Ms. Lauryn Hill and her Fugees’ bandmate Wyclef Jean will headline Global Citizen Festival this fall in New York’s Central Park, where the annual event will once again try to pressure world leaders to fund antipoverty initiatives at the end of the United Nations General Assembly’s yearly high-level meetings.
Who Gets Asked to Pay
The festival’s pitch is simple enough: people at the bottom are told to perform civic obedience, and the powerful are asked to loosen the purse strings. Festivalgoers gain entry by taking actions such as petitioning countries to dip into their international development budgets. This year’s priorities include mobilizing $100 million to provide 2 million children with access to education, nutritious food and healthcare; gathering $100 million to improve food security for 1.5 million smallholder farmers; and moving $1.5 billion to expand clean energy in the Indo-Pacific region.
That’s the setup. The money sits with states, budgets, and institutions. Ordinary people are handed an app and a ticket lottery.
Joining Hill and Jean on Sept. 26 are rocker Lenny Kravitz, R&B-pop singer John Legend, country music star Lainey Wilson, chart-topping Grammy winner Shaboozey and K-pop group TOMORROW X TOGETHER. The two Fugees are fresh off several performances marking the 30th anniversary of their landmark album, “The Score.” They were in London, where Hill also brought her music festival celebrating the sounds of the African diaspora, and Rio de Janeiro, where they closed out Global Citizen’s weeklong climate programming.
The event is also the first festival since Global Citizen produced the World Cup’s first halftime show. That collaboration helped raise more than $60 million for the education fund launched with FIFA. The numbers are large, the sponsors are larger, and the machinery of charity keeps humming.
The People at the Bottom, First
Global Citizen says the funds raised will go toward New York’s City Parks Foundation and organizations that serve those experiencing homelessness. Fans can still enter the free ticket lottery by completing calls to action on the Global Citizen app. They can also get automatic entry by making a $25 charitable donation.
That’s the public-facing bargain. Participate, donate, comply, and maybe get in.
Global Citizen co-founder Hugh Evans hopes to use next month’s gathering to shore up some outstanding commitments. He said the countries facing asks this year include Spain, Norway, Ireland, Kenya, Japan, Denmark and Australia. Evans specifically called on France to support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, Gavi, Education Cannot Wait, or any of their other education partners.
He said, “Macron will often talk a lot about their leadership on issues of education,” and added, “But I think, when the rubber hits the road, are they actually stepping up?”
The question hangs there because the answer is built into the system itself. Leaders talk. Budgets decide. The rest is theater with a donation button.
The State as Donor, the State as Gatekeeper
The United States is not on the list. Evans said the U.S., once the world’s single largest aid donor, now provides for him “an example of a country that should be a leader on the global stage that is such an incredible laggard at this point.” He said the U.S. wasn’t worth targeting because the administration “butchered its entire foreign aid budget” and “dismantled the entire apparatus” of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
That’s the hierarchy in plain view. The apparatus gets built, then butchered, then mourned in public by people who still believe the right leaders might someday use power well.
Still, while acknowledging a “world of shrinking foreign aid,” Evans said he remained optimistic that the pendulum will shift. “I believe that the future belongs to political leaders who are willing to understand the nuance of how power works,” he said. “Power doesn’t have to be a negative thing. It can be a very positive thing if you’re wielding it for good. As Spider-Man taught us: with great power comes great responsibility.”
That’s the pitch from above: trust power, refine power, hope power behaves. Meanwhile, the festival asks people to petition governments, donate money, and wait for the right hands to hold the levers.
Evans said he hopes artists such as Wilson and Shaboozey, both country music acts, can bring a new audience to his movement. He noted that Wilson, who expressed interest in the festival’s support of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, comes from a family of farmers. “It’s been quite some time I’d say since we had this level of a country presence in our lineup,” Evans said. “So, I’m super excited about that. I’m hoping that the fans are, too.”
The lineup is broad. The structure isn’t. Central Park will host the spectacle on Sept. 26, and the same old arrangement will stand behind it: people asked to act, leaders asked to fund, and institutions asked to prove they deserve the trust they keep demanding.