Just One

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

sometimes there is only black and white and no shades of grey. 

I've been thinking about something I posted not too long ago. And through my pondering coupled with some web surfing tonight, I've found something pretty cool to talk about.

“Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately it is not fashionable to talk with them.”–Mother Teresa 

I just bought a T-Shirt from Just One. Check out this website--One Voice To End Slavery. It's a social network for abolitionists. And that is how I found Just One's sites, like OBWL



And this is what I am going to do (once I can actually ride my bike). I've spent the last few days thinking about one of my favourite spots to go play Ingress, at a park in Costa Mesa. I was actually interviewed by a local news channel there about the "homeless situation". The city of Costa Mesa treated them like a nuisance instead of seeing them as people. They spent $60,000 tearing down a picnic area to try to get the homeless to stop sleeping there. When I go there at night after work to play Ingress, I see no difference in the amount of people there. So instead of spending $60,000 to care for these people, the city just gave them less shelter. 

OBWL seeks to encourage every day citizens to fill their backpacks, riding bags, tubs, etc with new socks, toiletries, dog treats, bus passes, and other simple necessities jump on your bikes and ride, spending time with your neighbors who live under the stars. It is our hope that OBWL Chapters will start in different cities or neighborhoods throughout the US.

Free Them

I am excited to announce that Janette. . .ikz will be sharing at the OC F.R.E.E. T.H.E.M event, "It Starts at Home."



She will be performing a shortened version of this piece.





If you are in the Orange County/LA Metro area, please consider coming to this event. It's looking to be pretty spectacular!

Domestic prisoner prevails

Published: Oct. 24, 2006 3:00 a.m.


Girl forced into servitude recounts her story in court; Irvine captors get prison terms.:
By GREG HARDESTY//The Orange County Register

 When authorities found her, the 12-year-old girl was shabbily dressed with reddish hands caked with dead, hard-looking skin - the result of being forced to work as a domestic servant for a large Irvine family.

Monday, at the culmination of Orange County's first federal prosecution of a human-trafficking case, the girl, now 17 and in a caring home, told a judge how she lost nearly two years of her childhood.

"Where was their love when it came to me?" the teen said, sobbing. "I was a human being, too."

Just a few feet away, the couple who treated her like an outcast in their new home in a gated community, forcing her to care for their five children and do housework for no pay, somberly awaited sentencing.

"What they did to me will scar me for the rest of my life," said the girl, Shyima. The Register is identifying her only by her first name at the request of her foster parents. "They treated me like nothing."

At the end of the emotional, two-hour hearing in Santa Ana, U.S. District Judge James V. Selna sentenced the pair to prison and ordered them to pay the girl more than $152,000 in restitution - the amount, plus penalties, that prosecutors calculated she would have made working seven days a week for 20 months.

After expressing remorse through an Arabic translator, Abdel Nasser Youssef Ibrahim, 45, was sentenced to three years in federal prison.

His former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-Abd El Motelib, 43, who also apologized to the court for her treatment of the girl, was sentenced to 22 months.

"What happened was due to my ignorance of the law," Motelib told the judge.

In a plea deal with prosecutors, she and Ibrahim pleaded guilty to four felonies, including conspiracy and holding a person in involuntary service through force, for keeping the girl in their home against her will from August 2000 to April 2002.

 Ibrahim was ordered to surrender to authorities on Oct. 30, and Motelib on Nov. 13, but agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took them into custody immediately after sentencing for deportation proceedings. Both will be deported to Egypt after they serve their sentences, said William J. Hayes, a special agent with ICE in Santa Ana.

"I hope this brave and courageous child encourages others who may be in similar situations to come forward," Hayes said outside court.

Shyima, who comes from an impoverished family, began working in the couple's home in Egypt when she was 9.

According to court documents, the couple caught her sister - also employed in their home - stealing.

They threatened to turn her over to authorities unless Shyima came with them to the United States as their domestic servant. They struck a deal with her parents, essentially leasing her for $30 a month for a planned 10 years.

What transpired in Irvine was a modern-day saga of child slavery, according to court documents and an interview with Shyima.

Shyima was not allowed to go to school and was refused visits to the doctor.

She was relegated to a 12-by-8-foot converted room in the garage and forced to sleep on a dirty, fold-up mattress. She had no dresser, no closet, no heating or ventilation and only a black widow spider for a companion.

Every morning, Shyima would wake up the three youngest children and dress them. She would make their breakfast and pack their lunches for school while Ibrahim and Motelib slept.

While the other children in the household went to school, played with friends and visited the mosque, Shyima was shunned. She was not allowed to eat with the family and was verbally abused. Family members called her "the Stupid Girl," among other names.

Shyima was forced to hand-wash her clothes separately, in a soapy bucket she kept by her mattress.

On at least one occasion, Ibrahim slapped her for disobeying, and Motelib slapped her at least twice.

They told her she would be arrested if she went outside alone.

