SLCL Authors @ the J Presents Labor Rights Activist Saket Soni

St. Louis County Library and the JCC of St. Louis are pleased to host an SLCL Authors @ the J event with community organizer and labor leader Saket Soni, author of “The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.” Presented in partnership with SLCL’s Westfall Politics & History Author Series

The event will take place on Tuesday, March 14, at 7:00 p.m. at the JCC’s Staenberg Family Center – Mirowitz Performing Arts Center, 2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis, MO 63146.

Saket Soni will be in conversation with Kathy Gilsinan - contributing editor for Politico Magazine.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from Left Bank Books.

“The Great Escape” presents the astonishing story of immigrants lured to the United States from India and trapped in forced labor—told by the visionary labor leader who engineered their escape and set them on a path to citizenship.

In late 2006, Saket Soni, a 28-year-old Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of 500 men trapped in squalid Gulf Coast “man camps,” surrounded by barbed wire, watched by guards. Recruiters had promised them good jobs and green cards. The men had scraped up $20,000 each for this “opportunity” to rebuild hurricane-wrecked oil rigs, leaving their families in impossible debt. During a series of clandestine meetings, Soni and the workers devised a bold plan. In “The Great Escape,” Soni traces the workers’ extraordinary escape, their march on foot to Washington, DC, and their 23-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Along the way, ICE agents try to deport the men, company officials work to discredit them, and politicians avert their eyes. But none of this shakes the workers’ determination to win their dignity and keep their promises to their families.

Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of twenty-first-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the lives of the immigrant workers the United States increasingly relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. “The Great Escape” is the gripping story of one of the largest human trafficking cases in modern American history—and the workers’ heroic journey for justice.

Saket Soni  is the founder and director of Resilience Force, a national nonprofit that advocates for the rising workforce that rebuilds after climate disasters. He was profiled as an "architect of the next labor movement" in USA Today and named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business for 2022.

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.