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orangedodge · 3 years

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@dannybagpipesarecalling replied to your text post:

I didn't realize those were Destiny's diaries either. If you would be so kind, can you explain how Emma knows? Unfortunately I haven't read enough comics to know this backstory.

I am glad you asked about this, because it gives me an excuse to post about it while hopefully not sounding like a conspiracy blog. I've been slightly obsessed with this idea since Emma first turned up in House of X, so I'm rather excited that “maybe Destiny's Diaries still exist” isn't just my weird crack canon any longer.

Emma was, in short, the last person who can be established to have control over the whereabouts of the diaries. And as one of the top five telepaths in the world, who has expressly defended that secret from the likes of Exodus and Mr. Sinister, she is capable of preventing Professor X from just taking the information from her. So barring new retcons, if Moira has the diaries now, they had to have been obtained directly from Emma.

That's not enough to say that she turned them over to Moira specifically. She could have given them to Charles or Er—okay, no, she wouldn't give them to Charles. There could be a circumstance where she'd trust them to Erik though. But in that contingency, I think there's enough context to support Emma knowing why they'd want them and for who. To be clear though, I would be less confident about making that assertion if Emma hadn't just opened the “Dr. Moira MacTaggert Memorial Public Hospital” expressly to freak out Charles and Erik, and if HoxPox hadn't already linked them by showing Moira to be worried about what Emma was up to.

(This got kind of long so I thought it'd be helpful to say the important part up front before spiraling down the continuity rabbit hole)

The origins and resulting chain of custody for Destiny's Diaries are as follows: One January, decades ago, Destiny began recording visions of the future in a series of diaries. Filling one book per month, she continued writing for thirteen months. This process was described as auto-writing, and Destiny herself did not have a complete memory of what she had written, nor did she understand the meaning of much of what she wrote.

Nonetheless, the July diary contained a recording of the events leading up to the defeat of Apocalypse, and another diary contained information on the life of Hope Summers, so they've been very relevant to the events of the modern era. It's not explicit yet that Krakoa's founding is also in the diaries, but because we know Destiny had at least one separate vision of Krakoa, and because Moira is interested in reading them, it seems fairly likely that whatever Moira, Charles, and Erik have been doing behind the scenes is also in there.

In the decades since Destiny authored them, most of these diaries were lost, except for five that Mystique kept hold of, and a sixth that Irene hid away herself. After Mystique killed 'Moira,' she sent her five diaries to Professor X, hoping that the temptation of using them would consume his life and lead him toward a ruinous fate. Destiny meanwhile had entrusted the sixth diary to Shadowcat (who Destiny met in 1936, while she was time traveling and having an affair with Moira's grandfather don't worry about it), who eventually became so freaked out by something she read in it that she vanished on a mission, let her friends believe her dead for weeks, and had herself deleted from Cerebro, while leaving the diary to Rogue for safekeeping while she was away.

(That last chain of events isn't incredibly important, I just think it becomes kind of lol in light of current canon)

Rogue went on to take that diary and the research that had been done on it to Storm. Storm and Rogue then formed a splinter team of X-Men, to journey the world searching for the lost diaries, believing Professor X could not be trusted. Along the way a seventh book turned up with a treasure hunter named Vargas (don't worry about him), and an eighth was found by Gateway and given to Rogue in a dream. Eventually Storm tried to get Phoenix to collect Professor X's diaries for her, but they discovered that they had already been stolen (Shadowcat did it).

The rest of the diary hunt isn't really important, just that Kitty eventually ended up retrieving the full set, before she rejoined the X-Men, which only happened after Xavier had left Scott and Emma to run the school. This timeline is important for establishing that Xavier has never possessed the full set of diaries himself, and was not involved in collecting the lost books at any point, nor was he present at the time the diaries were brought to the school and fell under Emma's protection. This rules out the possibility that the set of diaries we've previously seen were somehow forged by Xavier.

Xavier would not return to the school until after losing his mutant powers, whereupon he departed for space on an adventure to another galaxy. He was unavailable, therefore, to have undertaken any telepathic shenanigans, so what happens next actually happened, and is not a psychic illusion. While Xavier was gone, Mr. Sinister recruited Exodus and Mystique, and began a campaign of hunting down precognitive psychics, time travelers, and any other sources of information on the future. Scott, Emma, and Kitty meanwhile predicted that they were going to be next, and came up with a bananas plan to keep the books safe.

X-Men volume 2 no. 203 by Mike Carey (Writer), Humberto Ramos (Penciler), Carlos Cuevas (Inker), Studio F’s Edgar Delgado (Colorist), Virtual Calligraphy’s Cory Petit (Letterer), Will Panzo (Assistant Editor), Nick Lowe (Editor), Joe Quesada (Editor in Chief), Dan Buckley (Publisher)

First they hid the diaries somewhere in parts unknown. Emma then altered the minds of “all of us” (everyone who lived at the mansion at that time) to perceive a bunch of decoy books as the real thing. She then erased Kitty's memory, and her own, so that no telepath would be able to extract the information by force, before they gave each other a series of post-hypnotic triggers so they could restore one another's memories if they ever needed the books again. When eventually Exodus attacked the school looking for the books, they restored their memories, and decided to send another team to the hidden location where they'd buried a mystery box. Emma gave this location to Sam and Bobby, who dug up the box, which was never opened, and which was destroyed by Gambit during a firefight with Sinister's forces before anyone could confirm its contents.

This was intended by author Mike Carey to be the end of Destiny's Diaries, a dropped plot from a previous creative run, that was vaguely useful at building up to the Messiah Complex crossover, but was a lot more trouble than it was worth to an author who was writing about the X-Men trying to avert a bad future. But there's a lot of room in the story he wrote for the diaries to have survived after all.

I think it's actually really suspicious that the box was accessible to Bobby and Sam at all. Why not drop it under a mountain? Why not bury it under the ocean? Why not keep it phased in a tree? And it's a big red box with a big red 'X' on it. I know the X-Men love their branding and all, but that's going pretty far.

No one actually opens the box before Gambit blows it up either. It could have contained more decoys, or nothing at all.

And when talking among themselves, Emma and Kitty never actually say that they're sending the X-Men to retrieve the diaries. They say that they know where the diaries are, and then send the X-Men to a place where they've buried something. The intent of the author is clear, but there's room in the dialogue for a later writer to decide that this just was another plan to keep the books hidden.

So for the entire period of time between assembling the complete collection of thirteen diaries, and their seeming destruction, they are never unaccounted for. Only Emma and Kitty knew the full extent of what they did to hide them, and where they were hidden. If fakes were destroyed instead of the real thing, no one would have known.

We could just be in retcon territory, but I don't think so, because it's fine on its own without any direct changes to canon. And really, faking the destruction of the books to cover up their real location makes a lot more sense than believing Emma Frost actually sent Sam to retrieve the incredibly suspicious looking red box that contained the most important object in the world, while half the super villains on the planet were chasing him.

Believing the diaries weren't really destroyed just requires the reader to accept that Emma would lie to the other X-Men, and keep lying to them for years, and that she'd be willing to put Sam and Bobby's lives at risk to protect that lie. Which she was already doing in that story anyway. She was already lying to everyone when she changed everyone's memories. And she—and Scott and Kitty—was already fine with risking everyone's lives when setting up a decoy trap in a school. So that's why I think this works better as a continuation of the existing, known, story of the diaries, and not a direct retcon to what happened.

In conclusion I think Emma knows about Moira because Moira got the diaries from somewhere, and Emma is the person she could have gotten them from. Nothing proves a direct hand-off in, like, a formal standard of proof or anything, but Emma having access to the diaries for so long, and having been wrapped up in this whole weird plot thread—which involves Moira and most of the Quiet Council—is enough to imply the connection in a story sense.

(ETA - For completion’s sake, there is also a weird story I didn’t go into called Chaos War that was published in 2011 where Moira is resurrected and finds a book in the ruins of the Xavier School that may or may not be one of the diaries, and touching it causes her soul to merge with Destiny’s, who then possesses her and guides her through a quest to destroy an evil god. This was an odd story to place in continuity at the time, and has only gotten stranger, given 1. that couldn’t be the real Moira, 2. Destiny is not merged with her soul. If this is in continuity (it’s been suggested that Moira’s golem was the character in this event), and all of the characters are who they say they are, and if the book in question was actually one of the thirteen diaries (and not some other book that Irene also wrote), then it requires Emma to have deliberately left one of the thirteen books behind for “Moira” to find, which if anything only adds to the likelihood that she knows what’s up)

#x-men #comics #marvel #wednesday spoilers #long post

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themanicgalaxy · 4 years

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SPN 2X21 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1

Yes, I did make a Series of Terrible Irresponsible decisions to watch this episode tonight.

