【博客】Thursday, June 17, 2010

It’s poverty and corruption that cause slavery. After WWII, earth’s population exploded, as did the world economy. In no time, people around the world were eating the same McDonalds hamburger, dialed into a vast network for sharing and consumption. The countries that did not participate in this boom were left behind, forgotten and forced into extreme poverty and destitution. The more I look, the more I see our beautiful planet is out of alignment. We seem like we have a long way to go to achieve equality for all – but it is not impossible.
（图2）


Three hours from Accra, on the coast of Ghana sits a silent and eerie memorial, Cape Coast Castle, white as the ocean spray. Housing mostly echoes, its dungeons today are hollow. Floors soiled with shit and bits of shackle send shivers in the otherwise artless museum. During the slave trade, 11.6 million humans were exported through Cape Coast Castle alone, one of many forts of its kind.
（图3）


If a prisoner survived his capture, the enduring walk from his village to the coast, and survived detainment at the castle, he or she would eventually pass through the “door of no return,” and over the threshold from native Africa into Hell.
（图4）


In 1786, a group of 12 activists armed with a detailed diagram of a slave-ship and a printing press, set out to end the slave trade. They succeeded in just 20 years. By exposing the merciless industry and raising awareness about the mistreatment of humans, they shifted a nation’s perspective and abolished the trade in 1807. With England first in 1833 and then Lincoln in 1865, owning humans became illegal too. (Unfortunately the emancipation didn’t have a built-in plan to serve and protect the now free class of citizens. In fact, it would take 100 more years before African-Americans were recognized any civil rights.)
（图5、6）


Freeing people means to empower them and give them a chance to sustain their independence. The primary goal is to prevent that which causes slavery in the first place.
Today, billions of us have our own personal printing presses. We can contribute both our ideas and our dollars to ANY cause we choose with the press of a button. Our donations can be sent vie paypal, over the phone and even by text. We got it so dialed in we can source a superhero like James Kofi Annan from the comfort of our iPhones.
I have an unreasonable request.Go to the webpage of your favorite charity or NGO.Click on Donations page and see if they have a code for texting donations. If they do – Store that number in your phone. Then, anytime you make-up that your life isn’t great, open your phone and donate $5. (If they don't have a texting option, simply bookmark the page and do the same.)
Dear Mom and Dad,If anything should come from my being here, other than James knowing I’ll always be on hand to put gas in his boat, I hope it’s that people are fired up about whatever fires them up.
Whether its ending slavery, stopping a war, curing cancer, saving the food supply we rely on from the Gulf of Mexico, or being the person who finally gets a recycling/upcycling program started in your community – whatever it is – I encourage people to not just sit around and complain about issues. Lean into the discomfort and go fearlessly into the shadows and do something about it. We don’t lack ideas. In fact, we’re swimming in solutions. What our world needs are a few million more volunteers.  
Jason for Emmanuel Otoo for President of Ghana!
（图7）
Posted by Mraz at 6:31 AM 

好多图。。。