The Growing Alliance of Dumbledore's Army

If you haven't heard of it by now... where have you been?! The Harry Potter Alliance got started in 2005 on MySpace and has grown into a larger and larger alliance tackling issue after issue bringing online involvement into offline actions.

Most recently their stance on California's Anti-Equality Amendment Proposition H8

The HP Forum includes anti-discrimination topics that speak of the inspiration for the advocacy.

"Dumbledore spoke against the Wizarding World’s discrimination of Half-bloods, Muggle borns, Muggles, Centaurs, Werewolves, Giants, and House Elves. How can we fight discrimination based on race, physical and mental ability, age, sexual orientation, economic status, ethnicity, and any thing else?"

With over 12,000 friends on MySpace and 50 chapters in 7 countries across the world, the HP Alliance works against real dark forces as members of Dumbledore's Army that advocates for justice.

Their specific causes include but are not limited to:

• Genocide, Poverty, AIDS, and Global Warming are ignored by our media and governments the way Voldemort's return is ignored by the Ministry and Daily Prophet.
• People are still discriminated against based on sexuality, race, class, religion, gender, ethnicity, and religion just as the Wizarding World continues to discriminate against Centaurs, Giants, House Elves, Half-Bloods, Muggle borns, Squibs, and Muggles
• Our governments continue to respond to terror by torturing prisoners (often without trial) just as Sirius Black was tortured by dementors with no trial
• A Muggle Mindset pervades over our culture-a mindset that values being "perfectly normal, thank you very much" over being interesting, original, loving, and creative

Since the release of the first Harry Potter book in 1997 the Alliance is targeting a demographic that is 100% millennial. A generation has come of age with the HP books in their lives advocating for good against evil. Tapping into this value and applying it to policy initiatives that matter to young people and showing how they can affect change within their communities is what I believe we all strive for in the youth movement. The HP Alliance does more than advocate against Prop H8 they are working within the culture to create lasting impacts on policies that we'll see as Millennials continue their takeover.

HPA did a lot this election including a huge Wizard Rock the Vote registration drive, but I have been wanting to write about them for a while as a special thanks for their continued advocacy against Prop H8. And I hope they'll stay involved in the new campaign to overturn Prop H8 begins.