Displace Me - A Protest Against Child Soldiers
Invisible Children Supporters Protest Northern Ugandan War
Every generation protests something. Today's generation has taken a stand against a little-known war in northern Uganda. And to raise awareness and express opinions, thousands of young adults spent the night on public lawns across the United States.
The Scene
Cardboard, a sleeping bag, a bottle of water and a sleeve of saltine crackers. These are the only items more than 68,000 young adults used on April 28, 2008 as they gave up their comforts for a night to raise awareness of the 21 year war in northern Uganda at Displace Me.
These college-aged students represented their awareness and compassion toward global issues by sleeping on college lawns and public parks for the nationwide event held in 15 major cities.
Groups of participants built cardboard-and-duct tape homes on their city's lawn, using paint and marker to draw images and write words of protest and hope, much like the Ugandans who decorate their own homes with art and words of hope. The artwork showed signs of hope, compassion, authenticity and action. Painted silhouettes of child soldiers with a red Xs on their chests and quotes of outrage and outreach layered the walls.
The young adults slept slathered in dew and survived not knowing when their rations of crackers and water would come, but their experience hardly compared to the real displaced people of northern Uganda.
The War
In Uganda, about 50,000 children a year are abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army as soon as they are able to hold guns. They are then trained and brainwashed to become child murderers. For 22 years the war has pressed on, and if it continues five more years, the Acholi people, an endangered ethnic group, will vanish, making this is the largest genocide since the Holocaust.
Since 1996, the LRA has forced the northern Ugandan men, women and children into camps where members of the LRA often beat, rape and murder the abducted. Orphaned children flee from the LRA by sleeping in masses in hospitals and other public places. They stay awake late into the night studying, although 60 percent of schools have been closed because of the war, and the ones that remain opened are so crowded there are sometimes 300 students to one teacher.
The Protest
And American young adults care so much about people a world away from them that they are actively attempting to destroy the conflict that kills nearly 1,000 people a week. Not only did they receive the attention of local and national media, but they also wrote letters to their senators and the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, demanding three things: promotion of the peace, protection of the people and punishment of the perpetrators. Over the past 22 years both the United States and Ugandan governments have sat idly while the situation festered, and students are taking a stand.
One participant in the New Orleans Displace Me said that the nation only pays attention to the war in Iraq, in which only a fraction of people have died compared to the thousands of innocent families and children in Uganda, but there is hope because people who listen to the story of the Invisible Children care because they realize that it could be happening in their own country. The problem is getting publicity to spread the word.
The Result
The story of the Invisible Children has spread rapidly across America after three college students filmed a documentary, appealing mainly to young adults and teenagers. Participants agreed that the documentary causes people to empathize with others who seem distant by showing children studying in underground tunnels and shooting others before they are old enough to ride a bicycle. The program gives people an easy way of serving a nation in desperation.
Through the selling of hand-made bracelets, e-water bottles and the School-for-Schools program, people in Uganda are being fed, wells and schools are being built and lives are being saved. Another program greatly funded by the Invisible Children rehabilitates child soldiers and teaches them how to function in normal society. But the war still presses on.
While at Displace Me, a new documentary was filmed, which has been sent to both nations' governments. Through their temporary displacement, these young adults have made their voices heard: Every war has an end.
Decorations Reflected Protest and Hope
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Participants Helped Film a Documentary
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