Harry Potter Alliance gears up, Dumbledore Army lives on

With the grand opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince only a few nights away, you may be interested in joining the Harry Potter Alliance celebration. The HP Alliance is a online nonprofit organization encourageing Potter fans not only to band together in HP love but to use their individual powers to make a difference in the world. According to their press release, the HP Alliance has raised over $15,000 to protect citizens in Darfur and Burma, donated over 14,000 books worldwide, 4000 alone to a village in Rwanda. In addition, the Alliance is Dumbledore’s Army for social justice by, for example, exposing unfair work situations, promoting minority rights, and working for media reform. The Alliance believes the “lessons of Albus Dumbledore can be translated into our lives and toward a global transformation.” This is not really a group for young kids, rather the majority of members appear to be mid to older teens and the 20-something crowd. Members blog, join an HP House, chat, form local chapters that meet either physically or through Facebook (currently none for St. Louis), and discuss “what would Dumbledore do” regarding world, national or personal situations.

For the Dumbledore Movie Theater Challenge, Potter fans around the world who attend the midnight movie showing on July 14/15 are encouraged to wear name tags stating a lesson Dumbledore taught them. For the Dumbledore Twitter Challenge, the HP Alliance, Mugglenet, The Leaky Cauldron, and other online fansites invite Twitterers to tweet #dumbledore in honor of Albus and to reflect on “how he lives on in each of us,” as Harry says.

Although Dumbledore is a fictional character, his presence remains real in the hearts of Harry Potter fans and his message, much like the message of such real life figures as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, is needed in our world.  – HP Alliance

Coinciding with the showing of Half Blood Prince and the anticipation of The Deathly Hallows films, on Thursday, July 16, at 7 pm (Central), ABC will air J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life, a documentary by James Runcie which was filmed as Rowling completed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Runcie, a fan, concentrates not on the public figure of Rowling but on the universal themes in her writing.
 

See National Book Examiner Michelle Kern's article A look back at the Harry Potter movies to see what worked, what flopped, how they compare to the books.