Biography
The Not For Sale Backyard Abolitionist Tour is a multimedia event that brings together lecture, film and music to expose the human trafficking epidemic. Not For Sale founder, Dave Batstone and award-winning singer/songwriter, Brant Christopher Menswar perform together weaving songs into stories while being supported by riveting video; all in an effort to emotionally connect the audience with the global slave trade. It is a gripping night of heart breaking truth and inspirational victories.
The tour includes a workshop on how the people trade operates, highlighted by video footage of our undercover investigations, trafficking scenarios from around the world, and intervention strategies, including where trafficking is most likely to be operating in the region around the college campus.
In the month of May 2009 alone, David Batstone of Not For Sale and The Backyard Abolitionist Tour has been nominated for the Right Livelihood Award (an Alternative Nobel Peace Prize) and the Robert F. Kennedy Humanitarian Award. These are both huge honors. This amazing multi-media lecture/film/music program just completed 90 shows this Spring. The NFSC Free2Play program was also recently featured on MLB.com for signing on SF Giants pitcher Jeremy Affeldt and Oakland A's slugger Matt Holliday! And Batstone and NFSC was recently recognized by Canadian Parliament for the work they are doing reporting trafficking cases on SlaveryMap.org in Canada. Also just announced, the NFSC first annual Global Forum on Human Trafficking to be attended by Lou DeBaca, the new US Ambassador on Human Trafficking, Senators, Congressmen/women, international leaders from Nepal, Australia, UK and more.
With the optional Community Service project, we equip campus participants with rescue tools and send them out into the community to distribute them to clubs, cafes, restaurants, shelters and migrant labor centers. All resources feature a local hotline phone number that has direct lines to law enforcement and social service resources. The tools serve a triple purpose: 1) educate the recipients; 2) inform trafficking victims of available help; 3) solicit tips for witnesses and/or collaborators to forced labor. In the weeks after the event, Not for Sale staff will inform the campus groups of the results of calls into the hotline number.
About Dave Batstone:
Bono refers to David Batstone as a "heroic character". A professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco who started his "career" guarding Salvadorans and literacy teachers from death squads, Batstone was a member of the founding team of Business 2.0 magazine and is the founder of the social venture firm, Right Reality. He writes regularly in USA Weekend edition as "America's Ethics Guru", He traveled around the world investigating the slave trade before writing Not For Sale, the book associated with this campaign. Winner of numerous national journalist awards, Batstone's first book "Saving the Corporate Soul" was named the 2004 Business Book of the Year at the Nautilus Awards. Batstone was named National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at the University of San Francisco for his work in the technology field.
Batstone served as Executive Editor for the social justice publication Sojourner Magazine and has appeared on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as well as CNN, ABC, FOX, BBC, NPR, Australian Broadcast Company, and German Public Television.
About Brant Christopher:
Award winning singer-songwriter/social activist Brant Christopher Menswar may be best known for fronting the popular Koch Records trio Fort Pastor. Serving as the voice and main songwriter for the group, their last album "Beautiful Imperfection" received rave reviews from Billboard, Christianity Today, Sirius Satellite Radio, and others calling Brant's voice "Gritty and Magnificent!" and the album "A rare triumph" Founder of the community service based organization, the Social Justice Army; Brant has watched the group grow to over 2000 members who completed over 20,000 hours of community service last year.
Brant is currently the "Artist in Residence" and Director of Business Development for the Not For Sale Campaign.
Instrumentation
David Batstone, Author and lecturer
Brant Christopher, singer/songwriter
+Film - Backyard Abolitionist Tour (Bono, etc.)
Discography
Books:
Not For Sale
Saving the Corporate Soul
Links
| Not For Sale Official Website |