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Public Awareness
In 1994, AASG’s New York Times op-ed broke the silence on slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. Since then, the organization has led an intensive media campaign exposing slavery wherever it exists, receiving coverage in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Readers Digest, Essence, Newsweek, Weekly Standard, ABC, CBS, FOX, and National Public Radio.
Our National Speakers Bureau of abolitionists and former slaves speak throughout the country to audiences which include elementary school students, college groups, religious organizations, community associations, and at special events. In recent months, speakers have traveled to events in TV, radio, and newspapers.
The S.T.O.P. [Slavery that Oppresses People] Program educates and empowers students from fourth grade through high school. Developed by AASG volunteer Education Director Barbara Vogel, a Denver public school teacher, the children`s campaign turns young students into dedicated abolitionists. Over 150 schools here at home and in 13 foreign countries have since joined STOP, which has been honored by receiving both the Anne Frank Award and the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Reward. STOP`s website features free curricula and activism guides for teachers. STOP students played a key role in putting slavery in Sudan before the American people when they traveled to Capital Hill in 2000 and testified before the Senate.
Advocacy
Our award-winning interactive website -- iAbolish.com -- links activists and human rights organizations across the globe. Slavery survivors tell their stories through Flash presentations and interactive exhibits. When AASG learns that individuals have been abducted into slavery [such as the 2002 story on Afghan refugee children sold at slave auctions in Pakistan], we immediately launch campaigns targeting the perpetrators, mobilizing our 30,000-member Freedom Action Network [FAN] to contact world leaders to demand their release. Whether harvesting cocoa in the Ivory Coast, weaving carpets in Pakistan, or chained to sewing machines turning out designer clothing behind barbed wire fences in Los Angeles, bonded and forced laborers toil in the dark underbelly of the global economy. We trace the supply chain from slave labor to manufactures and retailers, urging industries to adopt monitoring mechanisms and prevention programs.
Thousands of members participate in our bi-weekly Freedom Action Network campaigns through iAbolish. Not long ago, iAbolish launched a boycott of the May Company stores [including Filene`s and Lord & Taylor]. The result: the May Company announced it will stop selling items made in Burma, a dictatorship where slave labor creates huge profits for foreign companies in joint ventures. People of conscience are not powerless; public opinion harnessed by the Freedom Action Network can and does make a difference. Our campaign brought about a major change in the way a large American corporation does business in less than two months!
Our flagship campaign is against Sudanese chattel slavery. This survival of ancient barbarous practice has gone hand in hand with physical and cultural genocide in the Southern Sudan for more than half a century, and more recently in the western region of Darfur. In terms of the sheer magnitude of evil, the crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan today are the worst on earth; the body count of African victims of mass murder committed by the regular and irregular forces of the radical Islamist regime in Khartoum far exceeds the number of innocent lives lost in the recent tsunami in South East Asia.
AASG’s battle against Sudanese slavery demonstrates our ability to turn an ignored human rights disaster into a front-page news story through dynamic advocacy. Several foreign oil companies, most notably Canada`s Talisman Energy, lead the Sudanese government`s oil operations, fueling slave raids and funding its war chest. In 1999, AASG launched a divestment campaign against Talisman modeled after the South African anti-apartheid divestment. Our many programs, including the Speakers Bureau and www.iAbolish.com, sparked public protests that prompted many of the world`s largest pension and investment funds to divest from Talisman.
Our campaign spurred Congress to act. On October 21, 2002, the Sudan Peace Act was signed into law by President Bush, finally recognizing the on-going atrocities in Sudan as genocide. At our activists` urging, Congress also included an investigation of war crimes in the Sudan Peace Act, including slavery, and the possible delisting of foreign oil companies from American stock exchanges. In March 2003, Talisman finally bowed to the immense pressure from human rights groups such as AASG and pulled its operations from Sudan. Talisman is now being sued in federal court by one of AASG’s board members, the ground-breaking class action attorney Carey D`Avino, for abetting the Government of Sudan in genocide around the oil fields.
