Tag Archives: Invisible Children

Coburn Say Yes

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Tomorrow is a big day for the Bill.  As you may or may not be aware from posts of the past, the Bill has 61 co-sponsors in the Senate, the most any sub-Saharan Africa-related bill has received in modern U.S. history.  Such good news that the original sponsors decided to hotline the bill, meaning it would pass with unanimous consent unless somebody actually took the time to put a hold on it to keep it from passing.

Tomorrow, is The OK Says YES Day of Action in Oklahoma City. The Invisible Children roadies, with two Ugandans, are already there. Lisa and Kenneth, director of communications and legislative fellow, respectively, of Resolve Uganda are already there. Activists, from Oklahoma and from elsewhere, are converging on the Capitol. Their mission? Get Senator Coburn to remove the hold.

Coburn has a strict set of principles that all bills must fit before he allows them to pass. His issue with the LRA/N. Uganda Bill is that the costs ($40M over 3 years) are not offset. Problem is, this bill doesn’t add to the deficit at all. If passed, it will approve the funds, which the Appropriations Committee would later direct – that is from where an offset can and probably will come. To add such an offset before would probably lose quite a few votes from whoever doesn’t like where the money comes from. To get passed Coburn’s hold would require a full floor vote, a time-consuming process that would be drowned by the health care overhaul. So this is where we stand.

Activists and constituents are converging on OKC tomorrow. And they aren’t leaving until the hold is removed. The Resolve Uganda crew and those who have the ability and the will are going to camp out at Coburn’s district office until the hold is removed.

If you want to hear from the Senator directly how he supports the cause but not the bill, you can check out this town hall meeting:

The Legacy Tour

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Every  fall and spring (and even sometimes in the summer) Invisible Children sends  dozens of determined and dirty youth in vans across the country to tell a story. Sometimes it is an inspiring story about  resilience and sometimes it is an progressive story of advocacy. This spring, the Legacy Tour will be completely different from anything they have done before. Why? Because instead of four American kids, one or two of which had been to Uganda, showing me a film about Ugandans, each team will be bringing a person featured in the film. 2 Americans and 8 Ugandans are getting ready to join the ranks of the roadies and go out on the road.

My representatives in the San Diego office, the Mountain West Team, will be hitting the road soon.  With them is a young man named Tony. Tony has been a part of the Invisible Children movement since 2003, when they met him on their first trip to Uganda and made Rough Cut. I am so, so excited to meet him. In 2003, Tony was a night-commuter, walking long distances to find a safe place to sleep in the big cities. He and a handful of  boys slipped away from the crowded bus park and slept in an abandoned hall under a hospital. Since night-commuting has gone down in the passed  three years or so, it’ll be interesting to see how he has changed.  So, so stoked!

Making History

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For the past few weeks I’ve been pestering Senator Jon Kyl’s legislative aide, Peter, about the senator’s co-sponsorship of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.  A couple of weeks ago, he assured me that Kyl had co-sponsored (something he rarely does), but we had no proof.  I bugged him again. Yesterday, he told me it was officially reported to Senator Russ Feingold’s office (one of the two original sponsors).  I was elated! And I was even more elated to hear this. In short, Kyl was the bill’s 51st co-sponsor in the Senate, making this the first sub-Saharan Africa-related bill to be supported by a majority of the Upper House since at least 1973 (maybe even earlier, that’s as far back as electronic records go).  Four senators got together to announce this landmark, showing unprecedented bipartisan support. If you’re interested, you can find some good excerpts from their announcement on Feingold’s site here.  The support in the Senate is great, but we’ve still got a ways to go:

Bad news is, the bill already would have passed the Senate if it wasn’t for one fiscal conservative. A while back, Senators Feingold and Brownback hot-lined the bill for passage, meaning it would automatically get 100 yeas unless a senator specifically blocked it. Right before the deadline, an anonymous hold was put on the bill. We now know that Senator Coburn is standing in the way of the best chance to end the longest-running war in the most conflict-heavy continent. In addition to that, the House is stalling.  150 representatives have co-sponsored, but we’ll keep pushing.  I’m trying to set up meetings with Mitchell’s and Flake’s district offices, so we’ll see. Got to keep fighting the good fight!

A year in review

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It took me less than 72 hours to realize that my intentions of declaring ten goals for 2010 were misplaced.  Why?  I’m not one for New Years resolutions.  I tend to resolve to do things as I think of them, and I decided at the last minute that coming up with ten things on New Years Day just wasn’t right for me.  I’ll try to do plenty of things in the next year, for sure, but I won’t be starting on day one but adding to what I’ve already got in the works.  However, I will make it up to you (as I’m sure you are all tuning in for my resolutions).  Instead of making resolutions, I am going to take one last look back and revisit my old tradition of reviewing the year.  No restrictive numbers or formats, no rules or audience – just remembering.  A lot of this may look like the last post, and I’m sorry for that.  This is just me pouring everything into a post.

This year started off between semesters at school and a couple of months into independent living.  I delved into what would be a very momentous year, but I had no idea at the time.  Kim and I rang in the New Year at the Tempe Block Party.  It was our first New Years together and it was quite a bit of fun despite quite the crowd.  Starting there, the following have happened:

-The Rescue hit.  I joined about a thousand people in a march where we abducted ourselves to raise awareness for the abducted child soldiers in Uganda.  We proceeded to sleep on a field in a makeshift camp alongside 100,000 others in 100 cities in 10 countries.  Several of my friends moved on to Albuquerque, then Wichita and finally Chicago while I called public servants all over the country to help them out.

-Kim and I celebrated seven great years!  Just one big step in a long line of getting closer and closer.  The celebration weekend was a lot of fun and we got to enjoy a lot of things we had wanted to do for a while – a concert, a museum, a zoo and painting.

-I went to LA with Kim, Cristina, and Zach.  The trip definitely had its ups and downs, but it was really nice to be on a trip with Kim again and it was pretty fun running around with Cristina.  California is always fun, but it was especially nice to see Los Angeles, which I don’t see too often.

-I flew to Washington, DC for something huge.  I joined 1600 people in the biggest lobbying effort for an African issue in American history: the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.  For me this was a huge reunion with dozens of great friends and a chance to meet some of the coolest people.  In the end I had a great time and am stoked to do more lobbying.

-Kim and I took a huge leap in buying a townhome in Tempe.  After months of saving and discussing, we have settled down in our very own home and are enjoying it very much.  It’s roomier than our quaint apartment and we’ve got a little garage to match our little patio.

Final statistics are thus:

Places visited: Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC.

Places lived: Mesa, AZ; Tempe, AZ.

Concerts attended: No Doubt.

Altruistic/Political events: Project CURE; Rotary River Rally; Malawi Dinner; The Rescue; How It Ends; Gulu Walk; Rock ‘n’ Roll Paint-a-thon; Hometown Shakedown; Schools For Schools.

Anniversaries: Seven years dating; twenty years alive; one year engaged.

Courses taken: History Methods in the Community; France in WWII; Human Development; SEI Endorsement II; Intro to Violence, Conflict, and Human Rights; Teachers and the Law; Technology in the Classroom; Physical Geography; SEI Endorsement; The Vietnam War; Content Literacy; Religion, Nationalism, and Ethnic Conflict; Global Trends; SGS Internship; Inquiry into Religion and Conflict; Facing the Past.

Blog posts: 14.

People annoyed: Probably whoever reads this and the previous post.  Whoops.