Invisible Children

On Saturday my daughter and I and some friends participated in the Global Night Commute (GNC) sponsored by Invisible Children. The purpose of the evening was to draw attention to the horrendous situation that is happening in Uganda where a rebel group called the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is kidnapping children to use as soldiers or sex slaves. That's right - young children are stolen from their homes at night and forced to kill and perform horrible acts to avoid being killed - or having their families killed in front of them. I first became aware of this situation by viewing the movie created by three young men who started Invisible Children and who are trying to change the world. It's an amazing story and you should check out their web site to get more information.

Every night, while my kids sleep peacefully in their beds, thousands of children in northern Uganda travel miles to find a safe place to sleep. They call them the "night commuters" and the GNC was designed to mimic their actions and hopefully draw some media attention. We parked at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and walked for about 45 minutes to Orange Coast College. We joined about 500 people and slept on a field at the college. Or I should say tried to sleep. I was one of only about 5 people in attendance who had grey hair and it turns out that this large group of young people were far more interested in talking and having fun than sleeping (go figure). Overall it was a great experience, and I tried not to act like a crabby old guy, but by 3:00 AM I was very ready for a little quiet (at least until I started snoring).

I checked the LA Times this morning, expecting that there would be some coverage, but guess what? Not a single story. Nada. Zip. This event took place in cities all around the country, but I haven't seen any stories in the media about it yet. I guess if we had burned some buildings or overturned a few cars, we could have received attention, but evidently young people trying to change the world through peaceful means isn't much of a story.

So what does this have to do with technology? Not a whole lot (but it's my blog so who says I have to stay on topic?). This kind of activity is certainly much easier now that we have technology that lets us be publishers as well as consumers. The Invisible Children movement is one that has been fueled by the Internet. You can buy the DVDs that tell the whole story from their website, and the GNC details were publicized using MySpace. It's a great use of technology for a great purpose. That's a great story - too bad the LA Times doesn't think so.