ACAS has created What Can We Do about Uganda and the LRA? for use with high school and college students who are the main audience of the Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign. See our new webpage, Resources on Uganda, the LRA, and Central Africa.
ACAS releases statement on the LRA and Central Africa
ACAS has released a statement and accompanying press release expressing its deep concern that the recent campaign in the United States to pursue and arrest Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), could have dangerous unintended consequences. Expanding U.S. military operations with the Ugandan army to capture Kony could increase the militarization of the region and lead to deaths of civilians who are caught in the crossfire or become targets of retaliatory attacks by the LRA, as has occurred in the past.
ACAS also is producing materials that scholars can use to engage with students on their campuses and with teachers and middle and high school students in their communities, who are a major audience of the Kony2012 video produced by Invisible Children.
Two critical essays on the Invisible Children’s Kony2012 campaign
Two useful essays on African Arguments Online with a critical perspective on the “Kony2012” video by Invisible Children:
“#StopKony2012: For most Ugandans Kony’s crimes are from a bygone era” by Angelo Izama. a Ugandan journalist and writer who founded the human security Think Tank, Fanaka Kwawote based in Kampala, and “The Problem with Invisible Children’s ‘Kony 2012′” by Michael Deibert, a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and author of the forthcoming Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books)
Critique of “KONY2012” Video by Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire
This short video from Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan journalist, is an eloquent, coherent, and well-informed critique of the Invisible Children video, “Kony2012″. Read more from Kagumire at her blog.
The explosion of interest in this video this week has reignited the controversy about the Obama administration decision in October 2011 to send 100 US Africa Command (AFRICOM) soldiers, armed and with permission to kill, as “advisors” to support the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army.
SIGN PETITION: US Aid to Ethiopia Supports Forced Relocations for Land Grabs
The ACAS Task Force on Land Grabs urges you to sign a petition to President Obama and USAID administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah to stop your tax money financing land grabs, forced removals of pastoralist peoples, and “cultural transformation” in Ethiopia.
Go to the petition (click on “Petition” tab to see text).
This initiative is from the Oakland Institute and Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE).
News of ACAS at 2011 ASA meeting
Thursday, November 17 at 9:00 pm is the scheduled time for the 2011 ACAS annual meeting, in the Jefferson Room at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (2660 Woodley Road, NW) in Washington, D.C. in , at the African Studies Association annual meeting. All interested scholars are welcome.
Demand an end to the violence against teachers and students in Haiti
We the undersigned are responding to a call for international solidarity sent out by the executive committee of a coalition of education organizations in Haiti after the police killing of a protesting teacher, and signed on Oct. 11, 2010, by the coordinators of the coalition François Mario, CNEH (teachers’ union), Eugène Jean, UPEPH (parents’ organization), and Josué Mérilien, UNNOH (teachers’ union). We stand in solidarity with teachers, students, and parents in Port-au-Prince who are organizing for schooling for Haitian children abandoned by the education system, and for decent living and working conditions for teachers and students. We demand an end to the systematic violence against them.