No this won’t be a problem

Who needs a good memory it’s Useless I have the Notes app

OH HELL YEAH ROCK AMV IS B A C K BABYYYY

oooo nice liminal space for an opening, and with the fun rock music

dammit let’s hope we find AVA I forgot about her

and so did the show oop

ohohHO the RADIO! THE SPOOPY RADIO

It’s a Good Day to justify my fear of spooky diners at night

oh my god that guy is FUCKING DEAD

Everyone’s just in a pool of their own blood

sidenote, boy is that uncomfortable, 0/10 do not reccomend

oho, Sam wakes up alone in an abandoned town? spooky town?

and they’ve fucked with the color grading just enough/given him a very white shirt so he always stands in Stark Contrast yes we love that

Also worth noting the town looks Just A Smidge old time-y I’m sure that’s gonna be important later

ANDY!!!

“frontier land” HAHAHAH

Aw Andy wants to Vibe with Dean that’s adorable

AVA!! FINALLY!

They have to uncomfortably tell her that her fiancé’s dead afh;ouaf

Andy is just Awkwardly Quietly freaking out I love him

San Diego and Afghanistan? Ah the Date is important

it’s like a Grunge version of the Avengers, which I do appreciate

Sam being Protagonist Boi to stop the arguing actually works this time around

BOBBY!!!

ASH IS BACK! AND HE’S GOT VAGUE OMINOUS WORDS OF WARNING

DFAIHSAP SAM HAS TO FUCKING SELL THIS ON HIS OWN THAT’S GREAT

No OF COURSE it’s not gonna work, demon war is a vERY HARD SELL

THE CREEPY GIRL WITH THE I WILL NOT KILL REPEATED ON THE CHALKBOARD HIDSPFAP

“I’m still working through ‘demons are real’” I love Andy

also well, at least we got proof

Sam the Nerd figures out where they are

jesus christ she killed her own girlfriend because of this noooo

...does this count as bury your gays because DAMN that started quick kripke what the fuck

I still don’t really understand why they don’t just leave, and figure it out later

SeRIOUSLY? THEY TORCHED THE ROADHOUSE??

OH C O M E ON

oh it killed Ash before he could say

ALONG WITH ONE OF THE ONLY INTERESTING PLACES IN THIS G O D D A M N SHOW

I mean Sam is right in the stick together, but like...shouldn’t they try to leave? say “fuck destiny” and move on?

Sam screaming a bit more loudly and Ava jumping is good, that’s very accurate he's very Tall and a Lot

Oh, they’re trapped by the ghosts that makes sense

“soldier up”...great I wonder what headspace this guy was trying to emulate

D. Hasselhoff that’s your fucking pseudonym what the fuck Dean

ah the spiritual vision

And Bobby(in contrast to the very cynical Dean) tries to call it

Instantly cracks jokes, yep that’s the Character Type

SUPERSTRENGTH!

“crazy’s relative” ok but the bond with the soldier is cool(yes the fact that he confides in the soldier is a Thing ok, it’s still nice to have fucking BONDS in this godforsaken show)

and Sam as a Leader is REALLY cool, please more of this

no I know we won’t get it let me delude myself

SAM IS ACTIVELY EMULATING DEAN AWWWW

heh Sam has to tell Ava her fiancé is dead that’s FUN isn’t it? Aren’t you HAVING FUN?

It’s Yellow-eyes! Appearing in a dream!

I do like his Barely Contained Power Jolly vibe. It’s cool

“only one of you will make it” AGH

Once you notice how Individualistic this shit is, none of it ever goes away

“Strong enough” feels like a thing about Bad Dads

WHY DO NONE OF YOU GO TO THERAPY AND WRITE TV SHOWS INSTEAD

ah that’s why we had Jess in the last episode, for this episode to hit harder(and show the complacency ig?). Which....does work, actually

Ah the Demon blood

he just feeds that shit to kids huh

SHE KNEW HIM! Can we please get interesting Mary shit? please

I know damn well we won’t till WAY LATER and all of that is contested but STILL

oh NO AVAAA

DAMMIT AVA WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BE EVIL/POSSESSED

And she plays it up

AH the five months unaccounted for

Yes, no trust, but whatever

the tear wipe is balling tho

is this gonna be a power corrupts thing? I feel like it is

alTHOUGH, I do like it’s her, and not a possessed version of her

the soldier just fucking killed her holy shit

ah Sam is the only Non Corruptible one, of COURSE

of course he doesn’t kill him

Stabbed in the back, ha isn’t that pointed

“it’s not even that bad” AWWWW

Motherfucker I saw a tik tok where you couldn’t talk about the family dynamic between Sam and Dean without...certain people coming in and ...yeah that’s a shame. There’s so much there and like...nah we can’t touch that shit agh

ok quick wrap up:

1. Once you notice the individualistic thing that Kripke is going for(trust nothing and no one, no bonds, everyone dies(and yes, while people that aren’t straight white men have a better shot, literally EVERYONE dies)), you literally can’t unnotice it, it is baked into this fucking show

2. And like. I saw these things where supernatural is a show to exist like...there is a lot here. Subtext and plaintext, there is a lot here. but the shit that is here is...not comfy, so people ignore it, call it a dumb show(which I’m guilty of too). But...that’s not true. it can’t be. We liked this show for a reason, and there’s also way more than we ever wanna admit in the show, both good and bad. And like...I clown this show a lot, but there is good, there has to be for it together as popular as it did.

ok part 2

#pawswatchesspn #2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1 #Demon deal is next or something #right?

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in-the-bookish-dark · 4 years

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The Dogs - RL

It’s 3 am and the dogs are barking again. Not new dogs, not today dogs. It’s the old dogs, yesterday dogs, come back again and again and again.

The dogs are your parents and the barking is – was, but still is – their incessant arguing. They’re two hundred miles apart these days, and haven’t spoken for easily a dozen years, but the argument is still going on. Some of their arguments are still circling the outer solar system, soaking into the dark matter and the background radiation of the universe, flinging electrons into the ether and causing some atoms to collapse into their nuclei.

When you drink just enough, you can disappear into the dark before the noise catches you.

But when the ruckus comes inside your head at night, the rumblings start the same as always and resonates with that particular 3am in the summer when you were ten. It’s not the only time, not at all, but all the other times got together and voted that it would be the one you’d remember.

Bobby was six and in his own room across the hall. You were afraid he’d wake up from the noise and then you’d have a whole night’s work trying to get him to quietly go back to sleep.

They always sounded like that, big dog woofing and growling and little dog yapping and yelping. Always fighting over the dried out bones of their relationship, fighting over who flirted with whom, who wouldn't let go of what; who can’t get a moment’s peace and who can’t trust whom for five minutes. Beyond the basic argument, who could ever remember what was said? Every time, it was a new transgression and a new accusation, though it was always the same old fight over the same old problem. The actual words just got lost in the ruckus. “Bark-bark-bark whore. Bark-bark trust bark-bark-bark-bark drinking bark always. Bark-bark-bark-bark-trust-bark-bark-bark-bark-bark.” There were a few words that would tend to surface and float on top of the static. All the rest got lost in the torrent. They blended and blurred and in time were reduced to guttural noises, reduced to the barks that carried them. You couldn’t escape the meaning, but you learned not to hold the details too close. They all meant the same thing anyway, whatever the specifics. Plus, there were always plenty more to come.

You’d already learned by Bobby’s age that, if you let yourself remember too many words, it was hard in the morning to see people the same way you saw them the night before, the week before, or the month before. It was that small, hard, fistful of words that lingered for hours after the barks. They left bruises. Even those words would get overlaid in the morning with a poultice of “mumble-mumble get upset mumble-mumble grownups mumble say things mumble be okay mumble-mumble.” Like most poultices, it lingered too long and did too little. And it had a stench. Always a stench. All those years and you still have the stench inside your brain.

When you were still young, there were times when you wondered why people bothered to become grownups if they were always so miserable and never bothered to control what they said or thought or did. Or who they did. As an adult, unfortunately, you’ve started to grasp it. Not embrace it – maybe you’re safe from that – but you can touch the pain by the corners and not become imprinted.

