The movie itself is soul-stirring (watch the trailer here). In a nutshell, it features musicians who have chosen to respond to this issue through song. Many original songs at that, written and performed exclusively for this film. (Imogen Heap's gut wrenching piano performance would have brought me to my knees had I been standing).That's what singers do. They sing it out. Play it out of them. Put it in the air.
Cornel West, hands down the most fantastic voice in the film, talks of historical and inextricable links between music and human slavery, such as "call and response" among those enslaved during that terrifying era here in the U.S. Stripped of property, possessions and pride, all they had left was their voices. Call and response was their song - one would call, others would respond. And the style continues in every form of song to this day.
This movement, then, is to encourage all of us - not just musicians and singers - to respond to this issue in their own way, to be 21st Century Abolitionists. Founder Justin Dillon calls it "open source activism - we give you the platform, you just lay your code down on top of it." (I'm paraphrasing what I remember from the film.)
Open source activism - I like that. It's exactly what most of society's pressing causes need in order to be remedied. And incidentally, exactly what our beloved social media is good for.
But will it work?
The movie will run in theaters this fall - opening weekend is October 3rd. The website is ready to rock & roll, so to speak, with a blog (not much going on there yet), Facebook/MySpace action, badges, actions, pass along emails, and a live "responsinator" where you can submit your response (a la CARE's Power Circle) and listen to a track from Moby and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal.
But there's no clear call to action other than "respond." While I love (LOVE) the creative liberty to respond as an individual, the unifying goal is not clear. Let's look at it as a strategic brief - and think of how not having a goal would be detrimental to your own mission/objective.
- Objective: Get 27 million people out of slavery. Britain did it in 20 years during a time when slavery was as common as the auto industry. So can we.
- Target Audience: Everyone who has a brain [I would normally never let "general public" slide but this really is an all-hands-on-deck issue. Judging by the collateral for this project, they're targeting 20's & 30's as do Invisible Children and similar campaigns].
- Goal: ? TBD...
- Strategy: Enlist the support of influential voices to create a compelling film that will sweep the nation, encouraging a modern day abolitionist movement. Everyone else can do their own thing as long as they respond to the issue and tell their friends to respond, too.
- Tactics: Movie, soundtrack, flyers, viral stuff.
- Measureable Outcome: Slavery is abolished by 2030.
That's a pretty noticeable gap. Without a very clear goal, I fear this movement (which I fully support, please see Call+Response badge at top right of my blog) will flop on its face.
If my memory serves correctly, there was a brief point in the movie when someone spoke of contacting legislators. THAT is what is needs to be brought to the forefront. It's old-school - "call you're congressperson." But consider, who is the real audience here? The people who curtail the slave trade and punish the slave traders. We're talking about an empire that rakes in 32 billion dollars a year in profits ("more than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.")
So What's Our Goal?
We need to be pointed in their direction with tools for lobbying, rallying, phone/email advocacy and, of course, a specific goal. "Get a bill passed by a certain date" or "Get 100% of Congress to pledge their support to this issue by January 1." Maybe that is what the organizers of Call+Response are leaving to us to determine. Does anyone who knows the advocacy or slave trade space have ideas for an effective, measurable, actionable goal?
This post is not just part of my response - it's my call to you. How can you use your influence to spread the word about this issue?
Call+Response is a nonprofit film, with "100% of profits going to fund global field projects on the front lines of this issue." Please go see it on opening weekend, and if you're in DC, let's go together.
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3 comments:
Qui: I agree with your concerns about tangible outcomes (without a goal this may "flop on its face"). I just visited the Call + Response website and clicked on ACT, but there needs to be something concrete there...although seeing the movie on its release is arguably the action they truly seek. ammado could be a good place for exposure, but not clear if this initiative is founded as a nonprofit venture or?
Thanks Barbara. It's independent as far as I know, with nonprofit partners such as IJM and Different Drummer: http://www.differentdrummer.com/.
Not sure that simply showing up for a movie will get the results that are needed, but as with all campaigns, awareness if half the battle.
Dear Qui,
It was wonderful to read your blog post, and I very much appreciated your insights and questions. Indeed, and unfortunately, our website is currently in its infancy and does not yet effectively represent the RESPONSE. As a ragamuffin team of a few, we are scrambling to get the movie out while simultaneously trying to learn from everyone we can about how to make a real impact on the massive and deeply complicated issue of human trafficking. But if we’re going to make a call, we better offer some advice for a response.
So here’s what we’re doing: we are partnering with very effective non-profits working on the front-lines to enable their efforts to reduce slavery (through quite a variety of ways) and care for its victims. This is a model similar to that of Kiva, Global Giving, etc. They are true heroes, and have a much better sense of what is needed than we do. We want to both help enable them to do their good work, and perhaps more importantly, promote them as valuable partners with whom interested audience members should partner and invest. So, we are creating high impact “projects” that will help them to do their good work. Each project will be funded as a community. If a viewer wants to make a difference in this way, he can become a part of the funding community and receive reports and updates on how his investment in the project is making a difference.
We know, however, that people are tired of being asked for money. So we are also building a suggestion list for high impact ACTION. We are working to orient this around people’s unique interests and talents. Ultimately, we hope to create committed changemakers by engaging viewers in actionable projects with tangible outcomes.
How will we know if we’ve been successful? Our measurable indicators include the following:
1. # of viewers (proxy for level of awareness)
2. Projects completed (measurable indicators of impact specific to project)
3. Partner NGO’s reported income and impact
4. # of new campaigns or projects initiated by audience members
Ultimately, after hopefully replicating and scaling up, our results at scale will be measured by:
1. # of projects completed
2. Impacts of anti-trafficking NGO partners (i.e. # of girls taken out of forced sexual slavery, # of former slaves served in rehabilitation homes)
3. Government regulations and legal implementation
4. Tourism Reports (country specific based on TIP report)
Ultimately, our measurements will not quantify the full extent of impact because the film’s long-term effect (in terms of motivation, awareness, etc.) on people will be unknown. But if our primary goal for its creation is to REDUCE SLAVERY, these indicators seem to have the best potential for showing us whether or not we have been successful.
So, while our website is not yet complete, soon viewers will be able to decide how they want to respond, and find direction of how to do so by helping to fund high-impact projects that make important change or how to get involved in very needed action responses. Building all of this is currently taking all of our time for action, but since we, too, are giving 100% of our profits to these projects – we want to know that the dollars make a difference. Measuring impact is of critical importance for all of us. In the end, we hope to not only motivate behavior change (catalyze people to want to do something, enable them to see the tangible difference they have made, and thus continue to engage social change with lasting commitment) but to indeed reduce slavery.
We are quite certain that it will be only as a committed and engaged community that we will have any hopes of success. It is a difficult and complex issue, but with a number like 27 million (each one forced to service men throughout the day, bonded into working hard labor most hours of every day, etc) it’s one we have to at least try to fight.
Thanks for your partnership in this. With best regards,
Vicki Ward
Call+Response
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