Abolition Class

I've never really thought of myself as an abolitionist-- although as a little girl, I always dreamed of how romantic & exciting it would be to work with the underground railroad and fight against evil & tyranny (I also played with Barbie dolls, but I had my occasional selfless, noble moments).

However, tomorrow, Chris & I will officially become abolitionists, attending the first of 6 classes on human trafficking in our city. After spending the summer in Uganda, working with girls who had been abducted & forced into sex slavery, we were really hoping for ways to continue serving in this area once we returned home.

Human trafficking-- and specifically sex slavery-- has been an issue that I have been wanting to learn more about. I had heard that many "massage parlors" downtown offer a little more than just a massage, and that most of the women "working" there have been brought from Asia and forced into sex slavery.

Of course, it breaks my heart to hear about things like that-- especially in my own city-- but I had never really known what to do about it before: Walk door to door downtown, asking at each massage parlor if there was anyone being held there against their will? Maybe not the most effective use of my time.

But when we heard that some friends of ours-- that run a really cool, alternative, artsy ministry just down the street from us, called Reimagine -- told us they were doing a workshop on Abolition in SF, I jumped for joy (okay, maybe not literally-- kind of a somber thing to be jumping for joy over). What a perfect way to gain awareness and to work on a solution with other interesting people!

What's really fun is that some of our students are going to join us. Hopefully we can make this a part of our movement on campus. I would love to get other clubs, sororities & fraternities involved & work together on this. We'll see how it goes!