Years later, though, the moments come back and it’s still just the barking and mumbling that you remember. The fists of words have gone somewhere else, thankfully, though you’re still hammered by the barks. You’re tired of the dogs going on and on. Your entire childhood took place at 3am, and the dogs just kept going and going. After a while you didn’t care why they were barking – if they were barking because they were mad, or even because there was a cat in the yard taunting them. You just wanted them to shut up. After the endless barking, it was actually all the same with you if they just attacked each other, or if they start licking or humping each other, or even if they find the cat and kill it, as long as they do it quietly and you can relax and breathe again, for just a little while. And as long as something distracted them, you could count on Bobby sleeping through the night.

But that was all years ago, and you’re sometimes able to remind yourself of that protective distance. Years and lives ago it was. Every now and then, there’s something else, the barkings of the present, there are different dogs barking and causing confusion now. Just breaking the connection with the past, separating the dogs, though, lightens the burden, and that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Right now can be just right now and not everything from the last thirty-five years. It’s a much smaller boulder to remove from your chest, and the sooner you can do it, the sooner you can start breathing.

There are nights, though, when despite your long sojourn from then until now, you close your eyes and you’re back in the old 3am, the original 3am. You’re back in the twin bed with the wobbly hand-me-down headboard from your Uncle George. It sways as you get out and it’s even still wobbling a little when you get to your door.

The knob turns in your hand and the door swings open behind your arm. Someone’s moving, and it must be you. The world outside blows in from the hall and fills the quiet of your room with its un-ease. The barking echoes even better inside your walls now; paint flecks rattle loose from the plaster with each wave of noise. Yap-yap-yap liar yappity-yap drunk yap sister. Bark-bark-bark years ago bark-bark let it go bark-bark God’s fucking sake bark-bark-bark.

You pass down the hall, remembering your first lesson about dogs: You were at your aunt and uncle’s maybe six years earlier, just before Bobby was born. Their big dog was chasing the little red one through the yard. You, in your young Galahad mind, decided to step in to protect the little one. You walked over to the garden. She, the little red one, sailed past. You stepped in front, playing the cop on the beat, there to restore the peace, and before you knew it, the sky was scrolling across your field of vision. As that vision soaked in, the ground smacked you on the back and dirt clods shattered under your skull. The dogs ran on. You got a few bruises for your troubles, not gratitude.

Walking down the hall, though, you were six years smarter than your first encounter. You no longer stepped in front of the big dogs if you had options, but six or thirty-six years later, you still made sure that the dogs saw you. That was the thing you kept. You couldn’t stop the dogs, but they would know they were being watched and judged. If nothing more, someone would see, and would tell if need be. Your attention left those options open and questions in their minds.

But you still weren’t halfway down the hall, and all the layers of history keep laying themselves down on top each other before you’ve even reached the living room. You’re never going to get there at this rate. Years later, after the war, after the icecaps melt, after the Earth spirals down into the Sun, and the universe trembles out of existence, you finally make it downstairs. You see the new crash and all the crashes that have happened to that point, going back to their first big bang.

The big oak shelves, making a divider running across half of the downstairs den, are toppled over onto the couch. Ceramic shards everywhere dig into your feet. Strewn playing cards call misdeal, and chess pieces both scattered and shattered play out their own endgame – king down, queen down, all the court in disarray. Only a few pawns still stand, leaderless and lost in their own confusions. Just standing and watching. There are dents and smudges on the wall from books and bookends cast off from the shelves in motion, and they’re in the vicinity of divots already patched from previous episodes. Two piggy banks with yours and Bobby’s summer vacation savings huddle against the couch, shocked and shattered, nursing their loose pieces, bleeding out their future fun. Your parents stand at opposite ends of the shelves, looking puzzled, looking for all the world like a twister had unaccountably dropped the divider into the middle of the room with all its contents. He wrings his right hand with his left, flinching even as he does it. She touches her cheek and jaw over and over

You survey the mess, sorting perceptions as you go. You’re always the first in one after these storms, the first one down the stairs. It’s just what you do, what you’ve always done, even before Bobby was born. He didn’t – ever – need to see any of it.

It took you years to verbalize why to yourself. You come to see because seeing makes it real, not just for you, but especially for them, real and harder to deny and gloss over. The boy you left up in the room would be upset, but you left him behind minutes ago. Before you go back up the stairs to yourself, to the boy in your room, you do the math on the damage. In two minutes you’ll be done, cool and professional child assayer, headed back to your room, back to your “head office” with your notes, back to your “precinct house” with all the crime scene images making their own diorama in your head.

You act quiet and studious, trying to keep them calm and hopeful, so the scope of what they’ve done again doesn’t hit them until you’ve left. Even so, the only thing left is your forensics. Things keep dying, figuratively or not. When things die, you need forensics. It’s a simple equation, but you don’t know why you know this, aside from it being the best way for the smart kid to sort things out for the sad kid.

They wander, shuffling things around in the rubble, not actually tidying. They sift. They nudge. They both watch you. Neither reaches out, trapped inside their own cocoons of pain. “It’s okay, Billy” he says. It’s just three words casually tossed out, and you refute them with just one. “No.” It isn’t an opinion or a feeling or even a rebuff, just a logical evaluation. It wasn’t okay before – how could more damage make it okay now? How much destruction would he need to make the world perfect? Is new misery is somehow supposed to release and relieve the old? The old pain never escapes, though. It just rests a bit before embracing the new. The dogs don’t run away, they just skulk about for a while before the next fight.

A small, singular “No” says it all because it’s married to all those other “No’s” All strung together as one, they mean not just “It’s not okay” but “It’s never been okay and never going to be okay.” It’s a marker for the Big “No” that fits everything.

That’s a lot of math for a kid your age, but it’s not your first word problem or your last. After the “No,” after the trip back upstairs, after the leaden mumblings wafting up through the floor, you know that, if he comes upstairs, he’s going to walk out the door, and you know that if he walks out the door, the odds are bad that he’ll ever come back. Why would he leave? He’s never done it before. But you know. You know because there’s something that died down there when the tornado came through the room.

You make a new plan, calculating exactly how loud you’d have to whimper and sound like you’re crying as he passes through the living room. How much is enough to catch his attention and not so much it makes him flee?

You lay in wait, knowing that he’s going to come up. How do you know? You know because you’ve analyzed your opponent for years, played chess with him, both literally and figuratively. You know his silence and his emerging rages, his vectors and his velocities.

The feet start chopping their way up the basement steps now, and you set the trap. The whimpers and the little hiccups start.

The footsteps cross the kitchen and you turn up the volume slightly – it has to be just loud enough to make him slow without scaring him. It’s not a perfect plan, but probably crazy enough to work, as they say.

It’s doubtlessly the most cynically hopeful thing you’d done in your life, at least to that point. Manipulation for what you saw as the common good.

The feet stop. They turn down the hall more slowly and softly. You can’t even hear them as they enter your room. He says “Hey …” and after a moment you can tell by the silence re-entering the room that he’s left. You barely hear his feet as they approach the stairs. He pauses at the top for minutes, then plods downward. What you hear after are barely even murmurs. More like the odd word spoken in sleep or in shame, widely spaced.

Sleep comes and the next thing you know, breakfast has come and gone and you and she are sitting at the kitchen table. He’s gone to work. Bobby’s long gone to the neighbor’s house to play because, for some reason that he can’t get out of your mother, he can’t play downstairs in the den today. As soon as he left, she brought the box up from downstairs. There are shards of glass and ceramic scattered over the table like an archeological dig. You have your Elmer’s in hand. She’s still touching her cheek, probing it as she sifts and sorts with the other hand. The two of you rearrange the broken parts and try to make the puzzles less puzzling. It works with some of the ceramics, but the bigger pieces never come right again. It’s just like the puzzles from all the other 3ams. Not all the pieces go back together.

As you get older, the puzzles just start to seem normal and you don’t get why other people’s lives don’t have the same missing and mis-aligned pieces connected up with obstinance and Elmer’s. You wonder about it all.

The thing you wonder the most about, though, is if it was a good or bad thing, the whimpering in the dark that slowed him and kept him. No. Not true. You know which it was. You stepped in front of the dog and it knocked you down again. And Bobby. And your mom.