Empowering Survivors and Activists
The Bearing Witness Program provides a platform for slavery survivors to tell their stories and serve as public advocates. This program also organizes trips by community leaders and the media to nations in which slavery is pervasive, such as Sudan and Thailand. Through the Bearing Witness program, four former slaves who are now speaking out, and we are working with other former slaves to have them become abolitionist leaders as well. Our former slaves-turned-activists survived slavery in Sudan, Mauritania, and right here in Boston. They have testified before the U.S. Congress, met with Secretaries of State Albright and Powell, carried the 2002 Olympic torch, and most recently at the signing of the Sudan Peace Act, met with President Bush.
The FREE US [For Redemption and Emancipation of Those Enslaved in the U.S.] Program strives to abolish domestic slavery by raising public awareness of involuntary servitude in the U.S. We are currently working with a Sri Lankan woman who was held as a slave in the Boston area. She is training to be a speaker so that she may teach Americans that slavery still exists right here in our own cities. With the aid of interns from area law schools, AASG is currently developing a new program to bring help civil suits against those who violate US law by providing an intake and networking system to connect those held in domestic servitude with lawyers who will represent them on a pro bono basis. FREE US provides assistance to prosecutors and government officials so that slave holders and traffickers, and not the victims, are prosecuted.
Our internship program fosters activism and empowers young people. This is no envelope-stuffing internship, but rather a life-changing experience that provides intellectual, moral and tactical education to young people and molds tomorrow`s human rights leaders and philanthropists. Over 150 interns have passed through this program. Our intern’s responsibilities include organizing events, teach-ins, and seminars; developing STOP .curricula; fostering media relations; and website design. Last year, students ran a successful divestment campaign against Talisman Energy of Canada, staffed a slavery fact-finding mission to Sudan, organized a Gospel Fest and Freedom March [which raised over $10,000 for AASG], and addressed audiences ranging from small groups to several thousand.
In 1994, AASG’s New York Times op-ed broke the silence on slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. Since then, the organization has led an intensive media campaign exposing slavery wherever it exists, receiving coverage in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Readers Digest, Essence, Newsweek, Weekly Standard, ABC, CBS, FOX, and National Public Radio.
Our National Speakers Bureau of abolitionists and former slaves speak throughout the country to audiences which include elementary school students, college groups, religious organizations, community associations, and at special events. In recent months, speakers have traveled to events in TV, radio, and newspapers.
The S.T.O.P. [Slavery that Oppresses People] Program educates and empowers students from fourth grade through high school. Developed by AASG volunteer Education Director Barbara Vogel, a Denver public school teacher, the children`s campaign turns young students into dedicated abolitionists. Over 150 schools here at home and in 13 foreign countries have since joined STOP, which has been honored by receiving both the Anne Frank Award and the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Reward. STOP`s website features free curricula and activism guides for teachers. STOP students played a key role in putting slavery in Sudan before the American people when they traveled to Capital Hill in 2000 and testified before the Senate.
Advocacy
Our award-winning interactive website -- iAbolish.com -- links activists and human rights organizations across the globe. Slavery survivors tell their stories through Flash presentations and interactive exhibits. When AASG learns that individuals have been abducted into slavery [such as the 2002 story on Afghan refugee children sold at slave auctions in Pakistan], we immediately launch campaigns targeting the perpetrators, mobilizing our 30,000-member Freedom Action Network [FAN] to contact world leaders to demand their release. Whether harvesting cocoa in the Ivory Coast, weaving carpets in Pakistan, or chained to sewing machines turning out designer clothing behind barbed wire fences in Los Angeles, bonded and forced laborers toil in the dark underbelly of the global economy. We trace the supply chain from slave labor to manufactures and retailers, urging industries to adopt monitoring mechanisms and prevention programs.