 One day, a neighbor saw her taking out the trash and asked her why she was not in school. An anonymous phone call tipped off authorities.

Defense lawyers argued that in Egypt it is customary to employ children as domestic help. Laws there prohibit employing children 12 and under.

Ibrahim and Motelib said in court papers that their conduct was motivated by a "well-intentioned, charitable desire to care for and support the children of an impoverished Egyptian family."

Two of their five children, both adults, have been deported to Egypt; the others, a 16-year-old girl and twin 12-year-old boys, are expected to be placed in the care of relatives in Southern California.

Shyima saw a counselor for more than year and says she is starting to move on. But she still feels anger at Ibrahim and Motelib.

Her foster parents, Jenny and Chuck Hall, 36, who are expecting to finalize adoption proceedings in December, say she is adjusting well. The Halls have three biological children and three foster children.

Shyima is a junior in high school.

She plays soccer and softball and is learning to play the guitar. She loves movies and hanging out at the mall. She plans to go to junior college and is thinking about becoming a police officer.

After Monday's sentencing, she and her parents strolled downtown Santa Ana.

They bought her a new black dress for a homecoming dance this Saturday.

Water

In 40 hours of travelling, I consumed $28 worth of bottled water.  No, I did not drink THAT much water. Instead, I consumed water purchased at a premium. It is disgusting to me, to think that I could consume the same for less than $1 if it was from the case I most recently purchased. An excess $27 went toward the luxuries of airport-purchased and room-service-delivered water.

Now, I did not pay for this, as I was not travelling for myself but for work. The truth is it is hard to be cost efficient when travelling, but to think of all those profits made on my 40 hours' worth "special" water . . .I drank my 4 litres of premium waters while 7500 children died due to lack of clean water. According to some figures I found during a google search, $28 could also be spent to provide 10 years of clean water to 3 people, not 2 days for one person!

I am so disenchanted with the ways of this world. Our pleasure and luxury blinds us. 

How Two People Changed the Future

Two sponsors changed the lives of two children and ended the line of poverty. Wow, that is success. I doubt our welfare program works that well

http://blog.compassion.com/poverty-stops-here/

Bailout Plan by Tim Glenn

“It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.” –Bono.

I don’t mean to make light of the current economic crisis in the United States, but there’s a part of me that wonders if we don’t deserve this.

As a country, we have been getting fat and lazy while two thirds of the world struggles just to stay alive. Not all of us, mind you, but collectively — as a country — we’re complaining not because we can’t survive but because our luxuries cost us more than we want to spend.

We want cheap gas and “affordable” four-bedroom homes. We want 200 channels on television and to be able to go out to eat two or three times a week.

As Americans, many of us believe we deserve those things. There’s a sense of entitlement. Meanwhile, on the other side of this tiny little planet of ours, someone is praying, pleading to God for a slice of bread.

So our government is working on a bailout plan. How can we maintain the “American way of life” without suffering the consequences of our decisions? A loan. We’ll loan ourselves money and turn a blind eye to the root causes of greed and selfishness.

We do that so well, don’t we? We attack problems by trying to change the circumstances, instead of battling the root causes. I know I’ve done it in my own life, so this is as much an indictment on me as it is on anyone else.

Then I start to think about the poor.

What is the bailout plan for that family living on less than $2 a day in a developing country? The family who struggles not with wants for luxury but needs for survival. Who will bail them out?

The answer, oddly enough, is us. Yes, the same “us” that’s struggling in the midst of this economic downturn. When our economy is bad, it trickles down to the poorest of the poor.

Higher food costs and fuel prices mean their $2 a day doesn’t go nearly as far. We have to look beyond ourselves, now more than ever, to be the church God intended us to be.

The Church is God’s bailout plan for the poor.

I’m not saying we should throw money at poverty and turn a blind eye to its root causes. I understand why Bono is frustrated over the lack of funds, I really do. But money alone won’t stop poverty.

It goes deeper than that. Besides, I think the Church can do better than any government. We understand the spiritual implications that despair and hopelessness cause. And no one can meet those needs better than the Church. If we’ll just be the Church.

This is a time to pray. Not just for the economic crisis in our country, but also for the ones hit hardest — the poor. And, there’s something else we can do: give more.

That’s right . . . more. I know it sounds odd, but what if, instead of hording our money during this time of economic struggle, we decided to be more giving? Wouldn’t that be something?

Imagine the headlines: GIVING TO THE POOR IS UP — EVEN AS STOCKS DECLINE. At the very least, we can’t afford to cut back on our giving. The poor simply cannot survive if we do.

I don’t know what giving more means to you. It could be sponsoring a child. It could be giving to a fund that feeds the hungry.

Maybe it means going on a mission trip and getting your hands dirty. But this is the time to do it. Now. Not tomorrow. Not to change circumstances . . . but to attack the roots.


Click the title to see the original post on the Compassion Blog