I've never written a diary here before. I've made the occasional comment. I've recommended other diaries and have uprated comments. I've gotten angry enough at various political situations I've learned about here to shoot an email to my senators and representatives or to the offending corporation. Between all the things I've committed to in my personal life (work, martial arts, my girlfriend, my family, and my friends), I've had little impetus and even less time to get myself out personally to rallies and protests. I keep telling myself that I'm totally going to get out to an Occupy movement one of these days (though it looks like, unless they moved, the Baltimore one disintegrated, which would have been the most convenient one to me), but, if I were to be truly honest with myself, that's likely not going to actually happen. I have never before encountered an issue or a cause that have galvanized me like this one has.
Joseph Kony is a criminal. He operates in Africa where he abducts children. He presses the boys into become his soldiers, and he presses the girls into sexual slavery. He has, over the last 20-odd years he has operated, abducted more than 30,000 children. No, I didn't add an extra zero. 30,000. I can't even wrap my mind around that.
Seriously, just watch this:
That's my somewhat feeble attempt to embed the video. If it didn't work, here's the link - Kony 2012. It's 30 minutes long. I'll "see" you when you get back.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to blog about this here. I'm too upset by this to do things like search diaries to ensure I'm not duplicating effort here. I have to take action. That started by my sharing this on Facebook. I tried to go to the Invisible Children website to donate, but their store/donation page seems to have hit a bandwidth limit, so now I'm posting this here.
The bottom line for me is this: it is never OK for children to have to live through what this man is forcing them to live through. I don't like using the word evil, but if I was ever going to use it, this would be when. This man is evil, and he must be stopped, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to make that happen.