Make Poverty History?

[ciphergoth]

I tend to assume that any campaign sufficiently high-profile to get celebrities on Breakfast News talking about it will be a waste of time. However, at a medium-length glance I can't see what's wrong with Make Poverty History - they're not making the mistake of asking for donations to give to the needy people of Africa, instead focussing on creating political pressure to a number of as far as I can tell wholly laudable goals. Am I missing something important? Or should I be making plans to visit Edinburgh around July 2nd?

Comments

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

I'm going :) Must talk to my mum about that - she's meant to be staying some of that time...

[booklectica]

I can't see anything wrong with it either.

The Edinburgh rally sounds great, though am already committed to Pride in London that day.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Come! Come to Edinburgh! *Does the googley eyed hypnosis thing*

[strangerover.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a little controversy regarding their wristbands being made under sweat-shop conditions in China...
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=588782005

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

I was going to talk to you about this, as I felt the same and it could be fun to visit Edinburgh :)

[bathtubgin.livejournal.com]

Were I not living in said poverty (really, my income falls well below the so called breadline) I would be up there.

[sparklegoth.livejournal.com]

I'll be protesting in Edinburgh on the 2nd of July with my mum. Would be great to see you there! We could go for lunch and catch up or something.

[sibelian.livejournal.com]

ARG!

See if you can guess what the hospitals up here think of Uncle Bob's proposal.

[juliet]

The rally on the 2nd appears to be a bit better organised than the one Bob's suggesting on the 6th.

[sibelian.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I just hope everybody can keep focussed. There's nothing more likely to damage the movement than a crowd of upstarts descending en masse to an EXTREMELY liberal city and shaking their fists at the residents (including the police, who are pretty good in Edinburgh) like some sort of "sticking it to the man" thing. All it will do is piss folk off and make the protesters look stupid.

People do get very wound up at these things and often end up shooting themselves in the foot. The political pressure they will be able to exert will be directly proportional to how organised they are and inversely proportional to how much inconvenience they cause ordinarty people.

[juliet]

I went to the Make Poverty History all-night event at Westminster a month or so ago, and that seemed reasonably well set-up. Obviously it caused some disruption (streets shut for a while for the march bit, that sort of thing) but nothing major. That was a lot smaller than this, but http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/edinburgh/ indicates that they have planned things with an eye to the number of people they're hoping to get. The message from the police at http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/edinburgh/additional.shtml indicates that there will be a fair bit of traffic disruption/crowdedness, but obviously the organisers are working with the police & so on.

What *is* a bit worrying is that this:
http://www.live8live.com/whatsitabout.shtml (link under 'what you should do' goes to the above stuff about Edinburgh on the 2nd) seems to contradict this:
http://www.live8live.com/longwalktojustice.shtml
where it talks about a 'mass event on the 6th'. Which seems to be (from looking at the media coverage) specifically aimed at getting a million people to Gleneagles. This bit does not seem to be an awfully well thought out plan... let's hope the organisations involved sort themselves out sharpish, otherwise as you say, shooting-in-foot will occur. (my suspicion is that Uncle Bob has not done his homework properly & has become Carried Away, although I may be wrong).

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Bob has most certainly not done his homework. He suggests that schoolchildren bunk off on the 6th, seemngly unaware that Scottish schools will have broken up by then...

[biog.livejournal.com]

The rally on the 2nd July in Edinburgh certainly seems to be worthwhile attending. I'd rather be at Pride in London that day, but seeing as I don't think I'll be able to make it Edinburgh seems to be a laudable cause worth making my voice noted at.

[jaggederest.livejournal.com]

It's the same problematic zero-sum-game as all of the "end poverty now" idealist movements, in my oh-so-libertarian opinion.

Same problem ponzi schemes have (although not in the same class of fraudulence)
There's just no way to redirect X dollars from point A to point B without bankrupting someone's economy in the process.