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From: Michael Laracy [mailto:mlaracy@aecf.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 7:26 AM
To:The KIDS COUNT Discussion List [KIDS COUNT]
Subject: [kidscount] Powerful Social Media and Marketing Project: Kony 2012

Hi, folks –

My teenage daughter, Charlotte, will be spending a couple of weeks this summer on a community service trip to Kenya.  Consequently, she’s been especially interested lately in current events within Africa.

Yesterday, she send me a link to a new YouTube video describing an effort to stop Joseph Kony and his murderous Lord’s Resistance Army which has slaughtered thousands of men, women and children in central Africa.  The project is called Kony 2012, and the video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc.   It is 30 minutes long, but I do recommend that you check it out because I think it is maybe the most brilliant and creative piece of social marketing and social media I’ve ever seen.  It is also utterly compelling and powerful.  It’s already gone hugely viral, and if you watch the video, you’ll see why.

For more info on the effort to bring Kony to justice, check out this excellent Washington Post Column by Michael Gerson:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/joseph-kony-and-the-international-effort-to-bring-him-to-justice/2012/01/26/gIQAYk04TQ_story.html

The net tightens around Joseph Kony

By Michael Gerson, Published: January 26

DUNGU, Congo

Francoise, age 16, talks quietly, revealing a shy smile only after praise for her tight cornrows. While walking to school four years ago, she and some classmates were captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The girls were distributed to soldiers as “wives.” In the mornings, Francoise cooked. In the afternoons, she carried packs on the march. When she tried to escape, the soldiers melted a water container and poured the plastic on her shoulders. Once, when the fighters saw two infants along the path, they crushed them with a pestle. “I witnessed that,” she says.

She recalls seeing Joseph Kony “maybe once a year.” Kony is the leader of the LRA and perhaps the most hated and hunted man on earth. His followers, she explains, think that “he is a supernatural being. He has a power over them.”

Francoise describes a six-week walk to an LRA camp in a remote part of the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR). Then the sounds of an attacking plane and helicopter. In the chaos, she escaped, arriving home just before Christmas.

Her story is eyewitness confirmation of an important event. During the summer, Kony recalled his commanders to the CAR for his first major leadership meeting in two years. On Sept. 12, forces of Uganda’s military (known as the UPDF) scattered the LRA fighters. Kony survived and fled. But the net around him tightens.

The pursuit of the LRA ranges over 240,000 square miles of jungle terrain in three countries. According to officers at the Joint Intelligence and Operations Center in Dungu, there were more than 300 LRA attacks last year. Units operate in small bands both east and west of Dungu. But Kony is still thought to be in the CAR. Experts on the conflict speculate his current location to be somewhere west of the Chinko River, a few hours by helicopter from his pursuers’ nearest military outpost.

During decades of fighting in the bush, Kony has been protected by a bodyguard of myths. His eyes are said to shine bright red. When he runs, his legs are invisible. His soldiers believe that they were created from Kony’s blood. They spill the blood of others without compunction. A few hundred of Kony’s fighters have turned a vast territory into a gathering place of fears.

Organizations such as the Eastern Congo Initiative and Invisible Children are constructing an early-warning radio system to warn villages of impending attacks. United Nations peacekeepers protect civilians in Dungu and other towns.

But for this region to be repaired, the LRA must be broken. Military forces of Congo and the CAR are incapable. So the task has fallen to Ugandan soldiers, advised by the U.S. military. More than 80 U.S. special operations forces have been deployed to forward operating bases in Congo, the CAR and South Sudan. Their mission is to provide intelligence and assistance to the Ugandan military, which has skilled trackers — some of them formerly with the LRA — on Kony’s trail.

Over the past few months, the pressure has begun to tell. Small groups of LRA fighters continue attacks on civilians, mainly to secure supplies. But larger gatherings, such as the Sept. 12 meeting, risk disruption. LRA leaders know that mass civilian killings — a traditional Kony tactic — would call attention to their location. LRA forces have recently released some captive women and children. U.S. advisers view this as a sign of stress — an attempt to lighten the load of a harried force.

The Kony manhunt, however, faces complications. For political reasons, Congo’s government recently ordered Ugandan forces out of its territory, leaving the LRA with significant sanctuaries. The UPDF — which is also fighting al-Shabab in Somalia — is stretched thin. Ugandan operations in the CAR and South Sudan involve just a few transport helicopters and a single reconnaissance drone. The whole effort is hampered by a lack of tactical air support, airlift capacity and advanced communications.

