This Week in Wizard Activism: Not-So-Secret Secrets
By Daniel Lytle
Hey there, magical people! It’s everyone’s favorite time of the week: This Week in Wizard Activism Friday!
Meet Your Fellow Resistance Fighters at GLA
In about a month and a half (wow, that’s soon!), the HPA will be descending upon Tuscon, Arizona with a gang of hardcore wizard activists, eye-opening workshops, game-changing keynote addresses, and a whole lot of fun. We call these four days of pure, uninterrupted awesomeness the Granger Leadership Academy, and there are only 13 days left to register! If you want to up your activism game, make a boatload of new friends, and soak up some Arizona sun in the process, register now at grangerleadershipacademy.com (and check out the preliminary schedule while you’re at it). We can’t wait to see many of you there!
Not-So-Secret Secret #1: Prepare for Self Care Liftoff
Quick announcement! Fasten your seatbelts, because the HPA will be launching a self care mini-campaign in February! We’re working hard on some fantastic Medium articles (five of them to be exact!) that will help you understand what it means to practice self care as an activist, how self care varies for different people, and even self care 101 if its a new concept for you! Keep and eye on our Medium page and social media so you don’t miss out on these awesome resources!
Report: You’ll Learn a Bunch From These Research Reports!
This week, our rad gender researcher shared some revealing stories about the music industry’s hidden gender gap in writing and production (link). Also, as tech companies train people to yell at Alexa and Siri, we may start to see some not-so-helpful side-effects. Check out this article on the danger of reinforcing internalized sexism by using predominantly female voices and names for AI assistants (link).
Other organizations are green with envy that they don’t have an environmental researcher as awesome as ours. This week, she highlighted the Indonesian government’s new effort to overhaul their environmental impact assessment process, known as AMDAL (link), leaving environmentalists and industrialists alike cautiously optimistic about the changes to come.
Finally, we all love our local libraries here at the HPA, but it can sometimes be hard to figure out how to protect these crucial community resources. Our library advocacy researcher shared a super-helpful guide to protecting libraries and helping them to get the resources they need (link). For all the students and educators out there, she also shared an insightful report about using free and low-cost alternatives to expensive school textbooks (link). Spoiler: making the switch in a few common courses could save students over $1.5 BILLION nationwide.
Calling all Obi-Wan’s and Leia’s: We Need Your Help!
Just like the Rebel Alliance, the HPA is always looking for new volunteers to help us save the galaxy. Right now, we’re looking for illustrators and advertising managers for our WAND magazine, several chapters liaisons for regions across the globe, and social media wizards and witches. If you or a friend have been looking for a way to get more involved with the HPA, now is the time to send us an email and jump in — no experience required! Check out available positions and get in touch (link).
Not-So-Secret Secret #2: You Are Awesome
Here’s our top-secret announcement for this week: You Are Awesome, and the work that you’re doing as a wizard activist is seen and appreciated. Well, I guess it’s not a secret anymore. The cat is out of the bag. Everybody knows that you rock!
With that, have a great week everyone!
