Hello to all of you lovely artists and enthusiasts. I hope you all had a lovely weekened, because I certainly did. If anyone happened to read previous journal entries there was mention of a program known as Invisible Children and I explained a bit about the LRA and what occurs within that group and the state of a country called Uganda. Well, this weekend (April 28, 2007) there was a demonstration called Displace Me. I attended this mentioned demonstration in the city of Los Angeles, which was one out of a total of 15 (when combined there were 67,844 people demonstrating). In LA's event we had 6, 9998 people living out the life of a displaced person. For 24 hours we lived in cardboard huts. We did not eat or drink anything until nine at night, we wrote letters to our Senators, and the Advisor of African Affairs for the Clinton administration was even kind enough to give us the phone number to Mr. President Bush himself to ask a simple question: "How much suffering needs to occur in Africa before something is done?" In one night almost 7,000 people came together to let the people of America know that we, the youth, are no longer apathetic, that we do care about what goes on in the world, and that we demand change.

We arrived, dropped off our bottle of water and box of saltines, and then set up what was to be our homes. Once the cardboard had been put up the art supplies were passed around and the painting, drawing, writing, and spraypainting began. Our mission? To make a statement about being displaced, and to come up with a slogan. After all, Where we live shouldn't determine whether we live.. We were then filmed for two hours for a compilation film that will be made of all 15 citites, and then our guest speakers came out. There was a large screen which then played a few videos and we were given our first task. Finish our homes, finish decorating, and really make a statement. Our next task was a displaced reenactment. Within our groups of people the males could each receive three packs of crackers and that was it. The girls a single water bottle at the time. Males could not get water, and girls could not go and get crackers. We had to unite to get everything distributed properly. After we were fed and watered our next task was what was known as 21 Minutes of Silence/Pray for Me where we did just that. 7,000 people silent for that period of time. After that the party really began. Music was turned on and everyone began to dance, and let me tell you, a thousand person long dancing train is incredibly intense and confusing to be apart of. People with guitars and one with a bucket walked around singing and playing Give Peace a Chance, and ended up followed by thousands for over 20 minutes. It was quite a sight and amazing to be apart of. After that different song circles broke out and people went from group to group singing songs and sharing instruments, even after the lights were turned out on us. Eventually people went to sleep, though not all. In the morning we cleaned up our camp sites, turned in our letters to our senators at the TRI tents, and sat in the parking lot sharing stories with other fellow Displacec children.

It was truely amazing, and pictures will be posted.