An American combat mission in this conflict is not contemplated. But the U.S. government should press Congo to readmit Ugandan troops pursuing the LRA. And the U.S. military could aid the UPDF with more advanced air and communications capabilities. A small, final push might remove the LRA’s most capable leaders from the field.

After a four-year nightmare, Francoise hopes to go back to school. Joseph Kony, the author of nightmares, remains at large in some jungle camp. He is not a supernatural being. He is human, and thus mortal. It is time to prove it.

michaelgerson@washpost.com

Many thanks,

Mike

 

Michael C. Laracy   /   Director

Policy Reform & Advocacy   /   The Annie E. Casey Foundation

701 St. Paul St.   /   Baltimore, MD 21202

410-223-2934 (o)   /   443-414-1379 (c)

mlaracy@aecf.org   /    www.aecf.org   /   @MikeLaracy

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I admit it.  I am entirely self-possessed at the moment, and I expect to remain in this spiraling inner state until I learn yet again what it is about disappointment that so rocks my inner boat.

Yes.  I am extremely disappointed that the event I took a big hand in arranging that was supposed to happen this coming Saturday has been trashed.  But as often happens in life it is not the current circumstances that lend most weight to my inner boat-rocking that is going on right now.  One event in the present often equals some version of a trauma trigger that stirs up all that muddy water from disappointments from my past.

When I speak about how I see the stress response cycle operating – which I have written about often on this blog – I find myself choosing to think about myself in my own life using the words I so easily spill out upon my blog’s cyber pages.

Thinking again about anger and as I see it existing as a FIRST STOP as one is challenged by something unexpected in life.  How do I begin to untangle the pop-word ‘resentment’ from the actual physiological emotional response of anger?

Anger.  The place where I am challenged to respond to a threat or to solve a problem using what I KNOW from past experience has worked to solve a similar problem in the past.

Am I angry that I have no control over most of what happens in life?  Yes.  That seems like a reasonable response – but only if some return to peaceful calm and a connection to balanced harmony in life can be quickly returned to by using the energy my anger creates for me creatively and postively.

What might my inner Scottish Warrior Woman self give me right now in my efforts to stabilize my own inner rocking boat?  What am I battling, anyway?  What is the threat I detect?  What is the problem?

And how is my current disappointed connected to certain of my past disappointments that are being triggered by my current one?

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I will not know unless I stare directly back at those events that are presenting themselves today on the stage of my life.

One of them happened when I was in 10^th grade.  My crazy, hate-full abusive mother happened to be selling what was known in 1966 as Beeline Fashions through home party shows.  Mother had allowed me to ‘join’ only one social club at my high school:  The Beautify America Club.  All meetings were held at the school during regular school hours.  We accomplished exactly nothing.  I didn’t realize that.  I was simply glad to be a part of something.

Mother decided – I suppose as a way of promoting her business – to contact the group – through me – with a suggestion.  She wanted the club to hostess a fashion show.  She would provide the garments.  There was to be a raffle.  The money earned for the tickets would go for the club.  Mother would provide a prize to the group member who sold the most tickets.

I do not remember what the prize was.  What I remember was myself knocking on every single door in the town of Eagle River, Alaska we lived in that winter as I sold raffle ticket after raffle ticket.  It was a damp and muddy March.  I wore a waist length light tan fake suede jacket with fake leather buttons and fake fur collar and cuffs.

One late afternoon as darkness crawled over the dirt streets I was heading home and slipped, falling fully upon my back in a soupy, sloppy mess of mud.  I was devastated in terror for what Mother would do to me when she discovered that I had ‘ruined’ yet another item of clothing.

My stomach instantly knotted into fists.  I scurried home as carefully as I could and was relieved beyond words when I entered our apartment to find that Mother was out grocery shopping.  I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in so I could wash the mud out of my jacket – so she would never know.

Yes.  I told many, many, many more tickets than did any other girl in the club.  I was so hopeful that here was something I had control over, something I could actually DO that would earn me not the prize itself – which I have no memory of – but win me some acceptance and recognition and positive feelings toward me by my mother.

Nothing.   The club knew I won.  Mother knew I won.   Nobody ever acknowledged my success in any way.  Was I disappointed?  Yes.

