On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested, and on April 19, 2015, he died in the hospital from severe spinal injuries. While it is unclear just how Gray sustained spinal cord injuries while in police custody and why he was arrested in the first place, it is clear that Baltimore police officers failed to get Gray the medical care he needed. Freddie Gray’s death has sparked protests in Baltimore as people question, critique, and protest the continued killings of unarmed black people at the hands of police in Baltimore and across the US.

But what has emerged differently in the protests and discussions around Baltimore is the contradiction between The Wire’s widespread popularity (1.8 million likes on Facebook) and the comparatively small support for the protests in honor of Freddie Gray (thousands protesting in the streets of Baltimore).

In other words, why hasn’t The Wire, which showed us how structural racism and an abusive police department defines black life in Baltimore, translated into collective social action? Why are there only thousands in the streets? Where are the millions of fans of The Wire? And why aren’t they supporting black folks in Baltimore?

My dissertation research provides at least a partial answer to that question. Examining cases of fan-based citizenship (including activism, volunteerism, and political participation), I investigate how we connect popular culture to political participation in a way that invites collective action. Through cases across television, movies, books, and sports, I find that fan-based civic appeals take significant community work and rhetorical work—that is, popular culture media almost never leads directly to collective action on its own. Like any social activism and community organizing, it takes hard work, coordination, deliberation, and discussion. It makes sense then that without a group of fans of The Wire emerging as leaders, providing organizational groundwork and constructing arguments that invite us to see The Wire as connected to our lives today, we see little collective action emerging as a result of The Wire fandom.

Protesters and supporters have pointed out another part of the answer as to why fans of The Wire are not at the protests in large numbers. They explain how the racism of our media industry and culture discourage audience civic action:

As audience members, we are invited to consume a narrative of black suffering. The show invites us to be consumers first and foremost, complicit in the structural racism that undergirds the media industry and our own everyday lives. The bad news is that this is widespread. The good news is that we don’t have to accept this situation as permanent. We can change how we, as fans, engage the story of black suffering on The Wire. We can shift from consumption to solidarity. Of course, we will need to counter cultural scripts, norms, and discourse to do it. But such change is possible, and quite frankly, desperately needed.

We can find a model for this kind of work in the Harry Potter Alliance’s (HPA) Darfur campaign. Through two podcasts and a series of blog posts, the HPA argued that the Harry Potter story called Harry Potter fans to take action to end the Darfur genocide by calling government representatives, divesting from companies implicitly funding the genocide, and donating money to Civilian Protection. On the surface, the story of Harry Potter would seem to have little to do with Sudan, genocide, and geopolitics in Africa (and it would certainly seem to have much less in common with Sudan than The Wire has with the Freddie Gray tragedy and resulting protests). But through sophisticated arguments that connected Harry Potter characters and values to the crisis in Sudan, the Harry Potter Alliance made the Sudan genocide relevant for Harry Potter fans.

The HPA made this argument by drawing connections between Lily Potter (Harry’s mom) and the mothers in refugee camps. By connecting Lily Potter with Darfuri refugees, the HPA a) helped fans understand the lives of women in the camps and b) transferred importance from Lily to refugees, giving fans a reason to take action. Protecting Darfuri refugees became a way to honor and protect Lily Potter.

Andrew Slack uses Lily as a way to understand the risk and sacrifice Darfuri refugee women are taking. In the second Darfur podcast, HPA co-founder Slack says, “we’ll be talking about people like Lily Potter in our world, mothers in Darfur who continue to risk everything to protect their children.” In November 2007, the Janjaweed militia were continuing to circle UN refugee camps, killing any men and raping any women who ventured outside of the camp. The HPA explains that refugees were forced to leave the relative safety of the UN camps in order to gather firewood nearby. Slack explains that, despite knowing they will likely be raped when they leave the camp, Darfuri women choose to take the risk so that they could feed their families. The HPA compares Lily’s demonstration of motherly love to that of the Darfuri women’s. Lily too made a sacrifice for Harry, protecting him from Voldemort’s deadly power. Lily also becomes a reason to take civic action. PotterCast co-host Sue Upton says in the podcast, “What better way to show our love for Harry Potter than to stick up for the women in this world who are doing the same thing for their children just as Lily did for Harry.” Protecting women in Darfur becomes a matter of showing respect for Lily Potter and showing one’s love for Harry Potter. Through the campaign, the HPA helped fans see intervention in the Darfur genocide as a public issue that was both relevant and important.

We can never know exactly what it is like to be another person. But we can stand in solidarity with them. The HPA demonstrates how we can translate a commitment to Harry Potter to a commitment to action to intervene in genocide, and it offers lessons for how we might translate a commitment to The Wire into participation in protests in Baltimore.

Indeed, popular culture media holds great potential to show us new things. And fan commitments and identifications hold great potential to push us to take action. Fans are powerful. But failing to connect The Wire with protests in honor of Freddie Gray represents a missed opportunity—one that we, put frankly, cannot afford to miss.

Miss Packnett calls us to take action:

Freddie Gray is not Dukie. But we must love Freddie Gray like we loved Dukie. We must help write a Season 6 through our protests and actions that create a safer, fairer, and more just Baltimore for black folks. #BlackLivesMatter.