Six months later, ten fights later, the third fight in a row that week, actually, it was another different 3am, exactly as unique as all the others. You’d spent all day exploring culverts and abandoned houses with your friends. You were dead tired, so you didn’t hear the barking and you didn’t hear Bobby get up and stumble to the stairs and you didn’t hear him tumble down the stairs. You heard the sirens and the pounding on the door.

When you let go of that, the dogs will stop barking.

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kidsviral-blog · 6 years

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Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/two-years-after-kony-2012-has-invisible-children-grown-up/

Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?

In March 2012, a human rights organization’s documentary about a central African despot became the most viral video of all time, and the ensuing furor resulted in its leader’s bizarre public meltdown. On the second anniversary of the phenomenon, everyone involved is still figuring out what it all means.

View this image ›

Jason Russell in his office in September. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Jason Russell is tan. Genuinely and exotically tan, even for a lifelong Southern Californian. He almost immediately apologizes for it, explaining that he’s just come from a wedding in Turks and Caicos. Later that afternoon, he’ll walk through the Barrio Logan, San Diego, headquarters of his nonprofit Invisible Children, burnt and barefoot in a neon orange tank top and shorts, rain whipping the office’s industrial windows. The interns will giggle, fondly: “That’s a guy who takes his workout seriously.”

This is Jason Russell today — 35, training for an Ironman, home every night by 6 p.m., never away from his family for longer than five days a month. This is not the raving man of two years ago, stomping down a San Diego sidewalk, slapping the cement with his bare ass to the sky. But part of him is here too.

“Every day for two minutes, I will think, Oh my god, I had a naked meltdown,” Russell says, stretching and snapping a rubber band between his fingers on his glass desk. “I will think that and be like, how did that happen? How in the world is that a part of my story and history forever?”

Russell today is healthy, or says he is. He went to therapy. He was on Oprah’s Next Chapter. He’s still theatrical and jovial, still prone to hyperbole, still enthusiastically earnest in a way that’s completely inspiring to half the world and nails on a chalkboard to the other. But after Russell’s psychotic episode, he spent six months figuring out who he was going to be, how and when and whether he would return to the nonprofit he founded in 2004 and nearly brought down in 2012 with the release of “KONY 2012,” the most viral video of all time — an impassioned, idealistic call for American youth to make Joseph Kony, the leader of central Africa’s militant child-kidnapping group Lord’s Resistance Army, in Russell’s words, “famous.”

For a majority of the 100 million who viewed “KONY 2012,” it was the first time they’d heard of Invisible Children, then an eight-year-old organization with a website that couldn’t handle its new traffic. Information gathering was a free-for-all; here was Jason Russell, the video’s narrator, describing Invisible Children as “the Pixar of human rights stories” to the New York Times. There he was telling CNN, “We are not these other organizations that do amazing work on the ground. If you want to fund a cow or you want to help someone in a village in that component, you can do that. That’s a third of what we do.” Here was a fairly embarrassing musical promotional video for a 2006 event called the Global Night Commute. There was Russell describing his personality: “If Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Bono had a baby, I would be that baby.” Here was an appearance on The 700 Club, an interview at Liberty University, and an audio clip of Russell at a Christian conference describing Invisible Children as a “Trojan Horse in a sense, going into a secular realm.” And everywhere was the photo of Invisible Children’s founders posing with tough faces, guns, and members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The ammunition was boundless and critics ruthless. Counterprogramming was one thing, but character assassination was another, prompting Time magazine’s Alex Perry to describe much of the backlash as “malicious online ‘takedown,’ most of whose participants were utterly uninterested in truth but focused instead on a point-scoring, trashing and hurting, the digital pogrom of the unaccountable, anonymous Invisible Mob.”

“I think that’s what really made me lose it,” Russell says. “They were attacking me personally: my voice, my hair, my face, my family, my friends … I didn’t realize what 15 minutes of white-hot fame looks like. And I got to see it. And it is not pretty.

“It’s” — he knocks on his desk — “not” — knock — “good” — knock. “It’s so dark. I was obviously not sleeping and definitely kind of losing my mind, for sure, but I would seriously start crying when I thought about, like, Lindsay Lohan, or even Sarah Palin, or these people who’ve been in the spotlight and been ridiculed by everyone in the world. Most people will say out of their mouths, ‘Lindsay Lohan should die.’ And then I was reading that about myself.”

After 10 days, it was reportedly “extreme exhaustion, stress and dehydration” that drove Russell to that San Diego sidewalk, and later a hospital on a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold order. A week later, his wife Danica announced the early diagnosis was “brief reactive psychosis.”

And then the conversation stopped — and with it, all the debate, conspiracy theories, and think pieces about Invisible Children’s methods and motivations. Some threads continued, of course, but it was as if the media saw Russell’s breakdown and slowly backed out of the room, switching off the lights before comically bolting away.

Russell was marked, even after his recovery tour. The organization was marked too. And yet they both have endured, largely off the millions KONY 2012 brought in, but also because of significant changes made in response to KONY 2012, and a desperately sustained belief that the LRA’s end is near — a belief motivated by the fear that if it’s not, theirs may come first.

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David Ocitti, a former child soldier from Uganda. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Eight years before KONY 2012, there was Invisible Children: Rough Cut, the documentary Russell made after graduating from film school. Russell and his friends Laren Poole, then 19, and Bobby Bailey, then 20, spent months saving money and petitioning family and friends, and their floppy-haired origin story has been told and told again: “All we really wanted, more than anything, was a compelling story,” Russell says. They found one — plus a few bouts of malaria.

Rough Cut focuses on “night walkers,” or rural Northern Uganda children who used to walk into town each night to sleep in public and avoid capture by the LRA. It largely follows one former child soldier, Jacob Acaye, who watched his brother die after the boy tried to escape.

“We wanted to go to Sundance and be the documentary darlings. And Sundance shut us down,” Russell says. “In a way, we were like, ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ Sundance.’ I’ve been [there] enough times to know that even if there are great movies there, they often do not get seen by more than a couple thousand people. And we felt our story was powerful and important enough that we were going to, in a way, force people to watch it.”

And so they held screenings on the West Coast, forming a charity with a mission statement to “raise awareness and [educate] the U.S. about the atrocities, exploitation and abuse of invisible children throughout the world.” According to financial documents, Invisible Children brought in $331,783 in 2004, its first year. In 2005, as screenings ramped up, the organization made more than $3 million. The founders hired a CFO, Ben Keesey, a UCLA graduate who turned down a finance job at Deloitte & Touche after a post-finals trip to Africa. The money helped take Rough Cut on a national tour in 2006 and produce Global Night Commute, a concurrent rally in 130 cities, where an estimated 80,000 Americans walked to their city centers and slept outside.

As a newly IRS-certified nonprofit in 2006, Invisible Children continued to stage dramatic events, produce short films, and host thousands of screenings, raising money through donations and selling Ugandan-made goods. Celebrities began lending support; in 2007, Invisible Children had a storyline on The CW’s Veronica Mars, starring longtime supporter Kristen Bell (and Russell’s brother-in-law Ryan Hansen). In 2007, Fall Out Boy filmed a music video in Uganda, and Invisible Children joined Warped Tour.

On paper, business was good; revenue climbed from $7 million in mid-2007 to $8.25 million in mid-2010. Program expenses were divided into essentially two pots: one for U.S.-based events, film production, lobbying, and awareness tours, and another for programs in Uganda, including scholarships, teacher exchanges, and a seamstress program for former LRA abductees. (Generally, the U.S. pot was more full than the Uganda pot, by anywhere from $50,000 to $1.7 million.)

But internally, there were growing pains. “I remember going through a couple painful periods and having to let go of friends,” co-founder Bobby Bailey says. “During the summer months, we thought, There’s no way we were going to make payroll. We were never good at reaching out to high-level donors to pay for our overhead. Most of our money came from kids buying products.”

Bailey left Invisible Children in 2009 — an emotional, messy exit that began with The Rescue, a 100-city event during which participants “abducted themselves” in an attempt to get high-profile figures to voice public support for helping child soldiers. Bailey pushed for it and raised the money, and the event got Invisible Children on Oprah’s radar. But Bailey says he was overwhelmed by the planning and implementation of the event.

“These massive events that brought out 80,000 people almost crushed us and killed us, financially but also because we worked people so hard,” he says. “To be honest, I couldn’t do it. I was tired, I felt frustrated, I was just burnt, and I couldn’t figure out how to make the event happen. It was just a big blow to me and my ego.”

