Visible Success

Caroline Brazill

World Politics 001H

25 October 2011

A famous quote reads, “Every true genius is bound to be naïve.” College students watching the screening of Invisible Children’s documentary Tony saw that three high school graduates’ summer trip to Africa transformed into one of the most well known Non-governmental organizations to date. A mission to capture the lives of Ugandans on film morphed into a political and social movement asserting that young people can, in fact, end a war.

Tony tells the story of a young boy growing up in northern Uganda, who becomes a face of the Invisible Children Mission. Tony is a “night commuter,” one of the hundreds of children who walk many miles into the city at night to avoid abduction by rebel leader Joseph Kony, whose rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, is composed of captured children forced to act as soldiers. Tony’s story drove the Invisible Children movement; he was a face to a cause, a name to a number. The founders of Invisible Children place a great emphasis not only on the story of Tony, but of peoples’ reactions to the story. So many people, especially youth, wanted to help suffering children and make a long lasting impact.

And so it began: fundraising events, getting the word out, and contacting government officials to help create a safe and sustainable future for Uganda. In one year alone, the youth of America raised more than three million dollars for Invisible Children. The organization sent “roadies” out to travel cross-country and send a message about the violence in northern Uganda. More than 150,000 people participated in Invisible Children’s two large-scale fundraising events in 2009. Invisible Children even introduced a bill to Congress that passed in May 2010. This bill required the governing administration to create a system or plan to ultimately get rid of Joseph Kony and end his countless human rights violations and terrorist actions in Africa.

The film met its objective: wide eyes and dropped jaws signified that the audience was moved and motivated; we, too, wanted to help the communities of Uganda. But our adrenaline rush came crashing down as the speaker for the night revealed that the bill that Invisible Children pushed for Congress was still sitting, waiting for funding. Anger and frustration quickly took the place of pure motivation. All this desire to help, and the government can’t even respond? I left the screening trying to understand the relationship between social activism and political processes: is it that the government shakes its head and nods politely at the passion that surrounds a cause, only to turn its back and remain unresponsive in the long term?

Not quite. The idea, I discovered one chai-latte-assisted decompression session later, is to separate success as defined by the political world and success defined in the social sphere. It’s quite clear to the outside world that “success” in the political arena (i.e. getting a bill passed, approving funding, taking concrete steps toward a solution) comes and goes in waves; there are big celebrations and discussions when a decision is made, and then it’s back to the talking in circles that has categorized the typical bitter American’s definition of the legislative process. But the social arena, as seen in the case of Invisible Children, defines success as constant and intrinsic; Invisible Children expresses its success based on the fact that its supporters wake up every day with a need to make the world better for others.

Furthermore, the systems that these definitions operate in are fundamentally different. While NGOs and social institutions can focus on one idea and invest all of their energy in exposing that idea and creating big goals, the government must sift through hundreds of proposals and concepts, which means their measures of success are smaller chunks rather than radical change—something for everyone (or, at least, most).

So, congressmen are not the evil villains trying to trump the naïve genius that propels NGOs; instead, it’s that the systems of thinking in politics and social activism are not aligned. How can we align them? By keeping channels of communication constantly open. When President Obama announced in mid-October that he would deploy one hundred troops to Africa to rid terrified communities of the threat of Joseph Kony, he showed that issues of social activism don’t always fall completely to the political background. The screening of Tony led me to an understanding that political and social systems of motivation and action are in fact very different; a current success story allowed me to further understand that these systems do have the ability to fuse and create concrete change that thrives in both contexts.