In a blog entry for the Daily Beast, Allison Samuels notes that activists like George Clooney are protesting war crimes in Sudan and the abuses captured in the video Kony 2012, but few apart from the Rev. Al Sharpton seem concerned about the apparently unjust slaying of teenager Trayvon Martin.
With much fanfare, Oscar-winning actor George Clooney and his father were arrested in the nation’s capital Thursday for taking a stand on human rights. The Clooney men were put in handcuffs in front of the Sudanese embassy and taken to jail for protesting that country’s torture and bombing of its own innocent civilians.
Two weeks ago the 30-minute video “Kony 2012” shocked and mesmerized the world via YouTube. Jason Russell’s film revealed images and jarring details of thousands of African children kidnapped and murdered by Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony.
“Kony 2012” spread virally like wildfire and at last count received more than 82 million views on the video-sharing website. Both African atrocities are horrifying as well as heartbreaking, and both are absolutely worthy of all the attention they’ve received.
Both tragedies occurred thousands upon thousands of miles away from the U.S.
Last month and much closer to home in Sanford, Fla., a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin took a walk to the corner 7-Eleven for a bag of Skittles. On his return walk home, a neighbor, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man, apparently decided a young black man walking alone at night must equal trouble, so he made a call to the police. Somehow, not long afterward, Martin lay dead on the grass of a gunshot wound to the chest.
Read Allison Samuels' entire piece at the Daily Beast.