Woman to Run, Bike & Swim for 27 Hours Straight, to Raise Awareness of 27 Million Modern-Day Slaves:
Paula Heron, a woman from Lexington, Kentucky will be raising awareness about modern-slavery by spending “27 straight hours of swimming, biking and running.” She’s doing this for the 27 million people enslaved in the world today. A noble cause indeed! Read more about Paula’s actions here (via WKYT).
Excerpt from Investigative Book, Tomatoland Sheds Light on Slavery in Florida’s Tomato Farms
The Atlantic has published an excerpt from a new book Tomatoland—about corruption in the tomato industry. This excerpt is about modern-slavery in Florida’s tomato farms, an issue that our ATEST partner Coalition of Immokalee Workers has actively organized and raised awareness about. Here is an excerpt of the excerpt:
Taking a day off was not an option. If Domingo or any of the others in the crew became ill or too exhausted to go to the fields, they were kicked in the heads, beaten with fists, slashed with knives or broken bottles, and shoved into trucks to be hauled to the worksites. Some were manacled in chains. One day a crew member couldn’t take it anymore and ran away from a field. One of the Navarretes got in his truck to chase him down. When the truck returned, Medel said that the man’s face was so bloody and swollen that he was unrecognizable. He could not walk. “This is what happens when you try to get away,” the boss said.
Read: ‘Victory for Florida’s Tomato Farm Workers’
More from CNN’s Freedom Project: Demi Moore Will Host and Narrate an Hour-Long Documentary: “Nepal’s Stolen Children”
From the New York Times:
In the documentary, which will be shown for the first time on June 26, Ms. Moore meets girls as young as 11 who had been forced into prostitution and were rescued by a Nepalese nonprofit.
…Tony Maddox, the executive vice president and managing director of CNN International, said of the documentary: “This wasn’t, ‘We’ll get more publicity if we work with someone high profile, so let’s go find someone high profile.’ This was, ‘Who are the leading players in this field?’ ”
One of them, he said, happened to be a famous actress.
The documentary comes in the fourth month of the CNN Freedom Project, an effort to investigate and bring an end to human trafficking, bonded labor and other forms of what advocacy groups say amounts to slavery.
Led by Mr. Maddox, CNN is taking a stand against slavery — an “easy position” to take, he acknowledges, but one requiring hard work in coverage, campaigning and following up.
“It’s an issue of fundamental humanity,” Mr. Maddox said in a telephone interview. “When that humanity has been violated, there is a moral responsibility to say that this is wrong.”