that several times the monthly earnings of those who live next to the stud difference is sand. any one of the poorest areas in the country on this bridge, this is the separation between the normal felony i shall say with such poor neighbourhood such as this one of homicide. and on the other side, percent of halls where there is. there are many major. it's natural events such as the final of the youth which empathy, for example, one thing can be to make tickets more affordable for people of sudden he because we are locals. here we welcome the world, but we can't go inside the said, the hot not staying locally could make getting to the stadium difficult rail work as a planning a strike to coincide with saturday's final. on the pitch derailing madrid's french striker could be the only way to win 41 years of rail dominance. paul reese out is there at paris. ah.

quotes every with us hope the top stories here on al jazeera, the, you and human rights. commissioner michelle bashfully says that china must not used legitimate concerns about terrorism to justify human rights abuses. she was speaking at the end of a 60 trip to china. she visited the shin jang region where chinese authorities were accused of abusing weak people in camps. at least 31 people have been killed in a stampede in southern nigeria. it happened that a charity event at a church in port harcourt. local media reports say that a large crowd of assembled people were crushed when the venue opened. russian forces of advanced in that push to fully control the don bass region of eastern ukraine. the defense ministry of moscow says its forces. now control leven ukraine though, says fighting is continuing near the town and is where the right group is demonstrating against the construction of a settlement outpost to the occupied westbank. the police tried to disperse the protest this and confiscated to buddha, says that have been brought in to demolish the building of those headlines. one is

the era right after the stream, which is coming up next me? oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. i don't need to be here with you to look and i'm just gonna put them to me. i just need to, i need you. and then you also get the home and the ya today. and we're going to give you what we said as well the media i'm a lot of fun at the hospital gave me yeah. when i don't mean,

i mean i shooting off the edge of the to oh, they just said we're one of the most significant for elections in columbia recent history. many, dear, long reports, certain records of the most conservative rule, well, columbia elect, through with the 1st 5 minutes at 31 of the story of the brain with i, as for me, okay, to day on the street, we are looking at style, paola and sing equity activism, i know you have seen them high profile,

global ambassadors, representing charities and yos around the world, global smokes people who also happened to be very famous, raising awareness on important causes. who was a really helping him, what impact are they having? those are 2 questions to start you off in id chief chat, a comment section open. do join in and be part of today's discussion. let me introduce you to our panel. it's a good one, lisa. to me. i shall i know welcome to the stream. i'll come back to the stream for some of you really good to have you, lisa introduce yourself to our global audience and tell them what you're bringing to the table today. i thank you very much. my name is lisa and richie. i am a professor of globalization at the copenhagen business school. and i'm here today because i work on commodified compassion. and i'm the co author of a book which has just been published by university of minnesota to press together with alexandra booted men called batman saves the congo. how celebrities,

who disrupting the politics of development. it's a heavy lee. so we're gonna dig a little bit into some of your findings later on in the show cou may welcome back to the stream. introduce yourself, remind out audience who you are, what you do. thank you, hear me. i'm currently the global ambassador or african sizing for just the speech and dignity, a pan african social movement. i'm a visiting fellow at the bush academy in berlin at the moment. i get to have you can remember a just to be clear, i want to spend what gender balance i thank here. thank you for bringing your social justice activism to us and also providing gender balance. and finally, i shall welcome to the strain tell of what who you are, what you did. i re wine. so i'm i sham pakistani. american who's been spending the last 20 years fighting for the right and dignity of the women who make our clothes mostly happen to be women of color. i currently service see your we me, we are an advocacy organization based in california. lily to handle,

i guess i'm going to start with somebody that caught my eye just recently. i was watching global citizen live, which was a huge global concept that went from one city to another city around the world, raising awareness, raising money activism that was very accessible. and i noticed that the end of the new york lag, the ceo and co found of global citizen was all state his name is hugh evans. and then you see him in central park and just listen to what the audience begins to shout out as he presents his message of we need to take action. have a listen, have a look. oh, in 2005. when nelson mandela launched the campaign to make poverty history, he said that overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. but it's an act of justice. he said,

poverty is not natural. it is man made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. charity alone as important as it is and it is important will never be sufficient to end extreme poverty or tackle climate change the crowd a yelling out, cold play co play. they want the next act to come on stage. they don't really care that much about take action. who said, wow lisa use yeah, yeah. wow. um, i think that this is one of those really good moments which explains why it is that maybe this isn't the best way about getting audiences engaged in global justice movements. because when nelson mandela was talking about why we really shouldn't have poverty, he was also talking about the human beings create poverty with their choices. and

