One of the world's deadliest cities lies just south of El Paso, Texas: the border town of Ciudad Juarez. For nearly two decades, murder and rape have rocked the town, especially its women, leaving an estimated 10,000 unsolved and uninvestigated murders since 2007.
The violence in Juarez is one of the workshop topics at Cal State Fullerton's seventh annual Social Justice Summit this weekend. Karley White, a fourth-year women studies major, will attend the workshop, which is titled “Women of Juarez.”
“People aren't really informed about it,” she said. “It gets thrown under the rug and is not really investigated. It's hundreds of women that have been killed. And this issue kind of gets ignored.”
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Thus, the theme of the one-day summit this year is appropriately titled,
“Unite to Rise Above Apathy.” White is one of 15 students who've
organized the event, which consists of over two dozen
workshops that touch on a range of issues from higher education,
immigration policy, and animal rights in the food industry to the
struggles of transgender folks, U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East
and the Occupy protests. Ron Thomas, father of slain Kelly Thomas, will also
lead one of two workshops on homelessness in Orange County. The more
popular workshops, White said, are “Human Trafficking 101” and
LGBT-related topics.
“The whole day is vegan,” explained Amy Mattern, CSUF's Volunteer &
Service Center coordinator in reference to the day's lunch hour. “The
shirts [we pass out] are sweatshop-free and the centerpieces [at the
lunch tables] will be tomato plants people can take home and plant in
their own backyard.”
The summit will open with a speech by Dr. Jeb Middlebrook, who teaches
sociology at the University of Southern California, and closes with
spoken word artist and community activist Abraham Medina, who's
described as “undocumented, unapologetic, and unafraid” on the event
website.
Both speakers will address the importance of caring about social justice
issues, which Karley White and her fellow organizers feel is a
sentiment lacking among friends and family. “Social justice, to me, means being there for your fellow human beings,”
she said. “[It means] knowing and caring about what's going on in the
world and taking an interest in ensuring equality around the world.”
