On Animal Rights Activism

Earlier this year I saw a talk about armed conservancy. The talk centered on nature reserves in northeastern Central African Republic where conservancy groups employ armed teams to patrol the grounds for poachers. The act of hunting hunters is really fascinating, and it’s actually not that uncommon. A lot of African countries have shoot-on-sight policies regarding poachers in order to protect the wildlife (and therefore the tourism industry). But what was interesting was that some of the anti-poaching men Lombard talked about were not from Africa. There was a Frenchman and a couple of Russians who were active in these groups either for ideology or for the money. It reminded me Battleground: Rhino Wars .

Battleground: Rhino Wars is a mini-series that follows four U.S. ex-military as they work to stop poachers. I haven’t seen it, I’ve only seen commercials and that video linked above. But it’s not hard to see what happens on the show. They wander the preserves looking for snares and other traps, they go into markets looking for ivory, and they try to arrest poachers. Animal Planet is documenting the horrors of poaching and showing the more extreme ways to fight it, with a heavy dose of neo-colonialism throughout (like in this video, for example, but that will have to be another post). It’s not too different from a more popular Animal Planet show, also about the more militant types of halting illegal animal trade: Whale Wars.

Whale Wars is a program that’s been around for a few years now. The show follows the crew of several ships that are part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an environmental and animal rights group that the U.S. had designated as eco-terrorists, as they work to interrupt Japanese whaling vessels. The group has done a lot in its history, but the series concentrates on its action against Japanese whalers. On the show, I’ve seen them lobbing jars of butyric acid at ships (to taint the deck with odor so they can’t work) and try to break the propellers of ships while at sea. The Japanese ships usually respond with water cannons, sound cannons, or flash-bang grenades. It’s direct action, as to whether it’s violent – judge how you want. It might be worth noting that these shows don’t cover violence against people, but rather attacks on the infrastructure and ability to make the animal trade financially nonviable.

But whenever I think about environmental activists and their extreme actions, I wonder where the line is. Raiding a poachers’ camp and boarding a whaling vessel are disputed, but they’re at least accepted enough to serve as entertainment on a television program.  But when animal rights activists firebomb a research clinic or environmentalists burn down construction sites in new, expensive neighborhoods, people are quick to label them terrorists (again, your call). These acts also attack property and infrastructure, trying to make it more difficult to abuse animals and more expensive to clear forests for the rich. What changes our understanding of these acts? Is it the escalation of the attack, from stink- and smoke-bombs that render a ship’s deck unfit for whales to fires that actually destroy? Are people less likely to object to Whale Wars and Rhino Wars because they take place outside the U.S., and so it has less to do with us? Is it merely because it’s on television, so it seems somehow less real? Better question: how would people react if activists sabotaged the Keystone XL pipeline?

One Year After Kony2012: Resources for the Lord’s Resistance Army

Today marks a year since Kony 2012 was released, which means a year minus a couple of hours since it went viral. In the aftermath of the controversy, I threw together a link roundup about the video. To mark the occasion, I wanted to try my hand at a definitive reading list on the conflict and its many facets. I’ve broken this into categories to help anyone looking for specific aspects of the LRA conflict. A lot of the links are open access, but there are a lot of journals too. If you have trouble opening any articles, drop me a line. Please let me know in the comments if you know of other works I should include.

For a broad overview, there are two big things you need to read. The e-book, Beyond Kony 2012, edited by Amanda Taub, is available at whatever price you’d like to pay. It includes everything from the history of the conflict to advocacy responses to Invisible Children, all from great people in various fields. The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality,  edited by Tim Allen and Koen Vlassenroot, is a good primer, especially on living in and near the LRA and the debate between peace and justice.

If you’re looking for other broad resources, International Crisis Group (ICG) has a report on understanding the conflict. The Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) has a number of field reports outlining various events in the conflict’s history that are worth perusing. For specific aspects of the conflict, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and Tulane’s Payson Center for International Development have a report on LRA abductions. In additon, the LRA Crisis Tracker has just issued its annual security review on LRA activity.

There are quite a few decent articles on motivations and politics of the LRA: Frank van Acker, and Ruddy Doom and Koen Vlassenroot have written good analyses of the LRA; Adam Branch situates the conflict around Acholi  peasants; Paul Jackson views the conflict from the greed vs. grievance perspective.

Patrick Wegner wrote a great piece on the Internationally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Uganda. Chris Dolan has written a whole book (Google Books preview here) on the camps, in which he details their damaging effect on the entire northern Ugandan society. Adam Branch has written a book (preview) about the consequences of humanitarian involvement that I haven’t read, but if it’s anything like his other work it’s imperative. The Refugee Law Project has a paper [pdf] on effects of violence on displaced communities.