it's really hard for us to actually accept that. and it's hard to get people sort of to get on to that message. and so probably they just wanted to do something fun and listen to call play. i think that's where that's really challenging to try to mix up celebrity activism and entertainment ayesha. you know, i would say it really depends on who the celebrity is and whether or not they are really using that platform for good. you know, we all remember the cringe where the candle jenna pepsi commercial. right. where she was handing the pepsi to the protester from the protesters to the lease, in order to say, hey, you know, this is a way for us to come together. and we all just lost them and say, you know, new york to modify black lives matter movement. this is terrible. and so that's an example of a right. but we're just coming off of the tree, the gum and work of protection act here in california, which assures government workers make a minimum wage. and we had some incredibly thoughtful celebrities, supermodel,

amber valera actress robin wright, who lent her support to our campaign. and i have to tell you that was critical in our when it helped us galvanized more citizens. it helped us reach policy makers. so i would say it really depends. you know, this blanket statement of celebrity should never get involved. frankly, for us, we sometimes need the star power off celebrities, age cultural narratives. yeah. can i just jump in? it's amazing that robin wright was doing that work for you. because, you know, some of the interviews that i did with humanitarian and development workers in kinshasa, in the democratic republic of congo. actually some of them pointed to her in particular because she has this organization where she sells like $200.00 us dollar pajamas for, for women in eastern congo called her left him. and when one of the human hearing workers actually said, we have a quote in our book, basically, you know, that robin wright made a big deal out of something. she knows absolutely nothing about. actually if she

came here to the congo, she'd probably get stowed. can me lay in, well, i was moved by the example because i was the chair of that global make poverty campaign which is called a global called action against poverty. and i, together with nelson mandela lost launched that campaign in london in japan square nearly genuity. and let me just tell you our perspective in engaging with celebrities. it was based on what i show basically said, which is that we have a media environment that is stacked against us. it is so difficult for us to get our narratives into the mainstream media. however, they are, as lisa points out, civil lists involved. and i think it's a question of finding the right balance between how we actually engage and what kind of sort of parameters we put to it. because the term that we used, by the way,

in 2005 because we had challenges in the way that celebrities engage with us an impact that time we would say we need to be gaudy against a problem up celebrex to see and set up to see the domination of public space by celebrities. on the other hand though, let's be clear. we got a method communication challenge. how do we get our message across to the largest number of people in the short space of time? and whether we like it or not, celebrities have access to public opinion and able to shift people. but then we don't want situations where for example, a company is supporting l g b t i q issues. i'm so glad you said that to me you read our mind here on the strength to finish up. go him to this, but then are producing those sort of

the coding and the bending and so on. washing where the t i q people are murdered and killed for their choice of sexual orientation. so while we can't be black and white about this, i think we need to put some clear. busy guidelines that, that you lead to or guide how celebrities engage. yes. if i may just intervene just just one moment i should because i'm, i'm just going to bring in a point that to me race and i wanna introduced into the conversation. david bishop, he talks about rainbow washing in june. the month of june is as pride run around the world and how companies leave on it and say, yes, we celebrate pride. we support pride. but again, that actual policies do not. this is what they've had to say about that. i'm a very fortunate person. i've been lucky and blessed enough to be very successful in ways that i've always wanted as an actor, writer,

director and so on. when i got to a point where i felt like i'm living with idea or some goal or i didn't know what my values or what i was contributing to while i was reading about the miles in washington, as you said, to some $300000.00 das and or, or to work only by the $5000000.00. i mean, that's an unimaginable. how could this? how do i know? what is never where we do it? as you can tell, that was not david bishop, that was a animation of ben affleck with get to him in just a moment. here as promise is david bishop, i think that there is a lot of people that are not interested in the rainbow washing and the corporate appropriation of i'll to be to you people, you know,

because they were europe rambo in june. and then, you know, get hundreds of thousands of dollars or $1000000.00 to organizations that you know, want us to scribble rides away. so. 3 i think a lot of people are over that. so where we find ourselves right now is in a place where celebrities look for cause is not all of them where they can be connected together. so they use their platform and then they can help amplify a cause. is there anything wrong with that lisa? yeah, i think it's really important that we understand that it's not that celebrities just look for causes like that, that there's an entire industry that's developed in terms of celebrity liaison officers. the work of my colleague dunc rocking too, and actually includes a lot of interviews with these, these folks who work in the industry, whose entire job is to match large corporate in cios together with celebrities. and to get the right fit. and it's extreme, you know,

