I think the Invisible Children response is great but I feel that it fails to address one of the biggest problems with their campaign which one of my friends captured by referencing Paulo Freire's theory of False Generosity:
"When a system is structured so that there are oppressors and oppressed, some of the oppressor class feel genuine compassion toward the suffering of the oppressed. They move to isolate that suffering and to aid it, not to address the structures of society which are the root causes. Thus, to the extent that they relieve any suffering they do so by hiding from themselves the genuine causes, their own privilege as oppressor class members." An over-simplification perhaps but that's what the Kony 2012 campaign smacks of to me. -amer On Mar 8, 2012, at 3:56 PM, Yaw Anokwa wrote: > Invisible Children has written a response at > http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html > > http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18954353409/not-alone has links > to other critiques. > > On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 19:32, Yaw Anokwa <yanokwa at gmail.com> wrote: >> You may have heard about Kony 2012. It is a film and campaign by >> Invisible Children that aims to make "Joseph Kony >> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony) famous, not to celebrate >> him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for >> international justice." The film is at >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc. >> >> While almost everyone agrees that Joseph Kony is a bad person, >> Invisible Children has been criticized for their approach. Grant >> Oyston lays out some of those arguments against Kony 2012 at >> http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble. The >> follow on posts are also informative. >> >> The spread of the Kony meme, both for and against, has been possible >> only because of social media. In that sense, it's quite relevant to >> those of us interested in leveraging technology for change... >> >> Yaw > _______________________________________________ > change mailing list > change at change.washington.edu > http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change
