Brittany Ballantyne
Equinox Staff
Invisible Children came to Keene State College on Wednesday, April 11 with a guest speaker from Uganda, making the war in Africa and the children involved in it not so invisible after all. The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness club brought the organization to the Mabel Brown Room and insisted that it is not for nor against Invisible Children (IC), but merely pro-awareness.
IC videos were shown, discussed, and the discussion was opened up for questions after the presentation.
What caught many students’ attention, however, was Quinto who spoke of his experience with the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Quinto had escaped the LRA with paralyzed palms but returned safely to his family. What he asked of audience members was to increase their involvement and spread awareness peacefully. He told audience members, “I believe that your voice is much stronger than Joseph Kony.”
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Sophomore Johanna DeBari, vice president of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness club, said, “Frankly if truth telling is of any value to anybody, I think it’s most valuable to the people that think they’re untouched by it and I’ve listened to a former child soldier speak.“
“I’ve listened to a Holocaust survivor speak, I’ve listened to a Rwandan survivor speak, and hearing them tell their story and either them get emotional or non-emotional, it kind of shakes you up and makes you think about your life in a different context,” she said.
“He puts the movement into perspective because you can tell people there’s a war in Uganda and the LRA’s doing these horrible things but if you don’t hear it directly from someone who’s been affected by it, then it doesn’t really click for you and I feel like he made it click for a lot of people,” DeBari said. Quinto’s message clicked for sophomore Liz Leahy. “I think we look at those kids in the video and they’re a continent away from us, we don’t think of how it effects them but to actually see someone who went through it as a child, it’s almost impossible to ignore,” she said. Sophomore Haley Brittain agreed and said, “You see the people and you listen to their stories and it makes it real.” Senior Danielle Flaherty of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness club said Quinto’s message was important to her.
“A lot of the time when you deal with conflicts and different war crimes like this, it doesn’t necessarily bring it to home and it doesn’t necessarily bring it to life. So when you bring someone over and you see what’s happening with your own eyes, not necessarily like a digital or online thing, but actually seeing a person standing in front of you saying this is happening and this happened to me, I think it really makes a difference in how you see the conflict and how it stays in your mind,” she said.
DeBari was surprised that those who attended didn’t ask more critical questions. Due to the controversy and skepticism many have about IC, she said, “It was surprising to me to not have as much of I guess a tug-of-war between the organization and the people.”
“I think that it’s kind of the next step for taking this from being a trendy, sort of ‘I’m just going put it on my Facebook and then forget about it’ thing, but it’s also really physically putting yourself in that movement and it’s making you feel like, ‘Wow, I actually am part of this, something that’s bigger than me and it’s awesome. But even if people don’t agree with it and they have all the criticisms associated with it, they can come and ask those hard questions because that’s why we’re bringing them here. That’s what they’re here for,” DeBari said prior to the event. “I think that a lot of the message of what Kony 2012 was trying to do kind of went over people’s heads because it’s not specifically about explaining this complex war to people,” DeBari said.“They say in the video that it’s complex and you’re not going know all the parts because it wouldn’t have lasted 26 years if it wasn’t complicated, but I think that the fact that it’s just telling you to go out there and make a difference, that’s something that I support and I think that it’s enough for me to weight that more heavily than all of the nitty-bitty facts,” DeBari said.
“I think a lot of people are very ignorant about the subject and very misinformed mostly because in the United States we can’t possibly fathom a subject like this, we can’t wrap our heads around children being murdered and killing their own parents and fighting a war,” Leahy said. Brittain said, “I think the controversy is understandable, I think it is a very complex issue and the video is definitely a hit on Americans’ interests and fads and emotional connection to it but what I think they need to do is take it a step closer and get people more informed in what they’re learning about, not just knowing and becoming a fan of something, they should become an activist for it.”
The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness club, according to DeBari, is trying to “get people involved, not in just this Invisible Children issue but issues more relevant in the rest of the world because our club does a lot of things more like activism.” During the presentation, IC members explained that as an organization they are supporting Kony’s capture to be tried in the International Criminal Court and set an example for if there is ever another Joseph Kony in the future.
Cover the Night is taking place Friday night, April 20, across the nation.Volunteers will hang up posters, stickers, banners, and get creative to spread the word about Kony in their towns and cities.
IC members told audience members to think about years down the line, questioning, “What were you doing when Kony was made famous?”
Students asked questions about the future, wondering about plans, and what would happen next.
Leahy explained her plans for the future.
“I’m definitely doing Cover the Night and hopefully from there they can tell us what we can do in our own hometowns. I know I went home and I was surprised many people didn’t even know this was going on, so I feel like the more that we learn about this the more we can bring it to our own communities,” she said.
Flaherty plans on participating in Cover the Night as well and is looking into going to Uganda to try and make a difference.
When Brittain was asked what she would tell students about the event who didn’t attend, she said, “They missed out. We’ve all heard the video, everybody has seen it or has heard about it or it’s popped up on a news feed somewhere and you missed out on getting the real dirt.”
Brittany Ballantyne can be contacted at
bballantyne@keene-equinox.com
Graphic by: Chelsea Nickerson / Graphics Editor