Kevin Little

Emma Louise - Boy

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:36:05 -0500

Emma Louise - Boy

Emma Louise - Jungle

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:36:05 -0500

Emma Louise - Jungle

Last Dinosaurs - Andy

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:45:16 -0500

Last Dinosaurs - Andy

Passion Pit - Take a Walk

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:31:43 -0500

Passion Pit - Take a Walk

Ghost Beach - Miracle

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:24:53 -0500

Ghost Beach - Miracle

Mark Foster, Kimbra, A-track - Warrior

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:21:12 -0500

Mark Foster, Kimbra, A-track - Warrior

St. Lucia - All Eyes on You Ready for a saxophone solo?

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:47:05 -0500

St. Lucia - All Eyes on You

Ready for a saxophone solo?

Capital Cities - Kangaroo Court

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:45:05 -0500

Capital Cities - Kangaroo Court

Summer Camp - Better Off Without You

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:42:05 -0500

Summer Camp - Better Off Without You

Vacationer - Good As New

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:35:05 -0500

Vacationer - Good As New

Delta Spirit - California

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:31:05 -0500

Delta Spirit - California

Good Old War - Calling Me Names Going to see Good Old War, The...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:50:22 -0500

Good Old War - Calling Me Names

Going to see Good Old War, The Belle Brigade, and Family of the Year at Lincoln Hall next month. It should be a good show. You should come, too, non-existent blog reader!

Marina and the Diamonds - Primadonna Produced by Dr. Luke, whose...

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:14:00 -0500

Marina and the Diamonds - Primadonna

Produced by Dr. Luke, whose PhD thesis was on making songs that bury deep into your head, even if you want to hate them.

More Marina

First Aid Kit - Emmylou

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:13:00 -0500

First Aid Kit - Emmylou

Last Dinosaurs - Time & Place

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:25:09 -0600

Last Dinosaurs - Time & Place

Education and advocacy are tricky beasts

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:35:00 -0600

This week the education/advocacy/aid group Invisible Children launched its KONY 2012 campaign with a 30-minute video that invites viewers to join together to bring Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (an organization in central Africa that is infamous for abducting children and forcing them to be its soldiers), to justice. Most people agree that Joseph Kony needs to be caught and tried for his horrific crimes, and the video and discussion about Kony have been all over the internet the last few days. However, it turns out that stopping the LRA, like solving any of the world’s difficult problems, is more complex than it may seem in the well-produced video, leading to wide-spread criticism of Invisible Children and its campaign.

I’m not an expert (on anything, really). And I’ve never been to the countries where Kony has been active in the past (Uganda) or the present (South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic). I’ve never been to Africa at all. But I know that education and advocacy for issues like this one are tricky beasts to tackle. You want to get people motivated to act on a big issue, but it’s hard to do this in a way that educates people about the complexity of the issue. If a problem is big enough that you want to build a movement to solve it, it’s probably not a problem with a simple answer.

In college, I helped run a campus organization called Acting on AIDS. Our goal was to educate our campus and community about HIV/AIDS both in sub-Saharan Africa and in our community. We used a variety of methods that were also used on other campuses, like “Lives at Stake” and “Lives on the Line,” where we’d post pictures of AIDS orphans that students could sponsor through World Vision (an aid behemoth that receives plenty of criticism we never thought to consider). We were giving it our best shot, but I think most people came away with a one-sided view of the problem (“Kids are dying!”) and a one-dimensional response to the problem (“Give us your money!”). Our goal was to give students a chance to respond and act, but the result was usually just to rain down white guilt on campus every World AIDS Day.

HIV/AIDS is a complicated issue that is intertwined with so many other big issues, especially in Africa (not to say that HIV in the developed world doesn’t have its own complexities). When you’re dealing with a problem this large, on a continent as large and diverse as Africa, you’re starting to take on centuries of systematic oppression, poverty, and poor governance, just to name a few of Africa’s problems. When you begin to search for a solution, you find that you’re actually looking for many solutions to a wide range of interconnected problems.

This doesn’t mean that we should be cynical and do nothing when the answers aren’t simple. But it does mean that we should try to learn about the complexities of an issue before we jump on a bandwagon that’s promoting a silver-bullet solution. The KONY 2012 campaign has motivated thousands of people to learn more about this issue, and since Invisible Children is primarily working towards education and advocacy, the campaign’s definitely already been hugely successful. It’s our responsibility, though, to make sure we’re well-informed before we take action or just throw some money at the problem to assuage our guilt.

So, if you took the time to watch the 30-minute video, take another 30 minutes to read (or at least skim) a well-written report by experts on the situation. Read a response from someone that was abducted by the LRA as a child. Read Invisible Children’s response to its criticism. Remember that there are people in Africa just as smart and as interested in solving these problems as people in the US. Remember that there are no easy solutions to difficult problems, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to solve them.

Amanda Mair - Sense

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:25:02 -0600

Amanda Mair - Sense

Family of the Year - 6am

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:24:46 -0600

Family of the Year - 6am

If I had Pinterest, it would be nothing but pictures of Downton...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:21:00 -0600

If I had Pinterest, it would be nothing but pictures of Downton Abbey’s Sybil, the woman of my historical fiction dreams.

Fun. - Some Nights If you haven’t already, check out We...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:25:28 -0600

Fun. - Some Nights

If you haven’t already, check out We Are Young.