AMNESTY CONCERTS--THE RETURNS KEEP COMING

Should we be cynical about the lasting impact of rock benefit concerts?

Let’s look at the aftermath of the six-city Amnesty International tour that ended with a nationally televised, 11-hour concert featuring U2, the Police and Bryan Adams on June 15 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

That was 11 weeks ago and the human-rights organization was basking in the spotlight. Jack Healey, executive director of the U.S. section of Amnesty, proclaimed, “I couldn’t be more pleased with what we’ve accomplished.”

The tour, whose primary goal was to raise awareness in this country of the organization’s worldwide campaign to free non-violent prisoners of conscience, netted $2.1 million in box-office receipts for Amnesty and 34,000 new members.

But what is the atmosphere now in the no-frills, 10th-floor Amnesty office at 8th Avenue and 26th Street?

Is the mood still jubilant--phones ringing, spirits high?

Or has disillusionment set in? Did the new-found public interest wane as soon as the last band stepped off stage?

Healey seemed surprised by the question as he sat in his office.

“This has been the best thing that has ever happened to us,” Healey said, picking up a file of newspaper clippings about the tour that is as massive as a metropolitan-area phone directory.

“We are getting reports from (chapters) all across the country--cities where the tour didn’t even go--about new members. We have had so many designers volunteering to do posters and attorneys volunteering their services that we don’t even have enough brochures to send them.

“There were a lot of people in our organization that thought we had lost our minds when we announced we were going to do this. . . . it seemed too slick, too razzle-dazzle for a human-rights organization. But they are really thrilled now. From our point of view, everything is positive. We thought people would respond to our message and they have. Rock ‘n’ roll just gave us the opportunity to reach them.”

The influx of funds and new members (pushing the national membership total to about 190,000) is just the starting point, agree Healey and Mary Daly, Amnesty International communications director.

“Those are very important steps that you can easily measure,” said Healey, sitting with Daly in his office here last week. “But there are other gains that are harder to measure--like boosts in the spirit of our existing members. Our work is very depressing because we keep hearing about new victims (of torture and political oppression), yet the actual victories are very few.

“So, all this attention becomes an endorsement of your work. It makes you feel you are not alone. For instance, there is a group of our members who have adopted a prisoner in the U.S.S.R. and they have been writing post cards on his behalf for 15 straight years . . . and nothing happens. There isn’t even very much mentioned in the press here about our organization.

“But then, our members see the Amnesty tour coverage on television and in the papers, and it’s very reassuring. It makes them feel rejuvenated . . . that they have been doing the right thing and that their letters weren’t just going into some deep hole somewhere.”

Daly believes another benefit was the development of greater media sophistication about Amnesty International’s work.

“I think our impartiality got communicated to people,” she said. “When we call publications now, there is much more willingness to listen to our message. Before this project, it was hard to even get a public-service announcement aired.

“I think we were always considered a little too political. But since the tour, I’ve seen that WNBC-TV here had one of our spots in the schedule every day for the month of August.”

Healey said packets of post cards will be sent this month to the 34,000 new “freedom writer” members who agreed, as part of their membership pledge, to send post cards monthly to governments asking that specific prisoners be freed.

Meanwhile, approximately 25,000 of the estimated 30,000 post cards that were collected at the six Amnesty concerts have already been forwarded to the governments of Guatemala, South Korea, the Soviet Union, Vietnam and Syria. The cards sought the release of specific prisoners of conscience who had been “adopted” by the tour musicians.

The remaining cards were to be sent to South Africa, asking for the release of Thozamile Gqweta, a 34-year-old black South African who is president of the South African Allied Workers Union. He was arrested in 1985 for outspoken criticism of the government and for supporting the opposition United Democratic Front, a coalition of 650 anti-apartheid groups. But they are still sitting in the Amnesty office. Shortly after the tour ended, charges were dropped against Gqweta.

Despite the success of this tour, Healey isn’t thinking about trying to put together another series of rock concerts next year. “I think it would be a mistake if we tried to make the tour some type of annual event because it would take too much energy and time from our primary responsibility,” he said. “We accomplished what we set out to do, and now it is time to use those resources.”

On a personal note, Healey, a former Jesuit priest, added, “One of the things I feel best about the tour is the way the musicians related to the work. You have to remember that we aren’t rock ‘n’ rollers like Bob Geldof (the organizer of Live Aid). We feared there may be a gap.

“When you translate very complicated human rights things, we have to be careful to keep it non-political and we didn’t know if some of the musicians would get up at the press conferences and start making speeches against particular governments . . . thus turn it into something that it wasn’t meant to be.

“But we were very pleased here too. If you review all the press conferences, all the statements by the musicians, they were really terrific, no craziness. And, they haven’t just gone home and forgotten about the organization. They are still in touch. We want to maintain those ties with the rock musicians and get them involved in our campaign next year against the death penalty--but as individuals who care, not as musicians who are asked to go on tour again for us.”