Thousands of members participate in our bi-weekly Freedom Action Network campaigns through iAbolish. Not long ago, iAbolish launched a boycott of the May Company stores [including Filene`s and Lord & Taylor]. The result: the May Company announced it will stop selling items made in Burma, a dictatorship where slave labor creates huge profits for foreign companies in joint ventures. People of conscience are not powerless; public opinion harnessed by the Freedom Action Network can and does make a difference. Our campaign brought about a major change in the way a large American corporation does business in less than two months!
Our flagship campaign is against Sudanese chattel slavery. This survival of ancient barbarous practice has gone hand in hand with physical and cultural genocide in the Southern Sudan for more than half a century, and more recently in the western region of Darfur. In terms of the sheer magnitude of evil, the crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan today are the worst on earth; the body count of African victims of mass murder committed by the regular and irregular forces of the radical Islamist regime in Khartoum far exceeds the number of innocent lives lost in the recent tsunami in South East Asia.
AASG’s battle against Sudanese slavery demonstrates our ability to turn an ignored human rights disaster into a front-page news story through dynamic advocacy. Several foreign oil companies, most notably Canada`s Talisman Energy, lead the Sudanese government`s oil operations, fueling slave raids and funding its war chest. In 1999, AASG launched a divestment campaign against Talisman modeled after the South African anti-apartheid divestment. Our many programs, including the Speakers Bureau and www.iAbolish.com, sparked public protests that prompted many of the world`s largest pension and investment funds to divest from Talisman.
Our campaign spurred Congress to act. On October 21, 2002, the Sudan Peace Act was signed into law by President Bush, finally recognizing the on-going atrocities in Sudan as genocide. At our activists` urging, Congress also included an investigation of war crimes in the Sudan Peace Act, including slavery, and the possible delisting of foreign oil companies from American stock exchanges. In March 2003, Talisman finally bowed to the immense pressure from human rights groups such as AASG and pulled its operations from Sudan. Talisman is now being sued in federal court by one of AASG’s board members, the ground-breaking class action attorney Carey D`Avino, for abetting the Government of Sudan in genocide around the oil fields.
Empowering Survivors and Activists
The Bearing Witness Program provides a platform for slavery survivors to tell their stories and serve as public advocates. This program also organizes trips by community leaders and the media to nations in which slavery is pervasive, such as Sudan and Thailand. Through the Bearing Witness program, four former slaves who are now speaking out, and we are working with other former slaves to have them become abolitionist leaders as well. Our former slaves-turned-activists survived slavery in Sudan, Mauritania, and right here in Boston. They have testified before the U.S. Congress, met with Secretaries of State Albright and Powell, carried the 2002 Olympic torch, and most recently at the signing of the Sudan Peace Act, met with President Bush.
The FREE US [For Redemption and Emancipation of Those Enslaved in the U.S.] Program strives to abolish domestic slavery by raising public awareness of involuntary servitude in the U.S. We are currently working with a Sri Lankan woman who was held as a slave in the Boston area. She is training to be a speaker so that she may teach Americans that slavery still exists right here in our own cities. With the aid of interns from area law schools, AASG is currently developing a new program to bring help civil suits against those who violate US law by providing an intake and networking system to connect those held in domestic servitude with lawyers who will represent them on a pro bono basis. FREE US provides assistance to prosecutors and government officials so that slave holders and traffickers, and not the victims, are prosecuted.
Our internship program fosters activism and empowers young people. This is no envelope-stuffing internship, but rather a life-changing experience that provides intellectual, moral and tactical education to young people and molds tomorrow`s human rights leaders and philanthropists. Over 150 interns have passed through this program. Our intern’s responsibilities include organizing events, teach-ins, and seminars; developing STOP .curricula; fostering media relations; and website design. Last year, students ran a successful divestment campaign against Talisman Energy of Canada, staffed a slavery fact-finding mission to Sudan, organized a Gospel Fest and Freedom March [which raised over $10,000 for AASG], and addressed audiences ranging from small groups to several thousand.
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