A small group of committed people

The world is not the place we believe it to be. This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way, and have to continuously relearn, as I attempt to work toward making the world the place I know it could be. Regardless of our various economic backgrounds, all Columbians are incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to attend this institution. Here, we can live and learn while all our basic necessities are provided. When I was young, I believed, in my naïveté, that this was how everyone in the world lived—not necessarily indulging their every whim, but well taken care of. It was not until an ethics class in high school that I learned the truth: my classmates and I were part of an educated elite, while the vast majority of the world still languished in poverty. It was, and still is, a shocking lesson to learn.

Why is it that I devote time to social justice? Quite frankly, I believe that we are all extraordinary lucky to live lives not for want of basic necessities. We just as easily could have been born into the slums of India or into modern day slavery in Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, or even the streets of New York. We have all worked hard to get where we are today—that is true. But when nothing more than luck truly separates us from the people on the other side of the world laboring in rock quarries and begging on the streets, how is it right for us to ignore them? It could just as easily have been us, and if it were, I would desperately want people working to improve my hereditary condition of poverty. For this reason I feel the need to work towards evening out the standards of living in the world. And that is exactly what my friends and I, as well as thousands of other modern-day abolitionists around New York City, are doing this week.

This week, from Sept. 20-27, is officially Freedom Week in New York City. Several abolitionist groups are hosting events at Columbia, including a benefit concert with Braddigan from Dispatch and a theatrical performance on the issue. It all culminates in a walk around Lincoln Center organized by the non-profit organization Stop Child Trafficking Now, to raise awareness on a mass scale about modern day slavery.

So how did a group of Columbia University students get involved in such a movement? Just nine months ago, if someone had asked me if slavery still existed, I probably would have told them “no.”

It all started with a documentary called “Call + Response,” just released and played in an independent cinema down in Tribeca last fall. Now, my friends and I were no strangers to the massive discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots in our world when we hit the one line that snowy December evening. We were all in different clubs that worked on social justice issues, but even when you know the facts, it is still all too easy for the urgency of the poverty and injustice in other parts of the world to just fade away from the forefront in the wake of friends, midterms, and life in general. Every so often, even activists need to hear a call to action. Needless to say, that is the least of what we experienced in the theater that night.

Quite simply, we learned that slavery is not dead. Far from it, it is one of the largest illicit markets in the world today, second only to weapons trafficking. Modern day slavery exists all over the world, from children kidnapped and forced into prostitution in Southeast Asia, to workers paying off impossible debts in India under threats of being beaten. This is not mere sweatshop labor or unfair working conditions. This is being kept in bondage and forced to work under the threat of physical violence or death. This is the loss of freedom. It is thought that, in total, there are 27 to 29 million slaves in the world today. This alarming statistic was not one to which we could turn a blind eye. We decided it was time to get to work.

Our first big event occurred in February of last semester. Through an incredibly fortuitous series of events, we managed to get the rights to screen “Call + Response,” book Miller Theatre, and have high profile artist Matisyahu (featured in the documentary) perform for us. On top of all this, Justin Dillon, the creator and director of the film, rearranged his UN sponsored flight to the Middle East so he could speak that night. Miller Theatre was sold out, and the night was a resounding success. But one event was not enough, and soon after we started planning our next slew of awareness-raising activities.

And here we are now, in the middle of Freedom Week, doing all we can to bring the issue—no, the tragedy—of modern day slavery to the forefront of peoples’ minds (and hopefully their wallets). It may seem ridiculous and hopeless to work to take down a massive, thriving market across the world from our dorms at Columbia. But it is not. My friends and I truly believe in the now-cliché Margaret Mead quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” We are a small group of committed people, and we will change the world. Join us.

The author is a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences majoring in mechanical engineering and political science.

Tags: Opinion, Phillip Dupree, human rights, human trafficking, social justice