Coldplay is championing the Make Trade Fair campaign during the second leg of their "Twisted Logic" tour, January through April 2006. The concerts feature music from their Grammy nominated "X&Y" album and a call to sign Oxfam's Big Noise petition to Make Trade Fair. This petition calls on world leaders to change trade rules that keep millions of farmers from making a decent living.
Coldplay has established a deep commitment to Oxfam America and its causes. In 2003, Oxfam volunteers gathered 10,000 Big Noise signatures during Coldplay's 14-date US tour. In 2005, Oxfam gathered 63,600 signatures. We delivered them to US Trade Representative Robert Portman in December.
Worldwide, the Big Noise petition has gathered 17.8 million signatures, many of them from poor people living in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Zambia. Oxfam delivered the Big Noise to world trade ministers in December at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong.
Coldplay front man Chris Martin has seen firsthand the crippling effects of bad trade rules on small farmers after traveling to both Ghana and Haiti with Oxfam.
"How on earth could anybody stand in a field with these people and say that it's the right thing to do to dump their excess produce cheaply on a third world country? It's beyond me. But the truth is, the people responsible haven't talked to the farmers in the areas affected."