Regarding the ICC, Allen’s short book on the subject is best, but you can also settle for his DFID report [pdf]. Branch has written this short piece [pdf] and a longer one [pdf] on ICC involvement. My professor in undergrad, Victor Peskin, wrote this analysis of the ICC’s approach to both Uganda and Sudan. The Refugee Law Project has working papers on the ICC, traditional justice, . Louise Parrott looks at alternatives to the ICC. There is also a series of blog posts at Justice in Conflict about LRA commander Thomas Kwoyelo’s trial in Gulu.

On the flip side, regarding Uganda’s amnesty process, Louise Mallinder analyzes the amnesty process and Linda M. Keller looks at alternatives to the ICC. The first issue of JRP’s magazine, Voices [pdf], was about the amnesty process, and the Refugee Law Project has a working paper [pdf] on it as well. ICTJ and Berkeley’s Human Rights Center have a report on popular attitudes towards the ICC and amnesty, and ICTJ, Berkeley, and Tulane later published a joint report [pdf] on attitudes towards these ideas and reconstruction.

ICTJ and JRP have a joint report [pdf] on memorials and memory in LRA-affected regions. There’s also this piece on young adult perceptions of the LRA, which is an interesting perspective. Accord has a great report [pdf] on the long history of peace negotiations between the LRA and Uganda. They also put out this addendum [pdf] by Chris Dolan about the Juba peace process. I wrote a condensed history of peace and conflict in the war.

Looking at the military side of things, Mareike Schomerus has a look at the UPDF’s actions in Sudan, Sverker Finnström wrote about Kony 2012 and military humanitarianism; a group of authors wrote this article shedding light on what a military solution to the conflict would actually require. The Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative released this report right before Kony 2012, outlining what U.S. involvement should look like. More recently, Resolve helped release this report [pdf] on problems with the UN’s response. ICG has a report spelling out what else is needed beyond Kony’s capture/death.

This is my no means an exhaustive list of readings, merely the ones I think are the most important or ones with interesting perspectives, in addition to some reports with lots of information. Again, if you know of other things that are missing that you think are important, leave a comment.

What Can We Do?

Yesterday, in light of recent events, my friend Adam and I engaged in a thorough conversation over what the next step is in changing the national discourse on gun control. The truth is that I have no idea. I figured I’d lead with that before writing this post. I’ve never worked on any gun control issue, and I’m not even that well-read on the issue. But I have a lot of thoughts on it, because it’s something that enters my thoughts pretty often.

When looking at the recent history of gun violence and massacres in the United States, it’s hard to parse out a strategy or narrative that’s deals solely with guns. The perceived importance of guns is tied up with our Constitution’s Second Amendment, and any conversation about preventing such tragic events must include talk of access to, funding for, and reduced stigma of mental healthcare and increased support for victims of domestic violence. And when you talk about political or legal solutions to gun proliferation, you involve the political system, the powerful gun lobby, and the ideologues of the Republican Party along with unequal state laws, a Supreme Court that strikes down bans, and a Democratic Party scared to use its strength.

So, eschewing the question of when it’s right to talk about gun control, I ask: what will be done? We can’t really accept that nothing will be done, even though a lot of us have reluctantly muttered the question “how many more times will this have to happen before we do something about it?” at least a few times in the past week, month, year, or decade. But if we refuse the idea that nothing will be done, if we decide that something will be done, what will that something be?

A relative of mine recently tried to take advantage of some gun sales at a hunting store in Arizona, and the guns had all sold out almost immediately. When my dad asked him why, the relative reiterated the fear that Obama will be banning all guns any day now, so a lot of Republicans are getting them while they can. Nevermind the fact that Obama hasn’t had the gumption to do anything when it comes to gun violence, and has actually helped facilitate the militarizing of a host of countries around the world. What do we do about gun control when people are already hoarding weaponry to face both the apocalypse and the specter of a government crackdown on guns, both of which are completely unfounded?

It will be a long and arduous campaign to shift the cultural mindset. The NRA and similar organizations have always had a tight grip on the lawmakers of this country, and they have also fostered a deep love for guns among the citizenry. The recent radical turn of the Republican Party has only exacerbated this as more and more people feel tied to their right to bear arms. There’s no easy way to reverse this trend, but a long and committed campaign could slowly chip away at the power of firearms.