“It was difficult,” goes Russell’s version. “I mean, it was just a power struggle. That’s all. He’s an amazing filmmaker and so creative. But because we’re very entrepreneurial, a lot of his ideas wouldn’t get traction. And so he was super frustrated with feeling like people wouldn’t listen to him.”

The Rescue was a turning point for Invisible Children, not only because of Bailey’s exit. The organization received substantial media attention for the first time, but also attracted its first major wave of criticism.

“My initial reaction was that it was goofy and self-serving and a disturbing over-simplification of the issues,” says Kate Cronin-Furman of the international issues blog Wronging Rights. At the time of The Rescue, she wrote (with co-blogger Amanda Taub) that “choosing to simplistically define … Ugandan children as ‘The Abducted’ constrains our ability to think creatively about the problems they face, and work with them to combat these problems.”

“The cavalier first film did the trick,” wrote Chris Blattman, then an assistant professor in political science and economics at Yale. “Maybe now it’s time to start acting like grownups.”

To Blattman, the “idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa” was “inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous … The savior attitude pervades too many aid failures, not to mention military interventions.”

Ben Keesey, who became Invisible Children’s CEO in 2007, calls this kind of criticism “low-hanging fruit.”

“Like, of course it’s detailed, nuanced, and complicated how you actually contribute responsibly to seeing an end to a conflict like the LRA,” he says. “But the statement that wherever you are in the world, however old you are, you have the ability to help end a war in Africa? I stand by that. And I think it’s the necessary statement to actually get a lot of people to do something.”

Invisible Children’s first legislative victory came in 2010, when President Obama signed the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, leading to the deployment of 100 U.S. advisers in LRA-affected areas in 2011. That year, Laren Poole left Invisible Children to move to Uganda, fundraising and strategizing for the Bridgeway Foundation, which hires private military contractors to train Uganda’s army.

“We left the Oval Office after the bill was signed, and we stayed out much too late and were drinking dirty martinis and having the best time,” Russell says. “I brought up the question, ‘What’s the dream for your life?’ It’s something I always ask people, and Laren said, ‘I want to be a Navy SEAL.’ And then I started laughing, because we were like, ‘Dude, you’re always so sick. You’re already 29 years old. You’re not going to be a Navy SEAL.’ And Laren is the type of person that will say, ‘Watch me.’”

The move left Russell in full control of the organization’s creative direction, which he had always fought with Bailey and Poole over. And as 2011 ended, he was bringing together a campaign that would become bigger than he — a “lifelong dreamer,” disciple of Oprah, and permanent summer camp counselor — could have anticipated.

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

“KONY 2012” went live on Monday, March 5, 2012. Noelle West, Invisible Children’s director of communications, switched the YouTube video from private to public — a fairly insignificant moment she may actually remember for the rest of her life.

“I don’t know if you’ve been in a media shitstorm, but I’ve never been, none of us had ever been, and it was the most traumatic and overwhelming crisis-bringing thing that ever happened to any of us,” says West, a fast-talking, sporty 31-year-old with long waves of brown hair.

The KONY 2012 campaign wanted a youth uprising — through tweets, rallies, and late-night poster blitzes — that would encourage the U.S. government to increase efforts to help Ugandan forces find and capture Kony. The video was told from Russell’s perspective, as he explained Kony and the LRA’s tens of thousands child abductions to his wide-eyed blond son, Gavin Danger, then 5.

Between the versions of “KONY 2012” on Vimeo and YouTube, the 30-minute film received 100 million views in six days — surpassing Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent performance (which took nine days to reach 100 million) and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance video (18 days), according to audience data service Visible Measures.

And for a minute there, it seemed to be incredibly well received, particularly if you had any Facebook friends in the 16–24 demographic. Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Nicole Richie, Diddy, and the Kardashian sisters all tweeted their support. In San Diego, one intern in Invisible Children’s fulfillment department had 500,000 orders of $30 “action kits” to process. One intern in public relations had 4,000 emails and counting incoming from media outlets. Russell flew across the country for TV interviews twice in 48 hours.

But as millions clicked beyond the video, Invisible Children’s website crashed. And the lack of information left an incredibly open opportunity for critics to offer counter narratives.

The controversy wasn’t a surprise, West says. “But it got too big for us to talk to people who were upset. We’ve always simplified the issue down to a very understandable, non-academic, non-complex issue, which is offensive to some academics because they think you’re trivializing it. But for us, that is just the entry point. We’re trying to attract people into this issue but make it accessible for them. ‘KONY 2012’ was not trying to be a very P.C., well rounded, in-depth piece.”

To academics, this simplification was still deceiving, relying more on emotion than facts. Wronging Rights’ three-year-old criticism of Invisible Children received nearly 500,000 views in one day. By Friday, a Tumblr called Visible Children had nearly 2.2 million views. The blog’s creator, Grant Oyston, wasn’t a qualified expert on African issues; he was a 19-year-old Canadian political science student who offered some commentary, but mostly linked out to others’ criticism of “KONY 2012.” His influence, however, warranted comment from Invisible Children’s newly hired New York PR firm Sunshine, Sachs & Associates, who told The Canadian Press that the “things he’s written are important but are a little misinformed and naive.”

“I thought that was strange. It had this air of, ‘You young people don’t understand,’ but their whole target was young people,” says Oyston, who eventually got a call from an “emotional” Russell, offering to fly him to California or even Uganda to see Invisible Children’s programs in person. (He declined.) But Oyston still takes issue with being labeled anti-Invisible Children, admitting the charity has done some good work, and finds himself criticizing the entire cycle of KONY 2012 — praise, backlash, and all.

“I found it troubling how quickly people read my criticism and other more informed critiques and responded by giving up and not caring,” Oyston says. “This video made them excited about helping victims and then they read something on a blog and they said, ‘Never mind.’ I found that disheartening. “

No one denied that Kony was a criminal who should be brought to justice, but many were critical of the call — from young, white Americans — to help Uganda address a problem already generally thought to be resolved in that country. Uganda’s government spokesman even issued a statement: “Misinterpretations of media content may lead some people to believe that the LRA is currently active in Uganda. It must be clarified that at present the LRA is not active in any part of Uganda. Successfully expelled by the Ugandan Peoples Defence Forces in mid-2006, the LRA has retreated to dense terrain within bordering countries in the Central Africa area. They are a diminished and weakened group with numbers not exceeding 300.”

Michael Wilkerson, a freelance writer and one of KONY 2012’s earliest critics, encouraged KONY 2012 supporters to consider the “potential collateral damage.”

“In previous offensives by the Ugandan military that didn’t quite catch Kony, what [happened] was the LRA ransacked and massacred vengefully as it fled, killing hundreds of civilians in the Congo in the winter of 2009,” he told NPR.

Others were offended by the portrayal of Uganda, down to the word “invisible,” including writer Dinaw Mengestu: “To claim [the children] were invisible because a group of college students traveling through Uganda happened to stumble upon a war they were too ignorant to have known of before going to the region is, to put it mildly, patronizing. By the time the organizers arrived in Uganda and created Invisible Children, northern villages such as Gulu were crowded with NGOs and aid workers and the largest humanitarian concern, by far, was the housing conditions of the more than one million people living in camps for the internally displaced.”

“That’s a tough one to talk about,” Keesey says today. “Of all the critiques that we got, it was the one that I never saw coming. Is Joseph Kony, who’s the world’s most prolific child abductor, worthy of a campaign to stop him? Is that a worthy pursuit? To see the LRA disarmed and to see these communities free from fear? That one took me off guard.”

Two weeks after “KONY 2012”’s release, Teju Cole wrote in The Atlantic about the “white savior” who “supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening,” and those who financially support him — without considering U.S. foreign policy’s role in the conflicts that yield large aid movements, or the wishes of those receiving the aid.

“I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference,’” Cole wrote. “There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.”

Cole’s analysis was smart and personal without overt hostility — something other critics couldn’t resist, particularly when it came to Russell’s role in the film. It resonated, and when talking about the backlash today, Invisible Children staff still cite the phrase “white savior industrial complex.”

