Renowned recording artists SINEAD O’CONNOR and MARY J. BLIGE have joined forces along with newcomer and survivor, Martha B. for a remake of O’Connor’s 1996 song, ‘This is To Mother You’ to bring awareness to the issues of the sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of American girls. The song was recorded as an outreach and benefit tool for GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) and its Girls are Not For Sale campaign and is available for sale at http://gems-girls.org, iTunes and other online retailers.

The updated version of ‘This is To Mother You’ is produced by MARTIN ‘DOC’ MCKINNEY (Sting, Alice Smith) and ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD (A Tribe Called Quest, Lucy Pearl), and mixed by Grammy nominee JOE ZOOK (Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Timberland).

“I am moved by the really important work that GEMS is doing,” says O’Connor, who has consistently used her voice to advocate against injustices impacting children. “I was delighted to contribute my song to the campaign if it can help and inspire women and children to feel safe.” O’Connor recorded at Dublin’s legendary Windmill Lane Studios (also dubbed ‘the U2 Studio’) this summer.

“When I read the lyrics to ‘This is to Mother You’ I really fell in love with the song,” says Blige, who like most Americans was unaware of the prevalence of child sex trafficking stateside until her introduction to GEMS. “It describes how I feel about my work and how so many fans view me – as a mentor and a mother figure. It has always been my dream to be able to encourage women and let them know that if I can make it, they can make it too despite any physical and emotional abuses they may endure.”

“This song is so true to GEMS and how it has impacted my life. GEMS and Rachel have truly been a mother to me,” says Martha B. who came to GEMS at the age of 15 and transformed her life through GEMS programs and services. With the production of This is To Mother You, Martha B. realized two lifelong dreams– recording professionally and meeting Mary J. Blige in person.

“There’s so much in this song that speaks to the way we feel about the young women and girls we serve at GEMS especially in terms of being protective and supportive towards them,” says Rachel Lloyd, GEMS founder and executive director. “It is also speaks to the way we feel they should be treated by society in general. They should be protected and not sold.”

“This Is to Mother You” is available for purchase now at http://www.gems-girls.org and major online retailers.

The Clinton Global Initiative featured Human Trafficking as one of its focuses this year and I had the privilege to attend.  The focus group on Human Trafficking focused primarily on supply chain accountability and acknowledged our activist tool, ChainStoreReaction.com, as one of the most deft tools in the effort.  We are honored and inspired that this site is making such a strategic impact in the demand for SlaveFREE products.  Expect more tools being rolled out in early 2010 both on our site and on your mobile phone (!) .  By tangibly expressing demand for transparency all the way to the commodities level (cotton, cocoa, sugar, minerals), we are showing companies that we mean business and that, in fact, we ARE the business. 

 

We are turning supply chains into 21^st century Freedom Trains!  You know, while you are thinking about it, why don’t you go send some letters right now…..

Call+Response had it’s Australian Premiere on October 22.  The film was released to theaters nationwide and received a huge response from the media.  I spent almost two weeks there promoting the film.   I hit several cites speaking to newspapers (all the national papers), magazines (Marie Claire, Cosmo, Rolling Stone et al), Radio and Television.  You can watch a few clips on our You Tube channel.   I was told that more media about the issue was generated by the film than at any other time.  I met some amazing groups working on the issue like World Vision and the Anti-Trafficking Network.  Too much to share, so here are some highlights:

 

1.  MTV NEWS

VJ Ruby Rose interviewed me for an MTV News Segment.  She really impressed me with her knowledge of the issue the fact that she watched the film twice.  Very cool crew at MTV Australia.  You can watch their segment on C+R here.  More is being planned with our new friends and advocates there.

 

2.  HACK TV

The Hack TV show airs on one of the major TV/Radio networks in Australia.  We filmed all day around Sydney where we were able to take a group of young activists from World Vision out to street tag our SLAVEFREE symbol.  These folks are putting passion into action and the world is changing on THEIR axis.

