Coldplay Rocks the US for Make Trade Fair
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| Chris Martin promoting and supporting the Make Trade Fair campaign during a performance. ©Coldplay |
Chris Martin and his chart-topping British band Coldplay turned up the volume on the Make Trade Fair campaign by inviting Oxfam to promote trade justice at concerts in their spring '03 tour. This summer Oxfam fielded over 150 volunteers at 14 concerts across the country and collected over 10,000 postcards calling on President George Bush to stop dumping cheap, subsidized exports on poor countries. Oxfam will deliver these cards to President Bush prior to the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancùn, Mexico this September.
Oxfam CHANGE leader and volunteer Ben Brandzel traveled with the band to coordinate on-site logistics. Teams of volunteers distributed postcards throughout concert venues such as the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Denver's Red Rocks Amphitheatre to New York's Madison Square Garden. The team reached hundreds of thousands of concert-goers across the country with key messages about the Make Trade Fair campaign.
Coldplay has been a supporter of the Make Trade Fair campaign since it started in 2002. The relationship with Coldplay began when the band's leader Chris Martin traveled with Oxfam to the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 2002 where he saw firsthand how unfair trade rules affected the lives of the people there.
Chris visited rice-growing areas where farmers once grew enough to provide for Haiti's population. But due to cheap imported rice dumped in their market, they are now facing ruin. As Chris explains in his trip journal: "This rice dumping is an example of what Oxfam means when it talks about unfair trade. Haiti has been forced to drop all restrictions on imports, making it one of the freest markets in the world... So it is flooded with surplus rice grown by heavily subsidized farmers in the US, and many of its own rice farmers are now moving to the already overcrowded slums in the cities in search of work."
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| Chris Martin of Coldplay with Oxfam on-site tour volunteer coordinator, Ben Brandzel. By: Ben Brandzel/Oxfam |
Chris also witnessed some examples of sustainable trade: he visited Fair Trade coffee cooperatives that earn a decent price for growing coffee, which helps the farmers cover their basic needs. This is no easy feat in a country where the average person makes less than $500 a year.
After his travels, Chris decided to take on the issue of fair trade and sang a song at the launch of the Make Trade Fair campaign in Trafalgar Square in London. Since then, Coldplay has included a trade message on their album and Chris has been a brilliant advocate of the campaign—talking about trade in interviews, wearing the Fair Trade T-shirt, and promoting the campaign at concerts. As a result, Chris and his band have done a remarkable job of bringing trade issues to an entirely new audience.