Last night, nearly 1,000 young people—primarily students from local colleges and high schools—marched to and slept in Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids as part of the Global Night Commute designed to raise awareness about the abduction of children in Uganda and their subsequent forced participation in an ongoing military conflict in the country. The nearly twenty-year-old conflict began in 1986 and has displaced some 1.7 million people and kills an estimated 130 people per day. However, it is the war’s toll on children that was highlighted by the event, with an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 children being abducted by rebel forces to fight as soldiers in the past ten years of the conflict. In response to these abductions, Ugandan children began “night commuting” whereby they moved from their villages where many children were abducted out of their homes into the Ugandan cities where the children sleep collectively in order to prevent abduction. According to many NGOs, the situation in Uganda is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, yet it has received scant attention in both the corporate and independent media.

The event was organized as part of the outgrowth in interest that the film Invisible Children has directed on the issue and as part of the filmmakers desire to encourage people to act on the emotions raised by the film. Aside from raising awareness about the situation in Uganda—the Global Night Commute gained coverage locally in the Grand Rapids Press and on WXMI Fox 17—the event also encouraged people to take political action aimed at ending the conflict. To that end, participants were encouraged to hand write letters to President George W. Bush and one of Michigan’s two Senators encouraging them to press the United Nations and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to end the conflict and protect the civilians in Northern Uganda and ensure adequate humanitarian assistance to the “Invisible Children.” (Letters can also be emailed online). Participants were also encouraged to work on a collaborative art project where a Polaroid photo was to be attached to a blank piece of paper with art responding to one of four questions—what does America stand for, what does the Global Night Commute mean to you, how can you change the world, and what is your story, why do you care—with the art being compiled into a book that “will express what the night is about” and be sold online as a yearbook so that participants can find themselves (copies will also be sent to “our country’s most influential people”).

After nightfall, the film Invisible Children was screened for those who had not yet seen it and an estimated 200 people watched the film as it was broadcast on the side of an RV. The film does an exceptional job of drawing out an emotional response to the situation in Uganda and convincing viewers that the situation must be dramatically changed, but it does a poor job of providing a background on the conflict or providing the contextual information that is necessary to understand the conflict. Instead of giving a detailed history of how and why the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) began its rebellion against the government, viewers are told that the conflict had its origins with a spiritual woman that simply “wanted to overthrow the government” rather than attempting to provide a history of the conflict in Uganda that looks at the war as a legacy of colonialism or discusses the role of outside entities—such as Sudan or the United States—in the war. Similarly, there is no examination of the politics of the current Ugandan regime and its crimes against Northern Ugandan civilians or the military aid that it is getting from the United States government. Such a discussion may have complicated the film, but it needs to take place if people are to understand what is happening and are to advocate for solutions that include asking the United States government to put an end to the war.

While the event and film have been successful in raising awareness about the conflict, there are legitimate questions to be asked about the way in which the film is encouraging a form of activism based on the notion of “white man’s burden.” One student at Calvin College criticized the Global Night Commute for encouraging a “paternal attitude” towards Africa where white Americans—in this case middle and upper middle class college students—are seen as the “saviors” of Africa. This criticism seemed particularly applicable when organizers thanked participants for “spending a night in the cold” for “the children” in Uganda when participants were sheltered from the cold in a variety of semi-expensive sleeping bags and in many cases were drinking warm coffee and eating food that their privileged position in the world allowed them to purchase while a “musical” produced by the filmmakers conveyed the idea that it was only the white American students portrayed in the musical that had the power to “change the world.” For the most part, both the children engaging in “night commuting” and the Ugandan people as a whole were portrayed without agency throughout the evening and were instead portrayed to be objects in need of white sympathy. Questions about the role of white America in intervening in the conflict are furthered when one considers that the campaign is seeking the United States to intervene to solve the problem rather than by strengthening Ugandan NGOs or empowering Ugandans to bring an end to the conflict.

For ongoing news about what is happening on the ground in Uganda, visit Uganda Watch or visit the Uganda Conflict Action Network for additional information on the conflict.