Am I still angry about this injustice?  I don’t know.  If I am angry, has my anger soured into a useless resentment?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that there is something about this event from the past that is triggered today with my current disappointment over the trashing of Saturday’s hoped-for events.  Both incidents are at present in my rocking boat.

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And these disappointments are – I find – interestingly – connected to another disappointment.  I can tell myself now how foolish it is for me to still hold in my ‘unresolved trauma’ categories what I am going to mention next.

Only long time readers of this blog will comprehend the comprehensiveness of the insane abuse I suffered for the first 18 years of my life.  Today it is not those stories that interest me.  Today I am reminded of my ESCAPE from my home of origin terrors and traumas.

One month after my 18^th birthday my parents put me into the Navy.  I mean that exactly the way I wrote it.  I knew so little at this age – so little.  But I, in my typical move-ahead way took the strange turns of events in which I was captured in stride the best that I could.

I told the Naval recruiter on the day my father took me there to sign me up that I wanted to study journalism.  “Fine,” the recruiter told me, not looking me in the eye, shuffling signature papers for me to sign.

I believed him.  Just as certainly as I BELIEVED Mother (and the club) that I would be recognized if I sold the most tickets.  I took these people at their word.

I was disappointed yet again.

There were 64 women in my boot camp company.  I was the youngest.  One day all of us were ushered into a room to be ‘tested’.  The results of these tests would determine what school we would be sent to, and hence would determine to a large extent the trajectory of our next months/years of life.

I remember this today.  I was so anxious about this testing – and so fully aware of the promise I had been given that I would be sent to journalism school – that I developed a terrible nosebleed.

There I sat squarely up to the counter with my timed-test sheets of paper coming and going it seemed at a very rapid rate, with my nose bleeding like a faucet into the scrunched up wad of Kleenex in my hand.

I did not complain.  I did not ask for and certainly did not receive any special help considering my difficulties.  I simply took all the tests – and ended up having the highest scores on all of the tests of the entire group of 64 women.

The disappointment:  Because of my high scores I was told it would be a waste to the Navy to send me to journalism school.  I was being sent to computer school instead.

Computer school?  In 1969?  Of course they called it data processing school – but it made no difference to me WHAT they called it.  It was NOT journalism school as I had been promised.  Nor did that altered course of study match one single possible skill set in my possession.

Am I angry today about this betrayal?  Yes.  Do I consider my anger a soured resentment?  I have no idea.

What I do know is that I argue with myself about ‘daring’ to hold onto a sense of justice and injustice that creates in me some kind of energy related to wanting to fight back against something that just plain feels/seems wrong to me.

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Yet today as I examine these disappointments from my past along with this new one today I see that currently there IS NO INJUSTICE.  There is chance.  There is circumstance.  And, yes, there is disappointment.

Nobody intentionally set Linda up to fail regarding Saturday’s events and their cancellation.  I volunteered for this whole thing in the first place.  Obviously I know that.

(OK.  I just saw a word flash through the back of my mind so fast it is gone now.  What was that word?  Find it, Linda!  I bet it’s important…..)

Oh, here it is:  RISK – DARING TO TAKE A RISK.

Did I take a risk in trying as hard as I could to sell those tickets as I REACHED into the future in trust and in hope for a reward I had been promised?  Yes.

Did I take a risk in trying as hard as I could to get the best grades on those Navy tests that I could while trusting in the promise I thought I had been given that in the end I would be sent to study WRITING, my passion?  Yes.

And did I take a big risk in investing great hope and energy over this past month to create an opportunity in this little town to experience a world class musical event of great value?  Yes.

Was I given a PROMISE this time?  NO!  NO!  NO!  I was NOT given a promise.  Therefore no promise has been broken in the events’ cancellation – no matter how disappointing this turn of events might be.

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So what is the connection for me between these three events that marshals some Scottish Warrior Woman sense of outrage?

Part of me is ANGRY that life on this earth is not about promises – and therefore is not REALLY about promises either kept or broken!  Life on the material level is not about rose-garden-fairness.  Life on this earth is not YET about justice.

The only promise of value and worth in existence comes from God – however any of us conceive of this greatest of mysterious powers.  Spiritual promises are given to humanity in the form of Covenants between people and our Creator.  None of the rest of what can ever bother me is really any greater than an eaten Twinkie.

