Debt AIDS Trade Africa - Bono Is Busy
http://www.data.org/
Why DATA?
DATA aims to raise awareness about, and spark response to the crises swamping Africa: unpayable Debts, uncontrolled spread of AIDS, and unfair Trade rules which keep Africans poor.
DATA is part of a rising tide of action by people like you to beat back these crises.
The organization was founded in 2002 by Bono, the lead singer of U2, along with Bobby Shriver and activists from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign. At the core of DATA's mission is a view that these issues are not about charity, but about equality and justice.
DATA calls on the governments of the world's wealthy nations — the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan — to put more resources towards Africa, and to adopt policy that helps rather than hinders Africa in achieving long-term prosperity. We also call on Africa's leaders to strengthen Democracy, Accountability and Transparency toward their own citizens- to make sure that support for African people goes where it's intended and makes a real difference.
DATA is bringing people and organizations from all around the world together to stop the spread of AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa. From our offices in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, we work in partnership with grassroots organizers and other non-governmental organizations across the US to build a movement of Americans who want to help Africans achieve a better future and want their government to do the same.
In Europe, our office in London works with other organizations to raise awareness and put pressure on governments, especially the members of the G8 and the EU (UK, France, Germany, Italy) who, alongside the US, are the world's largest economies. Through international networks, we also work with campaigners in other countries such as Australia, Canada and Japan as well as in Africa itself.
DATA has focused public attention on Africa through trips to the continent with high-profile celebrities (such as Bono, Bob Geldof and Chris Tucker), politicians and media, as well as inviting African activists from Uganda and Ghana to tour with celebrities through the United States (such as Ashley Judd, Warren Buffett and Lance Armstrong), as well as through reports on whether politicians are keeping their promises to Africa.
We talk to the experts, so we know what is really working — and what's not. We pull together, summarize and explain cutting-edge research on what works in Africa — and use our access to deliver those insights to top officials who might otherwise not hear the message of hope. And above all, we work to tell our leaders and politicians that people like YOU want to see action.
Again and again, politicians tell us they want to do more for Africa. Then they don't. Why? Because they don't hear from YOU — their citizens, voters and taxpayers — that you care and want to see something done. We're here to get the word out that you do care — and to give YOU the best ways to get the word out for yourself.
Incidentally, here are excerpts from a biography of Bono:
...In the 90's, when U2's political earnestness ultimately threatened to turn them into a caricature (due mostly to Bono's often politically-charged, on-stage sermonizing), the band vanished into Berlin, Germany to remake itself with a new sound.
Having a full appreciation for the Brechtian and surrealist origins of rock performance, the lead singer followed suit...and altered his own earnest image into something more cyberpunk. With the help of band stylist "Fighting" Fintan Fitzgerald, Bono stylized his once-brown shoulder length hair into a jet-black coif, donned a pair of bubble-eye wraparound sunglasses, and slid into a skin-tight leather suit to become a funkified banshee called The Fly, a cool phantom hoodlum who howled amid the dark electronic flash and shash of the band's watermark album, "Achtung Baby."
This character --part Jim Morrison, part Lou Reed and all trash -- begat other characters who appeared onstage during the band's worldwide Zoo TV tour: the Mirrorball Man, a glittering tribute to televangelists all over the world...and Mister MacPhisto, a gold lame-suited cross between the devil and Elvis all wrapped up in the frame of a broken-down soul singer during his final Vegas days....
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