As you may have read in the Rothbury post, Conscious Alliance is placing a bid at the Rothbury Festival for the largest can structure with the 40,000 cans that Whole Foods has donated to give to local food pantries. However, Conscious Alliance’s involvement at music festivals is not new. Their presence at concerts and festivals on a national level actually began with the support of The String Cheese Incident and Sound Tribe Sector 9. These philanthropic bands supported their cause and they soon began touring with them to all their concerts. Then when Hurricane Katrina hit, they were able to respond immediately by raising emergency relief with the help of Dave Matthews Band.
Conscious Alliance is a national nonprofit whose goal is to raise one million pounds of food for Native American reservations and other areas in dire need, and then once that goal is reached, to donate one million pounds of food each year after. Whole Foods recently donated 500,000 pounds of food to their cause, and they now need money for gas and trucking costs for transporting the food. So the proceeds from our next Grooveshark Benefit Show, on June 4th here in Gainesville, will actually go toward helping them with this transport cost.
In a phone interview with Justin Baker, founder and executive director of C.A, he told me about an e-mail from a mother who had chaperoned her 15-year-old son and his friends at a Foo Fighters concert. She had received a call from her son asking her to stop by the grocery store to buy canned food to donate. She told Baker that this was the first time her son had ever donated to a good cause and that she appreciated how Conscious Alliance engages youth in human responsibility. Baker then explained how the Conscious Alliance provides these donated necessary resources to places like Native American reservations but makes it a point not to intrude on their traditions and culture.
Their “Art that Feeds” motto has come from their program of donating 10 canned food items or $10 for specially-made band or festival posters donated by artists. The bands and festivals also play a role by donating their name without royalties to the cause.
“The greatest part is how many people donate their time,” says Baker. There are hundreds of grassroots volunteers and the thousands of people who have donated at festivals throughout the years. These people take pride in how much their own community, whether it be their regional community or their specific musical community, can help the hungry and collectively change the world for the better.
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