Please join tonight’s Live HPA DA meeting on Ustream at 8:00 pm EST!

In tonight’s call we will continue to talk about What Would Dumbledore Do – a project that is your chance to blog about both your relationship with Dumbledore and what you think the world could learn from Dumbledore’s example at this critical moment in human history.

Please take part in what is going to be a fun and stimulating conversation about this project by being part of the call tonight right here on Pottercast’s Ustream and sending questions via Twitter to @thehpalliance

The call will last one hour.

After that, at 9:45 pm EST (nine and three quarters) Andrew Slack will be hosting “Late Night Snack with Andrew Slack” which should go pretty late as Andrew reads and discusses the book that he is writing on Dumbledore.

We hope to see you there!

Andrew, Kate, Karen, Hope, and the whole HPA Staff

Hey everybody, apologies for the lateness. We had some technical difficulties with our podcasting service. And without further ado:

At our live DA meeting on June 10, Andrew Slack, Hope Mullinax, and Karen Bernstein had a fabulous discussion with each other and the listeners in the USTREAM chat about the Harrry Potter Alliance’s What Would Dumbledore Do? campaign, which was launched at LeakyCon 2009.

Among the many ideas and actions discussed were:

-Why is it important to think about what Dumbledore taught us?
-What is What Would Dumbledore Do? and how long will this campaign last?
-How to harness the media blitz surrounding the movies to bring attention to important causes and events that might otherwise go unreported or under reported
-How Dumbledore moved from an inspirational, untouchable “God-like” character to a more relatable human being in the later books and what we can learn from this transformation
-How we can all be true to the spirit of Albus Dumbledore
-Harry’s hero complex and how our human experience can help us when working on difficult issues like genocide and poverty
-The differences between a wizarding mindset and the muggle mindset when it comes to issues of social justice and social action
-The impact of death and grief on our own lives
- How can you get involved? Blog on the Common Room, post a video response to the WWDD video on the Harry Potter Alliance’s YouTube channel, or contact dumbledore@thehpalliance.org for other ways to get involved.
-The USTREAM chat room discusses bacon, and Andrew, Karen and Hope call Paul DeGeorge and wish him a happy 30th birthday.

Direct Download link: http://media.libsyn.com/media/hpapotterwatch/06_10_09_DA_Meeting_WWDD01.mp3

Tonight is Harry and the Potters 500th show. And Pottercast is celebrating, looking forward to LeakyCon 2011, and reminding us and the people of Iran that the weapon we have is love. Still. Always. Love.

A lot of people have been blogging about Iran in our Common Room. Vlog Brother John Green gives some good background as to what is going on there and why the “Iranian Ministry” may very well be taken over by those who have no interest in people of Iran (or the people of the world).

The HP Alliance’s “What would Dumbledore do?” project launched during LeakyCon in May. It’s been met with an overwhelming response. We would like to get your input and share some things that you can expect from WWDD in the future. We will be hosting a Ustream chat Wednesday, June 10^th at 8:30pm EST. Pottercast is hosting this chat on their channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pottercast Please send any questions or comments about WWDD via Twitter @thehpalliance .

While through What Would Dumbledore Do, we are off to a start in discussing several ways that we can be loyal to the spirit of Albus Dumbledore, are you ready to go deeper than we already have? Because we aren’t messing around here. In declaring our loyalty to the core of Dumbledore’s spirit we are truly stepping out into the night and pursuing “that flighty temptress, adventure” on an adventure and entering the realm of deep speculation.

The importance of such an endeavor cannot be underestimated. To travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul is to travel to the core of the entire series of Harry Potter. To travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul is to travel to a clarity where Voldemort’s attempts at splitting his own soul seem more futile and pathetic than nefarious and evil. To travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul cannot be done through a journey of the intellect alone and so these words will simply not suffice to hold the meaning for which they are intended. For in reality, to travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul is to travel into the the elusive spiritual reasons for why I believe the Harry Potter novels were written in the first place. To travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul is to travel to the core of our own soul, the soul of the world.

In essence, we are traveling into the dark and ancient woods of the human unconscious, into the elusive spiritual realities behind why human beings have ever told stories to our kin within caves, our children within cribs, our brethren around fire pits, and our mass communities within movie theaters. By traveling to the core of Dumbledore’s soul, we are traveling to the heart of it all. And to declare our loyalty to this core with every fiber of our strength, with every fiber of our mind, and every fiber of our being is to fully declare our loyalty to the most primordial and in the same instant, the most evolved Being that has ever and will ever be. In the end, the only Being that truly exists at all. The only Being that has ever and will ever exist at all.

