So, when exactly did we finally ‘make poverty history’?
I’m only asking because nobody seems to be wearing the little white arm bands any more. I can only assume this is because the fight was fought and won, and poverty has indeed been eradicated – ‘made history’ – and the world’s poor are now living it up like the rest of us, buying the latest consumer smack from Apple and congratulating themselves on how they’ve arrived. That’s that then. Job done.
But wait, it seems that’s not quite how things have worked out. Apparently far from being consigned to history, poverty is still alive and kicking – indeed it’s creeping closer to home all the time. So where, therefore, have the arm bands gone? Surely ‘the message’ still needs to be got out there and awareness still needs to be ‘raised’?
Apparently not it seems.
I was never comfortable with the whole white arm band fad back in 2005/06, and I’ve never worn one. I did attend the march in Edinburgh though (and even put on a white shirt, gasp!), because it seemed good to be a part of a singular event which might actually have some kind of effect. The G8 was taking place in Gleneagles Hotel at the time so the eyes of the world, and the most powerful people in it, were likely to be on an event as big as the march.
Back to the arm bands though. Now that I reflect on them after more than 5 years, they annoy me as much as ever. Although the ‘movement’ (if you can call something so obviously transient a movement) was self-evidently a positive thing, and the organisers were just using those means available to them which were most likely to chime with the majority of their young audience, what it boiled down to for so many people was nothing more than a cynical and selfish fashion stunt. Putting on that little arm band meant you ‘cared’, you were ‘part of something bigger than yourself’, you sympathised with the plight of the tens of millions of people around the world whose lives are blighted by poverty. Yes, that’s really what it meant to so many.
No, in fact, what so many really cared about was jumping on a warm and fuzzy bandwagon, passively cosseted in the embrace of a Good Cause while requiring no self-sacrifice, critical thought or effort whatsoever, save for the epically meaningless act of pulling a bracelet onto your wrist. Debasing the positive and valuable charitable message that lay beneath the Make Poverty History campaign to satisfy some empty craving to belong was just contemptible. And the evidence that this is how so many treated it is plain to see – or not – on the naked wrists of those who supposedly cared.
Image by Neil T