Over the next few days, weeks and months you will be hearing and seeing the slogan ‘KONY 2012’. However, the overall ambiguity of the slogan will confuse a vast majority of you. To quote the organisation behind this campaign, Invisible Children: “KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”.
Who Is Joseph Kony?
The 29-minute documentary (available below), which has become a viral hit being shared nearly 4 million times on Facebook in the past week, is titled after the infamous leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). It depicts a war-torn child, named Jacob, who is a former LRA child solider, and his struggle for awareness about the issues that Joseph Kony has caused.
The short film calls all supporters to arms on April 20, 2012 to stage their own guerrilla war, but instead of being armed with weapons similar to Kony’s 30,000 strong child army, they will be armed with posters and stickers in what is one of the most diverse political campaigns seen to this day. The campaign will see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of posters depicting the face of Kony plastered across the globe to achieve this goal of making Kony an infamous celebrity. Director of the film Jason Russell described the 20th April as “The day when we will meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city until the sun comes up. The rest of the world will go to bed Friday night and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice,”. KONY 2012 is one of the most moving viral documentaries available today, and expires at the end of 2012. It’s coming.
Those wishing to help contribute to this more-than-worthy cause can buy posters, starter packs and merchandise here.