It is, of course, my dream that I could live in an America where there is either a full gun ban or something close.  But that’s all it is. It’s a dream, and it will remain that way. After all, yesterday’s tragedy, and many gun-related tragedies, was carried out by legal weapons. But there has to be some argument that, if killing sprees and this easy while ostensibly following the law, maybe we should change the law. The fight against gun violence and mass killings needs to start locally, and it needs to start with conversation.

Kony 2012 Panel – A Response

Over the weekend I penned a lengthy recap of Friday’s panel on Kony 2012 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture that was hosted by Congo in Harlem. If you’re interested in the LRA, central Africa, or Invisible Children, it’s worth perusing. I promised to contribute something to the conversation, and this is what I ended up with:

Today I wanted to take a brief look at a particular moment of last week’s panel, when Kate Cronin-Furman gave her opening remarks. She chose to talk about the decision for Invisible Children to concentrate on the International Criminal Court, and to look at what that meant for the campaign specifically as well as the narrative of the conflict as portrayed in the video. She began by looking at the circumstances that resulted in the ICC referral and compared it to Uganda’s justice system today. She also argued that a campaign that only addressed the ICC was either “not thoughtful advocacy” or was “window dressing for an all-military approach.” She ended with the question, why are we treating a complex political situation like a law enforcement problem?

There’s lots to talk about in this discussion. We could hold a whole other panel on the ICC in Uganda (and I’d love to go to that, if any panel organizers are reading this), and there are plenty of papers and several books on just this subject. Kate touched on a number of contentious points about the ICC’s involvement in the conflict and how that involvement has been executed. I want to expand on and respond to a few of these discussion points, because a lot of what Kate said is the stuff I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Kony 2012 Panel – A Recap

Last night, I had the privilege of attending a panel discussion of the Invisible Children film, Kony 2012. The panel was convened at the New York Society for Ethical Culture as a part of Congo in Harlem, a week-long series of film screenings and other events related to the DRC. It was the best way I could have spent my birthday (I know, right?) and I would like to recap everything covered at the event for all of you who couldn’t be there. (In addition, the Congo in Harlem website should have a full audio podcast up in the near future). Early next week I will also (attempt to) write up my own response to what was said. Below is a run-down of what was said by whom, in a very not-verbatim transcript rendered from my notes.

• Moderator: Elliot Ross, writer and contributor to Africa is a Country.
• Participants:
  • Milton Allimadi, editor-in-chief of Black Star News.
  • Amanda Taub, professor at Fordham University and blogger at Wronging Rights.
  • Kate Cronin-Furman, lawyer, PhD candidate, and blogger at Wronging Rights.
  • Laura Seay, professor at Morehouse College and blogger at Texas in Africa.
  • Richard Mark Ochaka, mentor at Invisible Children.
  • Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve.
  • Bukeni Waruzi, program manager for the Middle East and Africa, WITNESS.

Invisible Children, Moving Around the Problem

 

This week, Invisible Children released Move, they’re most recent film. The film’s goal is to shed some light on the aftermath of the Kony 2012 video, looking at how IC dealt with the rapid growth of the movement and how co-founder Jason Russell coped with the stress of being at the helm. The film also explained the immediate future of the Kony 2012 movement: a large-scale lobbying initiative to take place in November. If Kony is to be captured by the end of the year, a lot of pressure needs to be put on a number of governments to buckle down and really commit to the cause. The push, called Move:DC, aims to concentrate IC’s grassroots support all in one place – the nation’s capitol.

Three years ago, I went to the last big lobby day held by IC, Resolve, and Enough Project. The event was informative and effective, with educational workshops and lobby-training. There were multiple instances where I felt specifically that I was making a difference, that I was where I was supposed to be. And it wasn’t false: almost 2000 constituents made it one of the biggest lobbying initiatives, and over the following year I led a dozen local meetings with congressional staff – the bill ended up passing with more co-sponsors than any Africa-related legislation in modern history. With that in mind, Move:DC will be huge – and I think it will be effective. And while I don’t have the specifics for what the policy asks will be in November, there is a glimpse into what will be going on at the IC blog:

We ask that:

Governments in central Africa provide better protection for their people, while also denying Kony and his top commanders any safe haven. This includes the territory controlled by Sudan where Kony is thought to be hiding, and the Congo, which continues to downplay the impact of LRA violence.

The United States provide increased resources to help train and assist regional forces that are pursuing Kony and other top LRA commanders and contribute resources to overcome the critical gaps in air mobility needed to facilitate rapid movement above the difficult terrain of the region.