 

3.  PARLIAMENT

Their was one person other than Wolverine that I really wanted to meet while in OZ.  The only problem was that he was a Minister at Parliament and a former rock star…details…details.  Through some gracious relationships, I was able to meet MP Peter Garrett.  Peter used to sing for an Aussie band called Midnight Oil who mixed art and activism with passion and precision.   During our meeting at Parliament House I was able to give him a copy of the film and  discuss the role Australia could play in the mining of Coltan (the conflict mineral that goes into all our mobile phones and electronics).   Aussies could alleviate some of the mess this precious little mineral has gotten itself into in the Dem. Rep. of Congo by insuring that they are not importing any “dirty” (ie mined under duress or conflict) Coltan from that region.

 

 

There is no doubt that Australia has a huge role to play in the fight against slavery, especially regarding their influence in the South East Asia region.  Thank you Australia.  Keep up the fight!

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An alliance against human trafficking and forced labor wants companies to examine whether they are indirect sponsors, with leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative saying on Thursday it could even boost business.

Julia Ormond, founder and president of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, said her organization was seeking to team up with three companies willing to examine their supply chains for any abuses and to share the resulting knowledge widely. She said consumers often seek out products that are made using ethical sources and demand could increase.

“The public will rally behind purchasing product from a clean supply chain,” Ormond said. (more)

October 22 Nationally.

Check www.callandresponse.com.au for listings

NYTIMES

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: August 11, 2009

 

GOMA, Congo — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came face to face with the consequences of the brutality in eastern Congo on Tuesday afternoon when she met a Congolese woman who had been gang-raped while she was eight months pregnant.

The fetus died, Mrs. Clinton said, the woman was gravely injured and since there was no hospital nearby, villagers stuffed the woman’s wound with grass to keep her from bleeding to death.

“I’ve been in a lot of very difficult and terrible settings,” Mrs. Clinton said later. “And I was just overwhelmed by what I saw.”

“It is almost impossible to describe the level of suffering,” she said. Eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, she added, “is just horrific.”

Mrs. Clinton used her unprecedented visit — she is the first secretary of state to venture into the war zone here — to unveil a $17 million plan to fight Congo’s stunning levels of sexual violence, a problem she called “evil in its basest form.”

She announced that the American government would train doctors, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence, send American military engineers to help build facilities and train Congolese police officers, especially female police officers, to crack down on rapists.

“This problem is too big for one country to solve alone,” Mrs. Clinton said after meeting with Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila. Her visit was part of a seven-nation Africa tour intended to strengthen relations with strategic African countries and to use American influence to stop Africa’s wars. She arrived Tuesday night in Abuja, Nigeria, and planned talks Wednesday with Nigerian officials.

Eastern Congo is home to the worst war on the continent right now, an intensely predatory conflict driven by a mix of ethnic, commercial, nationalist and criminal interests, in which various armed groups often vent their rage against women. The United Nations calls Congo the rape capital of the world and says hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in the past decade. Nothing so far — not 18,000 peacekeepers, not various regional peace treaties, not other high-level diplomatic visits — have stemmed the violence.

Recent Congo-Rwanda military operations along the volatile border may be making things worse. The operations have spawned revenge attacks that have driven more than 500,000 people from their homes. Dozens of villages of have been burned. Hundreds of villagers have been massacred. And countless women, and recently many men, have been raped. Often the rapists are Congolese soldiers.

Mrs. Clinton said she urged the Congolese government to do a better job of protecting its own people and to prosecute offenders in the Congolese military, which is notorious as one of the least disciplined, poorest paid armies anywhere.

“I spoke at length with President Kabila about the steps needed to be taken to protect civilians,” she said. “We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender based violence, and there must be arrests and punishment because that runs counter to peace.”

Mrs. Clinton also addressed some of the conflict’s root causes, including Congo’s illicit mineral trade. In the words of Congo’s foreign minister, who also met with Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday, the country, with its rich trove of diamonds, gold, copper, tin, coltan and other minerals, is a “geological scandal.”

But Congo’s mines are often the unlawful prize of armed groups, and Mrs. Clinton said the world needed to take more steps to regulate the mineral trade to make sure the profits do not end up “in the hands of those who fuel the violence.”