it's extremely scientific. you know, you don't just go out and support the cause that you happen to like a bit off. that's a great example, but i know we'll get to it later. this is, this is a strategy, it's a business strategy, friends. and it's about, you know, mixing up the kinds of things where people, where they want to do good and managing to modify their compassion, managing the coffee, or met without giving any of the profits that you make from that to the rightful shareholders. who are actually, you know, the supposed beneficiaries of the people who are supposed to be helped a couple of thoughts. hey, on twitter, then i shall go to you of the back of, of these tweets h t for a says, what's happening right now with celebrity activism. it's gentrifying the issue then commercializing it. the impact is an issue. publicity is relative to its profitability. so they gotta be some cause is down. i say that a sexier than others that get a lot of attention and then others that do not. this is 10 die 10. i says that a, as in bob, we and social justice activists. i view this new trend as demeaning and trivializing

general genuine causes. i should go ahead. no, no, i think at the end of the day if celebrity activism focused on telling staff, it's essentially doing more harm than good enter barren. i think like the conflict cried when you think about as q i as so much of the commodification, is around lands wanted to just pump out products. and so celebrities to lend a name to, to make more money. and that's where i think it becomes very dangerous. right, it's a be yeah, i think similarly, we all remember when nike announced that, kept the nick was going to be the person in america like in to camps. right. that was, those were like, oh my god, because of this, we never going to buy nike and then folks were like, now we're going to buy nike and the shares started story. the thing maggie has a history of praying on black and brown communities, not just to sell their products, but also how their product is made. and so similar to cultural appropriation. when you've got liberties endorsed, being or giving their message to

a big brand. that's clearly a poor creating a social movement for clever advertising. that's very problematic. i think that sort of shallow marketing and modification of social movement is what we need to stay away from. but the earlier example that i gave you, which was a worker, lead piece of legislation, where the front line work, a community that the ones that demanded the living. and then you had celebrities with back check data using that platform to support. that sort of similarity is really critical. and so i think the win win here is when influences and celebrities are allies to campaigns that are really rooted in solutions for the community. the professor, how can we go ahead? well, i think the biggest problem, the biggest disease we have in the world right now is not covered, but a disease that we could call affluenza, affluenza pathological illness where people have been led to believe that

a good decent life comes from more and more material acquisition so let me just be very clear. i believe celebrities are human beings. they are citizens, right of the work. they have a right to participate in public life as anybody else s. however, when they use that relationship to cow products to make profit and to abuse that relationship, that's when in fact the violation of that right, that's happening. so i have no illusions in my mind that like now things are packed against us in terms of us being able to get our message to the largest number of people in the short space of time when the faintest fellow that we've got listen to me is to get emissions to peak and stop coming down and way. in fact, this decade that we live in, which is i would argue the most consequential decade in humanities history. and

what we achieve in the next 10 years would determine what kind of future we have, or whether we have a future at all when we, when the stakes are that high. but i think it is appropriate plus, recognized that we are never going to be able to pass in the politics that is going to be perfect and idealistic we're gonna have to make some sort of i don't want to use a word compromise, let's say some sort of adjustments in i was strategy, compromise, compromises the right word. yeah. yeah, that's the right provis compromise is a difficult would for activism. let me just say why? because you cannot compromise on values. you cannot compromise on the life that people have to choose the own sexual orientation of women to have equality and so on. right? so. so what i'm saying is that when provided we are not sacrificing principles, right? if we look sacrificing principles,

technical adjustments that we need to make from time to time. i think given the realities that we are dealing with, what many call a white stream media, i'm talking here from the global out perspective. and, and we in fact quite often the media and vitamin is not talking about the issues. i mean, think about the climate stuff shrank. call me back between tick tock and it's so hard for us to come to the noise and gotten our attention. and so what we, you know, we're here to influence the multi trillion dollar industry, the company, not billions of dollars products. and for young girls look at celebrities and influencing perpetually buy stuff. so we can get married and get some thought about our cars. why not? well, absolutely, but i completely agree with, with what you're saying, but i also think we should remember celebrities or the oligarchy of the attention economy. ok. they, as you both pointed out, really take it all,

but the politics that they bring forth is this politics of authenticity of oh, how much we? well, meaning often white people in the western parts of the world care about a particular cause and not about another law, lisa cannot cut and i can, i would say, i think you're, i want to push in a particular field. i wanna push in a particular dad's i went to because we, we saw ben affleck explaining how he wanted to be involved in the east and congo because he read something and he had the money and he wanted to do something . lease is, i'm just gonna push you in that direction because now that i've shown everybody the animation, i want it to ring us full circle and explain what the challenge is when a celebrity says, i care about this. i've read about a, here's my money and, and i'm super famous what they do. yeah. but yeah, absolutely. and that kind of genesis story about how much we care is exactly the politics i was talking to you about these politics of authenticity not

