By Stella Petrone
There's no Christmas in slave labour camps. Christmas is just another day.
Slaves are unknown by the world. Nobody knows they're there. But they are. Trafficked. Stateless. Working 14-hour days for a dollar or so.
Sometimes I take a group to the sugar slave camps in the Dominican Republic in mid-December and we provide Christmas dinner for about two hundred cane cutters and their families. This sounds nice but there are about half a million cane cutters. Most won't be coming to dinner.
Dinner's a cup of rice, a half-cup of beans, a small piece of chicken and 6oz of clean water. Santa visits too. He doesn't bring presents because there's many children but he does bring music and entertainment. Sometimes my trip to the slave camps is in July so we hold a Christmas in July and do the same.
We have to end Christmas for slaves. It's 2009. We have to educate ourselves about slavery and urge others to educate themselves about it too. Slavery's a secret. We have to tell the secret. Then a critical mass of knowledgeable people will be reached and a strong abolitionist movement will be born.
Visit freetheslaves.net. Then speak up. Let's end Christmas for slaves.
Stella Petrone is a retired teacher from Toronto. For over 25 years, she has taken students and families to the Dominican Republic and Haiti to raise awareness and engage them in activities to benefit the impoverished citizens.
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