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I wrote a post on February 4, 2012 titled — +KEEPING OUR SAIL TURNED INTO THE GOOD WIND OF HEALING – at the end of which I included three short prayers I use during my daily 45 minute walks.  This one is especially important for me to consider right now in my anti-boat rocking efforts to still my self:

“O God, my God! Look not upon my hopes and my doings, nay rather look upon Thy will that hath encompassed the heavens and the earth. By Thy Most Great Name, O Thou Lord of all nations! I have desired only what Thou didst desire, and love only what Thou dost love.”

From:  Prayers and Meditations by Baha’u’llah, Pages 317-323: 318

If I am asking God not to look “upon my hopes and my doings” why do I bother my self with looking at them for my own self?  Whether I am hoping for a desired prize, a desired course of study, a desired series of planned events to go off without a hitch – none of this actually matters.

What might matter to me, however, is that I dared to take a risk.  And with this daring, with this risking, perhaps there is a special kind of disappointment that can happen when my glass castle crashes into the sea.  True, I’ve never been one to leap from the top of a skyscraper attached to life by a gigantic rubber band, but I have upon occasion made little leaps of faith in human nature into the future.

The trick for me might be to think of some risks of daring I have undertaken in my life that had more positive endings than do the three I have noted here.  But even excluding the ‘final crashed results’ of my current efforts, I have recently experienced conversations with some fine people along the way.

For now, what I am doing is simply letting go.  Which is a process of grieving in its own way……

Can I currently congratulate myself for having yet again taken another leap of good faith?  Not yet.

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My guess is that it is only because of flaws in my spiritual knowledge and practice that I ever experience what I am tempted today to call my ‘human psychology’.  Certainly it is a basic reality of being human that human psychology exists at all.  My suspicion is that many, if not all mammals have a psychology.  But I bet it is only we humans that are given the spiritual ability to manipulate our experience of our own — if not other people’s — psychology.

What do I think human psychology might be?  I return to my memory of being nine years old when I was intrigued with what I could see — and not see — when I held two mirrors up to face one another.  I was keenly though not consciously aware of the fact that it was I that interfered with infinite perfection.  It was only because I — using my eyes — was trying to SEE what infinity reflected in infinity looked like that made the object of my desire impossible to see.

I had to tip the mirrors to see into either one of them.  I wonder if human psychology is a similar experience.  I have a psychology because I live a human life in a human body.  My soul is having experiences — my body, my ego self — all of me has experiences that require that the mirrors of spiritual perfection cannot face one another dead on because I am in my own picture.

I often watch the psychology of other people like I am watching a movie.  If I allow myself to be attached or entangled in what other people think and feel I often feel troubled.  Watching my own psychology lets me know that my discomforts are ALWAYS caused by my own imperfections……

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And, so it is today.  This is the letter to the editors of our local papers that I wrote this morning — and yes, I am dealing with my own psychology including my disappointments:

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Cancellation of Saturday, March 10^th Congo drummers’ performance in Bisbee

With apologies I must report that NGOMA ZA KONGO has been most unfortunately delayed in their arrival in Bisbee due to complications in their travel schedule.  In the spirit of warm friendship and flexibility that Bisbee is famous for it is hoped that our current disappointment will not prevent us from enjoying the drummers’ amazing world class performances in the near future.

NGOMA ZA KONGO was scheduled to appear at Bisbee Farmers’ Market this coming Saturday morning, at Turquoise Valley Golf Course from 3:00–4:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon, and at Club Kilimanjaro from 8:30–9:30 p.m. Saturday evening.  ALL of these scheduled performances are cancelled although the group hopes that they can be rescheduled for us in the near future.

Last December an email appeared in NGOMA ZA KONGO’s inbox from a source unknown to the group.  Included were coupon codes for free food, lodging and for 7 free round-trip tickets for the group to travel from the U.S. to Bangkok, Thailand – and back.  Although the group strongly suspected that a joke or a scam was in progress, they indeed did wait on the east coast until Sunday, February 12^th so that they could key in the coupon codes that had been given to them to see what would happen.  Sure enough, the 7 free tickets appeared.  I received email confirmation at 6:00 a.m. on February 13^th that the group was on their way to perform at festivals throughout Thailand and would return to the U.S. on Tuesday, February 28^th.

