11 participate in Queen’s Kony 2012

Queen's Does Kony 2012 posters could be seen around Princess St. on Friday night.
Image by: Justin Chin
Queen's Does Kony 2012 posters could be seen around Princess St. on Friday night.

Over 1,100 people were confirmed as attending the Queen’s Does Kony 2012 event on Facebook, but only 11 people showed up on Friday night.

Starting at 10 p.m. the group put up over 100 posters along Princess Street. By 2 a.m. many of the posters had been taken down or destroyed and only remnants were left.

The Queen’s event coincided with the worldwide Kony 2012 campaign’s Cover the Night event – an attempt to raise awareness of the group’s goal of capturing Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony.

Invisible Children, the charity behind the Kony 2012 campaign to capture, offered activists around the world the opportunity to participate in the Cover the Night event by ordering an Action Kit containing posters, bracelets and other promotional material.

Wynne Baker, one of the Queen’s event organizers, said wasn’t expecting a high turnout to the event in light of criticism the charity has received since their YouTube video garnered over 100 million views last month.

Baker and her friends tried to differentiate themselves from Invisible Children by making their own posters and changing the event name to “Queen’s Does Kony 2012” instead of “Cover the Night”.

“I personally do not support Invisible Children,” Baker, ArtSci ’15, said. “Personally I wouldn’t give money to them so I didn’t order [an action kit from Invisible Children].”

Kony’s rebel group, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is believed to have abducted more than 30,000 children and turned them into soldiers or sex slaves.

“I don’t care about the politics. I don’t care about the budget. I don’t care about all that. What we are here for is to bring awareness to 30,000 children who don’t have a future. That’s all we care about.” Baker said. “You don’t have to support the cause to support the idea. If you want to hate, that’s great. That shows you don’t care about children.”

Baker said the environmental impact of printing and putting up hundreds of posters could’ve been another a factor for the low turn out.

“I think people will wake up tomorrow and get a nice shock seeing all the posters and hopefully they’ll get on a computer and look up who Kony is,” Baker said.

Kingston Police said they haven’t received calls in regards to the Kony 2012 Cover the Night event. However, it is a city bylaw violation to post on hydro poles and city properties.

“KONY” was taped on the windows of Urban Outfitters on Princess Street, but by 2 a.m. only the letter “O” could be seen at the time.

Chris Le Feuvre, manager of Urban Outfitters on Princess St. said they didn’t notice anything when the store opened.

Tags

Activism, Kony 2012, Uganda

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