Unlocked Voices Announces First In A Series Of Livestream Fundraiser Events

Unlocked Voices, a campaign launched in 2020 by Calling All Crows with Multifaith Initiative to End Mass Incarceration, has announced the first in a series of livestream fundraising events, taking place next Thursday, September 17 at the Exit/In in Nashville, Tennessee. The show will feature performances by Nashville-based artists San Franklin, Maddie Medley, Lydia Luce and Austin Grimm from Roots of a Rebellion, with more to be announced. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Tennessee-based community organizations Unheard Voices Outreach and Free Hearts.

Watch via Calling All Crows Facebook Live, free with suggested donation.

The performance in Nashville is the first of eight planned concerts to take place across the U.S. monthly, each partnering with a local community organization and featuring locally based artists, looking to bring about change on a regional scale, while getting the word out on a national scale. Performances will take place in Massachusetts, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, New York and California, with a final national event.

Unlocked Voices looks to use the power of the music and faith communities to shine a spotlight on the issues of mass incarceration here in the U.S., where 1 in 2 adults has an immediate family member in the prison system, 1 in 3 women have experienced housing insecurity because of family incarceration, and 1 in 5 Americans have had a previously incarcerated parent.

Along with the live events, the campaign looks to amplify the stories of people, especially womxn, impacted by incarceration, while acting in partnership with existing movement leaders and community organizations. Through the 8-part concert series Unlocked Voices looks to educate and grow new supporters, to drive action and celebrate the movement.

"We launched the Unlocked Voices campaign to bring attention to the epidemic of our mass incarceration system and how it has criminalized black, brown, and poor people in our country," says Sybil Gallagher, Co-Founder of Calling All Crows. "As a community of artists and music fans, we were excited to partner with a multi-faith organization and provide a community-centered approach to understanding our country's oppressive history and how we can move forward together in a more equitable way."

Discussing the partnership, the Rev. John Vaughn of the Multifaith Initiative to End Mass Incarceration states, "As a pastor and a parent of two Black, teenage boys, our national pattern of incarceration fed by inequitable policies, law enforcement and legal systems fuel my worry that there is little-to-no margin of error for my sons in all that comes with growing up. In partnering with Calling All Crows, the Multifaith Initiative to End Mass Incarceration is providing concert goers with specific ways that each person can make a difference in reversing this system of locking people up. It is a chance to support strategies that engage in a range of alternatives that can prevent men and women for being locked up in the first place."

With the spread of COVID-19 across the U.S. in 2020 one of the organizations greatest focus has been on getting hygiene kits inside prisons and assisting inmates whoe are being released early from prisons due to coronavirus. Americas prison population is at even greater risk than the general public. As of last month, nearly 160,000 incarcerated people and staff had been infected with COVID-19 and over 1000 had died.

Details on next month's performance in Boston, Massachusetts will be announced in the coming weeks. For additional information on Unlocked Voices, please check out the website at: http://www.callingallcrows.org/unlocked-voices

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