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Breaking News from America's Progressive Community... Latest Releases
Making news?
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| SEPTEMBER
21, 1998 1:25 PM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Jay Heavner 202-483-9222, ext. 234 |
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| Country Rock Legends Raise Awareness, Money for Landmine Victims | ||||
| WASHINGTON
- September 21 - Veteran singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris will join Willie Nelson, Lucinda
Williams, and Steve Earle at a concert to raise awareness and money for assistance to
landmine victims. The concert will launch efforts by the arts and entertainment community to support the Campaign for Landmine Free World. The show will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, October 9 at DAR Constitution Hall in downtown Washington. Tickets for the concert are available for $25.50 and $35.50 at all Ticketmaster outlets or by phone at 202-432-SEAT. In addition to the entertainers appearing at the concert, a number of other celebrities have joined the landmine campaign, including Boyz II Men, Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Harry Connick Jr., Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Sinead O"Conner, and Bruce Springsteen. Last year Emmylou Harris traveled to Cambodia and Vietnam to see first-hand the devastation caused by the weapon. "There will never be peace in a country like Cambodia or Angola or Afghanistan as long as there are landmines. I do think people are compassionate and want to do the right thing, but they don"t know how," said Ms. Harris. Harris has been an advocate of a ban on landmines on behalf of VVAF which was co-founder and coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. In 1997 Harris traveled to Cambodia and Vietnam with VVAF to visit the organization"s humanitarian programs and to see firsthand the impact of landmines in a region devastated by the weapon. Cambodia alone still suffers from 100 to 200 new landmine victims each month. More than eight out of ten landmines victims worldwide are civilians. Events like the concert will provide people a way to help. Proceeds will support a comprehensive program that is providing rehabilitation services, helping the international effort to remove mines from the ground, and raising public awareness. As of August 18, thirty-two countries have ratified the international treaty to ban landmines, signed by more than 120 countries in Ottawa in December 1997. The treaty will go into force six months after forty countries have ratified it. ### |
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