Journalists covering this story have struggled to frame the protests within a broader relationship between popular culture and politics in the real world. Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com says, “If I say the phrases Hunger Games and ‘life imitates art’ in the same sentence, you might start to worry. But this is actually an inspiring appropriation of the practices of Panem.” Ryan Gilbey at The Guardian points toward critics’ concerns that films inspire violent copy-cat behavior. Both Brown and Gilbey frame popular culture as a causal mechanism, but in doing so they undermine the agency of actors. This is particularly problematic when popular culture is connected to political action. In these cases, we ought to understand popular culture as resources. We must recognize that popular culture does not cause political action, while also recognizing the incredibly important role popular culture plays in offering up the choices we have for political resources.

Popular culture has always functioned as resources for politics. For example, Nan Enstad describes how American women factory workers at the turn of the century used dime novels, films, and fashion to come to see themselves as both ladies and workers, and thus as deserving of fair working conditions. These women staged labor protests in unexpected numbers. Today, we see examples ranging from Harry Potter to football. In January 2014, Chinese diplomats used Harry Potter metaphors to make arguments about regional power in Asia. In the fall of 2013, the TeamMates’ Coaches Challenge campaign invited Nebraskan citizens to volunteer to mentor by connecting mentoring with being a Nebraska football fan, beating Kansas, and joining the Nebraskan team. During 2012 and 2013, DC Entertainment led a campaign named “We Can Be Heroes,” calling Justice League fans to donate money to charities working to end hunger in Africa. These are just three examples from this academic year alone. Indeed, there are many more.

What I hope this contextualization provides is a framing that enables us as audience members, reporters, and citizens to take seriously the Thai protesters’ Hunger Games salutes. While not all political appropriations of popular culture are necessarily ethical, desirable, or effective, we cannot dismiss such uses of popular culture out-of-hand. Jonathan Jones at The Guardian takes this problematic approach when he asserts that the Thai protesters’ use of the Hunger Games salute “reveals something about the bankruptcy of political beliefs in the 21st century.” But Jones is missing the point because he’s got the context all wrong. The protesters aren’t claiming allegiance to the Hunger Games. They are using the symbol of resistance in the Hunger Games as their own, imbuing it with democratic meaning and critiques of the Thai government. Popular culture is a resource, combined and recombined with other resources, appropriated and changed through various performances. This framing is absolutely necessary to understanding the Thai protesters’ use of the Hunger Games salute in a complex and full way.

In the news story, Ulaby interviewed Kate Looby, the Operations Director for the Harry Potter Alliance, who explained that before she got involved with the Harry Potter Alliance, she was “pretty apathetic.” After joining the nonprofit and becoming their Director of Operations, Looby said “I would say now I consider myself to be a full-fledged activist.” Ulaby’s story of how Harry Potter fans were becoming activists demonstrates how surprising it is for most people that fans are not loners, hiding away from the world, but rather are productive and rational- and can create real political change.

For a fandom organization composed mostly of adolescents and young adults to see themselves as activists is pretty surprising. Harry Potter fandom is considered a leisure time activity, something silly, though enjoyable. Adolescents are supposed to be apathetic about current events and critical issues, uninformed, much less engaged. For Looby at least, fandom is playing an important role in her process of recognizing herself as an active citizen and engaged activist.

The Harry Potter Alliance’s rhetoric has invited Looby and thousands of others to begin to see themselves as more than fans using media for themselves, and consider themselves engaged citizens. Fandom and social movement rhetoric are coming together. For people who are concerned with political action, the important question is how a nonprofit can use Harry Potter enthusiasm to spur adolescents into action, where high school civic teachers cannot.

Political theorist John Dewey, philosopher Fredric Jameson, and sociologist Doug McAdam all note that people need grounding in order to act meaningful in the world. For Harry Potter fans, the Harry Potter story provides that grounding. It provides fans with a touch-point, worldview, or philosophy that allows them to take political and social action.

The Harry Potter text operates politically for fans in two ways. First, the Harry Potter text anchors fans as it guides fans and gives them ways of acting in the world. The Harry Potter Alliance asks fans to compare themselves to Harry and to ask themselves what Dumbledore would have done. Since Hermione fought for House Elf rights, then Harry Potter fans should fight for fair trade. If Voldemort killed mudbloods, then Harry Potter fans should value diversity. The Harry Potter Alliance certainly plays a key role in guiding such interpretations by highlighting some aspects of the Harry Potter story (like Dumbledore’s sexuality), organizing particular kinds of alliances (with liberal, social justice groups), and by guiding fans in determining the real world equivalent of House Elf rights.

Second, the Harry Potter text works as a strong anchor, drawing on an intense dedication to the text. The Harry Potter Alliance capitalizes on fans’ already intense identification with the Harry Potter text and translates that to an intense identification with social activism. While apathy about the environment may be easy, apathy about house elf rights for Harry Potter fans is more difficult to maintain.

For young adults who feel like political discussions are irrelevant and distant, Harry Potter offers a way to connect. Maybe political world views like liberalism and conservativism aren’t our only choices anymore. Sarah Palin better move over. Harry Potter just arrived.