Unfortunately there was a visa/passport complication that prevented NGOMA ZA KONGO from leaving Bangkok to return to the U.S. as planned.  The American Embassy in Thailand has repaired the problem and the group notified me this morning that they are now scheduled to arrive in Tucson one day too late to meet their performance commitments in Bisbee for this coming Saturday, March 10^th.

It is greatly hoped that the group will be able to come to Bisbee at a future date.  Please keep checking the Facebook event page at http://www.tinyurl.com/NgomaZaKongo for future plans and updates!  The offers of assistance and the most-warm reception extended by everyone in the Bisbee area on behalf of efforts to bring these AMAZING world traveling professional Congolese drummers to Bisbee is most appreciated!  Let us not give up hope!

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Of course it matters a great deal to me that I am missing a piece of information that concerns not only me personally, but now to some extent many hundreds of people in the community I life in:  Where in the world is the Congolese drum and dance group, Ngoma Za Kongo?

They were last heard from last Wednesday, February 29th when they emailed us that the complications with their visas/passports had been resolved by the American Consulate so that they were now free to fly out of Bangkok, Thailand.  We were told the group would let us know their time of departure from Thailand.  Today is Sunday, March 4th — and we have not received a word.

Congo Drum Group Facebook Event Page

So — what?

Two words for a nearly infinitely loaded question!

How will that question be answered?

I am being continually and very clearly being reminded that it sure is not I who runs the world!

Obviously.  Not that I wouldn’t mind having some super powers right now…

My delight-full brain just responds with, “They must be in the Bermuda Triangle.”

My OTHER brain, my trying-to-be-remote-and-objective-and-reason-able brain suggests that it doesn’t really matter one single bit what happens in the future!

I suggest to myself that every single bit of energy, care and love that has transpired since last February 9th when I heard from the drummers that they would love to come to our little town has already been invested with value.  Much value.  For myself, for others, in ways that I will never understand.

Life goes on.

Life has meaning.

Life will always be a Mystery, everything continually being invested with Divine and Holy Spirit — whether we wish to consciously recognize that fact or not.

So, what?  There is a mystery in progress – plain and simple.  And I have absolutely NO way of knowing what the ending to this little piece of the Congolese Drum Group story will be!

In the meantime – everything is perfect.  Everything is as perfect as it is meant to be!  All the wheels that have been put into motion — all the wheels that remain in motion — center upon this one single most important aspect of a life that connects every person on earth with one another — whether we can physically SEE or HEAR them — or not — the greatness of —

*THE UNIVERSAL LOVE

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What if my life — all life — is defined by what I cannot see?

What if what matters most is invisible to me?

If my hearing was better — more acute and finely tuned — could I hear life happen around me?

What do the newest rose bush leaves sound like as they appear breaking dark purple – not green – into these early spring days?  What do the garden worms sound like – those I so carefully court and care for buried in their earthen bins as they work their magic in the soil?

I heard the raven yesterday.  It was perched on the tallest pinnacle it could find on my neighbor’s glorious pine tree.  It’s mate circled and dove, trying to gain that same foothold where the snacks of newest pine needles was tastiest, full of vitamin C.  One raven held it’s ground – if I can say, so high in the air.

The loser flew again and again, soaring high above the Mexican-American border wall to disappear somewhere, somewhere, somewhere else before it returned.  Four times it returned to float in the air inches – again – from its staunchly standing mate – the one who barely lifted its sturdy wings as the gusts of wind whipped around — the tree and the bird.

And there was that conversation.  I listened.  The neighbor’s bony bull mastiff lies tied by a chain, only bumpy gravel rocks to sleep upon down there on the ground below the growing, reaching, soaring tree.  Raven and dog, dog so captured caught and sad – barking in tones raven answered.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Intent and intention as these two conversed.  One free.  One not.

Beside and below I watched the many butterflies float around my spring budding garden.  Their first day here.  So early.  So light.  Also so free.

And I the watching, listening one.  I having paused from building compost, moving worms into their new homes, knowing they will busily and happily consume consume consume while turning what is useless to other life into something good – something new – something that can bear and sustain life as it comes and goes in these wide circles.

Finally raven mate came to circle the tree’s tip one last time, turned and flew back over the border so invisible to those who are free.  Tree top abandoned.  Conversation ended.  New pine needle snacking completed.  Off flew the birds – south.  Still chained, the dog, silent again — did it feel better having been listened to?  Does the chained one have visions now of places it cannot see?

Will the butterflies return today?  Are they listening for flowers yet to come?

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