Bringing together fandom and activism

“I’m hoping to do some good in the world,” boasted the handmade poster in shiny gold that adorned the Granger Leadership Academy (GLA) hallways. Said by Hermione Granger, an integral character in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the quote perfectly and succinctly sums up the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) conference I attended on the weekend of March 3 to 6.

The Harry Potter Alliance is an awesome organization. They take their favorite stories, and use parallels from those stories to create social change and change the world — like comparing the child soldiers in Syria to the child tributes in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, or using political drama shows like House of Cards or The West Wing to encourage voter registration and increase turnout.

As an avid Harry Potter fan, the HPA was perfect for me — I could channel my limitless enthusiasm into doing something good for the world.

So when I came to GLA, my expectations made me feel giddy inside, and the conference definitely delivered.

There were speeches by Jackson Bird, Swapna Krishna, and Meghan Tonjes. Jackson spoke about transgender advocacy, while Swapna tackled intersectionality (the interconnected and overlapping nature of race, class, gender, and sexuality and the social discrimination that comes with those categorizations), while Meghan preached body positivity and self-care.

There was a screening of the extremely powerful movie, Girl Rising, which documented the lives of oppressed girls like Azmera, an Ethiopian girl who was expected to marry at age 13, and Suma, a Nepalese girl who had been forced into systematic slavery from age 6 onwards, because her parents thought the money they needed to send her brother to school was more important than her livelihood.

I attended a workshop called “Unpacking Privilege for Activists,” where I learnt how to understand my own privileges, and how to help the underprivileged without alienating them through my privilege. All of us have privilege, whether it’s through being socioeconomically stable, white, male, or even just being literate enough to read this article, and it’s important to acknowledge that privilege.

On the last day of the conference, we took the skills we learned and put them into use by creating a library advocacy campaign against a bill that would cut funding for libraries nationwide.
We sent 43 letters to legislators in Washington, made a video advocating for libraries, and staged a demonstration to protest the bill.

GLA was an enlightening, empowering, and wizard-worthy experience that truly changed my outlook on the world.