Archive for April 30, 2007
THE INVISIBLE CHILDREN ‘DISPLACE ME’ EVENT Inview - Part 1
April 30, 2007 by PT Rothschild.
ENDING A WAR THE GRASSROOTS WAY
Somewhere between the avenues of ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ lays the crossroad of ‘determination’ and ‘commitment’. This is the spot where approximately 100,000 people, college and high school ‘kids’ mostly, decided to build cardboard ‘huts’ in 15 different locations across the nation (see archive article ‘Get Displaced In These Cities’). The following is the Full Value Review ‘inview’ of one such site, the one leading in people numbers as of April 28th; the LA ‘Displace Me’ site at the Pomona Fairplex.
Pomona, CA – Arriving at the Fairplex in the afternoon of Saturday, April 28th, the first thing to hit me was the steady stream of young people with a scattering of older parent types, all lugging various amounts of cardboard, sleeping bags, water, and saltine crackers. This was impressive because event registration had started hours earlier. Following on the anniversary of the GNC (Global Night Commute, see archives) staged last year to bring attention to the harrowing situation gripping children of northern Uganda who commute nightly from the bush to escape from being captured by the LRA, ironically named the Lord’s Resistance Army. The abducted children were being traumatized by having a younger brother, aged 4-7, macheted in front of them and then told the same thing would happen to them unless they joined the rebel army to fight the government. Children, males mostly aged 8-14 had been deemed the optimum recruitment age bracket by the LRA. The young girls from 12 or 13 would be made ‘wives’ of the rebel officers with some bearing children by the age of 13. This despicable situation, this unseen war, carried on for over two decades was unseen by the western world’s media whose focus is a ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ mindset (que Don Henley’s ‘Dirty Laundry’), until three ‘surfer dudes’ from San Diego went there and filmed this ‘night commute’, producing a documentary called INVISIBLE CHILDREN. “(This documentary) is not only breaking new ground, but has had a greater impact on my life than any other documentary I’ve ever seen,” touted Jon Turteltaub, Hollywood director. It had the same impact on everyone the three San Diegans showed their film to, leading to a grassroots movement that included 2 Million viewers from churches and high schools across the country in the first year alone. This ain’t your Grandpa’s ‘March Of Dimes’, Sports Fans.
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