Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 229

“I saw the text messages from other women before we got...

“I saw the text messages from other women before we got married. My parents warned me but I married him anyway, without their permission. I thought he’d change. Now he leaves for days at a time. He tells me: ‘Calm down. It’s nothing. They come and go. But I live with you.’ But I can’t calm down. I think about it all the time. Whenever he’s out, I think about it. I try to keep busy and calm my mind but it’s gotten so bad that I’m seeing a doctor.”

(Rasht, Iran)

“I’ve fallen in love with literature. I try to read for one or...

“I’ve fallen in love with literature. I try to read for one or two hours every day. I only have one life to live. But in books I can live one thousand lives.”

(Rasht, Iran)

Today in microfashion… (Tabriz, Iran)

Today in microfashion…

(Tabriz, Iran)

“He tried to take a social studies test for me once. But...

“He tried to take a social studies test for me once. But we got caught because he wrote his own name.”

(Chalus, Iran)

“She had heart surgery when she was four years old. It was a...

“She had heart surgery when she was four years old. It was a very hard day. We all stood around her bed and told her that there was nothing to worry about. But all of us were terrified.”

(Namakabroud, Iran)

“It took us ten years, countless doctor appointments, and...

“It took us ten years, countless doctor appointments, and three miscarriages to have her. So we never feel bothered by her cries.”

(Namakabroud, Iran)

My last stop this summer is Iran. Iran holds a special place...

My last stop this summer is Iran. Iran holds a special place in my heart because it was the first international trip that I ever made with HONY. But that was three years ago, and I’ve always looked back at the collection with a tinge of regret, because HONY was still quite new and the work was pretty uncooked. I was only just beginning to include quotes alongside the photographs. I always wished that I could return and do a better job telling the stories of ordinary Iranians, and I’m excited to have that opportunity.

A Final Word On Pakistan:Imagine that every time you have a...

A Final Word On Pakistan:

Imagine that every time you have a lapse in judgment, it gets printed in newspapers around the world: every time you lose patience with your children, every time you scream at someone in traffic, every time you drink too much and do something you regret. Each time you slip up, everyone hears about it. The world is never notified about the 99.99% of the time that you are a completely normal, productive, law-abiding citizen. The world only learns about you when things go wrong. Now imagine what the world would think of you.

It’s not that terrorism, patriarchy, and violence aren’t real problems in Pakistan. They exist and the country is battling these issues every single day. Pakistanis are very much aware of the extremism in their midst. The problem is that so many people seem to only be aware of that extremism. Because just as in the hypothetical example above—the other 99.99% of life just doesn’t make the news. When there’s only room in the newspaper for a single column about Pakistan, it’s going to be filled with the most compelling story. And unfortunately, that tends to be the most violent story.

And those are important stories. Those are the types of stories that expose corruption, stop genocide, and alert the world to emerging threats. It’s right for those stories to be told. But when those stories are all that we hear, it’s so easy to imagine a world that’s far scarier than it really is. You lose sight of the 99.99% of the world that’s not scary at all. And living in fear can be a dangerous thing. Because if we’re afraid of each other, we’ll never be able to work together to solve our common problems.

Before this fundraiser, Fatima had exhausted her financial...

Before this fundraiser, Fatima had exhausted her financial resources in the struggle against bonded labor to the point where she feared that she’d be unable to pay her own medical bills. Thanks to everyone who donated over the past 72 hours, she now has nearly $2 million to continue her organization’s fight against bonded labor. (To fully visualize this impact, it should be realized that the purchasing power of a dollar in Pakistan is about 5x greater than in the United States.) This is an absolutely transformational amount of money. Fatima is meeting with the board of the BLLF to plan a major expansion of their efforts, and she wanted me to pass along this statement:

“From BLLF and from all of the bonded labourers, thank you. Thank you to everyone who has opened their hearts and donated to our cause. I struggle to find the words, I don’t think I have the words to tell you how grateful we are. You have donated for freedom, for rehabilitation and we are indebted. Thank you so much. The prayers of every labourer are with you and they will always hold you in their hearts. Our responsibility now is to honour what you have trusted us with, and we will. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we want to build a real freedom center in Lahore, here we can work on not just releasing families but rehabilitation. We want workers to be treated with the rights they deserve as citizens.

Pakistan faces a lot of challenges, and we want industry to thrive in Pakistan, but the labourers must be free. You cannot make people work by beating and chaining them. I believe that the day the owners understand me, that the day the worker is happy, the profits will be greater. Labour rights need to be regulated, owners have the right to make profit but not through abuse, and deprivation. That is not an industry, that is slavery.

This is a big step for labourers that this has received so much attention, and that their voices have reached a global stage and we are being heard. With this we hope to end bonded labour in Pakistan.”

Yesterday 40,000 people donated over $1,000,000 in fewer than...

Yesterday 40,000 people donated over $1,000,000 in fewer than 12 hours to help Fatima end bonded labor. The fundraiser currently sits at almost $1,400,000. There were no perks offered. No ‘reward levels.’ This was motivated by nothing more than genuine compassion and a desire to empower a woman who’s devoted her life to freeing people trapped in modern slavery. Thank you so much. Fatima has prepared a statement that I will post shortly.

I want to conclude this series with a story that will show you the character of the person you’ve just empowered. This is one of thousands of anecdotes that reveal a person who is more committed to humanity than to her own safety or comfort:

Recently a family trapped in bonded labor got in touch with Fatima. They told her that they could not escape their owners, and that the girls in the family were being sexually abused by the owners. Fatima immediately jumped in her car and drove to the kiln in the middle of the night. She told the family to run. The owners woke up and began to fire guns. The family reached the car, but the youngest girl—only four years old— had fallen down and been captured.

For three months the child was missing. Fatima went to court and begged for intervention, but the police kept insisting that they’d searched the kiln, and no child could be found. “I couldn’t sleep,” explains Fatima. “Every night I laid in bed and could think about nothing but this young girl in the hands of her brutalizers. I stayed awake all night thinking about how I could rescue her.”

Fatima recruited several other laborers to help her. Dressed in rags, they went to the kiln and pretended to be workers. They spent several days searching. They couldn’t find the girl anywhere. But from the owner’s house, they heard constant crying. They went back to the court and demanded that the house be investigated. The girl was found. But for weeks, she would not eat, talk, or cry. Fatima eventually learned that every time the girl would cry for food, the owner would beat her.

(Lahore, Pakistan)
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I’m going to leave the fundraiser up for the remainder of the day.
Anyone else who wishes to donate, can do so here: http://bit.ly/1N9W3Ts