The Harry Potter Alliance

By Andrew Slack

December 31, 2009

2009: A Year In Review

“‘Another year gone!’ Dumbledore said cheerfully. ‘And I must trouble you with an old man’s wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been!” (Sorcerer’s Stone p 304).

Indeed, Professor: what a year it has been! Why it feels like only three hundred and sixty something days ago that I was summing up 2008 and here we are approximately one year later, summing up 2009!

The Harry Potter Alliance has had some extraordinary experiences this year. Amongst them (get ready for a ton of hyperlinks!):

• Donating over 14,000 books across the world, including 4,000 to ASYV youth village in Rwanda through the first ever Accio Books!

• Wrock 4 Equality combined Wizard Rock, livestream, knocking on doors, phone banking, and education on equal rights in a pretty astounding way. Over 3500 phone calls were made in one day, increasing phone calls through Mass Equality’s phone banking system by over 1200%. The event was covered by the Wall Street Journal amongst others. Though marriage equality was repealed in Maine, we transformed so many hearts and minds and will continue supporting and working for equality!

• In What Would Dumbledore Do (with an amazing web site designed as always, by Acacia) we brought the whole fan community together (Mugglenet, Leaky, Wizard Rock, HPEF, Fiction Alley, and more!) to celebrate being loyal to the spirit of Albus Dumbledore in our world. People wrote tons of blog entries about how Dumbledore transformed them, on the night that Half-Blood Prince came out, we took over Twitter with over 12,500 tweets of #Dumbledore in less than nine hours, and in the Dumbledore Movie Theater Challenge, Harry Potter fans around the world (North and South America, Europe, even Singapore) wore name tags that stated a lesson that Dumbledore taught them. We estimate that thousands if not tens of thousands wore name tags reminding them of a lesson that Dumbledore taught them.

• We received significant press on Australia’s Today Show, the front page of CNN.com, features in the LA Times, Newsweek (and Newsweek Japan), and mentions in Entertainment Weekly, Time, and so many, more – check them out here!

• Magical Acts of Kindness WROCKED in partnership with GivesMeHope.com – and you can check out some highlights here where people from all over the world did good deeds for people anonymously.

• We did a ten day campaign around dealing with the Muggle Mindset of “stress as the only norm” during Finals and Holiday season.

• The first two HPA House Cup Competitions with Ravenclaw (fittingly) winning Accio Books! and Gryffindor (also fittingly) winning Wrock 4 Equality! We have less Slytherins, but they did incredibly well considering their numbers (don’t worry Slytherins: next year we’ll rob banks and you guys we’ll be so motivated nothing can stop you). And Hufflepuff, it should be noted was in the lead for the first half of both contests – I believe in you Hufflepuffs! Special thanks to our House Prefects and Heads of House, Paul DeGeorge, Evanna Lynch, Lauren Fairweather, Brian Ross, Sue Upton, and Matt Maggiacomo.

• We worked with Vlog Brothers John and Hank Green to motivate the creation of hundreds of videos, with folks lighting candles of hope for Rwanda, across the world – the best of which were played during the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.

• You all raised over 4000 dollars to keep us going through the extraordinary efforts of the Nine and Three Quarters campaign. This is not to mention the ridiculously generous fund raising by Leaky, Harry and the Potters, the Whomping Willows, Justin Finch-Fletchley, HPEF, and the entire Wizard Rock community – all of which are keeping us going and making this possible.

• We kicked off the New Year on January 1, 2009 with Paul and Matt’s “No New Stuff Campaign” – a New Year’s Resolution that they followed for it’s full six months and inspired so many to be engaged in conscious consumerism.

• We created the HPA Common Room on Ning, our Twitter account, a flowering of our Youtube account, and livestream! WHOO HOO!!

• Our staff saw an explosion of new volunteers (and sadly seeing some go – we miss them!) who are doing amazing things for the HPA! It is difficult to express how much the heart and soul of this organization is run by creative and committed volunteer staff. I won’t even try to name each one of you – but I am so grateful for both you and your ridiculously admirable work!

• Our chapters exploded through the roof as we now have over 50 active chapters across the world. Though small in number compared to how many we end up reaching, our chapter members are mind-blowingly, soul-inspiringly committed and creative – doing half the work of the entire organization (including donating more than 4,000 books, sorting all of the books t help them get to ASYV, spending more than 20 combined hours calling Maine, residents during Wrock for Equality, and doing unbelievable work during What Would Dumbledore Do!!!!

• We put on over ten full hours of AMAZING programming during Leaky Con (special, special thanks to Karen Bernstein), and HPA presentations at Azkatraz, Pledge 2 Protect, and the Futures of Entertainment Conferences

• New HPA merchandise (and more soon!)

• Getting well over 1,000 signatures at ipledge2protect to join the movement to end genocide

Tomorrow night at midnight we begin a new year on the heels of an amazing year for the HPA. I believe that with our incredible staff, chapters, members, and an entire community and the breadth of our scope and vision that the beauty and transformative power of this organization will continue to expand and ripen for what will be an amazing 2010.

And yes, tomorrow night at midnight we begin a new decade on the heels of a decade of Harry Potter – that saw amongst so much, the birth of the Harry Potter Alliance and our magical approach to activism. I believe that the magic that Harry has given our world and the magical activism that we have been practicing for several years will continue to expand, ripen, and flower in this new decade. I am excited, humbled, and grateful that we are on this journey together.

The Weapon We Have Is Love,

Andrew