After viewing Poverty, Inc. in class, the lesson that stuck with me the most is the stark contrast between what makes donors feel good and what the donees in the movie actually need. The example of the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” seems particularly illustrative. As noted in the movie, the song is quite offensive and distorting of the facts. See, e.g., Leslie Loftis, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ Is The Worst Christmas Song Ever, The Federalist (Dec. 3, 2014), http://bit.ly/2k4lzkc (“The lyrics are dreadful on many levels. The song uses the ‘pitiful souls of Africa City’ tripe . . . to illustrate the applicable white Western virtue, showing the world that we care.”); id. (“Other lyrics needlessly sacrifice facts, without adding to the poetry: ‘There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.’ Well, except for the mountains. But to the extent the song is correct, it is not because Africa is a pitiful continent but because the bulk of the continent lies in the Southern Hemisphere. Christmastime comes in the summer there.”).

But the song reinforces the donors’ perception of the donees as “the other,” a class of people to be pitied and worthy of a monetary donation. To the donors, it is easy to solve the problem, just send some money overseas and be done with it. I firmly believe this problem has gotten worse since 2014 (when the movie came out). Now, (those who used to be) donors need only change their profile pictures or click “like” on their social media feed in order to feel good–and don’t even need to send money in the process. See generally Slacktivism, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism.

Slacktivism and distorting public perceptions such as “Do They Know It’s Christmas” seem to be the worst ways to actually help those in need. However, the end of the movie gave an interesting example of how those in the legal community can make actual effective change. Impoverished people need property rights in order to rise out of poverty. See generally Empowering the Poor Through Property Rights, Mercatus Center, https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/ch2.pdf. Perhaps this is the solution that lawyers can provide–burgeoning entrepreneurs need property rights in order to protect their investments and rise out of poverty, and lawyers can be the agents of change that foster the development of these rights. This seems to at least be a much better goal than making offensive songs and changing our profile pictures.