Mar 30, 2013

call me hope?



I will admit to having enjoyed this video.  The music is great, as is the production, and I like the way it reminds us of all the things we have in common, across differences.   I was disturbed that Africa gets conflated and is not really an equivalent to the US category (like, say, Tanzania would have been) - but what really got me was following the link to the organization that produced it as a promo, Mama Hope.  Though it tries to present itself as a different sort of development organization, it comes across as a lot more like traditional charity than the vision of solidarity the video led me to think they might embody.  Though they may, as they say, respond to the needs and proposals of local communities - none of those seem to have involved any sort of organizing component to change the structures of power that make it necessary to go to the US to get help in, say, building a clinic.   Maybe local committees didn't ask for organizing support - but that is probably reflective both of who the people in the US talked to, and what the Tanzanians thought they could ask of them. 

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