Slavery Footprint

Not long after my last presentation on my book and human trafficking, one of my parishioners let me know how horrified she is that she has around 100 slaves working for her.  She figured this out by looking at slaveryfootprint.org, an excellent website to learn more about how we can tangibly reduce our slavery footprint (like a carbon footprint).  My wife said the same thing when she discovered that she had over fifty.  Some of the questions are hard to answer accurately or refer to one-time purchases and may skew the actual result, but the conclusion remains the same: OH NO!

The purpose of slaveryfootprint.org is not to alarm you.  The purpose is to inform you.  Of course, your alarm serves a purpose, too, in that once you see how terrifying your slavery footprint is you’ll be more likely to want to change.  The website then gives you a bunch of detail on what goes into your slavery footprint so that you can adjust your lifestyle and choices accordingly. 

 Even then the number will probably remain high.  I suppose that I am slightly more simplicity-oriented in life and slightly more informed on slavery than the average Westerner, and so I have made slight adjustments to reduce my slavery footprint, and yet I still have thirty-seven or slaves working for me.  At the end of the day, even if we entirely remake our lives to limit our footprint, we probably won’t eliminate our footprint until we also influence society to remake itself.  That’s an unfortunate truth, but we know it’s true looking at how we reduce our carbon footprint.  If we ride our bikes everywhere we go, don’t use electricity or have solar panels that cover our electric usage, and have geothermal systems to heat and cool our homes, we’d still have a carbon footprint (which is sad, considering how expansive and demanding these changes to our lives I’ve listed are).  How?  Well, where do we buy our food?  Is it all local?  If not—and it’s almost surely not because in most places it’s actually impossible to only buy local and still eat anywhere near healthy—then we have a carbon footprint because our food had to be transported.  Dangit!  We’d then have to change the way our society produces and distributes food to completely eliminate our footprint.  One example of at least a handful.  Another example: do we use paper? If yes, is it hemp paper?  If no, and it’s paper made from wood, then we are contributing to the rise in carbon dioxide in the environment because trees breathe on carbon dioxide.  Moral of the story is simple: we must make radical changes to our own lives and also make radical changes to how society operates.

 Moral of the moral: go to slaveryfootprint.org and learn how you can make a difference with, often, simple life changes.  Find out how many slaves are working for you and how exactly you can reduce that number.  Remember, a law of economics is that supply always seeks to meet demand.  If we limit demand then we limit supply.  And when we consider that the supply consists of human beings, each and every one of whom deserve dignity and respect, then we should get to work.  We also see that sometimes a product can look so enticing that having a supply creates demand, but that side of economics relates more to societal changes and that comes later.

 One quick lesson to take away with you, especially if you don’t go to slaveryfootprint.org right after reading this: don’t upgrade your cell phone.  Or, at the very least, make sure that you recycle your phone in a place that will properly reuse the parts of the phone.  All cell phones, the way they are made today, require the use of a metal the mining of which, at the moment, uses slave labor.  Upgrade your phone and don’t recycle the old one and you are using slave labor.  Unless your current phone is broken, why do you need to upgrade it anyway?  What’s up with that?  Take better care of your cell phone in the first place, too.  Even if we recycle our current phones, the rate at which we buy and upgrade our cell phones is not sustainable using recycled product only.  If it works, keep using it; if you’re behind the times, so what?  The “times” aren’t so kind to 27 million slaves.

Worst Evil

Recently I've done a number of presentations on human trafficking and my bike trip.  Human trafficking and my bike trip always go hand in hand when I do presentations because most of my unique contributions to the fight against slavery--my reflections to help ordinary folk change their lives to combat the evil--come directly from my bike trip.  Anyway, during the presentation I always discuss how and why I think human trafficking is the worst evil imaginable.  Well, at one of the presentations a community member posed the question: "Isn't child abuse the worst evil imaginable?"  I was suddenly struck dumb.  In many cases, child abuse is related to child slavery in one form or another, but is child abuse and child molestation that is not considered trafficking actually a worse evil?

To be honest, I don't think the answer to the question matters.  Perhaps child abuse not related to trafficking is a worse evil.  That a parent could mentally or physically harm his or her own child on purpose blows my mind, especially he or she does so for some self-gratification.  Yet, as I say with pornography, I don't think that we can say there is such a thing as child abuse not related to human trafficking.  Any parent who does abuse/molest a child clearly does not view the child as a dignified human being.  Any person who uses another person for gain, as a slave, clearly does not view the slave as a dignified human being.  There's a reason why, during the African slave trade, slave owners did not want the slaves to become Christian: the owners would then have to view the slaves as dignified human beings.  If we all were to perceive our brothers and sisters in this world as dignified then there wouldn't be slavery.  So, in my book, anything that encourages someone to view another human being as not a human being is related to human trafficking.

Really, the inability to perceive all other persons as dignified and worthy of respect is the worst evil in our world.  It takes different forms but they are all related.  And it's all horrifying. 

Friends, if we want to combat human trafficking, we need to start treating one another better.  That starts with how we talk about our fellow persons.  We can't go on-line and post at the end of articles and call people creepy, idiots, ****heads, or otherwise people who don't deserve to breathe and then say, "I can't believe there are people out there who use slaves."  Well, simply by talking like we reject the rules of decency demotes culture's perception of humanity.  I mention posts at the end of on-line articles because I see that often and it's disgusting.  Indeed, on my other blog an anonymous person posted some rather demeaning statements about me.  Now, I'm not saying that we need to be nice to everyone.  Sometimes we need to have some difficult conversations with one another.  Dialogue often needs to happen so that one or more people can start acting better.  But we should always be polite and respectable because the people we are talking to and about are human beings.  In all seriousness, this simple change in cultural attitude will make a serious difference.

