Not For Sale

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing." -Edmund Burke

The horrors I'm learning about...

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today.

I don't know about you, but the word "slave" makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Slavery doesn't exist any more, I'd like to think. Abraham Lincoln signed the papers 160 years ago, and slavery become illegal. There are no more slaves...

But there are. There are sex slaves. There are slaves forced to fight and kill. There are slaves forced to work long hours for a wage far below the legal minimum. There are slaves trafficked across international borders to a country where they don't know anyone and can't speak the language. Slaves who are told that if they try to escape, they will be found, and they will suffer.

People bought by other people. People "owned" by other people.

That makes me even more uncomfortable. That makes me mad.

Slavery today is much much different than it was 160 years ago... back then, slaves were a long-term investment. Slave owners had a reason to keep the slave alive. I'm not saying conditions were any better for slaves then than they are for slaves now, but slaves today are disposable. Once a slave exhausts his or her usefulness, a slave owner can easily get another one at no great expense. There's no reason to treat them well, honestly.

In Cambodia alone, there are currently 30,000 children exploited in the sex trade. And that's just one small country. What have we done about this?

The kids I'm spending time with every day here in Uganda were also abducted to be slaves. Eighty percent of the LRA ranks are child abductees; boys forced to smash their own brother's head with an ax, or girls starved to death by their rebel leader until they give in and have sex with him. And what do we do?

Nothing. We do nothing. What if it was your own child, stolen from your home and forced to perform unimaginable "duties"? What if it was your own child, starving and crying and cold? What if it was your own child dying?

"To say that the poor have rights means to accept that street children hold the exact same value as our own children. Our society is not yet ready to affirm this truth." -Lucy Borja

Again I ask, what have we done about this injustice? We haven't even tried to learn about it, because it's uncomfortable.

Well, perhaps if the abductors were stealing oil rather than children, the world would pay more attention.

It's foolish to assume that this is only taking place in third-world countries like Cambodia and Uganda. Yes, the majority of trafficked people come from impoverished places, but did you know that 75% of all New York apparel-manufacturing firms are sweatshops, using forced labor or paying workers below minimum wage? Foreigners are trafficked to the United States from at least 35 countries.

I had no idea. I can honestly say I didn't know the statistics were that high. But now that I know, I promise you and I promise those slaves that I'll be doing my research before I buy my clothes next time.

Slavery could be taking place in a hotel you stayed in last month, or the nail salon you went to last week, or in the karaoke bar you drove past last night. I wouldn't be surprised. And now it's a whole lot closer than you thought, and now you could reasonably do something about it because it's close to home. I said it last blog post and I'll say it again... we must refuse to accept a world where one individual can be held the property of another.

It's much easier to ignore the injustices in the world than it is to take a stand. To take a stand would mean making some sacrificial personal choices. But I encourage you to try. The pursuit of justice inevitably creates a social legacy.

I am mad about this right now. I apologize if this post sounds judgmental. I'm mad about injustice, especially when we can do something about it... especially when I can do something about it. I just read a book called "Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade- and How We Can Fight It" by David Batstone. As the title suggests, it brings to light much about what is currently going on in the world in regards to trafficking. It's where I got the information I just wrote about. I can't stop thinking about it, and about what we can do.

I'm so thankful that all of this will pass away one day. Broken political systems, inequality, nationality, slavery, all of it. Love will win the end. Why don't we act like it?