Saturday, May 23, 2009

It's been a while..

Right now, I am going to update by major events per post, starting with the earliest important event. In case you were wondering, I AM done with school and home for the summer (minus travel time).

So, let's go back to April 25....
On April 25, youth in 100 cities around the world symbolically abducted themselves to protest the kidnapping of children in northern Uganda and their forced conscription into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) by orders of the leader, Joseph Kony. The participants would only be rescued if a celebrity or political mogul and a media mogul showed up to the event, otherwise no one was going home. This event was put on by a non-profit organization called Invisible Children and was created after a few college buddies went on a vacation to Africa after graduation and stumbled upon the longest running war in Africa. The participants met at the “Abduction Site” where they were separated into groups and held a rope as they walked to the “LRA Camp,” where they spent the night. In San Francisco, 1500 people showed up and walked the 2.5 miles from the Abduction Site to the LRA Camp. As night drew to a close, San Francisco still was not rescued and at 8 AM the next morning, a group of people from the Los Angeles rescue showed up in a bus. The Rescue Riders had arrived to lend moral support and keep the energy up. Kristin Bell from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Heroes flew in from LA as well to help get more attention to the event and finally, at 6 PM, Willie Brown, the first black mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the House in the California Assembly for 15 years, showed up and rescued San Francisco. The Rescue Riders took on some new numbers from San Francisco and headed east to support other towns. Chicago was the last city to be rescued and after 6 days, a moving song and dance number, and good luck, Oprah rescued Chicago and had Invisible Children appear live on her show on Friday, May 1.

For more information and to find out how you can support Invisible Children and help end a 23-year long war, see www.invisiblechildren.com

1 comment:

Peter Eichstaedt said...

I invite you to see a new book on Kony and his child soldiers titled, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, avaiable at Amazon. Thanks.