NEWS
Fighting real-world Horcruxes with the HPA By Alicia Radford
T
he Harry Potter Alliance is the world’s premier Harry Potter-related charity and their work brings together fans of all stripes to raise money and awareness for realworld causes, drawing parallels between our world and Harry’s world. The HPA’s latest campaign is the Deathly Hallows campaign, spanning the months between the releases of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One and Part Two. During these nine months, the HPA has picked seven real-world Horcruxes for the fan community to focus on and fight against. The seed for the Deathly Hallows campaign was planted after the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, when the HPA launched a “What Would Dumbledore Do?” Campaign. “The Dumbledore campaign was very introspective,” said Andrew Slack, the Executive Director of the HPA. “Half-Blood Prince is a very introspective movie. It was centered on romantic maturity and Dumbledore’s death, and the campaign was about ‘what has Dumbledore done for you?’ It was our most popular and fastestgrowing campaign ever, I think because it was so connected to the canon. So we knew we had to do something for Deathly Hallows.” Where Half-Blood Prince is introspective, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is action-oriented. “We brainstormed what kind of actions we could take and thought that maybe we could have seven Horcruxes for our world. It was a long process figuring out the concepts and took a long time to develop.” Each month, a new real-world Horcrux is unveiled and the HPA community is encouraged to engage with and fight against it in several different ways. Organizing and launching not just one campaign, but seven one after the other has been “exciting and exhausting,” Slack said. “In the middle of one campaign you have to be planning the next one – and all the previous ones continue as well. Deathly Hallows was exhausting for Harry, Ron and Hermione. They’re on an epic journey, and so are we. The Harry Potter books are built on the premise that we can learn from and be like the heroes we read about – and become heroes in our world.” February’s Horcrux is the Bullying Horcrux, focusing specifically on the bullying and inequality that is often a way of life for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning their sexuality (LGBTQ).
From the HP Alliance website, “Often this type of bullying encourages high rates of depression, suicide, and hate crimes. Bullies in the US have spread their hate to Uganda, where they are trying to pass a law to murder everyone who is LGBTQ and all straight supporters. What started off as bullying in schools has escalated to potentially mass human rights atrocities of genocidal proportions.” This month the HPA will fight the Bullying Horcrux by working to create safe school environments that accept all youth for who they are; promoting a bill to prevent government interference in same-sex marriage; and working with human rights organizations to end LGBTQ hate crimes in Uganda. The HPA is also launching Fans for Equality, which is a “bigger group than the HPA, in the sense that it will bring together multiple fan communities for equality.” Every Horcrux is interconnected, from the Starvation Wages Horcrux, which petitions Warner Brothers to use only certified fair trade chocolate for all of their Harry Potter merchandising, to the Body Bind Horcrux, which focuses on accepting our bodies and living healthfully. “The Body Bind Horcrux is not considered a traditional activist cause,” said Slack. “We’re redefining what activism can be. If you’re getting into your body, connecting, having fun, isn’t that a form of making the world better? When a population is disempowered – hobbled by the Dementor Horcrux or the Body Bind Horcrux – we also aren’t conscious of what we’re eating or buying, or of our power as consumers. On accident, we become oppressors. When we don’t ask companies with our dollars to act in a way that is ethical and common sense, no one is going to stand up. “J.K. Rowling said, ‘We do not need magic to change the world. We have the power to imagine better’ – society asks us to imagine worse.” But we don’t have to. That’s the power of the Deathly Hallows campaign. “Most of us can’t take down the equivalent of Voldemort – Osama bin Laden or poverty – but we can do small things, and those small things add up. We’re all making it happen together.” To learn more about the Deathly Hallows campaign and the Harry Potter Alliance, visit http://www.thehpalliance.org.
“The Harry Potter books are built on the premise that we can learn from and be like the heroes we read about – and become heroes in our world.”
February 2011 • The Monthly Seer |14