Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public
From 2005-2008, I had the opportunity to be involved with a film project called Call+Project that ultimately ended up being a full-length ‘rockumentary’ about human trafficking. It was an amazing process that started with a musician wanting to learn more and turned into a multifaceted effort to inform the public about one of the greatest horrors of our time.
Watch the Trailer.
Making a film is one thing. Changing lives is another.
The Film
CALL+RESPONSE is a first of its kind feature documentary film that reveals the world’s 27 million dirtiest secrets: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history. CALL+RESPONSE goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India to reveal that in 2007, Slave Traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.
Luminaries on the issue such as Cornel West, Madeleine Albright, Daryl Hannah, Julia Ormond, Ashley Judd, Nicholas Kristof, and many other prominent political and cultural figures offer first hand account of this 21st century trade. Performances from Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists including Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Rocco Deluca move this chilling information into inspiration for stopping it.
Music is part of the movement against human slavery. Dr. Cornel West connects the music of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing.
The New Model
There is a sea of change happening in human rights activism. The world’s issues cannot be solved alone by governments and non-profits, but require community-based participation. As a feature film, CALL+RESPONSE has the unique position of being not only a ground-breaking genre-bending film, but due to the fact that this project was funded completely through donations, it operates as a powerful movement with 100% of profits going to fund global field projects on the front lines of this issue.
CALL+RESPONSE is creating interactive field projects for each aspect of human slavery: sex slavery, labor slavery, child soldiers and child slavery. All profits from the use of the film, dvd, soundtrack, itunes downloads will be directed, by the viewers, to these projects with clear start and finish points (ie a landrover for a child soldier rehab camp, sewing machines for a after-care training facility). Our goal is to fund and celebrate completed projects together in community. We are closing the loop by allowing viewers to become participants in the solution.
Human trafficking is not something that is going to disappear quickly. As the third largest blackmarket industry (after weapons and narcotics), the lucrative nature of human trafficking makes it difficult to stop. Those benefiting from the trade make enormous sums of money, run multi-national cartels and ellude law enforcement who are ill equiped and under funded.
One of the industries that is closely tired to human slavery is the manufacturing industry, particularly the production of clothing. Check out Chain Store Reation to see what stores have responded to inquries into the labor practices, and send an e-mail to the CEO yourself.
Why the name Call+Response?
If you look back throughout history- call and response is key to the basics of music. A drum was used to call out a warning and solicit a response. When the first slaves were brought from Africa to United States, they used call and response in the field to echo their sorrows and to communicate with one another. As music developed in the United States blues and jazz were a medium to express the sorrows of oppression and the realities of life and ultimately the voice of rock and roll was born from this linage.