sensitive coming of age film, about the friendship of to 13 year old boys is barbed as late a torn apart her daughter should. i mean, does she know how to do with the jury prize is also shared between ear and gentle field, exploring the world through the eyes of a donkey and so on. come on, duncan solomon lloyd, trotting and 8 mountains. an epic love letter to friendship and nature. set the italian out this year can, has celebrated story teddy. there are no car chases and special effects in these winning films. destroys well. told that remind us of the power of independent cinema charlie angela. how does that? ah, this is al jazeera,

these are the top stories now in evolve the texas hundreds of people have attended a memorial service for the 19 children and 2 teachers gone down in their classroom on tuesday, us preston taz at once again. the spoken about the need for stronger gun doors. special forces have stepped up, their assault on severity on the skin, eastern ukraine, control of nyman without access to multiple road and rail britches, which is so far impeded russian progress in the don't bass region. un human rights chief says china must not use legitimate concerns about terrorism to justify human rights abuses. show actually visited the jang region. authorities are accused of abuses against the we got ethnic minority group. at least 31 people have died office stan, hayden, southern nigeria, the committee report, fair large crowd turned up her head of the event and crush occurred in the venue opened. there's all the headlines and news continues here and here that's after

history. mm. oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is i don't need to be here with you to look at me about how to put them to me . i can also just give you a list of the thing you open at the home and yeah, today we're going to be will be set up. well, they didn't put me in a lot of fun when i know, i mean, i mean me

shooting off the edge of the to how do you states control information each? i know there's no can go if you tried to search the war tenement, you find it is trying to make the whole country for clear. how did the narrative improve public opinion? the headlines died and that allowed the children to continue to die to how is citizen journalism re framing the story. i am here to document the war crimes committed by winter and his resume. the listening post dissects the media on al jazeera. ah, i found the ok to day on the street. we are looking at star power and sing equity

activism. i know you have seen them high profile, global ambassadors, representing charities, and deos, 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 sure 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 and my name is lisa and richie. i am a professor 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 crest. i,

together with alexandra, it'd been called batman saves the congo. how celebrities disrupting the politics of development, yet to have a lease. 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 for me. i'm currently the global ambassador or african sizing for just the speech and dignity, a pan african social movement. and 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 on the spend agenda balance. i thank you. thank you for bringing your social justice activism to us and also providing gender balance. and finally, i shall welcome to the strain california who you are, what you do. hi, everyone. so i'm, i, shan, 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, we me, we are an advocacy organization based in california, lily to handle guess i'm going to start with something that caught my eye just recently. i was watching global citizen live, which is a huge global concert that went from one city to another city around the world, raising awareness, raising money activism that was very accessible. and i notice at the end of the new york leg, 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. ah, 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 went the next act to come on stage. they don't really care that much about taking 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 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. and 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 sending the pepsi to the protest her 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, the latter 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 one of the humanitarian 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 stoned to me lay in. well, i was moved by the example because i was the chair of that global make poverty campaign which was called a global calls action against poverty. and i, together with nelson mandela last launched that campaign in london in chicago 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 in 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 engaged us. and in fact, at that time, we would say we need to be gaudy against a problem up celebrex to see and sort of rock to see the domination of public space by celebrities. on the other hand though, let's be clear. we got a massive communication challenge. how do we get our message across to the largest number of people in the shortest space of time? and whether we like it or not, celebrities add excess 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 stream to finish up. but go him to this,

but then are producing those sort of the coding and the bending and so on. washing where b c 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. guess if i may just intervene just just one moment. i sure, cuz 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 lean on it and say, yes, we celebrate pride. we support pride, but then 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 so, i didn't know what my values, what i was contributing to while i was reading about the amounts in washington and you said some $300000.00 and or 4 or to work only by the $5000000.00, i guess. that's an unimaginable. how could this? how do i know? what is never where we do it? as you can tell, that was no david bishop, that was that animation of ben affleck with get to came in just a moment here as promise is david bishop. i think that there's a lot of people that are not interested in the rainbow watching in the corporate

