The international campaign to arrest accused Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony has come to Thunder Bay.
The advocacy group Invisible Children Inc. started the campaign to bring Kony to justice with a short 30-minute documentary went viral on YouTube earlier this month. Kony is the head of a Ugandan guerrilla group called the Lord’s Resistance Army and is accused of war crimes.
As of Saturday, the film has had more than 80 million viewers and the hashtag “#stopkony” has exploded on Twitter.
But the hashtag wasn’t just online.
At some point during the week, the word “Kony” was painted on stop signs across the city. All the stop signs at the intersection of Pine Street and Van Norman Street had the word “kony” painted on as well as some of the signs near Bay Street.
Many Facebook users also expressed those feelings on the Thunder Bay Kony 2012 page.
Jessica Lansdell posted that after watching the video he had trouble going to sleep.
“This needs to be addressed,” Lansdell wrote. “Imagine a world where we actually have the power to end these things through social media. Crazy thought.”
The Facebook group also posted an upcoming event scheduled for April 20. The event advises people to paint and put up posters to spread the message of Kony 2012.
