From Invisible Children:

In the span of one year, we have made history. In April of 2009, 80,000 of us stood in solidarity with the child soldiers trapped in Joseph Kony’s war. In June, we were two-thousand strong on the lawn of Capitol Hill, asking our leaders to consider the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. In January of this year, we delivered 253,512 signatures to the State Department in support of Kony’s arrest.

Our tenacity, annoying phone calls, hundreds of local office lobby meetings, and certainly our sleeping bag assaults (Oklahoma) paid off and the bill has been passed. Getting a bill passed through Congress is an enormous accomplishment. In the last session of Congress, only 3% of bills introduced were actually passed. We’ve done the impossible.

Now, it goes to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law.

Lawwwww. We have made it law to pursue Joseph Kony. Let that sink in.

This is confirmation that young people have a powerful political voice. We have asked our government and our President to pursue Joseph Kony and other top LRA commanders, to disarm and disband his militia, and to restore stability to those areas of Africa that have been terrorized by the LRA. They have heard us, and now we will hold them accountable to their commitment. This is an entirely solvable conflict. In the aftermath of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Darfur, it is with our generation’s united voice that we proclaim national self interest is no longer our only priority.

We celebrate this victory with our partners Resolve: Uganda and The Enough Project, and now we must pressure the Obama Administration to follow through on this important mandate, to set a precedent for justice, and to protect these children who have too long been trapped in a war against their will. We will see them come home.

How you did it: Watch the Video

Congress Speaks on LRA: Watch the Video

Fist pumps and aggressive status updates with too many exclamation points are encouraged. (sorry news feed… making history wins)

Sincerely!!!!!!!!!!!!
Invisible Children.

$1 Million would go a long way towards bringing Joseph Kony to justice and rescuing his child soldiers. Want to make that happen without giving a cent or hardly lifting a finger?

‘JP Morgan Chase Bank‘, through ‘Chase Community Giving‘ is donating $1 Million to the charity that receives the most votes on their Facebook page in the next 24 hours.

Vote here for Invisible Children: http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/598099

Last week I posted some stuff on the Machine Gun Preacher, Sam Childers. Ever since I posted that, I’ve been trying desperately to reconcile his actions with my theology of non-violence. If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you’ll know that I’ve had an involvement with Invisible Children, an organisation aimed at raising awareness about the plight of child soldiers in East Africa. The violence and chaos in that region caused by Joseph Kony and the LRA is devastating. This madman continues to abduct children, massacre entire villages, hold sex slaves, and maim survivors by cutting off their limbs.

Invisible Children has been working tirelessly to build momentum around this cause and pressure governments to intervene and extract Joseph Kony and rescue the child soldiers. Unfortunately, there have been only small steps towards this goal as the US government and other Western governments are not directly threatened by this catastrophe and are therefore not compelled to dedicate resources to intervene. If you’ve seen any of the Invisible Children films, you’ll know that many attempts have been made to come to peaceful agreements, but to no avail.

Here’s my troubling concern. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, I think we all know that this isn’t going to end peacefully, and that an “extraction” of Joseph Kony won’t happen without a brutal fight. Are we ok with that? Would any of us be the ones to go in there and do it? Probably not. But by sanctioning a military effort, we are essentially approving of violent action. The conundrum presents itself as I agree to a violent extraction of Joseph Kony while maintaining a theology of non-violence.

Let me introduce you to this theology. It is often referred to as the “Myth of Redemptive Violence.” Hundreds and hundreds of books have been written about this, so I won’t be able to do it justice here, but I will give you a brief snapshot. The term was coined by Walter Wink and has been adopted by more contemporary authors. The basic gist goes something like this, if evil always takes some form of violence, then more violence isn’t going to solve anything. Violence cannot bring peace, and the idea that redemption or justice can be gained through an act of vengeance or revenge is simply a myth.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel address in December 1964 sums it up well: “Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

The common understanding is that there are two options: violence or passivity. The question that this theology raises is this: Is there another path? A third way? One that, in Rob Bell’s words, is more imaginative, subversive, brilliant, and creative? There are always alternatives to violence that bring about restorative justice and peace. The crucifixion was the perfect example of this. The violence perpetrated against Jesus by the Powers only served to unmask their illegitimacy. You see, in Matt 5:38-40 where Jesus instructs us to turn the other cheek, this is not passive, it’s quite the opposite. What turning the other cheek does is shame the other person into realising and understanding their destructive behaviour.

But what do you do when there are no more options? What do you do when every possible non-violent option has been exhausted, all the while, innocent people are continuing to die each day? As I take part in the effort to bring about action, each day that passes brings me closer to wanting to follow in the footsteps of Sam Childers and rescue the children myself. We look at Sam Childers and shake our heads in disapproval. But he makes a good point when he challenges people by asking them what they would be willing to do if their own child was abducted and the authorities did nothing. What would you do?

Love it or hate it, but you’ve likely never seen anything like it…

http://www.machinegunpreacher.org/

BRISBANE RESCUED – APRIL 25th, 2009
Our Brisbane event was successful with the rescue of around 300 abductees by Grace Grace MP from Brisbane Central. A big thank you to Grace for coming out and supporting the cause. Sky News also came to “The Rescue” in Sydney with a 7 minute interview on April 26th. Brisbane was one of over 100 cities worldwide that participated in this overnight event, with Melbourne, Perth and Sydney also on the list. » Read the rest of this entry «