“Our biggest mistake,” West says, “was we should have had supplementary materials that showed how much we really know. We should have had that secondary video that has all of our regional staff who are in fact from the regions in which we operate. It’s not a bunch of white California kids out in the region. These are professionals who have lived through this conflict their whole lives. We should have had that stuff in front when people came looking, but we were just too underwater to even figure that out.”

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Russell says he still hasn’t grasped how many people saw the clip of his naked rant. (Somewhere around 4.5 million, only counting the most popular versions on YouTube.) But he’s distinctly aware of the mark it left on Invisible Children’s internal culture. On his office bookshelf, next to thick, beat-up journals from his first Africa trip, Russell has a blue binder, where dozens of cards and press clippings and notes from friends and strangers and co-workers are collaged together. On the cover of the binder is a cut-out headline from Entertainment Weekly: “This was the year that… EVERYONE GOT NAKED.” The article didn’t include Russell, but he thought it was funny anyway.

“Coming back to work,” Russell says, “I think it was strange to hear a lot of people be like, ‘I was gonna move on, I was gonna get another job, I was gonna stop the internship, but I’m here for you to make sure you’re OK. I’ve stayed here for a year to make sure you’re OK.’”

On his first day back, one of Invisible Children’s writers wrote him a letter, which he picked out of all of the notes to show me:

“Welcome home. I’ve literally had dreams about this day when I would see you for the first time in Noelle and Heather’s office — slow motion hug and tears — and now my literal dreams are literally coming true. A couple things I didn’t realize about you ‘til you weren’t in the office anymore: Your ideas and designs push the envelope, yet you have the key skill of getting people on the same page in spite of your ideas’ extremity. You break convention but somehow make peace and bring everybody together over it. I miss that.”

“She’s saying, ‘I dreamt of you coming back,’ and I’m not even like that good friends with her!” Russell laughs. “I just … Yeah. I feel most at home here, so I always felt like I would come back if they would have me.”

Was that a question?

“Obviously if someone does what I did, they’re getting advice from a lot of people saying distance yourself as much as you can, ‘cause he’s really the thing that took the campaign off the rails. So I think they had to really think about what my position would be like, get a lot of advice, and figure out if it could work.”

Russell and I spoke for an hour before he made any reference to his faith, and only when I asked. In the past, he’s talked openly about his evangelical upbringing and its influence on his life and work — Russell’s parents are the founders of the national chain Christian Youth Theater; he and Poole and Bailey are definitive Christian bros. But after several critics accused Invisible Children of being a secretly religious and even anti-gay organization — including an Atlantic story accusing Russell of “secretly pulling our consciences towards Jesus” — he has notably scaled back the God talk. In October, when he was at Catalyst, the annual church leadership conference, Russell says he turned away questions from a Christian Science Monitor reporter who approached him.

“I feel so manipulated by people who think, I’m gonna get the scoop because I think he’s secretly trying to do this spiritual thing. Like if we really were the illuminati, how much more exciting would your article be? If we’re working with Jay Z? We’re in a homeless neighborhood — give me a break, we’re not illuminati.”

Russell says he watches service on TV and goes to church once in a while, but not on a consistent basis.

“Maybe this is a cop-out, but if you want to know about my spirituality, I’ll totally tell you. I can talk about my faith. I’m not afraid of it. But Invisible Children is not a faith-based religious organization at all. People forget that something like 80% of Americans call themselves a believer in God … So to have like 30% or even half of our staff have some kind of faith is just a demographic. No one’s trying to push an agenda.”

Russell believes — of course — that everything happens for a reason. On his bulletin board is a printed-out email from Oprah (her email address blacked out, much to certain visitors’ chagrin). Russell wrote her last year after reading that she recognized the symptoms of her own nervous breakdown after interviewing him.

“Hi Jason, I received your beautiful letter,” he says, more performing her email than reading it out loud. “Isn’t it beautiful how we’re all angels for each other and messages to heal come in all forms? Thank you for taking such fine care and reaching out to me. I hold you in the light — exclamation point!”

“So you saved Oprah?” I ask.

“For me, it’s like, OK, my breakdown was a shitshow. We all know that. But I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘I’ve had a breakdown. I’m on this medicine.’ It’s this dark secret that we’re all struggling with our mental health, and I think we should be vulnerable and honest and tell the truth. If my next 10 years ends with having to do with mental health or encouraging a generation to be real and honest — it’s the only way you’re gonna get free — then the breakdown was probably necessary for me to become something of an expert.”

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Russell speaks to roadies and staff, kicking off a tour at San Diego’s Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial on Sept. 17, 2013. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Ben Keesey, a towering 30-year-old with slicked-back hair, likes conversation; he wants to know about your day, where you grew up, and what your job is like. But he bounces, sometimes ungracefully, between youthful energy and political pragmatism, stuck between a world of San Diego interns who end every sentence with “awesome,” and D.C. lawmakers who don’t. He is relentlessly idealistic, a trait he embraces despite how often it’s been used against him and Invisible Children.

After KONY 2012, Keesey would say during interviews, “How do I show you my sincerity? How do I just show people my actual heart? Can they just tap into it for 10 minutes, so they can see we really do care about the people we work for?”

“There are times when I get sad,” Keesey says. “Because a lot of the concerns or skepticisms that we weren’t able to overcome put a lot of people on the sidelines that I believe want to be involved. At times, I actually personally process it as feeling very responsible and saying, ‘What more could I have done? Did I fail? Did I fail this organization and this cause by not being able to properly justify our actions or our integrity?’ It’s a very heavy burden on my heart.”

In the controversy’s aftermath, Invisible Children had difficulty booking school tours for the first time in years. The money wasn’t there like it used to be, with young fundraisers experiencing resistance — “from their families, their friends, people spitting on them, people calling them liars, people calling them stupid, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Russell says. “Before KONY 2012, our organization was predominantly seen as, Good job! You guys are inspiring, keep going, we believe in you. And all the sudden it flipped on its head — You guys are liars, you’re a scam factory, you’re fake, you’re embezzling the money, or whatever.”

By mid-2012, Invisible Children had nearly $26.5 million in revenue and $17 million in net assets. By mid-2013, the organization had $4.9 million in revenue (their lowest since 2005) and less than $6.6 million in assets. Sixty-five employees in the San Diego office became 29. Two floors of a building became one. About 130 staffers in Africa — 95% of them from the region — became 108.

And yet, KONY 2012 was objectively the organization’s most successful campaign ever, both in its mission — making Kony famous, even if on the other end of punch lines — and in policy.

On April 20, 2012, when KONY 2012 supporters were supposed to “cover the night,” a directive from the film to blanket city centers in posters and other anti-Kony propaganda, turnout was abysmal. But that month, President Obama announced the extension of a military advise-and-assist mission to central Africa. The European Union, as part of a declaration of support, established a Joint Operations Centre to assist central Africa’s counter-LRA regional task force. On Capitol Hill, Invisible Children’s reputation went from “very young film students” to issue experts invited to White House roundtables, according to The Enough Project, a policy-focused group that says it helped Invisible Children overcome “stumbling blocks” in its early lack of expertise. In January 2013, Congress passed the Rewards for Justice Bill, authorizing $5 million for information leading to Kony’s capture. It was at the bill’s signing in the Oval Office that Keesey asked Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to speak at the 2013 Fourth Estate Summit, Invisible Children’s second-ever conference of more than 1,000 supporters. She accepted, starting the speech — her first since being appointed ambassador — with “O.M.G.”

“KONY 2012 created the most opportunity and movement around this issue more than all the eight years before it combined,” says Noelle West, who spent a not insignificant amount of her time immediately after KONY 2012 responding to critical comments on charity database GuideStar, Reddit, and social media networks. “To know that’s what happened and still feel punished for it is strange.”

“It was game changer for the profile of the issue and for the movement at the international level,” Keesey says. “It’s absolutely caused us gigantic organizational challenges, personal challenges, ones that we’re still working through. But I think on balance, net net net to the mission, it was helpful. And from that standpoint, I would do it again.”

There are regrets, of course, in how the backlash was handled. From all vantage points, Invisible Children didn’t know how to talk about itself. The messages — and messengers — weren’t consistent.

Grant Oyston (and many others) cited his fundamental problem with Invisible Children as “their relentless focus on advocacy over action,” a criticism heightened by Invisible Children’s director of ideology Jedediah Jenkins’ post-KONY 2012 comment that “we are not an aid organization, and we don’t intend to be. I think people think we’re over there delivering shoes or food. But we are an advocacy and awareness organization.” (Later in March, a video of Jenkins joking around and drinking — or pretending to drink — while celebrating Invisible Children’s $1 million grant from Chase Community Giving made it to TMZ. Jenkins has since taken a break from the organization to go on a bike trip from Oregon to Patagonia.)

