Anti-Slavery Activist Runs it Like He Talks it!

June 3, 2009

By Sean McIntyre, Gulf Islands Driftwood

If you’re driving down Long Harbour Road early in the morning and happen upon a man running along the side of the road in shackles, there’s no need for alarm.

Yes, he may be on the run, but it’s all for a valiant cause.

 

On August 1, 2009 Eric Proffitt will set off from London’s Westminster Abby and run nearly a marathon a day for 25 days as part of his Break These Chains campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking.

I’m doing this to help the world know that human trafficking still happens in every city on earth.” Proffitt said in an interview last week. “The whole point is that I want the entire world to stop and say ‘this is wrong’, I want this event to tip the balance and stop human slavery.”

News of his project has encouraged several groups in Victoria to invite Proffitt to run through the provincial capital before he leaves for England in late July.

Proffitt’s 800 kilometer run (500 mile) journey coincides with the commemoration of William Wilberforce’s 250th anniversary. Wilberforce was the 18th century British politician and philanthropist who made it his personal mission to ban the slave trade within the British Empire.

The run will take Proffitt west from London to Bristol, where he will venture northward through Gloucester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.

Proffitt’s route wraps up in Wilberforce’s birthplace of Kingston-Upon-Hull, where he will be one of the key presenter’s at the city’s annual freedom festival.

Many of the coastal cities along Proffitt’s route were major international ports and key ideological battlegrounds during the original move to end slavery.

Wilberforce may have succeeded in setting up some of the world’s first legislation banning the trade of human beings, but the underground slave trade is still alive and thriving.

According to statistics compiled by the United Nations between 1-4 million people are trafficked each year, 60 % of those are children and almost 80 percent are used in the sex trade.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today.

That’s enough to make it the third largest illegal market after drugs and weapons. The RCMP believes about 800 of those victims end up on Canadian streets each year.

Outside of the sex trade, much of the illegal slave trade involves individual held against their will to work in sweatshops, mines and on farms, where they produce many of the commodities that end up in the homes and stomachs of western consumers.

The involvement of powerful global organized crime syndicates and the weakness of federal anti-trafficking regulations here in Canada has encouraged Proffitt to attack the problem at its source.

“It will be the people who make the change,” he said. “If people are upset by this international disgrace, they may begin to ask questions about how and where the products they use are made.”

Proffitt said the global chocolate industry is among the most lucrative industries known to rely heavily on slave labor.

Strong consumer reaction to corporate irresponsibility around the world, Proffitt said, has proven companies will offer ethical alternatives if a demand exists.

“It’s really about starting where you are right now and questioning the impact of your everyday decisions,” he said.

Proffitt, a songwriter originally from the United States, “recognized the magnitude of this horror” while he was attending the United Nations’ Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking last year in Vienna.

Shocked by its scope and determined to do something about it, Proffitt and his wife made a joint decision to sell their home and use the proceeds to help fight human trafficking.

“My wife and family have been very supportive,” he said. “What awe are doing is really nothing compared to what is experienced every day by millions of slaves around the world.”

More information about Proffitt’s inspiring run is available online at www.ericproffitt.com