The RESCUE

This weekend, a few of us headed to downtown St. Paul to take a walk to the capitol. This was for Invisible Children's RESCUE event. The point was to be advocates to people of influence (senators, governors, celebrities, etc.) about Uganda's 23-year war. There's so much to say about it but simply put, Joseph Kony (leader of the rebel army in Uganda and now in the Congo) abducts children to turn them to violent soldiers. The goal for him is to have killing machines. There are currently around 3,000 abducted children. We want it to stop. And we want people who have voices of impact to want it to stop.

Here's how it went down.

We abducted ourselves for the night to simulate what happens to the child soldiers. People did this all over the world. In St. Paul, we started in Rice Park and took a walk (aka - the abduction walk) to the capitol to spend the night. There we had to stay until we were "rescued," meaning media coverage and a "mogul," a cultural or political leader to come speak. We obtained Channel 5 News and a representative to speak on Senator Amy Klobuchar's behalf. Amazing.

That night I saw people really get together in common cause. It wasn't easy to sleep in the rain (and to see other cities go unrescued - Chicago, San Francisco, etc!), but we did it anyway. That night we wrote letters to Amy Klobuchar and President Obama himself. These will be hand delivered to whoever goes to IC's How It Ends, a lobbying event in Washington DC. I can see how much people want this to stop and what lengths we're going to see that end.

Our home for the night - only a few of the many people there.

Sarah writing her letters!!

Visit Invisible Children's website to get more info and for updates.