Just when you thought we forgot about that Freedom to Assemble thing...

One might think, living in America, that we had become so complacent in our attitudes and values that the only thing we valued in the First Amendment was the Freedom of Speech. This is because when things piss us off we like to say something about it. We like to trash talk or say how awful something is or talk about what people should be doing, etc. The point being that we do a lot of talking, but not a lot of communicating. We don't, for instance, talk about how we can change something because when that sort of talk starts happening we begin to feel as if we should *gasp* be accountable for the things we say *gasp*. When people start listening it becomes more than just talk, it becomes a starting point for change.

This is where things like Kony 2012 become dangerous. The Youtube video for Kony 2012 went viral within a few days of being released and had college students organizing Cover the Night events all around the country without ever stopping to think about the source. I'll admit that when I was first invited (and when I say invited I mean added without my permission to the Invisible Children group) for my university, my heart ached for the cause and yes I shared the video. However, when I stopped to think about the video and what it was actually doing...I had to take a step back to think about what was really happening. The people behind Kony 2012 operated on a foundation of assumptions, stereotypes and privilege that was critiqued pretty heavily. If you want to read more about it just search for Kony 2012 critique or something similar, trust me, there's plenty.

But I'm not writing about Kony again, I'm writing because of the idea behind Kony, the one that sucked idealists in; the idea that conversation, awareness, and knowledge can create a meaningful social change.

Who'd 'a thunk it? Knowledge as a tool for social change. . .

More importantly who would have thought that a group of people can come together, have conversations to create awareness and foster knowledge in a way that becomes a form of activism?


Well, I know of a few people that may have thought about that idea once or twice before. . . those people being protestors. Yes from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the Fair Election protests in Russia (protesting about their concerns of rigged voting in the third term election of Vladimir Putin) and many, many other high profile protests around the globe, the Protester has been a force to be reckoned with and one to be recognized. The Protester was so widely influential that Time magazine name them the person of the year. Seriously, who would have thought that after years of just taking it, people would wake up and decide to do something about it, to stand up and say that they have a voice in their government and demand to be heard.

After my last post a good friend commented saying that she is angry, but she also feels helpless and has no idea what to do that will actually make a difference. Honestly, I don't have a clue either. I'm certainly not writing because I have all the answers, I'm writing because I think we need to change how we think about things (which also means that we need to think about things).

Sometimes its not about having all the answers or any answer at all, sometimes its just about gettting people to think about the question.