appropriation. i'll to be to you people, you know, because they were europe rainbow in june and then, you know, get hundreds of thousands of dollars or $1000000.00 to organizations that, you know, want us district more 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, well i, i think it's really important that we understand that it's not that celebrities just look for causes like that, that there is an entire industry that's developed in terms of celebrity liaison officers. the work of my colleague done rocking to 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 extreme. it's extremely scientific. you don't just go out and support a cause. do you happen to like a bit after it'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 to profit from it, without giving any of the profits that you make from that to the rightful shareholders. who are actually, you know, the supposed beneficiaries and 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 in others that do not. this is 10 die 10. i says that as,

as in bob, we and social justice activists. i view this new trend as the meaning 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 more 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 of their own 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 big yeah. i think similarly, we all remember when nike, you know, that kept the nick was going to be the person in america like in to camps. right. there 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 i think the shares started storing 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. let's clearly for creating a social movement for clever advertising. that's very problematic. i think that sort of shallow marketing and commodification 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 them is a poor back sort of similarity is really critical. and so i think the win win here is when influencer and celebrities are allies to campaigns that are really rooted in solution for the community. the professor help to me go ahead. well, i think the biggest problem, the biggest disease we have in the world like now is not covered, but

a disease that we could call affluenza. affluenza. pathological is 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 o ever. when they use that relationship to tell product to make profit and to abuse that relationship, that's when in fact the violation of that right thoughts happening. so i have no illusions in my mind that like know, things are packed against stuff in terms of us being able to get our message to the largest number of people in the shortest 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 humanity history. and what we achieve in the next 10 years will determine what kind of future we have, or whether we'll have a future at all when we, when the stakes are that high. but i think it is appropriate plus, recognised that we are never going to be able to pass in the politics that is going to be perfect and idealistic we're going to have to make some sort of i don't want to use a word compromise, but say some sort of adjustments in i was strategy, compromise, compromises the right word. yeah. yeah, that's the right price. compromise is a difficult would for activism. let me just say why? because you cannot compromise on values. you cannot compromise on the right 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. but

if we look sacrificing principle, technical adjustments that we need to make from time to time. i think given the realities that we are dealing with, what me 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, and it's so hard for us to come to the noise in garner 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 they look, get celebrities and influence are perpetually by stuff. so we can get married and get some thought about our con. why not? well, absolutely, but, 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've 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. melissa cannot cut and i can, i would say, i think you're, i want to put in a particular field. i want to put in a particular does i, which 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, leases, 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, 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 call 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 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 those shred 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 or hurting his? yes. this celebrity 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 in front of us social justice movements. they shouldn't. and 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 the language 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 guess skepticism is essential, but we can be skeptical in a way that doesn't contribute to our rhetoric. that tries to break progresses already. 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 an audience colleague 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 problem activist from when he was a teenager. and then we have the activists, the c b. what special i show is holding. i had, she's, i faced paulding, this 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 into a documentary about activation. all of us are leaning in to see how that scan 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 just briefly. as far as the show, like the activist, 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 capitalist state, 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 block the block, 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 a 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 every not been involved at all. suddenly you are the leader of some social movement. can you to use it to support people, ensure that you are not over exercising your influence and presence and take your leadership from movement. that is a problem would appear amount of celebrities getting ahead of me to say that i thought 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 richie. it was the biggest challenge he 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 the heart wrenching good buys loved ones. not knowing when they will unite again, women and children heading west to relative safety, often leaving when behind among the foreigners. also trying to give out train rise

of a free, but it's on a come 1st serve basis here at the bus station. there's only a few rides available and that's only to the surrounding villages. so people like for me in rose, now need to find another way to get out of the city. but for now they, like many others, would have to reach in hope. hoping tomorrow is a better day short films of hope and inspiration, a series of short personal stories that highlight the human triumph against the odds. ah, al jazeera select

a showcase of the best documentary films from across the network on al jazeera. now the answer was an arabic, my name is helen. i was abducted by the cia in 2004. a german citizen was kidnapped and tortured by garcia. you came up with handcuffs, led me into the interrogation. a new documentary tells the story of how the geo politics of the post 911 world ruin the life of an innocent deal mastery case on al jazeera. ah ah, a town that grieves for its murder children as us president joe biden renews calls for types of gun control.