After the official meetings, Mrs. Clinton and her heavily guarded entourage toured a refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma where 18,000 people are camped out on a field of volcanic rock. One of the first people she met was an aid worker who rattled off the problems: malaria, diarrhea, hunger, difficulties breathing because of all the dust, and of course, constant insecurity. The aid worker told Mrs. Clinton that an 8-year-old boy who had strayed out of the camp was raped the other day.

“Really?” Mrs. Clinton asked.

“Really,” he answered.

Then she met Chantal Mapendo, mother of six, who stepped forward from the corridors of long drawn faces that had instantly formed to look at the important white lady with all the sunglassed security guards. Mrs. Clinton visited the camp for 20 minutes. Mrs. Mapendo, whose home area has been plagued by fighting, has been living here for three years.

“Our life is very bad,” Mrs. Mapendo said. “We get raped when we go out and look for food. We want to leave this place and go home.”

Mrs. Clinton nodded. “Thank you for talking with me,” she replied. “I just met with President Kabila and told him we want to help you return home.”

After the camp, she spoke with two rape survivors, including the woman who lost her fetus and nearly bled to death in the bush. Mrs. Clinton then talked with a group of doctors and advocates who specialize in treating victims of sexual violence. Many said they felt abandoned.

“Children are killed, women are raped and the world closes its eyes,” said one woman.

Another called Congo the “soft belly” of Africa, a huge, rugged place with a notoriously inept army that has become a magnet for all the rogue groups in Africa.

A third woman, Christine Schuler-DeSchryver, a well-known anti-rape activist, vented about all the empty promises from the stream of high-ranking visitors who have recently come to eastern Congo, “one more important than the next.”

“In the end, all we got was a pile of business cards,” she said.

She pressed Mrs. Clinton to do more to end the criminally-controlled mineral trade.

“Madame Secretary,” she said, “we want you to be our spokesperson, our voice.”

After five hours on the ground in Goma, Mrs. Clinton climbed back on the plane, this time bound for Nigeria. She seemed drained.

“It was an incredibly emotional experience,” she said.

In collaboration with UNICEF and MTV, the Killers have lent their song to a video that sheds light on a chronic global issue: sex trafficking. According to UNICEF, more than 1.2 million children are being sold into some form of bondage each year, and over 80 percent of those children are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. MTV and UNICEF first partnered to address the sex trafficking crisis in 2008 with their video for Radiohead’s In Rainbows cut “All I Need.”

WWW.CARROTMOB.ORG

Carrotmob is a method of activism that leverages consumer power to make the most socially-responsible business practices also the most profitable choices. Businesses compete with one another to see who can do the most good, and then a big mob of consumers buys products in order to reward whichever business made the strongest commitment to improve the world. It’s the opposite of a boycott. WWW.CARROTMOB.ORGIt’s easier to understand if you look at an example. In the first ever Carrotmob event, a liquor store agreed to invest in upgrades that made their store more energy-efficient. In exchange, hundreds of Carrotmobbers showed up at once to support the winning liquor store. To the right is a video of that campaign, and the mayhem that ensued…

So…that video might be a little heavy on the dancing, but it explains the concept rather well. Now, choose a category below and we’ll tell you why the people in that category tend to love Carrotmob….

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) – One of China’s most sought-after actors is starring in an animated short-film about human trafficking and sexual exploitation, issues that have plagued the country, and Asia, for decades.

Zhang Hanyu, who won the Chinese equivalent of an Oscar at the Golden Horse awards in Taiwan last year, lends his voice to the Mandarin version of “Intersection,” will be shown on Music Television (MTV) China this weekend.

More…

A 65-year-old author from Pound Ridge is accused of forcing into sexual slavery young women he hired as international “au pairs.” A Tomkins Cove man is accused of organizing sex tours to the Dominican Republic. Around the region, prostitution raids have turned up young women who cannot produce paperwork and are in this country under mysterious circumstances, terrified to talk, terrified to return to their “employer…..(more)