The 12th Annual Liberator Awards - Saturday, March 29, 2025 - The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Banquet Hall - Columbus, Ohio
The Liberator Awards
The Liberator Awards highlight and acknowledge leading abolitionists across the United States. During the past few years, many have stepped up to the plate and worked hard to improve their grade card from Shared Hope International
About The Liberator Awards
The Liberator Awards were created by The SOAP Project to unite people from around the country who are working for the same cause: fighting human trafficking. They were also created with the hopes of highlighting the work of amazing individuals and groups. Everyone will tell you: this is hard stuff to do. We should diligently celebrate those who do it not because it is easy, but because it is right. The inspiration and namesake for this event is William Lloyd Garrison.
William Lloyd Garrison (December 12, 1805 - May 24, 1879) was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the first abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. He promoted immediate emancipation of slaves in the United States. In the 1870s, Garrison also became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement.
Garrison became famous as one of the most articulate, as well as most radical, opponents of slavery. His approach to emancipation stressed “moral suasion”, non-violence, and passive resistance. While some other abolitionists of the time favored gradual emancipation, Garrison argued for “immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves”.
How the Liberator Awards Works
Nominations:
January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month and the perfect time to honor people and organizations for their hard work in fighting human trafficking. Nominations for 'Radical Abolitionists' are made by the public before January of each year before. The Requirements are that they must be an upstanding individual or organization and do the work in the U.S. Winners are then announced at award ceremony.
Voting:
All approved nominations are then added to the website. Nominees are responsible for accepting the nomination and submitting a bio and photo. Voting is open to the public for all categories except Liberator of the Year. You can vote up to three times.
Determining the Finalists and Winner:
All nominees are winners in our eyes because it takes a village to fight this horrible crime. However, we would like to honor those who have gone above and beyond in this fight. This motivate us to keep going and also inspires others! Because this is not a popularity contest, we have added two more layers of determining the finalists and winner. Once the popular votes are tallied, the top 5 with the most votes then move onto a weighted vote from all previous Liberator Winners. The top 4 Finalists are determined and then they move onto another weighted vote from the previous and current SOAP Project Board of Directors to determine the winner of each category.
The Liberator of the Year is selected by the Board of Directors.
Other awards may also be given at the discretion of the Board.
Accepting and Attending:
The Finalists will be invited to the Liberator Awards and provided a free ticket along with a companion ticket. They will receive a free hotel room if they live outside of Columbus Ohio. We also are looking for donors to help us be able to provide airfare for the finalists. Finalists are expected to attend or have a proxy attend in their place. Not attending may result in losing the finalist position.
Tickets
We try to keep the prices of the tickets low so that anyone can attend. Many of the attendees work for nonprofits. If you would like to attend but cant afford it, please let us know at info@soapproject.org.