Consider bringing your congregation into the modern Abolitionist movement. Join in spirit, action and solidarity by participating in Freedom Sunday on February 21, 2010. Preach on modern-day slavery, sing redemptive songs, take action in your own backyard, and stand with the international movement to free the captives.
Not For Sale is helping with the resources on their website… With just a click, you can register your congregation and receive the downloads and resources you need to involve your faith community.
Please join me on Sunday April 19th 2009, 2 pm – 8 pm where I will be painting on a 48″ x 48″ panel to help in raising our human voice as an act of solidarity of intentional collaboration and to resource people for practical and persuasive mobilization against human trafficking. Freedom Day 2009 will be on the campus of Life Pacific College, located at 1100 W. Covina Blvd. San Dimas, Ca 91773. We will once again call upon every human being to join us for this historic day. For more information about this free event, please visit here
I will be working on the painting during the entire event. The finished painting will be the auctioned off at the end of the event to help support JustOne who is hosting the day.
I’ve just finished listening to the audio book Not for Sale today. I downloaded it FREE last week from Christian Audio. Thanks to David Batstone’s ongoing efforts, new abolitionists around the world can now listen to stories from this important book. As an artist, one of my goals is to bring light and beauty into dark places. In this book, there are stories of dozens of people that are doing the same thing in their own way. People standing in the gap, standing against the oppressors, lighting a candle in the dark where they live and often beyond their own countries borders. As I develop an image or a story, it is my connections with the community that inform my work. Whether with filmmaking, visual art or spoken word, I often collaborate with others to create multi-faceted opportunities to engage the viewer and foster an environment for open dialogue. I am compelled to expose the sometimes complex and hidden parts of society through the simple beauty of a moment, revealing those things that are unjust. This can often be a mirror for the viewer to see himself or herself or the greater society, if they choose to look. Though sometimes unsettling, my desire is to show the sacredness of human life and to transform communities through art. I know others feel the same way and we need to join together. I want this site to be a collaboration of sorts. It may be a nexus where my friends and fellow collaborators can dream, conspire and respond to the call. I will be downloading any relevant info I get for activities in my own neighborhood (Southern California) and who knows, maybe something bigger will happen with it someday. Someday I would like to do a new series of paintings with a “Not For Sale” theme with scenes from around the world. Cocoa or coffee field workers, back alley red light girls, night river crossings, karaoke girls singing, rice field workers, a clothing seamstress, and, and, and… scenes from around the slavery world that would put a face on our luxurious western lifestyle. Maybe that series will be next… and a continuation of my current work “The Face of Love” based on the six “I was…” statements of Jesus in Matt 25.
Not For Sale has partnered with Christian Audio to bring you a download of the Not For Sale Audiobook for $15
Not For Sale is the book that started it all. It recounts David Batstone’s investigative journey around the world as he uncovers the global slave trade.
“[It] exposes the alarming rise of one of the great moral crises of the day, human slavery. His well-written accounts of victims and survivors will inspire you to join the growing twenty-first century abolitionist movement.”
My whole being will exclaim,
“Who is like you, O LORD ?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
the poor and needy from those who rob them.”
