April 30, 2007
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Displace.Me
On Saturday a few friends and I took a road trip to Pittsburgh to participate in the nation-wide Displace.Me protest against the war in Northern Uganda (“Every war has an end”). I was an addition to the car pool at the last second, and the event wasn’t at all what I expected. There was a video from the event last year that I had seen that showed people lined up side-by-side in sleeping bags, and that was what I had expected to happen this year as well. However, after climbing in the car I noticed there were stack of cardboard in the back. In the usual celerity of fast-paced conversations I have with my friends I asked what it was for, and they said something like, “For sleeping in,” or a similar ambiguous statement like that.
We arrived early and volunteered for a few hours at the hilly park on a windy, misty afternoon in Pittsburgh. Soon, the masses of people began arriving to sleep in the park for the night, all with cardboard in hand as well. The whole thing just really didn’t click in my brain. However, a few hours later after everyone had arrived and settled down in the designated area, I was truly marveling at the sight. In a matter of hours these people had created a makeshift city of cardboard forts. It was like a tuscan raider encampment. All the little hovels were crowded closely together, and varied in quality and style. Walking through the miniature village was really surreal, like I couldn’t believe that people had built all these mini houses to sleep in for the night.
It was like a massive project to induce childhood nostalgia. I loved it. The whole night went brilliantly, and supposedly president Bush is supposed to be reviewing the actions of the Displace.Me projects sometime this week. For those of you who do not know, many young children are abducted from their homes in Northern Uganda to fight in a rebellion against the government. That is the premise behind the political group called Invisible Children, if you have ever heard of that.
Anyways, I was sick today, which I suppose is from sleeping outside Saturday night. It was, nevertheless, a great adventure. Hope you all had wondeful days, though!
Comments (7)
RYC: Haha…yeah…I know what you mean. I’m not a big fan of hardcore most days; but I’m unstable enough that some days I love it.
RYP: Sounds like a great thing to get involved with!
i am glad that th knowledge of invisible children is spreading. i first heard about it 2 years ago, and there was a protest at OSU that involved sleeping overnight as well.
lets pray there is an end to this soon
Hey btw man, IC is not a political organization really, technically they are a non-profit organization. And like most non-profit’s, they do have a political agenda. It’s not their only reason behind doing what they do, awareness is also a big part.
Anyway, yea man it was awesome!
a bunch of young people from our church went to it here, in Chicago … my son wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure a 13 year-old was ready, but he probably would have been fine. so cool to be ‘others’ centered. Here is a link to one of the guys who went. http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=StormTheFortsOfDarkness
Letting your hair grow is an excellent idea that I would highly recommend. I hope you have better luck coming up with something to do with it while it grows long than I did… Just stick with it, it takes a long time, but it’s worth the trip. Also note that depending on what kind of circles you spend time with you might get some interesting feedback, eg. earlier this week I had a girl telling me my hair was sinful. I doesn’t make much difference to me what most people think, but it does have an effect, especially with extended family…
Glad you had a “good trip” with the protest, I hope to do some stuff like that in the future.
I heard around the way that you like Coldplay. Do you like all their stuff? I’m curious of your thoughts on X&Y.
Coincidentally, when I was your age I listened to Coldplay a LOT, but I moved on (Radiohead!). Then X&Y was released… *shudders* I haven’t listened to them much after that.
Amazing.