All donor governments expand funding for programs that directly benefit affected communities, including initiatives to develop basic infrastructure such as roads and communications systems and help rescue and rehabilitate LRA abductees.

Outside of beefing up military support, there are arguably relatively few drawbacks in these asks. Building up infrastructure in the rural LRA-affected areas could go a long way, and IC is already involved in rehabilitation centers, early warning radio networks, and dwog paco “come-home” messaging to encourage defections from the LRA. Moving our lawmakers to help add to these programs through development agencies could go a long way. The election will have already happened, so hopefully a lame duck Congress can be urged to move forwads on the issue. Lasting peace and the end to the LRA might not be in our grasps, but it could be on the horizon.

But Move fails to help IC truly recover from the Kony 2012 fallout. The film is right that a lot of the attention that was initially drawn to Kony and the LRA ended up turning on IC, detracting from the goal of the video. But they’re wrong to say that is a bad thing that resulted solely from a lack of communication. The video concentrates on the naysayers that called IC a scam, ignoring important critiques that looked at IC’s actual work and narrative and had problems with it. Firmly stuck in the middle of the two, I was disheartened to not see pushback from IC. Self-refelction is hugely important, and this was a chance for IC to better explain what it is they’re doing and why we should continue suppoting them. The video had a chance to respond to legitimate critiques about its model, about its goals, and about its programs. And instead it circumvented the whole conversation. It concentrated instead on its curent campaign, which has potential and is important – but the film easily could have (and should have) done both. I like to think that IC learned some good lessons from this spring, but the video suggests otherwise. Now, the narrative about Kony 2012 is as simplified as the narrative of Kony 2012.

Throughout the Move video, and through a lot of IC’s older films, is a motif of the millenials standing up and sticking it to the olds. It’s true that we get a lot of flak for being radically different from our forebears. With such a rapid change in technology, that’s a given. IC is absolutely right to call on America’s youth to prove them wrong, and I think a nationwide push to fund development in central Africa and encourage involvement in holding government accountable is laudable. But let’s also teach the millenials that when shit gets hard, you don’t just move on. We can simultaneously address critics, create a better and stronger movement, and help stop the LRA. Let’s do that.

Dealing with Hate

By now you’ve probably heard about Pamela Geller and her American Freedom Defense Initiative, which bought ad space in New York City that many have called hate speech (because it is). Earlier this month New York’s Metropolitan Authority was forced put up the ads, which a court ruled were protected under freedom of speech (indeed it is). The ads read “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.  Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Earlier this year, the same group put the same ads on buses in San Francisco. Both situations have brought forward the number of ways to respond to free speech used in hateful ways. When hate speech is used, and critics call it such, the defenders of hate routinely argue that you can’t infringe upon their right to free speech. This is true, but the conversation doesn’t stop there. The First Amendment goes both ways, and there’s a diversity of tactics to respond to hate speech. The so-called “anti-Jihad” ads have shed light on just a few ways to shout down hate speech.

This Monday, New York’s MTA put up the ads in ten places throughout the city. Almost immediately, street artists took up the task of marking the posters for what they are, labeling them “hate speech” and “racist.”

Photo originally posted at Mondoweiss.net

Photo originally posted at Mondoweiss.net

Not long after that, Mona Eltahawy embarked on a quest to spray paint over one of the posters when a woman with a camera stood in the way, creating a weird scuffle of paint and yelling that ended in Eltahawy’s arrest.

Photo from the New York Post.

Last month, San Francisco’s saw a very different response. The SFMTA announced that any proceeds from the AFDI ads would go to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and subsequently put up their own ads to complement the hateful posters. The new ads read “SFMTA policy prohibits discrimination based on national origin, religion, and other characteristics and condemns statements that describe any group as ‘savages.’” They are posted on the same buses as the AFDI ads, and there’s a big arrow to make sure everyone understands what they’re talking about.

Photo by WarzauWynn

The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but it doesn’t shield you from criticism or from others speaking against you. I think a lot of us can agree that the ads should be allowed to go up and still be absolutely elated when they’re graffitied, covered, and mocked. SFMTA and the activists in New York called the ads what they are: hate speech. And they have the right to do so. To paraphrase Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, in any war between hate speech and stickers/spray paint/counter-ads, support whatever the hell isn’t hate speech.

Who’s in Their Corner? Obama and Chicago’s Picket Line

Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, in November, 2007:

“Understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you, as president of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that someone’s standing in their corner.”

That didn’t happen in Wisconsin. Or Indiana. Or Ohio. Chicago’s teacher’s aren’t in a showdown over collective bargaining so much as larger class sizes and longer days with less pay, but the question remains: do teachers deserve to know that someone’s standing in their corner?

