Three Way Minority

I wish I could just vent and tell the internet that I want to kill myself without everyone freaking out. I just have PMS, ok? not actually going to slash my wrists though this feeling suicidal once a month thing is getting pretty old. I’m posting this here cause I’m fairly sure no one actually reads this. rage# rage# rage# vent# vent# vent# that’s what this is for right? porn, cats and getting angry and the black space that is the internet? 

So I feel like having a Kony rant because I don’t think anyone (i mean less then 10 people) reads my tumblr which means I won’t get yelled at for talking about it or having an opinion.

So I’d totally ignored the whole thing until I actually had some time to sit and watch the video and read the criticisms.  Which I have now done. 

So the video was really well done and I felt empowered to go and do something. very clearly the video did what it was supposed to. So after watching it I went on a hunt to find what the critics had to say. 

The first things the critics had to say was that invisible children were only spending 30% of their funds on actually doing stuff. Now this is the reason I refuse to support organizations like world vision because I feel like the spend way to much of their money on  admin and not enough on feeding the starving children in africa. (forgive my crass offensive language, I’m mostly just ranting) I think this is a very fair criticism however I do think people under estimate the costs of running something that big.  Anyway, here is a document (http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html) that seems to say they are spending 37% on programs in africa, 16% on admin costs and the rest goes on raising awareness and on fundraising. Considering that their main aim with the Kony campain is to raise awareness so the american government takes some action, I don’t think these numbers are that bad. (having said that, I’m not sure about their campaigns prior to the current Kony one). 

Another criticism was that IC supports the US military to support the various african military groups to track down and find Kony. And apparently the african armies are riddled with corruption and rapists. If there is a high level of corruption, what do you do? The US military can hardly go in and just start their own war against Kony. I guess they could work at reducing the corruption instead of looking for Kony but it’s kind of a different issue entirely. 

Other criticisms were that the Kony campaign was aiming just to catch Kony and not support his victims which after reading the article I linked above, I don’t think is true. (though it is published by IC, they could be lying, who knows) 

The last criticism I will address is that some people don’t like it that other people think that they can change the world by “liking” a post. now. I agree with that. However I think that spreading awareness and getting people to speak up about issues that they feel are important, is a good way of going about getting things done and I think it’s really good when people spread awareness about stuff, provided they have done they’re research first and arnt just supporting it because it’s the thing to do. 

In summery I don’t think I’ll be going out and postering walls on april 20th however I think it’s quite a good campaign that may lead the way for better versions of the same thing in future.