By: Don Driggers
The Global Citizen Live event was held in Central Park on Saturday, featuring such stars as Coldplay, Jennifer Lopez, and Prince Harry and Meghan.
The founder of is annual event Hugh Evans started his fight against extreme poverty by mobilizing his friends when he was growing up in Australia.
On Saturday, Evans once more tried to mobilize the world to tackle poverty and COVID-19 with a 24-hour live concert featuring The Weekend, BTS, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, H.E.R. and dozens of other artists performing at locations across the globe — from Lagos, Nigeria, and Seoul, South Korea, to the Champ de Mars in Paris and New York’s Central Park. Late last week, the group announced Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will join the event in Central Park to discuss global vaccine equity.
The NY Post reported: the show began with a medley of Bob Marley tunes performed by an ensemble that included Cyndi Lauper, Jon Batiste and Billy Porter, among others.
Lauper soon took over the stage, dedicating her signature song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” to the young women of Afghanistan.
“Incredible,” enthused Lauren Baker, 21, of Ohio, as she bopped to Lauper’s 1980s pop classic, sporting sparkling eye make-up and a T-shirt that read “Climate Change, Social Justice.” Baker called Lauper, a Brooklyn native, “a feminist icon.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attended the Central Park show, joining UN leaders to amplify the concert’s call for G7 and EU nations to share at least 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses with needy nations.
At one point in the event Mayor de Blasio took the stage and was treated with loud jeering, at the event attended by 60,000.
AP reported:
Unlike most star-studded concerts for charity, Global Citizen Live isn’t asking for cash from fans. It wants to display their voices — on social media, on petitions and in person — as evidence for world leaders and corporate honchos that people support action on these issues. Evans, Global Citizen’s CEO, says such an awareness campaign is needed now because COVID-19 has ended years of gains and pushed 150 million people around the world into extreme poverty.
“Naturally, critics, have always questioned the murky and unsettled science revolving around: climate change and the intelligent person who actually follows science, understands that most climate change is due to solar activity not carbon, and all the corny events, cheesy celebrity speeches, will not change this”, a sceptic who was nearby the event told TVJ News.
