Name: Cyrus Fawkes
Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, International Workers Rights
Date of Fieldwork: February 10, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Meredith Dank
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :
On Thursday, the 10th of February, our social justice group interviewed Meredith Dank online. Meredith Dank is a consultant in the Urban Institute, specifically the Justice Policy Center. She researches a broad variety of topics such as sexual and human trafficking, teen dating violence, victimization and LGBTQ+ issues. She has gone on travels to eight different countries to conduct research and was even a part of a white house stakeholder meeting for survivors of victim services. Meredith was also the principal investigator in two sexual and human trafficking related studies, overseen by the US Department of Justice.
Meredith can definitely be described as courageous. She was willing to do anything to further her research and was extremely invested. She recalls experiences where she was in harm’s way but still continued. There were neighborhoods that she visited where kids were being hit by cars while trying to haggle on the street. Trying to help enslaved people, she told us about the ways that you can be freed. There is the possibility of living out your contract but this is very difficult to do and you will be facing terribly unethical working conditions for years but there is also the option of escaping. This doesn’t happen a lot but it’s still possible and it shocks me that innocent children have to escape their jobs because they aren’t allowed to leave. Luckily there are people like Meredith that give out a third option where they can bust the people in charge but this rarely happens and this is still a major problem.
One of my questions that she began to elaborate on was, “is there ever a situation where you see people in front of you that desperately need help but there is nothing you can do?” “All the time,” she said. Because many of her trips are funded by organizations and universities, she often can’t interact or help the people in need. It pains her to do this but it is necessary because if she helps one person, more will follow. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to reject somebody that is being treated so poorly but I feel so bad. She has also been up close with the people that run the child labor trades but she couldn’t do anything about because it might risk their freedom. This was my favorite part of the interview because I felt like it was an extremely interesting point that people often don’t realize.
Overall, it was a fantastic interview that our whole group enjoyed. After our interview my mom, sitting next to me, joked about how she was basically the perfect person for our topic and it wasn’t even an exaggeration. She was! I learned so much about child and enforced labor through her years of experience. It was disappointing that the call was online but I would love to go more in depth with certain issues and talk to her again another time. She also gave us a cool connection that might lead us to another interview. There is a certain type of chocolate bar that you can find at stores and when you open it up, it details how it was specifically made without any child or forced labor and what it is doing to fight it. I am definitely interested in that and I thank her for a super educational interview.
