Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Displace Me! (Follow Up)

I'd like to add a personal note to Doug's blog on Invisible Children. Doug and I watched the video at the FSU Wesley Foundation. The situation of these children is just gut-wrenching. I think it is particularly so if you are a parent and can in any way imagine your own children being forced to live like this.

The representative of Invisible Children gave a complete presentation of the organization's goals, with a follow-up video. The organization has aid-based programs, but the Displace Me! event is promoted more as a motivating event to the U.S. government to "do something" about the problem. What really impressed me about the students in the audience is that they asked several very realistic, logical, and important questions about this latter goal: What can our government do? If the kidnappers are controlled by a madman, how do you negotiate with someone like that? and so forth. Doug had been telling me that there was an audience at FSU for a course on economics and compassion, and it was in listening to the students at the Wesley Foundation that I became convinced that he was correct. I'm hoping this course will run in Spring 2008.

If you have never seen the Invisible Children video, look for a showing in your area.

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