Joseph Kony, Empowerment, and the First Step

If we’re going to talk about atrocities in the world and how to stop them, the first thing we need to do is figure out how to speak the same language.

Let’s start with the basics. We can all agree, right, that awareness is unequivocally a good thing. It’s better to know than not to know. Knowledge is power, etc. etc. 

Two weeks ago there were plenty of Americans who didn’t know Joseph Kony even existed. And now they do.

I can say it: that is a good thing.

Awareness is the first step. Invisible Children’s video made the first step for Americans. They’re an American company - whatever. They made Americans aware. That is a good thing.

Now, consider the facts. Kony is an evil warlord and a tyrant and he exploits and enslaves children - that is a fact. He wrought havoc in Uganda for years. Though his power HAS diminished, he continues to wreak havoc now in the Congo. He has ruined and/or destroyed the lives of thousands of Africans.

I would guess that everyone in Uganda already knows who he is. 

I’ll be the first to eat my words if this campaign to “make Kony famous” results in a kind of mobilization on the part of Congress, of other charities and NGOs (maybe ones who don’t have to budget for a film production company), of people in power, of the President of the United States, of the United Nations - that finally leads to the termination and neutralization of the Lord’s Resistance Army. (Here is another fact: Kony has been wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court since 2005.) As Nicholas Kristof points out in his NYTimes opinion piece of March 14th, “public attention can create an environment in which solutions are more likely.”

Public outrage over Serbian atrocities in the Balkans eventually led the Clinton administration to protect Kosovo and hammer out the Dayton peace accord. The Sudan civil war killed millions over half-a-century on and off, until public outrage — largely among evangelical Christians — led President George W. Bush to push successfully for a peace agreement in 2005.

I asked Anthony Lake, now the executive director of Unicef who was President Clinton’s national security adviser during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, whether a viral video about Rwanda would have made a difference then. “The answer is yes,” he said. He suggested that this kind of public attention would also have helped save more lives in Darfur and in Congo’s warring east.

But speaking of Nicholas Kristof, there’s an empowering story in his book with Sheryl WuDunn, “Half the Sky,” that details the story of a gangster in the slum of Kasturba Nagar in central India. Akku Yadav ruled the slum for fifteen years, using rape and torture to keep the public subservient. Then he attacked - or tried to attack - a young woman who dared to file a complaint to the police about him. Akku Yadav came to threaten her, tried to break into her home. She threatened to blow up her house - taking Akku Yadav and his men as well as herself and her family with it. Neighbors who had gathered saw her fighting back, found courage, and picked up sticks and stones. Akku Yadav and his men backed off, but the fever of triumph had caught the people in the slum, and they burned his house down.

Akku Yadav went to the police, who arrested him for his own protection. Apparently the police officers planned to keep him in custody until the mood cooled and then to let him go. A bail hearing for Akku Yadav was scheduled, and rumors spread that the police were planning to release him as part of a corrupt bargain. The bail hearing was to take place miles away in the center of Nagpur. Hundreds of women marched there from Kasturba Nagar and filed into the high-ceilinged grand courtroom with its marble floor and faded British grandeur … Akku Yadav strutted in, confident and unrepentant, sensing that the women were disoriented in the grand setting of the courtroom. Spotting one woman he had raped, he mocked her as a prostitute and shouted that he would rape her again. She rushed forward and hit him on the head with a slipper.

“This time, either I will kill you, or you will kill me,” she shrieked. At that, the dam burst, apparently by prearrangement. All the women from Kasturba Nagar pressed forward and surrounded Akku Yadav, screaming and shouting. Some pulled chili powder from under their clothes and threw it in the faces of Akku Yadav and the two police officers guarding him. The police, blinded and overwhelmed, fled at once. Then the women pulled out knives from their clothing and began stabbing Akku Yadav. 

“Forgive me,” he shouted in terror now. “Forgive me! I won’t do it again.” The women passed their knives around and kept stabbing him. Each woman had agreed to stab him at least once. Then, in a macabre retaliation for his having cut off Asho Bhagat’s breasts, the women hacked off Akku Yadav’s penis. By the end, he was mincemeat. When we visited, the courtroom walls were still stained with his blood. 

… A retired high court judge, Bhau Vahane, publicly sided with the women, saying: “In the circumstances they underwent, they were left with no alternative but to finish Akku. The women repeatedly pleaded with the police for their security. But the police failed to protect them.”

The point, I think, of this story, is its cast of characters. There was no viral video, no Americans or British riding in to save the day - there was a woman who stood up and a town who followed and the evil warlord was defeated. People save themselves. They always can, when they have the tools. That is where the work comes in, that’s how we can help, I think - because what do we have if not a plethora of tools? What if that video, with all its production dollars behind it, had been what the Ugandans who watched it expected it to be - a story of them and their counry and their suffering and plight - instead of a story of a couple of men saving them from their suffering and plight?

Standing in opposition, however possible, to oppression and violence and exploitation and cruelty is already a first step to combat an atrocity. But it’s just that. A first step. In a way, that might be as far as our American feet will take us. We can’t save Africa. Okay?

And yet: it’s a complex thing. Complexity becomes a great excuse for inaction. I’m sitting here writing a blog post about this. I’m deeply aware of the irony.

I don’t know the answer to any of these things. But I guess I’m glad everybody’s talking about it and everybody’s looking in other places for information - not just to Invisible Children. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: thank god for Al Jazeera.)

So, this is a reason DC Comics is awesome: http://www.joinwecanbeheroes.org/

But something doesn’t really sit right with me about this campaign. I think it’s because the whole thing seems geared toward a pretty self-centered message. “I give because it makes me feel good.” “I feel like a hero and that makes me feel good about myself.”

Here’s what I would rather have you take a closer look at: The Girl Effect. Here’s an initiative that motivates me outside of myself. I watched the first one of these and it stuck with me for months; this new one is even more powerful.

But, okay. Time to stop comparing production quality of videos encouraging me to change the world and time to start actually changing the world. Still, The Girl Effect is good and I want to start there. www.girleffect.org

[edit] Let’s be clear, please, that I am not saying one initiative is good and another is not. Both are incredibly worthy. I just wish we would want to give for others’ sake without thinking about ourselves, but that’s because I am very cynical. If we lived in a society where wealth was spread naturally I wouldn’t even have to think about this. I still wish there was a way to make a global communist economy viable. And no, U.S. Government, I don’t fucking care if you hunt me down and take me for saying that.