Poverty

I’m confused. How, exactly, is a giant rock show, even one that’s held all over the world and broadcast to 3 billion people, meant to influence the decisions of the G8? Do the world’s political leaders go to musicians for advice? Should they start? If so, as a motivating tool, wouldn’t it be more influential for the world’s musicians to NOT perform so that the world’s music-lovers would become indignant and protest rather than enjoying their “free” performance (Canada’s show had a $1 million budget – paid for by corporations & broadcasting fees) and then going home to watch it on TV to see if they can find themselves?

It has been emphasized that Live8 was not a fundraiser; it was meant to be an awareness-raiser. With whom should this awareness be raised? I’m pretty sure the people who can do something about this issue are already aware of it (see: World’s Leaders, paragraph a.) There may be a few people left in North America and Europe who don’t know that the majority of the world lives in poverty but if they haven’t realized it by now, they probably won’t turn around tomorrow and become passionate crusaders for debt relief.

Live Aid hit home 20 years ago in part because people honestly didn’t know that African people were starving to death. They watched the scenes on TV and watched Queen perform and got out their wallets and gave to a cause. This new cause, forgiving world debt, is so intangible, so out of our control. It has no donation box. We can’t give of our bank accounts; we have to give of our consciences, which is a far more difficult thing. If you admit that you care, there’s no going back.

Bob Geldof is encouraging us all to become activists, which is a noble gesture but, my realistic/cynical side assures me, a useless one. Witness the photos of the rubbish left behind on the ground at the Live8 show for physical evidence of People Not Getting It. I imagine SUVs full of laughing kids driving past homeless people and working poor on their way to the show; spending $8 a beer for Molson products; enjoying their right to Rock In the Free World; heading home to their beds to sleep soundly. If you start to actually think about the world’s poor; how they got that way and how they stay that way, you are on a very slanty slope towards being unable to live your life the way you used to: without guilt.

Maybe I believe the worst about people where Geldof chooses to believe the best. (Oh, probably.) And it takes time for people to become activists. And every little bit of awareness helps the greater cause. But I nearly lost it when I read in the same article referenced above that an anti-poverty organization was handing out the “universal anti-poverty accessory” white wristband. Aside from the wording, which is the Globe and Mail’s fault, hey, Way to make the cause transient. Yoo hoo, geniuses? Take the money you spent on manufacturing those rubber bracelets and do something useful with it.

I have never seen the point of symbols – ribbons, bracelets, pins. That’s a different discussion altogether.

I think it is too easy to drop responsibility into the laps of government (in whom I have no faith and for whom I have little respect, true) and then brush your hands off and look at your bracelet every day and wish things were different. How about if those musicians who donated their time also donated their lives; gave up their limos and personal trainers and mansions in the hills. They could probably sponsor an entire African village for 10 years. I know – fundraising is not the point. Awareness. Rallying together. Etc.

Maybe in a couple of days when the G8 releases a statement that says something like, “Bob Geldof has shamed us into doing the right thing,” I will eat this post. I would be OK with that.