Make Some Noise for Amnesty International

As a teenage Bruce Springsteen fan(atic), I once practically begged my parents to delay our departure on a family road trip so that I could record a live radio broadcast of a concert that he was performing in Stockholm, Sweden. Thankfully, my parents indulged my heartfelt request (perhaps fearing the hysteria unbecoming sulking which would have almost certainly resulted had they denied me), and we departed within minutes of the conclusion of that broadcast, with me armed with a Walkman and clutching that cassette tape like a Golden Ticket.

What I couldn't have known at the beginning of that broadcast though, was that near its conclusion, Springsteen, whose art and worldview I admired greatly, would speak with an eloquent passion about Amnesty International just prior to performing a heart-in-your-chest version of Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom." In his introduction to the song, Springsteen spoke of the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, and a worldwide tour on which he and his E Street band would proudly be joining Sting, Peter Gabriel, Youssou n'Dour, and Tracy Chapman in support of the Amnesty International. That broadcast was the first I'd heard of the existence of a Declaration of Human Rights, but as I learned more over the months to come –this was a bygone pre-Internet era, mind you, and the potential for gaining insight wasn't quite as sudden at the time– I was proud to support Amnesty International with donations culled from my paper route salary.