A couple notes from Bart Compolo

One, I had heard about this from Starfish Studios. It's a night-long march as a sort of protest/awarness raising for the "Invisible Children" of Northern Uganda - a massive group of refugee children often forced to join the army or be turned as sex slaves.

Apparently, around the nation, close to 50,000 people have committed themselves to shuffle around metropolitan areas on this Saturday night in the Global Commute Night. This organization also has a movie also called the Invisible Children. I've seen neither, nor am I aware too aware of it. I guess the whole cause isn't as *popular* as Darfur (which isn't as popular a cause de celebre as, y'know, celebs). Anyway, you may find some of their tactics tacky, but they may have a point. The easiest way to get middle class America's attention on anything is through entertainment and an atmosphere of fun, while giving people a clean conscience (heck, I was gonna say "White America's", but the truth is, that's true regardless of race. I just think lower class people sometimes might be a bit more splintered in terms of what constitutes as fun. And I'm coming from a lower class perspective. Camping-out generally isn't fun to us. Which isn't why I'm not taking a part of this particular activity on this particular night).

Hmmm... Republicans... Interesting.

Kinda cheesy, as Jennie says. But I like cheesy.

But the movie, based on the web design and the trailers, looks great. Truly one of those must-sees. Although I must question myself as to why the only movies about the African experience I've seen recently are about the severe degradation of the continent. Maybe that just speeks to hundreds of years of maltreatment. Reaping the whirlwind, indeed.

And this definition of social justice from a Christian worldview (as per Bart Compolo, son of famous Christian sociologist Tony Campolo and famous urban youth worker in his own right):

Social justice isn't about everybody getting what they deserve (that's death), or what they want (that's chaos), or the same thing (that denies reality)…social justice, as I understand it, is when everybody gets what he or she truly needs in order to realize his or her fullest potentiality as a lover of God and as a lover of other people.

It's not about what's fair, but rather about what's right, for each of us as individuals, but more importantly for all of us as a family. It's not about us all wanting all the same things or living the same way, either, though I think pursuing the common good involves putting basic human rights fairly high on everybody's list.