11:15 a.m.

KEVIN BALES

Going undercover to meet slaves and slaveholders, Kevin Bales exposed how modern slavery penetrates the global economy and flows into the things we buy. Named by Utne Reader as a “visionary who is changing your world;” and the originator of one of “100 World-Changing Discoveries” by the Association of British Universities, he is a leading abolitionist in the last great anti-slavery movement.

In 2001 Bales founded Free the Slaves, the American sister-organization of the UK’s Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights group. In eight years it has helped to liberate thousands of slaves in India, Nepal, Haiti, Ghana, Brazil, Ivory Coast, and Bangladesh, and work with them to build new lives of dignity. After reading Bales’ book Ending Slavery, President Clinton told the plenary of the CGI: “It tells you that it is a problem we can solve and here’s how to do it.” This year, with Ron Soodalter, he published The Slave Next Door: Modern Slavery in the United States, an exposé and plan to make America slave-free for the first time in its history.

MARIA SUAREZ

I came to the USA in 1981, at the age of 16, full of dreams and goals.  While I was learning to live in this country, I was offered a job.  The job did not exist, instead — I was forced into modern day slavery.  My nightmare began on the day I started working as a 'housekeeper'. I endured 5 years of torture, rapes, beatings, and mental, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse by the man who had bought me for 200 dollars.  

The nightmare did not end there. After those 5 years of torture a neighbor killed my enslaver for personal reasons.  I went into a kind of mental trauma.  I did not speak English at the time, did not understand the law, and most of all, I was not capable of comprehending what was going on with the police or around me. My family took me out of that place and brought me to their house. During those couple of days I isolated myself, I was not talking and my fear was even worse.  

My freedom did not last long, after a few days of being in my sister's home, police from Azusa called my sister and told her to take me to the police station that they wanted to ask me some questions.  By then I was 21, and that day I was arrested and sent to county jail for a year.

During that year I went on trial, was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for a crime that I did not commit.  After serving 23 years - the Board of Prison Terms investigated my case and reported that I had been telling the truth for decades. I was not guilty.  I was released by the Parole Board on Dec. 18, 2003.

On the same day, I was arrested by immigration, because, as a permanent resident with a record of a major felony, I was bound to be deported.  After five months and 7 days in San Pedro Detention Center, a group of lawyers working pro bono on my case were able to free me with a special Visa for Victims of Trafficking. This visa allows me to stay in this country for three years. My visa expired in May 2007, and my pro bono lawyers are working hard on my case to clean my records and allow me to remain in this country.

Since my release, I have tried to remake my life, and enjoy the freedom I have only known for 15 out of my 47 years of age.  I enrolled at a counseling program at Pasadena City College, and one day I hope to get a degree as a social worker.  I currently work as a counselor at About-Face Domestic Violence Center, counseling both victims and offenders.  It is my hope that something good can come out of something so bad in my life.

1:00 p.m.  Panel

RUSSELL BANKS, moderator

Russell Banks was raised in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. The eldest of four children, he grew up in a working-class environment, which has played a major role in his writing. Mr. Banks graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before he could support himself as a writer, he tried his hand at plumbing, and as a shoe salesman and window trimmer. More recently, he has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, University of New Hampshire, New England College, New York University and Princeton University.

A prolific writer of fiction, his titles include Searching for Survivors, Family Life, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Darling, The Reserve and The Angel On The Roof, a collection of short stories. He has also contributed poems, stories and essays to The Boston Globe Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Harper’s, and many other publications.

His works have been widely translated and published in Europe and Asia. Two of his novels have been adapted for feature-length films, The Sweet Hereafter (directed by Atom Egoyan, winner of the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival) and Affliction (directed by Paul Schrader, starring Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe, Sissy Spacek, and James Coburn). He is the screenwriter of a film adaptation of Continental Drift.

Mr. Banks has won numerous awards and prizes for his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Ingram Merrill Award, The St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award, The John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and 1998 respectively. Affliction was short listed for both the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Prize and the Irish International Prize.

