Day: December 20, 2010
Fight Poverty! Act For Peace!
Overconsumption at Christmas? If you haven’t bought presents yet, and are just jaded by the plastic crap that no one really needs, consider giving money instead to Act for Peace so that people who have very little except from a lot of misfortune can benefit.
My friend Sarah works for Act For Peace. She sent me their promo clip which is fun to watch, but also makes you ask yourself at Christmas: “are we just being sucked into a great big festival of consumerism?” You can do better. Here is an alternative:
I thought the making of the video was worth including as well:
Don’t forget the Americans! 1985
…and then there was USA for Africa.
The refrain actually makes sense: “It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me“. This is perhaps the sentiment at the core of the 10 City Bridge Run. Joining together, the many thousands, even millions of you’s and me’s in the world can really make a difference. The question is of course, will we?
After Band Aid for 1984 and USA for Africa, did anything change? I think to say ‘no’ would be to miss the point. Sure, it wasn’t a silver bullet…but did anyone actually think that would be the case? In 2000 the Millennium Development Goals were agreed to by world leaders at a meeting with the United Nations. I don’t believe that achievement would have occurred if the profile from 1984 and beyond hadn’t have taken centre stage.
The sales from both albums showed the incredible interest in this issue, even if cursory.
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
So many good reasons to watch this video from 1984…totally fashion tragic in every sense.
“Feed the World” was the refrain. How sad that today so many deaths occur from preventable disease. Hunger remains a problem. Many of these problems have solutions that are not too difficult to resolve…especially after 16 years.
How many more Christmas will again pass before this hunger is met. Personally, I believe that a deeper hunger drives all of this poverty. It is a deep-seated spiritual hunger within all of us, masked by our insatiable desire to consume and buy more stuff. All the politicians and rock-lords in the world cannot meet that hunger.
How should we respond to this video- With Nostalgia? With disbelief that nothing has changed? With annoyance that we swore we never wanted to hear that song again? With resolution to finally put it right?
Everyone, please give it up for the original Band Aid ensemble (in sleeve order):
Linda Ronstadt
Adam Clayton (U2)
Phil Collins (Genesis)
Bob Geldof (The Boomtown Rats)
Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet)
Chris Cross (Ultravox)
John Taylor (Duran Duran)
Paul Young
Tony Hadley
Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17)
Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran)
Simon Crowe
Marilyn
Keren Woodward (Bananarama)
Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
Jody Watley (Shalamar)
Bono (U2)
Paul Weller (The Style Council, and previously The Jam)
James “J.T.” Taylor (Kool & The Gang)
George Michael (Wham!)
Midge Ure (Ultravox)
Martyn Ware (Heaven 17)
John Keeble (Spandau Ballet)
Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
Roger Taylor (Duran Duran)
Sara Dallin (Bananarama)
Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama)
Sting (The Police)
Pete Briquette (The Boomtown Rats)
Francis Rossi (Status Quo)
Robert ‘Kool’ Bell (Kool & the Gang)
Dennis Thomas (Kool & the Gang)
Andy Taylor (Duran Duran)
Jon Moss (Culture Club, former member of Adam and the Ants)
Rick Parfitt (Status Quo)
Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran)
Johnny Fingers (The Boomtown Rats)
David Bowie (who contributed via a recording that was mailed to Geldof and then dubbed onto the single)
Boy George (Culture Club)
Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
Paul McCartney (Wings and The Beatles, who contributed via a recording that was mailed to Geldof and then dubbed onto the single)
Stuart Adamson (Big Country)
Bruce Watson (Big Country)
Tony Butler (Big Country)
Mark Brzezicki (Big Country)
Starting to make poverty history?
What few people, including Bob Geldof, saw coming was the global financial crisis. As we draw close to the end of 2010, I was looking back on what people had to say about poverty in Africa in 2005. Bob Geldof for example, the aclaimed organiser of Live Aid and Live 8, who at the end of 2005 wrote for The Economist on how he “sees signs of progress in Africa” projecting a vision of the world from 2006 and beyond.
Bob Geldof is something of a paradox: once punk-rocker, and now elder-statesman of rock-royalty. We should celebrate people having the ability to change. If change wasn’t possible, it would be thoroughly depressing…just imagine what this would mean about Africa’s future and the burden the world would forever need to carry.
The key source of hope in Geldof’s article rested on the flurry of activity that came out of 2005 with promises of change. These included Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa, Band Aid 20, Live 8, Make Poverty History and the jewel in the crown: the Gleneagles G8 Summit.
His caution seemed almost unnecessary, but now reads prophetic:
We must worry that the G8 governments, especially the Germans and Italians, do not backslide on their promises. So much also depends on the willingness of African governments to use the new resources effectively. It is a matter of urgency that both of these contingencies are monitored and reported on.
Despite its earlier rhetoric, the G8 (“Group of Eight” major economies) has fallen short of its pledges made at Gleneagles in 2005 to increase the quality and quantity of their aid and “keeps failing the tests it [the G8] sets itself” as was observed in September 2010 by Jeffrey Sachs and Steve Killelea in a report titled Holding G8 Accountability to Account. Just over 40% of the US$25 billion promised to Africa has been met. To put that into perspective, more money was spent on stimulus packages to ailing banks in the US during the 2007-2010 global financial crisis than has been delivered in aid to Africa across history.
The United Nations has unique convening power but has been seen many times over the last 60 years as unable to enforce commitments. Will the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) present a similar disappointment to the outcome of the 2009 Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference? What will happen in 2016 if the 2015 time horizon for the MDG is failed to be achieved?
As 2010 draws to a close, how ought we to respond? Are the challenges insurmountable? Impossible? We need more than just hope to be able to report in 2015 that we are “starting to make poverty history”.
Building Bridges 