Advocacy

In the fall, we gifted our outgoing Board Chair with a snow globe featuring the nativity scene with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. As the present was unwrapped, someone around the table – reflecting on the nature of our work to address the lack of safe, specialized and supportive housing for trafficked survivors –  commented,“They didn’t have anywhere to go either.”

Over the years, I have marched in the Denver, Colorado Four Directions All Nation March where the marchers step off from four directions and rally at the Colorado State Capitol.  One might ask why do Indigenous people march in Canada and America? 

First, regarding participating in a protest march, I want to encourage non-violent political movements, like those associated with leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.

In 1992, the nations of the world met in Rio de Janeiro and agreed that they had a responsibility to respond to the reality of climate change. They created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and agreed that the participating nations would meet once a year. The meetings are called the Conference of Parties (COP) and the 25th such meeting is being held in Madrid, Spain in December. 

I have yet to join a Friday Climate Strike. Not because I don’t think climate is important. I understand the clear science behind climate change and have seen firsthand the devastating impacts both in Kenya and in British Columbia, Canada to human and non-human communities. I know that humans are adding more toxins, more carbon dioxide, more destruction than the earth is capable of dealing with right now. No, I agree with the words being spoken on the placards and through the megaphones. 

God go with us.  Help us to be an honor to the church. Give us the grace to follow Christ's word, to be clear in our task and careful in our speech.  - Alcuin of York 

In April 2006, I was a teenager at home watching the CBC News as they reported from a land dispute in Caledonia, Ontario. On the screen, a reporter talked about escalating tensions between townspeople and the Indigenous protestors who had taken over a development site that lay between the town and the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. Behind the reporter a tire fire blazed. I looked through our living room window and I could see the billowing black smoke over the houses and trees. It was surreal to me that my hometown was national news. 

My name is Cindy Stover, I’m one of the CRC’s justice mobilizers, and I have a confession to make. Until about a month ago, I had no idea what I could do to combat climate change. More specifically, I had no idea what I, as one person, could reasonably do to substantially impact our overwhelming global climate crisis. Now, I do lots of simple environmentalist sort of things; I recycle, I shop second hand, I try to buy local produce at the grocery store, and I even remember (most of the time) to bring my reusable grocery bags with me! But is all that really enough?

On September 27th, hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets to urge governments and corporate leaders to take action on climate change. In Montreal, where the protests were led by teenage climate activist Greta Thurnberg, over 500,000 protesters (many of whom were children and youth), took the day off from school or work to join the protest.

This is a reflection on human trafficking. 

This is a reflection on more than just human trafficking. 

Because, like many of our world’s justice issues, human trafficking is rooted in other systemic problems and challenges.