>From Young Adult Book Fans to Wizards of Change By COURTNEY E. MARTIN Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. Tags: activism, books, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, young adult fiction
This week, Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” hits the big screen. As the latest wildly popular young adult (Y.A.) novel becomes a film franchise, it’s not just box office dollars that will be captured, but potentially nascent citizens. At least that’s the goal of the social campaign called “Hunger Is Not a Game” which aims to connect fans to the global food justice movement. “The Hunger Games” devotees have long congregated on sites like Mockingjay.net, Down with the Capitol, and the “Hunger Games” Fireside Chat podcast. Now Oxfam, with its long history focused on famine relief, has joined forces with a small, fan-focused group called Imagine Better to encourage the mostly young people who gather on these sites to sign Oxfam’s GROW pledge. Representatives will also circulate at midnight theatrical release parties on March 23 to ask people to sign, and encouraging them to tweet with the hashtag #notagame, in order to build a sense of global community. Food prices in recent years have hit record highs, leading to riots worldwide. Oxfam’s pledge calls for simple reforms: create policies that encourage crops for food, not fuel, reform food aid procedures and support small farmers. It’s worth paying attention to this campaign, not just because “The Hunger Games” film is projected to make $90 million at this weekend’s box office, but because Imagine Better is an example of how social change organizations are looking to tap into the extraordinary market power of Y.A. fiction — now the world’s fastest growing literary genre. While the publishing industry struggles to reinvent itself and find a sustainable business model, the Y.A. category exceeds all expectations. The number of Y.A. novels published each year has quadrupled in 12 years — from 3,000 in 1997 to 12,000 in 2009, when total sales exceeded $3 billion. “The Hunger Games” series has already sold 23 million copies and been turned into 26 foreign editions. Perhaps the most effective practitioner of fan-fueled social change is Andrew Slack, the 32-year-old founder of The Harry Potter Alliance and the force behind Imagine Better. Since Slack, who started out as a comedian, founded the Harry Potter Alliance, he has motivated Potterphiles to send five cargo planes with $123,000 worth of relief supplies to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, donate more than 88,000 books across the world, raise awareness about net neutrality and genocide and make forays into politics — taking on Maine’s 2009 ballot initiative that sought to repeal same sex marriage. Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Devoted fans of the Harry Potter series dressed in costume and lined up for hours at release parties for each book and movie in the series. The Maine campaign, called “Wrock 4 Equality,” featured a “wizard rock” concert followed by a day where local fans canvassed while those watching via livestream phone banked. The lobbying day was cast as a “House Cup Competition,” in Harry Potter parlance, where participants could earn points for their preferred House at Hogwarts. The group made over 3,500 cold calls in one day. The Harry Potter Alliance has a $175,000 annual operating budget, but they leverage it in big ways: volunteers in over 90 chapters around the world have engaged an active membership of about 100,000 within a larger network of 1 million. Slack thinks of himself and his team as community organizers on the Internet: “The Harry Potter online fandom is the community that we are organizing. We’ve always gone to them.” Time Magazine reported that when asked about the Harry Potter Alliance, J.K. Rowling “practically levitates off the couch, spilling her coffee along the way. ‘It’s incredible, it’s humbling, and it’s uplifting to see people going out there and doing that in the name of your character.’” She has not yet donated directly to the organization. The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism has initiated a research project, called Civic Paths, to study groups like these. The key to fan activism, explains Henry Jenkins, the project’s principal investigator, is to: “take kids who are culturally active and build a bridge for them to become politically active.” Funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Jenkins and his colleagues have edited a journal issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, due out this June, devoted to the subject of fan activism. The editors received hundreds of submissions from around the world. The themes found in Y.A. fiction are often at the heart of what motivates fan activism. That, at least, was the case with Slack. In 2002, teenagers at a Boston-area Boys & Girls Club where Slack worked persuaded him to give Harry Potter a try. On Halloween night, Slack sat in the bleachers of the club’s gymnasium and read the first line from the first Harry Potter book: “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number 4, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” He loved the subversive message — celebrating the misfits of the world. He went online and discovered “an activist breeding ground” in the form of Harry Potter fan sites. “The Web sites were astounding,” he remembers. “Here was a well-oiled, well-connected network. I realized that all I needed to do was become a community organizer and use the parallels to inspire action.” Slack convinced wizard rock bands with huge followings to repost his first action alert in 2005. He remembers, “I sat there, hitting refresh over and over and crying as friend requests poured in from all over the world and teenagers commented that they had always dreamed of the chance to be a hero like Harry. We instantaneously became an international organization.” There are a few key strategies that make fan activist campaigns like The Harry Potter Alliance successful: invest deeply in the literary themes, prize weirdness, honor the power of cohesive online communities and link to larger organizations that can implement the big ideas of plot-fueled real world advocacy. It’s essential that fans see their own power, or as Slack puts it, “We all yearn to be told we are magical.” The serialized style of much Y.A. fiction helps extend fan activists’ commitment to parallel causes; as they anticipate the release of the next book in the series, they can stay engaged through online fandoms and real world actions. Many of these efforts are the epitome of the old adage “think global, act local.” Rebecca MacKinnon, in her recent book “Consent of the Networked,” writes about the birth of “netizens”— citizens who live in a world more logically organized by online channels of communication and culture than geographic borders. The paradox is that these netizens often use global cultural language to address hyper local concerns. Manga fans in Japan mobilized to provide disaster relief after the 2011 tsunami long before many more established institutions had a chance to respond. Palestinian activists recently dressed up as blue Na’vi from the 2009 blockbuster film “Avatar” to draw parallels to their struggle for a safe homeland and attracted unprecedented media attention. Harnessing fan activism is not a straightforward job. Fan networks prize authenticity—proving weary of outsiders who try to exploit the networks or passions. Major anti-poverty groups like Oxfam are wise to partner with existing fan sites, rather than trying to conceive of or implement their own campaigns. Related More From Fixes Read previous contributions to this series. As a case in point: in 2002, the Association of American Publishers and other institutions tried to galvanize fans to fight censorship attempts by creating a campaign called “Muggles for Harry Potter.” But as non-fans, they missed an important point. Fans didn’t want to identify as “muggles” — unmagical people in the world of Harry Potter; they wanted to be wizards. The language used by the consortium was rigid, not like the playful banter of the fan activist. Their mistake was using corporate-speak to try to mobilize a million people who consider themselves happy misfits. The manifesto of Imagine Better asks fans, “Feeling apocalypsey? Imagine a world where ‘Harry Potter’ fans come together with fans of ‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Firefly,’ ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Glee’ to build a community of activists. Imagine this coalition of united fans working with the world’s most prominent YouTube celebrities, actors, and best selling authors to change the world.” Jenkins, who is also the author of the forthcoming book “Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture,” explains the importance of early activist experiences: “The research on civics proves that young people’s political identity gets set very early — defined by parents, experiences at school, volunteerism, etc.— so this kind of formative experience of fan activism is significant.” Slack recently spoke at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, urging the audience to move beyond the “technocratic details that make activism appear as boring” and “respect how we as human beings communicate — through story.” If you plan to participate in the “Hunger Is Not a Game” campaign or are engaged in other fan activism, let us know. We’d like to hear your stories about what’s working, what isn’t, and where the future of this alternative form of citizen engagement is headed. More: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/from-young-adult-book-fans-to-wizards-of-change/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120321 -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