accountability. ok. what we actually know from the research that we've done over years on the organization and ben affleck's involvement in the democratic republic, congo is he didn't wake up one morning and read the newspaper and find out how terrible things were in the democratic republic of congo. okay. in 2006, he hired one of the world's best and most successful strategic consultancy firms. he interviewed a number of experts, including people that we also interviewed to try to find him a good cause. and of course, he couldn't have sal sudan because george clooney had already taken that oprah already had south africa completely. you know, under wraps. i mean, basically he would cause shopping as celebrities do at that level. and he hired, you know, an extremely successful firm. it was about a business model, and then they wrote a really important story which is very compelling. and i have no reason to believe that ben affleck doesn't hear about eastern congo. why would we think he's not a human being like the rest of us who's also moved by, by the tragedies and difficulties and in the world?

yet it's to convince ourselves that just because he carries that, makes her for tickler authority to speak on behalf of the congolese people is something that's a real problem. there were already plenty of organizations working for the eastern congo, including that issue by congo lease. and we have statistics to show that unless those organizations had guerrillas, or very horrific stories of sexual violence or a celebrity, they got almost no funding. and looking at the looking at the budget differences over a 5 year period is incredible. yes, i want to play to videos for you and to get your instant reaction. catherine clay higgins spoke to us a little bit earlier. she's a ph. d candidate at atlanta school of economics and political science. he was wrestling with this whole concept of celebrity activism. are they helping all hurting his? yes, the celebrity can bring to the table of social justice is disability. and of course it's important not to miss recognize that there's ability as actual social change at the same time. however,

i think it's also important not to be true automatically, dismissive of celebrities, to speak out about social justice courses. not because celebrity should be the front of us social justice movements. they shouldn't. i think it's obvious to most people they shouldn't. but because the way that we tend to dismiss celebrities by accusing them of that, she said, moreno, called chasing, or being otherwise, self interested. these are the exact same allegations that we then see far, right, groups and other regressive political projects. re purposing against people involved insertion, justice, well, they're celebrities or not. so yes, skepticism is essential, but we can be skeptical and wave. it doesn't contribute to our rhetoric that tries to break progresses already or so it's such a gray area until you really is the address that in the last 25 minutes. and i show lisa, let me show you everybody, guests and, and also audi. it's colleen night on twitter. this is him active, a speaking truth to power, continuing to flight right at the justice. all right,

that's can me a real life proper activist from when he was a teenager. and then we have the activists, the c b that special i show is holding ahead. she's, i faced paulding is a terrible idea. according to my, to population. the i day was that you voted on the activists of your choice. it was game of flying activism. it got such a horrific reaction that they've now turned it into a documentary about activation or give us a leaning end to see how that's going to turn out. but when we spoke to adam a little bit earlier, he said, well, this is just the natural progression of how a combo defying celebrity and activism here is adam. and then can me and me to react on the back of the display briefly. as far as the show like the active best, i was not particularly offended by it. in fact, that was actually weirdly excited for it because i thought it actually demystified

the essential nature of what activism is in a late capital estate. it was showing us very clearly that activism interest, another form of branding, of marketing. it poses no threat to the existing relations of the capital estate. and at this point in cap in the development of our economy, i don't even think activism can overcome short term contradictions. or even really achieve policy goals. well, danger lies the clarity that if you are going to be using your visibility to continue to advance an unjust economic system but and push overconsumption, then you've lost the plot right. oliver. i am persuaded by this reality that if we need to be yeah, in terms of how many people we mobilized, how much of consciousness there is,

how many people understand that we are losing, but the planet be losing the right of humanity to exist on this plan. as a result of climate, then we have to embrace at range of energies that can help us communicate. so i would make an appeal to people who are celebrities. you have a role to play as human beings as citizens like any one of us. you cannot imagine that having not been involved at all, suddenly you are the leader of some social movement, okay, to use it to support people, ensure that you are not over exercising your influence and presence and take your leadership from movements. the easy problem would appear amount of celebrities getting ahead of me to say that i went up. yeah. well of african refugees. thank you. to me. i thank you kimmy. thank you lisa. thank you. i shall we can obviously talk about celebrities and activism all day long. but i don't have all day long.

thank you so much for your tweets and your youtube thoughts as well. i'm gonna leave you with a song that was running a name 1985 by michael jackson, and long or richie. it was the biggest charity record ever. it has gone at a $163000000.00 more than that. the charity. i will leave you with. we are the well thanks for watching everything. with me, frank assessments. what are the political risks of batting russian oil? a gas for western leaders or sanctions on russian energy exports. recipe was informed opinions. france is not abandoning to fight against jedi, still resent media. they're going to be acting, missouri and from chad critical debate. could china actually help in russia's

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