“That comment is a bit of a half-representation of even who we were in 2012,” Keesey says. “But at the same time, this conversation in itself illuminates the challenge that we have describing who we are, because who we are has changed, and changes and will change.”

Still, accusations surrounding the organization’s financial integrity remain the stickiest: that so much of its money is spent on travel and film production, that so little is spent on overseas programs, that it kept money from the KONY 2012 action kits.

“We were very much accused of financial impropriety,” Keesey says. “The feeling of potentially being scammed is one of the worst feelings in the world. And it’s not possible to reach back out to the amount of people that heard that message in the wake of KONY 2012 for them to feel rock-solid confident that we do get our finances audited every year, and 100% of our audits have come back with an unqualified opinion. We’ve had no legitimate cases or even accusations of actual fraud. That doesn’t exist.”

COO Chris Carver says when Invisible Children tried to explain its finances, he wishes he had “put out not just the literal components, but how much we felt this strategy was important, this allocation of funds to domestic education versus international operations — how much we believe in that.”

And yet Invisible Children substantially reallocated funds last year, spending about $4 million in the U.S. on media and mobilization efforts and nearly $7.8 million on Uganda recovery and protection programs, according to its annual IRS filings. The only other year Invisible Children gave more money to Uganda than the U.S. was in fiscal year 2009, but the difference was just under $750,000. This reversal was Keesey’s direction, made with consultation from the staff in Africa.

According to independent evaluator Charity Navigator, Invisible Children has spent at least 80% on programs since 2009, contradicting a widely circulated 32% figure that one interpretation of their finances (which discounted U.S. educational programs) yielded during KONY 2012. But Charity Navigator’s accountability rating of Invisible Children in 2011 — two of four stars — was another reason the organization’s finances were called into question, and largely a result of Invisible Children not having enough independent voting board members at the time. The rating was restored to four stars in 2012, after more members were added. (Invisible Children was also questioned for not filing with the Better Business Bureau, another voluntary measure of nonprofit transparency. Carver says the “Better Business Bureau stamp was just something that we haven’t gotten around to doing, because it takes a lot of time.”)

Carver estimates this year’s revenue will continue to be lower than Invisible Children’s past highs. There can never be another surprise Susan Boyle performance, and there can never be another KONY 2012, which cost in total $2.8 million. The organization very simply doesn’t have the resources, financially or emotionally: “To fool ourselves into thinking that we’re gonna convince the world that this is different is not the best use of our time,” Carver says.

Invisible Children’s only fundraising campaign in 2013 was ZeroLRA, which Russell calls “the least inspired I have been and everyone around here has been, even though we worked our butt off to make it happen and inspire our fundraisers and supporters.”

The problem comes down to originality, Russell says. Invisible Children has been telling stories about the LRA’s abductions for 10 years, over 12 documentaries. “How many different ways can you cut the cake? How many different ways can you actually approach the conflict and keep it fresh and exciting?”

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

The most important question, two years on: How did Invisible Children spend its KONY 2012 millions?

The answer: mostly on what it considers attack-prevention programs in known LRA activity regions, including one that uses helicopters to drop defection fliers — “truth campaigns to psychologically woo them,” as Keesey says, out of the jungle and to safe-reporting sites. Of last year’s 83 known defectors, 79% referenced the fliers, Invisible Children says. (In December, 19 LRA members defected together, the largest mass defection since 2008.)

Invisible Children has also been investing in data-gathering since 2010, when it launched the LRA Crisis Tracker, broadcasting LRA movements and attacks based on information relayed via 71 high-frequency radios. The community reports are vetted through regional experts and updated to the tracker twice daily. The tracker provides an email subscription service, which Invisible Children says is used by state and military officials in the U.S. and central Africa, local communities, and other NGOs, including those providing health services to rural communities.

Invisible Children’s community-improvement programs in Uganda — the “recovery” piece of the organization’s four-part model — have expanded and matured, too; there are now 401 students enrolled in its legacy scholarship program, up from the 135 in its inaugural class, and 4,025 adults enrolled in the village loans and adult literacy programs, up from 400 in its inception. (When asked for their opinions on these recent developments, many critics of “KONY 2012” told BuzzFeed they haven’t kept up with Invisible Children since the controversy two years ago.)

This year, Invisible Children will go after grants from government and philanthropy groups, like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the LRA Fund, a small group of foundations supporting projects in LRA-affected communities. Keesey says the organization needs about $6.2 million this year to continue its programs and keep the lights on. Some of that will come from Invisible Children’s 10,230 monthly donors (with help from interns who make hundreds of calls a week) but not enough. The staff has come to accept that.

“We don’t need the masses, the gigantic grassroots movement, as much as we have in the past,” says West. That may change from time to time — Invisible Children is pushing an upcoming Senate resolution encouraging Obama to “finish the job and not reduce the amount of resources or commitment until we see a full dismantling of the LRA,” and will ask supporters in key districts to call or write to their senators.

But the reality is that Invisible Children can’t survive off the masses anymore. There will be no films or campaigns or tours this year — no 10-week trips led by interns (or “roadies”) screening films and spreading the word of Invisible Children around the U.S. There will be no large-scale Fourth Estate Summit, either — the conference Russell once described as “a TED talk, mixed with a music festival and a film festival, all mixed in a Justin Bieber concert,” with an average attendee age of 16. That means no 1,315 kids in T-shirts and bracelets spending $325–495 each, and no “spectacular wink and a nod to showmanship,” as Bobby Bailey, who attended the summits in 2011 and 2013, puts it. (There will be a smaller version of the event this year, an Invisible Children spokeswoman told BuzzFeed after this article’s publication.) Maybe Invisible Children will never return to that kind of showmanship; maybe it will never be able to afford to.

This scaling back has brought a certain restlessness to San Diego. Russell hasn’t been to Africa in two years; “There hasn’t been a real need for me to go out,” he says, with dozens of workers already on the ground. His next trip will likely be when Kony is caught or killed and the LRA is disbanded. Then, Invisible Children will either close its doors or change into something else entirely, with a different mission and different players.

“We all want to go do other amazing things at some point in our life, and we don’t want to hold ourselves back from that,” Carver says.

In “Move,” Invisible Children’s first film after “KONY 2012,” West says she was afraid that the backlash and Russell’s breakdown was the “beginning of the end … What if all this time we spent, all these things we built, are just, done?” It was certainly an option in 2012, but despite all its losses, Invisible Children wants to “work to put itself out of a job,” or so goes its spin line.

“I would love to shut the doors,” says West, who’s transitioning from communications director to an in-house consultant for companies seeking advice on viral campaigns. “I would love for there to be a big black screen when you come to IC.com after Kony is caught and there’s a process in place for rehabilitating the region so the LRA can’t come back. I would love for IC to be turned off. Why do you need us anymore? That’s just me, though.”

West wants to build furniture. Keesey is mulling over going back to school for sociology or psychology. Russell’s future may lie in some form of mental health advocacy — a field that may be a little more sympathetic to his intuition to put himself in his stories.

The 10 years they’ve spent on this single issue, maintaining all that swaggering idealism, has left the staff in a state of constant anticipation. They firmly believe the LRA’s demise is within sight and that they get closer every day to someone, somewhere, spotting Kony. And with that expectation comes an even stronger hope for vindication.

“It would be such a big deal. And people would come back to the cause and say, ‘Yeah I’ve been supporting you all along. I wanted Kony to be captured too,’” Russell says. “We definitely know that we need that win, and that the future of Invisible Children and the cause and the work that we do is completely reliant on believing that the win will happen soon. If he’s captured or killed in 2024, I would have a hard time believing we could sustain the narrative for much longer.”

Russell says there’s only one film he’s working on, currently plotted out on his big office whiteboard: the one he’ll release when Kony is gone. Whenever that is.

