Late yesterday afternoon word spread through our office that Invisible Children co-founder and Kony 2012 video creator Jason Russell had been detained by police for, among other things, "masturbating in public". Shortly thereafter a group of us gathered around a computer to watch this footage that TMZ was reporting to be Jason, minutes before police arrived...
It was a dramatic, surreal, and mysterious turn of events after a historic week in the life of the Internet. So dramatic that I felt the urge to sit down and sort out my thoughts in blog form.
Full disclosure: I own an Invisible Children t-shirt. On it is a hybrid image of a handgun and video camera.
It was given to me in 2008. I was working for a touring band who had given permission to a team of Invisible Children ambassadors to set up shop at their concerts. The Invisible Children advocates talked to kids at the venues and sold DVDs that highlighted the work Invisible Children was doing in Africa to help save child soldiers.
The Invisible Children group was well known, well respected, and the most visible not-for-profit organization I can recall within my corner of the music industry. They were aligning with musicians, holding benefit concerts, and recruiting well-intentioned kids to become ambassadors for their cause. It was an impressive effort.
When I first watched the Kony 2012 video there were approximately 1 million views - a respectable number by most standards on YouTube. I wasn't surprised by the "viral" nature of it on that first day, due to the established history of the organization.
But what followed was unheard of, as far as I can remember. While the view count was exploding, so was the debate. It seemed everyone was simultaneously circulating this blog post by VisibleChildren.com that outlined many skeptical viewpoints and raised moral questions of the Invisible Children organization.
Invisible Children proceeded to defend themselves in a thorough rebuttal. Meanwhile the view count grew well into the eight-figure territory.
After some debate here at Up we decided to address the Kony video and journalistic implications that came with it.
On Wednesday the story evolved further when Al-Jazeera reported that the Kony 2012 video was being shown to Ugandans for the first time due to limited Internet access. And they were reacting. Not with empathy, but with anger. And not towards Kony. But towards the filmmakers.
The video shows a local man, Leo Odongo, who was abducted by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, telling Al-Jazeera that some of the promotion "celebrates our suffering". It ends with local Ugandans throwing rocks at the screen.
As a lover of global events, and the means by which the Internet instigates action and inaction within them, I was pleased to be living in the middle of this phenomena. I look at this "experiment", as Jason Russell calls it at the opening of the Kony video, as a chance to learn. Not only about the issue itself, but how to fact check, how to question, how to debate, and how to develop an opinion through discussion.
We're all in agreement that anyone who commits crimes against children should be punished thoroughly. But as we discussed in our segment, the issue here isn't only about Joseph Kony. It's about the standards of journalism, activism, and those rare times when phenomenal events force us to think harder.
So when the story broke yesterday that Jason Russell had been detained for indecency, it was impossible to ignore. And when TMZ posted video that allegedly showed Russell's indecency, it became too much for me not to write about.
The image that originally summed up the Kony 2012 story for me was its YouTube thumbnail: an image of the Earth. Mythically and metaphorically the image represented our new-found hyper-connectivity. Then, after viewing the Al-Jazeera story, the image that came to mind was the white tarp used by villagers in Uganda to view the video. A rudimentary tool used by a developing nation that was being told its own story by people on the other side of the globe. Now, unfortunately, the image that I will associate with Kony 2012 is a naked man on the street corner. Reportedly exhausted after fighting for years to shed light on this cause, Jason Russell will now serve as a polarizing figure in this debate.
It's possible that the next image that I'll associate with Kony 2012 will be an even more epic and emotional one from April 20, 2012 when the organization and its supporters will "Cover The Night" and take direct action in cities across the world. Whatever imagery comes from that may re-establish my appreciation for what has been done here in the last week.
In the meantime, if you see me wearing my Invisible Children t-shirt, know that I'm doing so simply because it's comfortable. And everything else I own is in the laundry.
-Brett Brownell (@brettbrownell) is video and web producer for Up w/ Chris Hayes which airs Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC.
