Calling All Crows is a non-profit dedicated to using live music to create campaigns and advocate for social justice and feminist issues. In light of the current US presidential election as well as prevalent abortion bans that have spread across the country ever since the 2023 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Calling All Crows is encouraging music fans to educate themselves on reproductive rights and vote appropriately during this year’s election.
Ever since Calling All Crows’ formation 16 years ago, the organization has dedicated themselves to working with music venues, artists and fans to raise awareness about social justice issues. The group has worked with big-name artists like Phoebe Bridgers and major festivals such as Bonnaroo Music & Arts Fest to help spread awareness and has launched numerous campaigns over the years. With abortion on the voting ballots across all states this year, Calling All Crows founders decided to launch their Voice Your Choice campaign to educate music listeners on reproductive freedom.
Calling All Crows is also renowned for their ongoing Here For the Music campaign, which aims to educate artists, venues, festivals, music industry workers and fans on how to recognize and prevent sexual harassment in music. Maggie Arthur, director of the Here For the Music program, says that launching the Voice Your Choice campaign was incredibly important for herself and other Calling All Crows founders.
“Towards the end of last year, our founders and our executive director and our staff all came together and started talking about what we want to do to really amplify voting and participation in democracy,” Arthur explains. “Those were the things that really stood out and felt important to us. We can’t obviously endorse the candidate, being a nonprofit, but we just really want people to embrace voting and to understand how to access it and to not feel afraid that it’s corrupt in any type of way.”
When it comes to using live music to spread awareness about reproductive rights, Arthur says live music events are ultimately an opportunity for a community to come together. In this community, while many members will bond over loving the same artist or the same music, it’s more often than not that these same people will also share similar political views and ideologies — or even the same beliefs as their favorite artist.
“I kind of capitalize on that shared value or shared interest and then ask fans to expand a little bit within that,” Arthur says. “So while we’re tabling, sometimes folks approach us, we tell them what we’re working on, we tell them about the two campaigns and they’re immediately on board.”
Calling All Crows will work with artists, venues or festivals and set up tables, often following the artist on tour. Arthur explains that it’s very often many music fans who walk up to their table won’t initially realize how voting might be related to reproductive access or creating safer spaces in music scenes.
“We’re able to draw those connections for them and get them interested that way,” she says.
When it comes to political advocacy especially, Calling All Crows has been adamant about reaching Gen Zers, an age group that has been characterized as hard-to-reach voters. While Gen Z has been historically known for being politically engaged and outspoken, Arthur says they have mostly been ambivalent regarding this year’s presidential election.
“Our biggest audience that we engage with when we do tables and on social media is that audience, that group of Gen Z folks,” Arthur explains. “Especially when we’re at festivals like Bonnaroo and Kilby, Block Party. That’s the majority of folks who are attending those events. So it’s kind of this unexpected but sort of perfect intersection of the people who we have great access to through tabling and through attending concerts and the people who might be on the fence or just need a little nudge to get them more interested in participating in voting. That’s kind of where we’re coming from. We understand that our campaign isn’t necessarily designed to radically change people’s minds. It’s more so to take those folks who have been very disengaged and give them a little nudge to hopefully get them invested.”
As well as their current Voice Your Choice campaign, Calling All Crows is well known for their ongoing Here For the Music campaign that aims to spread awareness about sexual violence and discrimination in the music industry. Sexual harassment in the music industry can take many forms, some not often talked about. During the sexual harassment training that Arthur teaches for Here For the Music, she describes sexual violence as a spectrum. One end of the spectrum is groping at a live show or touching somebody without their consent, i.e. completely crossing somebody’s boundaries. The other end of the spectrum is gender discrimination and/or verbal harassment and catcalling.
“I’ve worked with artists before who have talked about the staff at a venue talking down to them or being snotty at them because their band is full of women,” Arthur admits. “I’ve also talked to people who said they got mistaken for the girlfriend of the band, even though they were the singer.”
Arthur says that not only are these behaviors ever present in the music industry, but they are often excused or seen as the norm. People experiencing sexual harassment in the music industry are often taken so unseriously that they start to feel as though nothing can be done to prevent or fix the problem.
“I think the thing that I really care deeply about that I really want to amplify is that this isn’t just the conversation about artists and people like audience members,” Arthur explains. “This should also include the people working at the venues and the festivals and the touring crews and the road crew and all those people too. They often don’t really get included when we’re thinking about this problem and it’s happening to them first and foremost, and they are so incredibly responsible for shifting that culture away from these practices right away from normalizing these behaviors. So it’s like not only are they impacted, but they’re, in fact, so necessary to change making change.”
Here For the Music provides bystander intervention training for anybody in the music industry — road crew, fan, artist or otherwise — who are interested in learning how to recognize sexual assault as well as what to do when they see it happening. Arthur explains this training as the four D’s: Direct, Distract, Delegate and Delay.
The Direct approach involves directly calling out the one who is harming somebody else. This method involves the most risk, as it requires confrontation and may not be an accessible method for everyone. The Distract approach involves creating a distraction so that the person being harassed can get away. This might involve a number of methods, like dropping a glass or creating a loud sound, that can successfully allow the victim to escape the situation. Delegate involves finding another person to help with the situation, whether it’s a friend or the bartender at the venue. This method is intended to find a person to assist with the situation before involving venue or festival security. Finally, the last method is delay, which consists of waiting until the situation has settled before asking if the victim is okay or needs help.
“And then in addition to [those principles], we just really try to have a transparent conversation about how cultures are built and how the culture of the music industry, in particular, has been built [and] how do we see it reflecting racism, sexism, ableism, all of these other things that we see in our greater society,” Arthur says. “How do they get boiled into the music industry and what are the specific challenges and strengths of this community? Because I think it’s also one of those things that we don’t know what we don’t know. If you’re existing as a white dude in these spaces and you’ve always felt safe, it doesn’t make you a bad person that you don’t understand. It’s a matter of helping folks get to that level where they can like see more.”
If you want to learn more about Calling All Crows’ Voice Your Choice or Here For the Music campaigns, visit callingallcrows.org.
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