With her sleeping bag in hand and her belongings strapped on her
back, Elizabeth Rulon began her six-mile walk on the jammed and
congested streets of Santa Monica Boulevard on Saturday evening
alongside over 200 other UCLA students.
Though she felt hungry and cold, Rulon, a third-year
communication studies student, said she believed her soreness was
minimal compared to the trek the Northern Ugandan children take
every night ““ a trek that Rulon, along with more than 2,000
other young people in L.A., mimicked Saturday evening.
“It’s almost sad to me that I wanted to complain
that I was wet, cold and hungry. But this is only one night … and
I’m not fleeing for my life as a 5-year-old in Uganda,”
Rulon said.
With the ultimate goal of encouraging the U.S. to become
involved in the civil war in Northern Uganda, more than 80,000
people across the country gathered in 130 cities, from Chicago to
San Diego, to take part in the Global Night Commute, a six-mile
night commute to a specified location, involving spending the night
at the designation and walking back home the next morning.
The walk was meant to symbolize the walk Ugandan children take
between local urban areas and their home in village outskirts in
search of refuge from a rebel army, which kidnaps children from
their rural homes and trains them to fight.
Five thousand children aged five to 12 have been kidnapped in
the civil war, and on any given night 40,000 children leave their
homes in fear of being abducted, returning the next morning,
according to Invisible Children, a national group which has sought
to bring attention to the situation in Uganda with hopes of
inciting government involvement.
As the war continued for years, participating soldiers began to
lose faith in the cause of overthrowing the Ugandan government and
leave the army.
To fill the thinning ranks of soldiers, the resistance army
began kidnapping and conscripting children.
Christie Tedmon, a fifth-year psychology student, assisted in
organizing the commute for Westwood residents ““ the majority
of which were UCLA students ““ which involved walking from the
Federal Building on Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, and
eventually joining over 2,000 other L.A. residents at Santa Monica
City Hall.
At the City Hall, participants each created a piece of art,
which they plan to compile and send to the Senate.
People were also asked to write letters to state senators, as
well as President Bush, asking them to provide more aid for the
children and people of Uganda.
In her letter to President Bush, Tedmon said she tried to give
the president perspective into the situation in Northern Uganda,
asking him to imagine what it would be like if his children were in
that situation.
“How would you feel if your kid got abducted into a rebel
army and you never saw them again? If your kid had to leave home at
night for a five-mile walk, and then come back home early in the
morning, to escape the army?” Tedmon said.
In her letter, Rulon said the U.S. government should take action
to protect the children of Uganda.
“We wouldn’t let this happen to our own children,
but why are we willing to turn a blind eye to kids in another side
of the world? Our kids aren’t different from their kids.
They’re equally valuable and precious,” Rulon said.
The idea for the march came from a documentary called
“Invisible Children,” which was also the basis for the
student group of the same name.
In the documentary, the filmmakers announced the idea and set
the date for the Global Night Commute event, which gained momentum
through college student groups publicly showing the film on college
campuses.
Anthony Halim, a third-year neuroscience student, said what
struck him most about the event was the youth participation.
“I think it particularly hits hard with the youth, because
if we were in Uganda, it could be us that could be the child
soldiers,” Halim said.
As she commuted to Santa Monica, Rulon said she was excited by
the publicity the commuters were getting as people rolled down the
windows of their cars to inquire about the walking students.
Though Rulon said she was tired and sore after the six-mile
trip, she recognized the walk did not come close to the commute it
was representing.
“They’re walking without shoes. … It’s on
dirt roads and they’re watching out for their lives,”
Rulon said.
Tedmon said her favorite part of the event was the sunrise
showing of a newly extended version of “Invisible
Children,” which included clips of the participants.
One clip featured a six-year-old child who attended the event
with his parents, holding a sign that said, “one American
child for one African child.”
“(The clip) was kind of a culmination of what the walk and
the night was about and how (participants) were a part of something
big that happened across the country,” Tedmon said.