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CREC Metropolitan Learning Center Hosting 12th Annual Abolitionist Fair


(Bloomfield, CT) One fact about human trafficking that resonated with 14-year-old Matthew Carrier, a freshman at the CREC Metropolitan Learning Center, is that the practice happens in Connecticut. It’s the reason he and a classmate are researching sex slavery for the 12th Annual Abolitionist Fair, taking place Thursday, March 16, 2017 at MLC.


“I like to focus on what happens around me because I feel it has a bigger impact on people if you tell them this is happening here,” said Carrier. “If we help bring people out of slavery here, that’s how we can make more abolitionists. It’s more of a sustainable solution because we have the resources here to bring awareness.”

Carrier is a member of Student Abolitionists Stopping Slavery (SASS), an extra-curricular group at MLC that began organizing the Abolitionist Fair twelve years ago as a way of bringing awareness to the horrors of modern-day slavery. Carrier and his partner are creating a series of paintings and colored pencil sketches on canvass that connect past instances of sex slavery to recent cases on the Berlin Turnpike.


Raena Davis, 17, a senior at MLC and a SASS member, said the level of participation in the fair is the highest it’s ever been. This year’s fair will take over the first floor of the school with more than 20 trifold board presentations by ninth-grade students on social justice, multimedia displays, interactive games, dramatic presentations and other projects. Some of the interactive games include Jeopardy, a slavery obstacle course, and a human board game in which participants walk the path to free a slave.


“My goal is to bring awareness to individuals who come to the fair and to participants who are eager to learn more about how human trafficking impacts people not just abroad, but impacts people in the western hemisphere from students to families to businessmen and women,” said Davis. “And also to advocate for those who are unable to speak out about the injustice of human trafficking and modern-day slavery.”


The fair will end with a panel discussion with SASS students, and members of Love 146 and Heifer International.

“We decided that the panel was the best way to engage the audience and provoke thought about the issue of ending modern day slavery because it will allow students to engage in dialogue. Changing our world starts with conversations and sharing and clarifying our different perspectives,” said MLC 11th grader Zanagee Artis, who is the Abolitionist Fair co-coordinator, along with his 11th grade (twin) brother Gezani Artis, and 11th grader Alexander Santiago.

"I am constantly amazed by the passion of my students to correct injustices they see in the world. They inspire me in their fight to end slavery today, rectify inequality, and make our community a better place,” said Wendy Nelson-Kauffman, a teacher at MLC and the program’s advisor.

SASS students meet weekly after classes to discuss this topic and how to raise awareness and fundraise for the cause. SASS members have presented their work to countless local high schools and churches, as well as at international conferences such as the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade conference at Yale University, the iEARN conference in Senegal, Africa, the Conference on Criminal Trafficking and Slavery at the University of Illinois, a United Nations subcommittee meeting in New York and at the National Conference of Historians Against Slavery.

The 12th Annual Abolitionist Fair will be held on Thursday, March 16, 2017 from 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. at the Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies, 1551 Blue Hills Avenue, Bloomfield, CT, 06002. Schools and community members are welcome to attend. For information about how you or your school, company, or community group can get involved, please contact Nancy Geffken at ngeffken@crec.org or 860-242-7834.


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