Town Hall Meeting Addresses Modern-Day Slavery
Slavery in the United States ended with the American Civil War, but that didn’t mark the end of slavery altogether, as Rose Kaczmarcik (SPH’08) well knows. The cochair of the BU Student Global Health Organization (BUSGHO) and members of seven other BU organizations are hosting a Town Hall Meeting tonight titled 21st Century Slavery: Abolition in Our Time, to address the issue and encourage people to take action against slavery.
The group sponsors — BUSGHO, the School of Public Health Rotaract, the BU International Law Society, SPH Student Services, the SPH Chapter of the Public Health Association for Minorities, the SPH Center for International Health and Development, BU’s Global Health Initiative, and BU Physicians for Human Rights — want to provide “an interactive education,” says Kaczmarcik, the event’s Communications Committee chair. “We want to get the word out about slavery and that there are actions that can be taken against it.”
The event’s keynote speech will be given by Kevin Bales, founder and president of the nonprofit activist organization Free the Slaves and author of numerous books on slavery. His new book, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves, offers a plan for governments, the UN, communities, and individuals to bring slavery and human trafficking to an end. The three panelists are Beatrice Fernando, a survivor of slavery and founder of the nonprofit activist organization Nivasa Foundation, Stephen Marks, the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Christine Dolan, founder and CEO of the International Humanitarian Campaign Against the Exploitation of Children. They will discuss their experiences with slavery and will answer questions from audience members.
Following the town hall meeting, the Action Fair hosts several national and Boston-based human rights and antislavery organizations, which will tell people how they can take action against slavery, such as by writing letters to their legislators or purchasing Fair Trade products.
21st Century Slavery: Abolition in Our Time, which is free and open to the public, takes place tonight, November 14, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the School of Law auditorium, 765 Commonwealth Ave.
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.