Freedom Run/Walk in San Francisco November 17, 2007
BAY
AREA FREEDOM RUN/WALK (San Francisco, October 27, 2007) Bay Area community advocates and supporters will gather on November 17, 2007 to participate in the Bay Area Freedom Run/Walk that is organized by a local grassroots organization, Students & Artists Fighting to End Human Slavery (SAFEHS). SAFEHS is a local organization in the Bay Area, a diversity of activists, artists, students, and survivors, whose mission is to define, educate, and abolish human trafficking through the arts. The goal of the Bay Area Freedom Run/Walk is to raise awareness about modern day slavery and to raise money to support organizations, including the Polaris Project in their initiatives to combat human trafficking through direct intervention, survivor support, policy advocacy, and movement building. The Polaris Project, named after the North Star, provides a comprehensive and community based approach to combating human trafficking in the spirit of modern day Underground Railroad. Human trafficking, or modern day slavery, is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. Currently the U.S. Department of Justice has a low estimate of 50,000 that are trafficked throughout the U.S., while other sources estimate 200,000 are trafficked in the U.S. that include U.S. nationals. Globally, millions of women, children and men are victims to human trafficking. Historically, the run/walk is organized by the Polaris Project in which the most recent run/walk in September 2007 was held in Vermont in an effort to raise awareness about human trafficking in Vermont, one of twelve states nation-wide that currently does not have any form of anti-trafficking legislation. In November, SAFEHS would like to bring this national initiative to the Bay Area. Participants wearing either Polaris Tshirts "Slavery Still Exists" and "Freedom" Shirts designed by def.i.ni.ción, will walk through the Geary Corridor to raise awareness to the community that human slavery is very much alive in San Francisco, in which San Francisco is one of the largest global centers for commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
Bay Area Freedom Run/Walk,
Reflections After weeks of promoting the event, November 17th finally came and so did the freedom walk. Myself and one of the other interns, Jerry, woke up at 6am to get ready to bart to San Francisco. Once we got there, we set off to 1 Market Street. The short detour we went on prepared us for the 6 miles we were going to be walking. As we arrived, more people began to show up one by one. Once the organizer of the run arrived, we met up for a short informational session before we set off. One of the very important things to remember was to work together thus we were always paired off. A few people ran while the majority of us walked through Geary, holding our signs and distributing Polaris brochures. Although our group was small, our purpose and hopes were far from that. While distributing brochures and displaying our signs, we came across many different people. Some were more than willing to learn about our cause while others were simply apathetic. I remember a woman saying she was too busy to take a brochure. However, we came across people who were really interested in learning more about the cause. Some people asked us for flyers while others took time to actually talk to some of us. As one of the participants distributed a brochure to a woman, one of her sons read the shirt of another participant who was walking ahead. Her shirt said “Slavery still exists”, leaving the little boy with a question he didn't hesitate to ask his mother. “Mom, slavery still exists?” he asked his mom with a sincere curiosity. His mother answered, “Yes it does and this is a very good cause.” After hearing this exchange of words, my motivational level shot up and I couldn't help but feel a smile come to my face. I honestly believe people want social change, but injustice has become so much a part of the norm that people have become afraid to even imagine a world full of equality. Events such as this freedom walk/run provide a time where people who have this hope of improving the world and people who have learned to just live with the current one can interact and hopefully unite under as specific cause. The world can't change all at once and that's why we have to take it one step at a time. More info. about the history of the run, visit: www.polarisproject.org |