But where words fail us in such an indescribable and transcendent journey to the core of Dumbledore’s soul, metaphor stands a chance. And though I am presenting this metaphor as something deep, intense, and heavy, in truth it is as light as a feather. For to travel to the core of Dumbledore’s soul is to travel to the very core of the wands belonging to Dumbledore’s most famous students, Harry Potter and Tom Riddle. What we find at the core of their wands is what we find at the core of Dumbledore’s soul: the Phoenix feather.
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New Hampshire has now legalized equal marriage! Finally, marriage is being protected to allow room for all those who love. Now that’s moral values!

And to those who think that heterosexual marriage is somehow being threatened by marriage being equal, well with more states having legalized marriage, what we’re about to see is a much more educated debate on what equal marriage looks like. Before those pushing for marriage to remain unequal were using old techniques of fear mongering – similar to the fear mongering that led us into Iraq and completely drained our resources away from dealing with the genocide in Darfur when it first began. But fear mongering can only last for so long in the marriage debate.

The movement for Marriage Inequality may be getting nervous because now the nation is about to see solid evidence that same sex marriage threatens no one. The only threat comes from those who stand in the way of equality. The only immorality comes from those who stand in the way of marriage equality. The only threat to values that are truly spiritual come from those who stand against legalizing love between consensual partners. We’ve still got a long way to go for marriage to be equal in this society and for those who are not heterosexual to be feel like welcomed members of this society – but the strides we are making are quite profound.

So Vernon Dursley Alliance – you who want to keep things unequal in the name of preserving what you feel is “normal” – the Wizards are coming to town whether you like it or not and we’re bringing the magic of understanding that every individual is worthy of love, loving, and the highest consideration.

New Hampshire has a saying: “Live Free or Die.” Today New Hampshire has chosen to live free. As a society grappling with issues so giant they may destroy us, it is time to follow suit and choose freedom for all. Not simply freedom for those who celebrate inequality with passive aggressive Umbridge like smiles. Love and Freedom are prevailing.

http://thehpalliance.ning.com/profiles/blogs/power-1

“That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.” (Deathly Hallows page 710).

If we break this quote down, we can learn a lot about what Dumbledore has to teach us about the nature of power. True power does not exist in Voldemort’s mutilated brand of might. True power exists in “house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence.” True power is something that each of us has access to at every moment regardless of our age, regardless of our gender, our race, ethnicity, sexuality, or creed. True power is stepping into ourselves. True power is what Harry and the Potters call, “one thing that I’ve got. One thing that you’ve got inside you too. One thing that we’ve got. And the one thing we’ve got is enough to save us all!”

So let’s talk about this. Power is probably at the height of our culture’s obsession. And for every Wizard, power is important. But if there is a distinction between true power and false power I think we better have that discussion now. Let’s talk about it.

In Harry’s world, what is false power and what is true power? And in our world, what is false power and what is true power?

The below comes from our friends at Azkatraz! Register! Get involved! Submit art (even if you can’t go)! This is going to be amazing! Who is going?

Last week, HPEF made their post about the charities they’ll be supporting at Azkatraz. All profits from Wrock Around the Rock will be divided between HP Alliance and
Amnesty International – and you can now purchase a ticket without registering for the event – click here for more. Tickets are $100 or $125 – the more expensive ticket is only for people over
21 and includes three hours of open bar, but everyone will enjoy heavy hors d’ouerves and dessert, plus hours of Wrock music from the Remus Lupins, Ministry of Magic, the Whomping Willows, House of Black and Brian from Draco & the Malfoys. You can also add a ticket to your single-day or multi-day Azkatraz registration at
http://www.hp2009.org.

Also, there’s only a little time left to submit art for the Azkatraz Art Dungeon Gallery. Even if you aren’t attending Azkatraz, you can submit art for them to display in the Gallery, which will then be auctioned off in support of the HP Alliance, as well as HPEF to use towards Infinitus next summer and the Kids Need to Read organization, who donate high-quality books to schools and libraries to foster a love of reading in children around the US. There is no hanging/submission fee for art donated to the auction.

From What Would Dumbledore Do in the Common Room:

You will never uncover all of the secrets. That’s what makes them magical. That’s why they are secrets.

Check it out here.