Your comment here made me think of Terri’s. Both point to that desire we have to do something to help — to be a part of something that matters and have our actions make a difference. The response to this video and other world catastrophes, like the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunamis in Asia, really bring this to the surface.

I guess this is getting me back to the Mother Teresa story. What if we channelled that desire to do something into the places where we can actually make a difference — the contexts we already know and are a part of and perhaps need the attention we are best equipped to give.

I find myself struggling (in a good way, I think) with the African response to this video. They want us to know the truth of the situation — that Joseph Kony is no longer in Uganda and that Uganda has been living in relative peace since the 2006-08 peace talks happened. And they want us to know that they don’t want outside saviors to come swooping in with their own ideas of how to resolve the situation. They want us to be aware of their complex story (you may already have seen this really beautiful TED talk from a Nigerian woman talking about the danger of a single story).

Can we trust those living there to know and do what is needed in situations like these? When is outside help needed? And what ought that outside help look like?

Probably the answer is different for every situation. Which is frustrating. But also calls us to be people who look deeper, seek to understand, and value the unique response each situation calls for. There’s something really dignifying about that, I think, even though it means unilateral or simplified answers won’t cut it.

Your talk about badvocacy is making me think of something that I keep running across in my students and their research papers. There’s something about the younger generations (and maybe ours, too) that makes them think that making people aware of a problem will somehow lead to a resolution (I don’t think this is what you’re saying, just a problem I see in a lot of areas). While awareness is important, it doesn’t necessarily lead to action (or, more importantly, to useful action). So while I think that maybe IC should have stuck to raising awareness, I struggle with the idea that they should have left it there. I disagree with their solutions, but in some ways I’m glad they encouraged people to act (I think that while simultaneously cringing at some of the actions they advocated . . . does that make sense?).

I guess what I wish is that there were more apparent ways to support the people who can really achieve something in these situations. I wish there were ways to get money to the people promoting peace talks, for instance, or clear ways to encourage those to happen. I say this because I don’t think there are too many things that a group like IC could encourage people to do that would 1) Actually help the problem and 2) Make people feel like they’re doing something. The second isn’t actually necessary, though I’m not sure people in our culture would act if they didn’t feel like their action mattered (whether or not it, in fact, did).

I’m sorry if I’m rambling – I hope this all makes at least some sense ;)

It’s incredible what they have done here, just from a means perspective. I think this campaign needs to go in some kind of playbook somewhere for future people to learn from.

But I found myself, toward the end of my research, deciding that I wish Invisible Children played more single-mindedly toward their obvious strength (raising awareness in effective ways with their specific audience) without proposing specific solutions. Maybe being more educators than activists? Because I’ve started to become more aware of what I saw one person call “badvocacy,” meaning some advocacy does more harm than good. (You can read that article here.)

I’ll also add to this that I think this is a critical time in which we’re seeing the effects of technological advances. In so many ways, critical thinking and nuanced thought has fallen to the wayside because we’ve become more dependent on technology to not only do our thinking for us but also to amuse us. So while the Kony 2012 campaign harnessed the reality of that in a really effective way, it left all those who are doing the hard work of thinking critically about the nuances at play here scrambling around doing clean-up while simultaneously tearing at their hair. It’s such an interesting time in which we live, and think you’re spot on that situations like this, full of such subtlety, bear the brunt of it.

I add to that a much more tentative thought that figuring out how to support the kinds of people and actions that are likely to actually bring about resolution seems much harder than what Invisible Children is calling people to, or at least much more subtle. I don’t necessarily think that means they shouldn’t have called people to those things instead, but I balance that with the fact that we live in a culture that doesn’t often appreciate subtle actions. I don’t know where that leaves things, but it is something I’ve considered that seems important in this whole thing.

Thank you for saying this. I feel this is terribly overlooked in many of the criticisms of the campaign!