View this image ›

Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Corrections: An earlier version of this article misrepresented Invisible Children’s office layout. The article has also been updated to clarify the LRA Crisis Tracker was launched in 2010, and that according to an Invisible Children spokeswoman, there will be a Fourth Estate Summit this year, contrary to earlier comments made by the staff. (3/10/14)

Update: On Dec. 15, Invisible Children announced it will put in place a strategy to close by the end of 2015.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/two-years-after-kony-2012-has-invisible-children-grown-up

#Jason Russell #kony 2012

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therightnewsnetwork · 7 years

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We Hear You: On Memorial Day, Why Americans Don’t Forget to Remember

Editor’s Note: To help commemorate Memorial Day, we decided to share some of your comments responding to holiday pieces in recent years from Heritage Foundation national security expert James Jay Carafano and others.—Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: Both my parents served in World War I, my brother and myself in World War II. I missed D-Day, but just by a few days (“Making Memorial Day Make a Difference“).

I am an old fart. I remember well the Great Depression as a teenager, working in a dairy and a saw mill and caddying on a private golf course, among other jobs, wherever we could find work.

As a soldier, I remember walking up a trail from the beach past Sainte-Mère-Église, seeing a burning Jeep with a body. Hearing the first sounds of the Germans’ 88 mm guns. Receiving our first mortar fire. And thinking this is madness.

Little did I know of the future: the hedgerows, Brittany, the run to the Rhine, the Ardennes, the death camps, the breakthrough at Saint-Lo, and more.

It does not seem possible now, but it actually happened. People in this country do not know how good they have it here. And in my mind, I see a country destroyed within by the ACLU, the courts, and our own government. I ask why and how did this happen. We were duped into war in Vietnam and Iraq. For what purpose?

The country is morally and financially bankrupt. What was all the death and suffering for? We have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. What kind of a life will they have?—Frank Jenkins

***

The Korean War is truly America’s “Forgotten War.” I am just one of those who served in that nasty, horrific war that cost our country nearly as many casualties in three years as the Vietnam War did in 10. It really is time for some measure of recognition of the sacrifices made by these veterans, who are rapidly leaving us.—Wallace Hystad

***

A few years ago, I was talking to a friend who had been on the beaches on D-Day (“This Soldier’s Story Reminds Us of Why Memorial Day Matters“). I asked him if he had ever thought of going back to see those beaches again. He nodded his head sadly. He told me that all he had to do was close his eyes, and he could see it all again.—Pat Jorgensen

Let us not forget what Memorial Day is all about. If you know a son, daughter, father, mother, spouse, brother, or sister of one of our fallen, please take a moment to thank them, on behalf of our loved ones, for their sacrifice.—Bryan Burgess

***

Working as a cryptography tech in Paris gave me an overview of the war in Europe, which is why I will tolerate no criticism of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had great generals leading large military groups and armies, but only so much materiel to go around.

When Gen. George Patton raced beyond his supplies (gasoline), the Battle of the Bulge with all its casualties ensued.

I learned of so many situations then and later. During the war, I could not understand why so many mattress covers were requested. Much later, I learned they were the forerunners of body bags. Much I’d like to forget.—Gwen Cody

***

The Korean War was the bloodiest war fought by the United States in the 20th century, based on the amount of men committed to combat: Over 54,000 killed in action and 8,000 unaccounted-for prisoners of war in just three years. But many forget to mention the truly “Forgotten War.”—Carl White

***

My husband served in both the Vietnam and Korean wars, so he doubly felt the rejection by the public. However, he volunteered for Vietnam. The omission of recognition that bothers him the most is that owed to Korean veterans.

He was drafted right out of high school, and it was during the Battle of Inchon that he earned his Purple Heart. Please, whenever you honor the veterans of our nation’s wars, remember those who fought in Korea during the 1950s. Many are still alive and carry the physical and emotional wounds of that conflict.—Anita Dragoo

***

I suggest my fellow Americans find the book “The Second World War” by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, and John Pritchard. Its 1,300-plus pages explain World War II more thoroughly than anything I have ever read.

This book tells of Nazi Germany’s “work” in Europe, and why the Nazis had to be stopped. It tells of imperial Japan’s treatment of China, the Philippines, prisoners of war, and so on.

My brother and four first cousins served in WWII, all as volunteers. One was a nurse in North Africa for 18 months. I served in the U.S. Marines with volunteers from WWII and Korea. One Marine was a master sergeant captured on Wake Island. My brother was at Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima. A cousin started on Guadacanal.—Alan K. Jackson

***

Thank all you heroes who put yourselves in harm’s way so that we are protected here in America (“Just a Common Soldier: A Moving Tribute for Memorial Day“). I have always loved our flag and our country. My father was in World War I, and I have always been proud of him and every man or woman who has kept us safe. God bless America and all those who still serve to keep us safe.—Leona Raney

We so often forget what sacrifices our men and women give our country. This simple poem says it all (“Just a Common Soldier: A Moving Tribute for Memorial Day“). Don’t forget our brave solders from the past and present. They are the true heroes. They give their all. Remember this: A man who lays down his life for someone else is a true hero. God bless and please, God, bring them home safe.—Bobby Lewis

***

Not only should we mourn, but as Patton said, celebrate their lives and be glad that we had them in a time of need.—John Naguski

***

Regarding Jarrett Stepman’s commentary “Memorial Day Tributes Should Include What Soldiers Fought For“: It’s a national tragedy. The dumbing down of America continues. Our politicians do not care as long as they remain in power.—Joel G. Wood

***

I have been watching Oliver North’s “War Stories” for many months. They show the reality and the horror of war. They should be viewed in our schools, because the magnitude of the sacrifice by so many is being lost.—Loretta Hurite

***

We do tend to forget the soldiers are individuals with families and friends, hopes and dreams, and most are at the beginning of their lives (“This Soldier’s Story Reminds Us of Why Memorial Day Matters“). Those that are lost are sorely missed and owed a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid.—Rick Simons

The Meaning of Memorial Day, From the Civil War On https://t.co/i4bv1F0I3z @DailySignal

— Fred Lucas (@FredLucasWH) May 26, 2017

As a proud nationalized U.S. citizen from La Paz, Bolivia, I respectfully pay tribute to the heroines and heroes of all wars who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our beloved country free and the exceptional beacon of light for the rest of the world. May their souls rest in peace, and may we always remember them in our fervent daily prayers.—Luis R. Quiroz

***

I have a copy of President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Memorial Day speech (“‘They Stood for Something and We Owe Them Something’: Reagan’s 1986 Memorial Day Speech“). I listened to it on Memorial Day 2016, along with the rest of the speeches I have in DVD format, instead of listening to you know who. We will never have another president and commander-in-chief like Ronald Reagan, or anything close to him. He brought our country together.—Virginia Murrell

***

God bless our fallen warriors.—Pete Kleff

***

A million GIs also served in Europe from 1950 on, keeping Stalin out of Western Europe (“Making Memorial Day Make a Difference“). The tour of duty was three years at $75 a month. Nobody knew we were there, and still don’t know, as there is nothing in the history books about that era.

We had air bases with atom bombs to hold the USSR in check , and ground troops for fodder. This was before intercontinental ballistic missiles. And thank God that Stalin died in 1953.

When I came back in 1954, nobody knew what was avoided. Nobody seemed to know we were there, and people still haven’t a clue. None of us is looking for a medal. Just a printed record would be nice in a recognized history book, written by an author with common sense.—Don Nardone

Share the stories of real heroes this Memorial Day https://t.co/Zvk022qzCM @Heritage‘s John JV Venable @DailySignal

— Ken McIntyre (@KenMac55) May 28, 2017

I have many relatives buried in Arlington Cemetery, and make many visits throughout the year. I see the thousands of headstones, and the hundreds of niches for cremains, and still after all these years I am still awed by it all.

So not make this weekend the only time you thank a serviceman or servicewoman for their service. Do it every time you see any man or woman in uniform, or a veteran.

Recently, I walked up to a young Marine and extended my hand and said thank you. He asked, “What for?” I said, “For serving.” He then told me I was the first person who ever had said that to him.

Please remember, they serve 52 weeks of the year, not just this weekend.—Jeanne Stottler

***

May they rest in peace with truth and grace.—Mary De Voe

***

Here’s a lesser-known verse of “America the Beautiful”:

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!

Americans have died, in liberating strife, at home and on foreign soil for more than two centuries. Our heroes gave us the freedom to refine who we are. May we always be worthy of their sacrifice.—Will

The post We Hear You: On Memorial Day, Why Americans Don’t Forget to Remember appeared first on The Daily Signal.

from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/we-hear-you-on-memorial-day-why-americans-dont-forget-to-remember/

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