Roundup of statements from Congress in wake of bill's passage
Three weeks ago, we asked our supporters to request that their Representatives in Congress use the occasion of the final House vote on the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act to issue official statements about the need for action to stop LRA atrocities and help rehabilitate affected communities.
Our staff's goal was to see five statements. To put that in context, to our knowledge no more than eight or ten current Members of Congress have -- at any time in the past five years -- given public statements about this issue. On Wednesday night, fifteen Members of Congress responded to their constituents' requests to speak out. Some even took time late on Wednesday evening to go to the floor of the House of Representatives to issue the statements directly and in person.
These statements give us even more momentum as we begin to shift focus to President Obama, who now has 180 days to issue a strategy to work with regional and international partners to seek the apprehension of Joseph Kony and help end LRA violence once and for all, as required by the bill. It's up to us to make clear to the President what we expect from him.
If somehow you haven't yet seen one of the myriad highlight videos now floating around, Invisible Children's is here, and their thank you to activists who took part in the process is here. Our own highlight reel is here, and we've uploaded the entire text transcript with a table of contents here.
We're also going to share some highlight quotes. Up first: the bill's introducer in the House of Representatives, Jim McGovern (D-MA), the co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Representative McGovern gave the clutch quote of the night in his floor statement:
"...These Americans, thousands of them high school and college students, understood that the children and people of northern Uganda, the DRC, the southern Sudan, and the CAR have no voice in Washington. So they were determined to become their voice. They realized that these African children and families were invisible to Washington policymakers. So they decided to make them visible.
They realized there is too much suffering, too much pain, too much destruction, too much killing in this region of Africa, so many thousands of miles away, and that there was just too much silence here in Washington. So they built a grassroots national movement of hope for peace, for justice, for reconciliation, for reconstruction, for the recovery of the human spirit. They believe that the people of northern Uganda, the children of Uganda, the DRC, Southern Sudan, and the CAR, have a right to protection and to have a voice in their own destiny."
McGovern's Republican counterpart in originally introducing the bill is Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), a former chairman of the Africa Subcommittee in the House, noted that:
"The LRA's objective remains the same as it's been for a couple generations now: kill, capture, and resupply for its next pillage. There is no other reason for its being... Mr. Speaker, this civil war, originally contained within Uganda's borders, is now a regional crisis in four countries. This bipartisan legislation aims to spur the administration into devising a strategy to remove Joseph Kony and remove his top commanders from the battlefield. Some targeted assistance from the U.S. could make a world of difference."
McGovern and Royce both also authored commentary pieces posted over on the Enough Project blog, with greater detail on their hopes for the bill's implementation -- McGovern's here, and Royce's here.
Our champions in the House were joined by their cohorts in the Senate as well. Senators Feingold (D-WI), Brownback (R-KS), and Inhofe (R-OK) joined Representatives McGovern and Royce in issuing a joint statement, celebrating the occasion, noting the historic number of cosponsors on the bill, and calling for action from the President. (Another Senator, Carl Levin (D-MI), issued a statement for the record upon the House passage as well -- we welcome him as an up-and-coming champion of this cause!)
In addition to Representatives McGovern and Royce, five Representatives traveled to the floor of the House to issue statements in person just before the final vote took place.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had this to say:
"Recent reports indicate that, rather than being weakened, the LRA today is stronger and strategically more sophisticated than it was just last year. The bill before us seeks to change that... (yet) it remains one of the most overlooked humanitarian and human rights crises in the world today."
Chris Smith (R-NJ), the Ranking Republican on the Africa subcommittee and a longtime champion of the cause, said:
"Although Kony has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for these and other crimes against humanity, he and his cohorts have yet to be brought to justice. Mr. Speaker, we must do everything possible to stop the widespread suffering that he is inflicting and to help those who have survived these atrocities to recover."
Brad Miller (D-NC), who is another original cosponsor on the bill and chairs a newly formed Congressional caucus dedicated to Africa's Great Lakes region, mentioned how LRA violence constitutes "barbarism for barbarism's own sake" and that:
"If the LRA ever sought to right some supposed wrong, if there was ever a grievance or cause that motivated the LRA, that has all long since been forgotten."
Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Susan Davis (D-CA) also took to the floor. Engel delivered a resounding statement of support for the bill, while Davis gave a massive shout-out to her hometown supporters at Invisible Children headquarters.
We can't say thank you enough to all the Congressional leaders and activists who made this happen. For the full transcript of the House proceedings -- which includes statements submitted for the record from an additional ten Representatives -- go here.