Modern-Day Slavery Museum on tour
July 2010 – On Sunday, July 25, members of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Va., joined hundreds of people who braved 100 degree temperatures to view the CIW’s Modern-Day Slavery Museum which is making a northeast tour, stopping in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Providence and Boston. Presbyterians across the northeast are busy hosting and promoting the museum. The Church of the Pilgrims PC(USA) in D.C., Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton and Iglesia Presbiteriana Hispana in Paterson, N.J. will all serve as sites for this mobile museum where the public can come, learn and work to end modern-day slavery in the U.S. fields.
The centerpiece of the Modern-Day Slavery Museum is a replica of the cargo box truck in which farmworkers were held against their will in a recent slavery case in Florida (U.S. vs. Navarrete, 2008). The museum traces the continual presence of slavery in different forms in the Florida fields from the revolutionary war era to the present day. The museum's central focus is on the phenomenon of modern-day slavery – its roots, the reasons it persists and its solutions. Visitors have the opportunity to call upon Ahold, which owns Stop and Shop and Giant grocery chains, to join McDonalds, Whole Foods Market, Aramark and five other major food retailers in working with the CIW to end these human rights abuses in the fields of their Florida suppliers.
The museum was recently hosted by the U.S. State Department on the national mall during the release of the Trafficking in Persons report in which the coordinator of the CIW’s anti-slavery campaign, was designated the first U.S.-based anti-trafficking “hero” by Secretary of State Clinton. The museum has received accolades from academic experts on slavery and was created by the CIW in consultation with the men who were held in forced labor in U.S. vs. Navarrete and museum curators. Check the tour schedule and plan to visit when it comes near your town!
