The Abolition

As the academic year came to a close this past Saturday, I have had a few moments to reflect on the year. If you ask me about my job, you usually hear about the crazy schedule, the wonderful staff I get to work with or the occassional 2am wake up call to respond to a crisis. What you may not have heard is the work I have been doing with social justice. As a response to the program I hosted this past fall called the Not For Sale Campaign, a group of students were eager to respond to the issue of modern day slavery. I was upfront from the beginning that I was just learning about the issue myself and did not have a direct answer to how we should respond as a community. I did, however, have an intense desire to see that response turned into action. Before Christmas break, I hosted an interest forum and about 30 students attended and I had hope that it would not just fade away from people's active awareness. After the break, we formed essentially a focus group that consisted of upperclassmen who wanted to develop the leadership and vision for a sustainable student response to the issue of human trafficking and slavery.

Students are often ready to jump in and activism in Seattle is especially appealing. However, I challenged the students to take a step back, form a vision, form some partnerships and get ready to launch some more educational and informative sessions in the spring in preparation for a collective activism. I was GREATLY impressed that they did just that. A core group of 8 students formed, created a vision and mission statement, started networking in the Seattle area with churches, NGO's and the academic community.

After prayer and anticipation, we lined up a number of speakers for spring quarter to further educate ourselves and our community about the issue. We started off spring quarter with a film viewing of TRADE, a powerful story on human trafficking. A variety of people came and partnered with us including Detective Harvey Sloan from the Seattle Police Department Anti-Trafficking unit, Sheila Houston from Late Night Outreach that ministers to women in prostitution through New Horizons, Ro Potter from YWAM who is heading up the Freedom Project, Brian Cress from International Justice Mission who shared about international work, and a presentation by one of our own students who has grown passionate and educated herself on the topic.

At the conclusion of the academic year, we hosted a rally in Pike's Place Market to further awareness and dialogue in the city of Seattle about the local and global issue of modern day slavery. A youth group from the area also joined the SPU students as they made signs and handed out information and resources on the issue.

As with all great things, the end of the year meant some of the core group members graduating or moving on. The great test was whether a new group of abolitionists would rise up to join the voices that had paved the way. We celebrated the graduation of four of our core members and one member moving on to youth work. That left us with 3 returning members and a hope that we would get interested students to take up the cause. We were pleasantly surprised by a number of individuals and have now expanded our core leadership group to ten.

Check out our website at www.theabolition.org.