Wizard rock saved my life. The HPA has rebuilt it.
Last night during the HPA’s 10th birthday party, my friend and colleague Andrew Slack was reminiscing about the early days of the Harry Potter Alliance, and about my personal journey from scrappy wizard rocker to Executive Director of the HPA. He remembered the first time I acknowledged out loud that I might want to work for the HPA some day. It was 2008, and I had become somewhat fixated on how awesome our chapters program was shaping up to be under the leadership of Karen Bernstein. I connected the dots: the HPA was doing the same thing for activism-oriented Harry Potter fans that wizard rock was doing for musically-inclined Harry Potter fans. The central tenets of each community were essentially the same: inclusion, collaboration, friendship, positivity, and passion for story. I was in the beginning stages of pursuing my dream of being a touring musician, but looking well into the future, I couldn’t help but think that the skills I was cultivating as a wizard rocker would be transferable to a position with the HPA. But I can’t blame Andrew for his reaction at the time, which he summed up pretty well last night: “How could I hire this guy? We would never hire this guy.”
“This guy” was an immensely flawed human being, dealing with some raw wounds from multiple personal traumas. My brother’s death in 2005 and my best friend’s death in 2006 were life-altering events for me. In particular, they put my own mortality front and center in my consciousness, which in turn made me a much more anxious person but also a much more self-motivated person. I no longer felt any desire to fall in line with outside expectations for who I should be or what I should do with myself. I disengaged from my desk job and started focusing more on music. I lost interest in my “serious” band, The Jena Campaign, and poured my heart and energy into the music that made me happy – The Whomping Willows. Within a year of my best friend’s death, I had already quit my job to focus on touring full time. It all just snowballed from there and I never really stopped touring until the fall of 2012.
“This guy” was a walking contradiction: I was accomplishing amazing things, but I was a total wreck. I drank too much. I smoked too many cigarettes. I was carrying an unhealthy amount of weight and I developed high blood pressure. I couldn’t sleep at night. I was a community leader, but I’m guessing that community was silently concerned about my well-being. I was in no place to be considered for a position at the Harry Potter Alliance or any other organization.
While I was out touring for the next few years, I watched the HPA grow from a rag tag outfit to a world-renowned non-profit. I collaborated with our chapters program on a few fundraiser tours, the highlight of which was a two-week tour to raise money for disaster relief in Haiti after a series of devastating tropical storms. As a member of the HPA’s Board, I was aware that one of our future goals was to hire a Chapters Director to run the program. Some time in 2012, I once again acknowledged to Andrew that I’d like to work for the HPA some day. But something was different this time: between 2008 and 2012, I had grown substantially as a person and gained a strong skill set as a community organizer. I had stabilized my mental health, gotten married, adopted two cats, and also come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t make touring work forever. Apparently Andrew’s perspective had changed, as he responded to my latest statement of interest by saying that I’d probably be excellent for a Chapters Director job, should it ever materialize.
That stuck with me for the next year or so. As I wrapped up my touring career, I began positioning myself for a new path with a lot more intention. The challenge was to find something for which I could feel the same level of passion and enthusiasm as I’d felt for touring – something that would utilize my creativity, my desire to build strong communities, my love for story and culture, and my faith in young people to transform the world.
You might see where this is going.
I’m not a huge believer in fate, but I can’t help but marvel how the HPA’s creation of a Chapters Director position aligned with my own personal development – as a human being with a complex emotional life, as an influential voice in a dynamic subculture, and as a person capable of navigating the professional world and all its expectations and conventions. I was officially ready for this job about five years after Andrew thought to himself, “We would never hire this guy.”
During last night’s show, we reflected on how the HPA’s employees and volunteers spend countless hours working to impact the lives of others, but we rarely talk about how our work impacts us as individuals. In my case, my work with the HPA has been a form of recovery – from alcohol addiction, from panic disorder and generalized anxiety, and from deep depression and grieving after two tragic and unexpected losses. My co-workers have become a second family; the greater community has become a constant source of inspiration and pride.
Wizard rock saved my life. The HPA has rebuilt it.
My sense of gratitude toward the HPA runs so deep, and that’s why I feel no regrets about filling up my twitter feed with plugs for our tenth anniversary fundraiser. We’ve been operating on a shoestring budget so long, and yet we’ve accomplished such incredible things. We’ve put a dent in human trafficking by compelling Warner Bros. to make all their Harry Potter chocolate fair trade. We’ve raised over 250,000 books for schools and communities in need across the world. We’ve influenced public discourse on issues ranging from economic inequality to media reform. We’ve trained and empowered countless young people to be leaders in their own communities.
Our current fundraiser ends in less than one week. Now is the time to invest in our second decade. For every accomplishment we’re able to list off, we have a dozen new goals we want to achieve. The reality of a non-profit is that we have to rely on the kindness of others to help keep us going.
If you want to see us launch a major campaign to fight institutionalized bullying that impacts trans people, then donate today.
If you want to see us build a campaign to tackle climate change around the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, donate today.
If you want us to continue working with organizations like Uplift to make fandom communities safer and more inclusive for women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ communities, then donate today.
If you want us to continue expanding our chapters community into every corner of the globe so that local fan activists can organize their own community-focused campaigns, then donate today.
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