Two Sides to KONY 2012

You might have heard about Joseph Kony and the California filmmaker who created a documentary about the plight of the Acholi people--the so-called "Invisible Children." 

View the video to hear his side of the story...

Touching and heart-breaking, isn't it?
On the flip-side, someone is courageous enough to shed some light on the other side of the story. Here's an excerpt from her blog that you can read in full if you click here:


"Firstly, I would like to question your timing of this KONY 2012 crusade in Uganda when most of the violence from Joseph Kony and the LRA (The Lord’s Resistance Army) has subsided in Uganda in the past 5 years. The LRA has moved onto neighboring countries like the DRC and Sudan. Why are you not urging action in the countries he is currently in? Why are you worried about Kony all of a sudden when Ugandans are not at this present moment?

This grossly illogical timing and statements on your website such as “Click here to buy your KONY 2012 products” makes me believe that the timing has more to do with your commercial interests than humanitarian interests. With the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the waning interest in Invisible Children, it seems to be perfect timing to start a crusade. I also must add at this point how much it personally disgusts me the way in which you have commercialized a conflict in which thousands of people have died."

As a former journalist, I used to be quick to jump to conclusions under the pressure of meeting news deadlines. This one's the good guy, that one's the bad guy, and that's the victim. But life experiences have taught me that it isn't always that obvious. There is a lot of gray areas in life and, especially, socio-political issues. 

I don't know who is telling the truth in the case of Kony 2012. But I believe we owe it to ourselves to not just accept whatever the media fed to us as the absolute truth. We need to do our own critical thinking and fact finding instead of having political pundits and so-called 'experts' do the thinking for us.