KONY2012: Six Months Later

It has been six months since Invisible Children’s viral video, Kony 2012, hit the internet.  From getting over 800,000 views in its first 24 hours, the video went on to 100 million views in a week, becoming the internet’s most viral of viral videos and launching Invisible Children and its cause into the spotlight.  Six months later, the attention on the Lord’s Resistance Army has died down, but the campaign continues to plod along.  Where is Kony? Where is Invisible Children? And what has the world’s biggest humanitarian viral video campaign achieved so far? This post aims to look at Invisible Children’s history to explain Kony 2012′s impact, and to look at what exactly that impact has been.

Kony 2012 was the fastest-growing online video in history.

Some are rightfully skeptical that Kony will be captured by the 2012 deadline in the film.  The more pessimistic will say that Kony is no closer to being captured than he was six months ago, and that things haven’t really changed. The LRA’s disparate brigades continue wandering the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan, with rumors that some troops, including Kony himself, have sought haven in Sudan, an old ally.  Rebounding from a piecemeal turnout for Kony 2012’s subsequent “Cover the Night” campaign, Invisible Children has moved on to other campaigns.  The San Diego-based non-profit is sending out its fifteenth tour of roadies, interns tasked with showing IC films to audiences at high schools, churches, and community centers across the country.  Their programs on the ground in Uganda and the DRC continue to serve war-affected communities.  But the fact is, things have changed, and to truly see how things have moved in the past six months you have to look back a few years.

Thoughts on Invisible Children and WikiLeaks

Earlier this month, Black Star News sifted through the WikiLeaks cable database and uncovered some evidence that Invisible Children may have handed information over to the Ugandan government that led to the arrest of a member of the opposition. I have been refraining from writing about this until more information comes to light, but it seems that everyone is remaining silent, so now’s as good a time as any to reflect.

According to the cable, Invisible Children gave information to the Ugandan government concerning a Patrick Komakech, a former LRA abductee whom the government alleged was a part of a plot to create a new rebel group, the People’s Patriotic Front. Komakech was a recipient of IC’s aid at one time, and was arrested by the police and charged with treason.

According to an article in The Monitor, both the Ugandan military and Invisible Children deny that the exchange of information ever occurred. In an e-mail to Foreign Policy, a representative for IC stated that they were “cooperative in providing information to the US Embassy regarding the nature of our relationship with and academic support to Mr. Komakech [after the US Embassy contacted IC about him]. In light of the severity of these allegations, the organization severed all ties immediately with Mr. Komakech.” But the statement emphasizes that there was no IC involvement in his eventual arrest, nor does it acknowledge any involvement with the Ugandan government, only the US embassy.

Since virtually everyone involved in Uganda knows the government tends to unjustly crack down on opposition figures, it’s curious how quickly IC separated themselves from an LRA survivor that was a beneficiary of their programs and services. But what actually transpired still seems pretty murky, and a number of questions still need to be answered. If Komakech was indeed involved in planning any sort of violent actions, it would be understandable why IC would want to wash their hands of him. They would be getting as much criticism for aiding a rebel-in-the-making as they are now for indirectly supporting the Ugandan military. If we take this cable to be true, and IC did give information to the government of Uganda, we need to ask more questions. Who approached whom about Komakech? And whose decision was it to pass information to the government (or not)? Did anyone confirm or at least investigate the government’s allegations?

Without getting some answers, I would still refrain from joining critics saying that IC pledges blind support to the Ugandan government. While the efforts of IC and their partners have directly led to increased US funding, training, and arms to the UPDF, it’s worth noting that IC isn’t unaware of government abuses, even if it wasn’t prominent in Kony 2012. When I saw IC co-founder Laren Poole speak in San Diego in 2007, he came incredibly close to calling the IDP camps in northern Uganda a genocide, and the Sunday bracelet video is almost exclusively about the poor conditions in the government-mandated displacement camps (you can find out more about the camps at Justice in Conflict, where Patrick Wegner looked specifically at the genocide question). More recent videos have been specifically about the effects of the contemporary LRA attacks in eastern DRC and CAR, events that so far haven’t been host to UPDF abuses (for the most part).

While the verdict is still out on the Komakech controversy, and it will be important to continue watching how current operations go in the region, I don’t think I would call this a fatal blow to the movement. With a rogue rebel group in survival mode and a growing force looking for it (now with the AU label), the situation will definitely continue to be something to monitor as the advocacy-for-peace-and-justice-through-military-means path marches on.