close loved ones, we continued our support of the Invisible Children movement. We joined the thousands of people like us who would not tolerate the LRA's terror, and tried to spread the word whenever and where ever we could. We held screenings, gave bracelets and shirts as presents, and we even marched the streets and waited to be "rescued" by our local government as part of the Rescue Me protest in Salt Lake City.

My brother-in-law, sister, and I also got to visit the Invisible Children headquarters in Gulu on our visit to Uganda in 2009.

It was during that trip that my eyes were really opened to how truly amazing the organization is. There are charities on every corner in Africa it seems, but most of them fail because they don't support sustainable practices. Invisible Children, however, does it right. The money they spend on awareness in America truly creates sustainable change for those who really need it. They've learned that catchy slogans, amazing graphic design, and clever movies can spread awareness that facilitates a better world. Regardless if you disagree with that tactic or not, Invisible Children is making a difference that I've seen with my own eyes.

For nearly the last decade, the Invisible Children organization that we so proudly stand with, has helped end night commuting in Gulu, created worldwide awareness of the LRA, participated in peace talks, and put in place inspired programs to help create sustainable change in Uganda.

Please join me and pledge your support in the Kony 2012 movement! I've ordered my kit, have you?


peace,
k.
 

A Beautiful Thought

“Evil can kill a person, but it cannot kill a people. We will punish the guilty. The punishment will be more generosity, more tolerance, more democracy.”

-Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Oslo Mayor Fabian Stang

Part 1: In Which Ira Glass is a Fox

Last Saturday I went to see one of my top 5 crushes speak at Kingsbury Hall. This crush comes glasses clad, jewish, with a new beard, and in the form of none other than Mr. Ira Glass.

Swooooooooon.

Some of you cute little radical conservatives out there might know him as "that gay liberal on NPR sometimes" (actual quote). Well, he's not gay and he has no political agenda, but his show This American Life is on NPR sometimes (and by sometimes I mean every Saturday and Sunday).

I first fell in love with Ira somewhere in the-middle-of-nowhere-Idaho about 5 years ago. This was around the same time that I realized I didn't like listening to music on the radio, but I loved talk radio (nerd alert). As I was driving by myself on this desolate road 5 years ago, I had two channels that were coming through in my radio in my little '97 toyota corolla. One was some family values Christian la dee dah snooze fest, and the other was this soft, effeminate male voice telling a story which was interspaced between cuts of groovy beats.

And basically the rest is history.

When I found out Ira was coming to lecture in Utah, I was ecstatic. My generous friend Jack bought he and I tickets for my birthday and we made an evening out of it, complete with mix-tapes provided by Jack for the ride up to Salt Lake and back to Provo.

Although I was excited as we walked to our balcony seats, I was sort of expecting Mr. Glass to be a pretentious, King of the Hipsters type, who would spout off some scripted deal while not making eye contact for fear of mingling with the lowly Utah commoner. Holy eff, I was wrong. His down to earth lecture was one of the best things I've ever heard in my life. Ira was so personable, I felt as if I was sitting in his living room eating frozen pizza in my pajamas. The lecture was full of uncontrollable laughter as well as moments of cathartic poignancy. What I learned during the 2 hours I spent engulfed in Ira Glass and his reflections on his craft gave me a great new perspective on understanding my own art.

His show started with a dark stage and a story about a mother and her children caught in the Joplin tornado. Ira paused for a moment and then apologized for the delay. His iPad from which he was cueing the sounds bits from kicked him off the network and wanted the password for him to continue.

It was one of the most genuinely hilarious things I've ever witnessed. Picture a packed house hanging on every heartbreaking word of this story in a completely black auditorium, and everything stops because Ira's iPad wants the network password. It's already annoying enough when this happens while your trying to waste life on Facebook, let alone when you're Ira Glass trying to orchestrate an entire show for hundreds of paying audience members.

He cracked some jokes but seemed relatively unfazed at this glitch. He sheepishly apologized, went off stage, got it squared away, and started again. This time with a different story.

In the (yet again) dark theater, he first talked about that thing he loved most about radio: the intimacy of the voice. When he first started in radio, he interviewed inner city gang kids. He knew it was important to give them a voice because people wouldn't love them them if they saw them. But because audiences heard only their voices, they would be able to hear the humanity without the distractions of aesthetics, and would love them. This concept of "if they saw these children, they wouldn't love them" struck me hard. My whole art is based on seeing with no voice.

Ira then went on to talk about how bland journalism is because it's all cliched. Turn on any news station and you'll basically see the exact same concept on every channel; the delivery, the graphics, and tempo, the lack of humanity. He said there are no surprises in this journalism and it's surprise that creates emotion.

Over the past few days, I've been thinking almost nonstop about the concepts and ideas Ira talked about and how they apply so perfectly to creative troubles I've been having lately. He talked about a number of other beautiful things like story structure, but for the sake of leading into my next blog post, I'm going to leave you with that.

To be continued...