A dozen stars from Metallica to Mariah Carey, as well as international leaders such as Ursula van der Leyen and the Biden couple, scrolled through a video in New York on Saturday to host a giant charity event against climate and poverty.
UN Behind the event, which has been held every year for ten years at the end of the General Assembly, is the NGO Global Citizen, an international digital platform created by Australian Hugh Evans. For scourges of famine, underdevelopment, climate change or discrimination.
To win a ticket to Manhattan’s enormous green lung – Central Park, you need to register on the Global Citizen site, register petitions and relay messages on social networks to put pressure on the political and economic leaders of the planet.
Broadcast on multiple televisions and platforms, despite the time difference, the New York concert was held in Accra, Ghana at the same time.
And of course there is Europe
President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, pledged in a video message that America is in the ‘fight’ on the climate and passed a law this summer that included $369 billion in investments to ‘improve health, promote justice and create clean energy.’ .
Both Senate and House Democratic leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, took the stage in person to defend Washington’s environmental policy.
Before them, European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen also told the concert in Central Park that “(she) has listened to the world’s citizens very well”.
He pledged to ‘end famines (…) raising 600 million euros for food security in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific’.
But after five hours of mini-concerts and unanimous messages from political leaders and the festival’s US corporate sponsors, legendary hard rock band Metallica took the power of Metallica’s metal sound to enliven the thousands of fans gathered in Central Park.
The nearly 60-year-old Californians entertained the audience for an hour with a version of their legendary title song ‘Nothing Else Matters’ sung by Mickey Guyton, who holds the title of the first black American country music artist.
Bollywood star
The ‘Global Citizen Festival’ was thanks to the dynamic young Italian rockers of the group Maneskin and the New Yorkers of the Jonas Brothers, one of whose three brothers is married to the star of Indian Bollywood cinema, Priyanka Chopra. In Central Park.
World-renowned New York pop artist Mariah Carey joins classical dancer Misty Copeland for a rousing version of her classic ‘Hero’.
Between two small concerts, political and economic leaders took turns on stage.
Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley echoed the warnings of her counterparts from smaller Pacific and Caribbean nations threatened by global warming, who are calling on the U.N.
‘Yes, my friends, our time is up,’ she warned.
Women in Iran
Violence against women has also been condemned: Anusheh Amir-Khalili, an Iranian refugee lawyer in Berlin, spoke on stage about the death of young Masha Amini, who was arrested by the morality police in Iran, sparking demonstrations and their repression.
“I have seen my sisters forced out of occupation, oppression and feminicide all over the world (…) We must give voice to oppressed women,” she said solemnly, to applause.
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