GoodStorm's MixTape Widget Spreads the Word About Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur

GoodStorm's MixTape Widget Spreads the Word About Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur

GoodStorm CEO Yobie Benjamin, Former Political Prisoner, Gives Back to the Organization That Helped Free Him

WASHINGTON, June 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- GoodStorm, a progressive e- commerce and digital music company, has teamed up with Amnesty International (AI) and the online community to launch a viral music campaign to promote Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur.

GoodStorm's MixTape widget, easily installed on any blog or social network, allows people to both hear and buy the music of Instant Karma and sign the campaign's online petition. MixTape plays music samples directly from a blog or social network page and points users to iTunes to purchase Instant Karma songs. Activists also can endorse the Instant Karma petition directly from the widget. MixTape installs via a quick cut and paste of a few lines of code. It is available in three widths, and is customized for use with Facebook, TypePad and WordPress.

GoodStorm's CEO Yobie Benjamin is a former political prisoner who credits AI's activism with having kept him inspired and alive while incarcerated. A student activist in the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship, Benjamin was arrested in 1977 after helping to organize a student organization to question and oppose martial law. He was held for seven months, much of that time in solitary confinement, was tortured while in detention, and lived under the continual threat of summary execution. A postcard from AI activist Deborah Kaufman, which Benjamin kept with him for the duration of his imprisonment, served as a talisman of hope. Pressure from Amnesty International facilitated Benjamin's release. He is today a thriving entrepreneur in California's Bay Area, and his company's work on MixTape is one of the many ways Benjamin gives back to the AI movement. He still has Kaufman's postcard, which read, "You can imprison a revolutionary, but you cannot imprison a revolution."

Benjamin says, "We believe that millions of people online are eager to be part of Yoko Ono and John Lennon's legacy of peace and justice. Our MixTape widget technology will make it possible for everyone to be part of this global campaign of compassion and activism. Using the power of viral internet technologies, we will be able to sustain the global campaign over many months and potentially in millions of social networks and Web sites of righteous and peace-loving people."

In a historic effort to mobilize activism around the human rights atrocities occurring in Darfur, Sudan, more than 50 international recording artists and more than 30 record labels have united behind Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. The collection features iconic songs by legendary musician and peace activist John Lennon recorded by an array of best-selling artists and will be available for purchase both on CD and as digital downloads via online retailers.

The rights to Lennon's songs were generously donated by Yoko Ono, who has donated all music publishing royalties. Amnesty International chose to harness the power of Lennon's music to inspire a new generation of activists to stand up for human rights. Proceeds from CD and digital sales will support Amnesty International and its campaign to focus attention and mobilize activism around the urgent catastrophe in Darfur, and other human rights crises.

Instant Karma, a two-CD set, released by Warner Bros. Records and produced by the music industry legend Jeff Ayeroff, goes on sale June 12. The campaign boasts a stellar line-up of 23 world-class artists from a variety of genres putting their own unique spin on classic songs from Lennon's solo songbook. The artists -- who come from the worlds of rock, pop, hip-hop and country -- include longtime activists U2 ("Instant Karma"), Green Day ("Working Class Hero"), R.E.M., ("#9 Dream") and Jackson Browne ("Oh, My Love"); female pop powerhouses Christina Aguilera ("Mother"), Avril Lavigne ("Imagine"), and Corinne Bailey Rae ("I'm Losing You"); country stars Big & Rich ("Nobody Told Me"); alternative favorites Snow Patrol ("Isolation"), The Flaming Lips ("(Just Like) Starting Over"), Postal Service ("Grow Old With Me") and Regina Spektor ("Real Love"); best-selling rockers Aerosmith ("Give Peace a Chance"), Lenny Kravitz ("Cold Turkey") and Los Lonely Boys ("Whatever Gets You Thru The Night"); and pensive singer-songwriters Jakob Dylan with Dhani Harrison ("Gimme Some Truth") and Ben Harper ("Beautiful Boy").

"It's wonderful that, through this campaign, music that is so familiar to many people of my era will now be embraced by a whole new generation," Ono says. "John's music set out to inspire change, and in standing up for human rights, we really can make the world a better place."

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, adds, "We know music's power to unite and inspire people. With hundreds of thousands dead, millions driven from their burned out villages and rape being used as a tactic in the Darfur conflict, the world needs a mass mobilization demanding action and justice. The Instant Karma campaign combines John Lennon's passionate desire for us to imagine a more peaceful world with Amnesty International's expertise in achieving justice. Instant Karma allows ordinary people to lend their hand in saving lives -- a notion we think would make John proud."

"John Lennon was not just a famous Beatle, he was the social conscience of his generation," says Jeff Ayeroff, one of the album's executive producers. "By reinterpreting his music and reintroducing it to a new generation, we shine a light on the darkness that is Darfur. Yoko Ono's gift of John's music to Amnesty International, whose work points out the pain and injustice in the world, is a true beacon of light. Give peace a chance is all we are saying."

For more information on Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, including the full track listing, please visit http://www.instantkarma.org/.

For more on GoodStorm, please visit http://music.goodstorm.com/.

Source: Amnesty International

CONTACT: Amnesty International USA Press Office,
+1-202-544-0200 ext. 302; or Jonathan Wood of GoodStorm.com, +1-415-223-0310,
jonathan@goodstorm.com

Web site:

http://www.instantkarma.org/
http://music.goodstorm.com/

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