KEVIN BALES (For bio, see December 5, 11.15 a.m.)

BERNARDINE DOHRN

Bernardine Dohrn, activist, academic and child advocate, is Director of the Children and Family Justice Center and Clinical Associate Professor of the Northwestern University School Law, Bluhm Legal Clinic.  Dohrn was a national leader of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Weather Underground, and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List for over a decade. 

Dohrn is co-author, with Bill Ayers, of Race Course: Against White Supremacy and co-editor of Sing A Battle Song: Documents of the Weather Underground, and wrote the introduction to Letters from Young Activists.   She is an author and co-editor of two books:  “A Century of Juvenile Justice” (2002) and “Resisting Zero Tolerance:  A Handbook for Parents, Teachers and Students”  (2001) and the author of I”ll Try Anything Once: Using the Conceptual Framework of Children’s Human Rights Norms in the U.S., Univ. Mich. Journal of Law Reform (forthcoming); Somethin’s Happening Here: Children and Human Rights Jurisprudence in Two International Courts, UNLV L.Rev. Summer 2006; “The Cultivation of Fear and Criminalization” in Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire (2004); “All Ellas: Girls Locked Up” in Feminist Studies (Summer 2004); and “Look Out Kid/It’s Something You Did! Zero Tolerance for Children” in The Public Assault on America’s Children: Poverty, Violence, and Juvenile Injustice (2000).  

Dohrn teaches children’s rights and international human rights law at Northwestern and is a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and Leiden University faculty of law in the Netherlands.  She writes and lectures on international human rights law, war and peace, racism and justice, children in conflict with the law, extreme sentencing of young people, torture, family violence and school law.

GEORGE HOLMES

George Holmes has served as Executive Director of the Congress for Racial Equality, CORE, since 1988 and as the director of their Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Celebration since its inception in 1984. 

Holmes joined the staff of CORE in 1974 and, in 1987, developed and directed their Immigration Counseling Services.  Under his leadership, CORE quickly became the lead agency in the Northeast United States assisting more than 20,000 immigrants obtain amnesty under the new immigration laws.  For this effort, Mr. Holmes received the Statue of Liberty Award from the U.S. Department of Justice and became one of the country’s leading experts and advocates for the rights of undocumented immigrants.

In 1996 and 1997 he served as the coordinator of a delegation of influential Americans dispatched to observe and monitor free elections in Nigeria, Africa, the largest Black country in the world. Following the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on America, Holmes organized CORE’s emergency response team to assist victims of the World Trade Center collapse. Through his efforts, CORE was asked to join the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Federal, State and City agencies in providing services to the victims out of the official Pier 94Disaster Relief Center established by FEMA. CORE was one of only a handful of non-governmental agencies asked to serve in this official capacity.  In February 2003, Holmes was part of a CORE delegation sent to Liberia to assess that country’s needs.

In 2003, Holmes was chosen to represent CORE on the Brown vs. Board of Education 50^th Anniversary Commission responsible for organizing and coordinating events being held to commemorate that historical 1954 Supreme Court decision. In 2006 Holmes was profiled on WOR Network Television as an “Unsung Hero”. Holmes has received numerous honors for his civil rights activities and is a frequent guest on national television and radio talk shows. He is listed in “Who’s Who in Black America,” Strathmore’s Directory of “Who’s Who in America” and “America’s Registry of Outstanding Professionals.”

ALICE KEESEY MECOY

Alice Keesey Mecoy is a great-great-great granddaughter of abolitionist John Brown. Unaware of her familial connection until high school (the family considered the relationship a secret and did not discuss it openly) Mecoy has researched her family history for the past 30 years, with her studies primarily focused on the women in John Brown's life, whose dedication and sacrifices contributed greatly to the war against slavery. Mecoy has presented her findings to numerous audiences, including The National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, NY and the Saratoga Historical Museum and Society, and was selected to present at the Academic Symposium on John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry in October 2009.

MARGARET WASHINGTON (Bio,see December 5, 8:30 a.m.)

JW WILEY (Bio, see December 4, 7:30 p.m.)