PTSD

Making Poverty History

After mystifying Elizabeth by my recent acquisition of a “Make poverty history” white band, I feel I should explain the reasoning behind my actions. As I like thinking in lists, here I go:

1. I do not think poverty will become history by my wearing a white band. But, it leads to questions about what the band is for, which leads to discussions about poverty. So, as Live 8’s organisers put it, it is a long walk to justice, not in terms of there being one justice for everybody but in terms of leading to questions, awareness-raising (after all, living in poverty is not much fun and, really, if a couple of dollars’ worth of white wristband-wearing can lead me to talk about it, then I am all for it).

2. My wrist was sort of bare since my watch stopped working. Looking like a tennis player who could not afford a proper wrist band or like an escapee from the local hospital ward was just the look I was going for. The white band, in this case, was handy.

3. The band stretches. Unlike Lance Armstrong’s version, this one can be worn around your hair (Harry Kewell and Milan Baros might want to keep that in mind) or used as a key ring or…anything really.

Leading me on to Live 8. I have avoided talking about this since it is probably uncool to admit this, I don’t remember the original but I grew up listening to Jason and Kylie crooning “Do they know it’s Christmas Time at all…” (leaving aside questions of why “they” should even care about Christmas, after all, “we”, growing up in Asia, didn’t). The blasted song was rather catchy for a pre-teenager. And, in my non academic side, I am rather in favour of putting issues like poverty on the political agenda. Now we have Live 8 instead of Live Aid and it wants to do just that.

Unlike the earlier efforts, this, as Geldof put it, is not to raise money but to raise awareness of poverty and coinciding with the G-8 summit. However, local news (most of my time here is spent listening to BBC radio five live via the Internet, which is not BBC World Service but a local version with lots of call-ins and weather and traffic reports) is framing Live 8 as Geldof's call to schoolkids to "ditch school" (he did say that in the original announcement before somebody pointed out that schoolchildren in Scotland would be on holiday anyway) thus encouraging anti-social behaviour and showing lack of respect for education (these decadent rock stars!) or as an "invasion" of hundreds of thousands of (potentially troublesome) people into Britain to march to Edinburgh rather than as a means to expand what is considered as a political issue (poverty reduction, in this case).

Also, I am not sure if yous have been following this but Richard Curtis (bloke who has directed many romantic comedies, usually starring Hugh Grant but also created—and he can be forgiven numerous romantic comedies for this-- Blackadder) called poverty "our own private Holocaust" and Geldof described the event as "the start point for the long walk to justice"? Re-deployment of rhetorical commonplaces all over the place, as yous may note ;-)

posted by Priya @ 9:07 AM