Fair Trade Morning Perk: Playing Fair With Coldplay

by Zarah Patriana

Published February 09, 2009 @ 05:58AM PT

While in Los Angeles this weekend, it was pretty hard to escape the Grammy buzz (and that beautiful Laker win). Red carpets, gold plated gramophones and celebrities celebrities celebrities. One of the big winners of the night was British band Coldplay who are known for their songs about love -- probably front man Chris Martin's love for some lady named Gwyneth Paltrow. Who knows. Aside from their multiple awards, sold out shows and children named after fruit, Coldplay have used their celebrity to advocate for an issue they became familiar with after a trip to Haiti -- making trade fair.

In 2002, Oxfam approached the band and asked them if they wanted to travel to Haiti to find out about Fair Trade. Front man Chris Martin recounts,

They approached us [when] we were making our second album and said, "Do you want to come to Haiti and learn about fair trade?" And we were like, "Fair what?" We hadn't any idea about it. But you go on a trip and learn how the importing and exporting of goods around the world works, and you realize it's a huge crisis. We've now seen, firsthand, the problems caused by America dumping rice on Mexico, or Haiti not being allowed to export its agricultural products.

Since the trip, the band turned into Fair Trade activists, even collecting millions of signatures for Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. They even traveled to the World Trade Organization summit in Mexico and met with WTO director general Supachai Panitchpakdi to deliver the powerful message bringing much attention to the cause.

[It was] our first lowering into the world of actual politicians. We as a band cannot change anything but if we are doing well as a band, more people know about us which means if we are advertising people will know about that.

The band has brought a lot of attention to the Fair Trade cause by talking about it at shows, getting their fans involved, writing it on their instruments and sporting an equal sign on their hands. They even got Lindsay Lohan to support the cause. The bandmates are happy to support a cause they feel so strongly about and continue to use their celebrity to get the Fair Trade message out there, but don't expect them to start signing songs about it. As Chris Martin said,

It's very hard to find things that rhyme with 'North American Free Trade Agreement."

Join Coldplay in the campaign to make trade fair and get in on the big noise of making the global call to end poverty around the world. Also, check out this video of Chris Martin serving as Fair Trade front man.