Massage Parlor in Vermont

A few days ago my fiancee did something truly great.  My eyes may or may not be tearing up as I think about it and how proud I am of her.  Without doubt, she found a front for human trafficking, called the Human Trafficking Hotline, and put Polaris Project on the hunt.  On the one hand, I'm thinking to myself, "With all my talking about how we need to keep our eyes open, why couldn't I have found this place myself?"  On the other hand, it's not about me at all.  It's about awareness leading to action.  It is because she knows me and has talked with me about human trafficking for countless hours, and therefore has grown immensely aware of trafficking, that my fiancee was able to realize that a certain massage parlor in Vermont is not really a legitimate massage parlor.  Awareness does lead to greater action.

I've decided that I have qualms about using names and real information of a place that hasn't yet been busted.  A whole series of "what if" questions are running through my head.  The major questions being, "What if the place happens to read my article, and they decide to pack up and move and continue enslaving elsewhere?" and, "What if some jerk-face reads this article and decides to go see what it's like being serviced by a slave at slave-rates?"  No, thank you.  As much as I would like to point out the good work that my fiancee did and show you how sketchy the place is, which hopefully would also inspire and help you to keep your eyes open for possible cases of trafficking, the conservatively reflective side of me figures it best to leave all the information in the hands of professional investigators.  The professionals can investigate the shady location, the sketchy website and the very suspicious reviews. 

Still, I can tell you, and tell you proudly, that indeed ordinary people like you and me can be greatly involved in ending trafficking.  There are bills and petitions we can sign, there are changes we can make in our own life, and if we keep our eyes open, we can help Polaris Project and other organizations do the dirty work of putting an end to human trafficking.  Your community is not free of slavery, if only because there are people living in your community who hold attitudes that might open doors for traffickers, and it is up to you to change that.  I am proud of my fiancee for performing such a great deed, and I'm sure there are many ways that I can be proud of all of you, too.

The United Methodist Book of Discipline

Human trafficking/slavery can be stopped without the help of religion or religious organizations.  Indeed, many might argue that religious organizations have contributed to the propagation of slavery, not only throughout history (which is definitely true) but even today.

I would argue that religious organizations do not contribute to slavery today but that religion does.  Being religious myself, about to be appointed as a pastor in the United Methodist Church, how can I say that?  Well, religion does accord a person the opportunity for hypocrisy: "If I believe this and do these things, then I am good; it doesn't matter what I do in my personal life."  The concept of religion opens the door for a person to have two separate beings: to structure an external life around the principles of the religion, feel good and justified for having done so; and then to ignore, because of the external image, what is going on inside the person's mind and heart.  Ignoring what's going on inside one's head and heart leads even the best of people to live a secret life, without ever feeling guilty about that secret life as long as it remains a secret.  For as long as the secret life remains a secret, the person's better half literally won't be able to comment on the secret personal life.  It may sound like I'm describing a mental illness, but I'm not--this is a natural occurrence that all people deal with on some level.  Religious people may be more susceptible to the phenomenon of tearing ourselves in two, but the vast majority of people of all faith backgrounds perform the same binary fission.  Religion may play a different role, but all people will have to deal with themselves at some point in the pursuit of ending human trafficking. 

Of course, on the other hand, all religions that I know of ask for a person's heart and mind.  While some people may use religion to split into two halves--the half that is devoted to a god or belief system, and the screwed-up half that the first half can't see--faith and religion are meant to reconcile the two halves of our being into one.  The first half of our being must acknowledge that the second half exists, and the second half of our being must declare that it wants to begin the arduous journey to hook up with the first half.  The vast majority of us love the idea of power and lust and greed, so bringing the two halves together is not an easy task.  Faith and religion, and philosophy, are the tools by which bringing the two halves of our being together becomes easier.

As anyone who reads this blog or has read my book should know, I truly believe that changing our attitudes, thoughts, and everyday actions can change the world--specifically, put an end to human trafficking.  The last few posts should make this rather clear: men are particularly good at tuning in to exploiting little girls in other countries and then shutting off the computer to go off to their "normal" lives without ever thinking about what they just did; we laugh at or condemn pornographic actors without ever thinking about how we are jealous, envious, lustful, degraded ourselves.  So, pulling together our two halves is, I think, of the utmost importance.  And yes, one can reconcile oneself without religion if that person has a great passion for human equality, freedom, and dignity, and at the same time recognizes their own humanness.  Yet I do think that religion gives us the proper tools for this task.  At the very least, religion gives us the language for the task of acknowledging who we are and how we might end slavery.

With that said, let me share with you the "Sexual Abuse" and "Sexual Harassment" sections of The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church Social Principles.  I'll write the "Sexual Harassment" section first, though it is listed second.  Notice in both of these principles how sexual misconduct, according to the UMC, is related to power, as I have argued long and hard in my book.  Notice also, particularly in the "Sexual Abuse" principle, that personal sexual behaviors, that we might otherwise overlook as personal, are directly linked to and escalate quickly into the worst form of sexual behavior: the use of sex slavery.  As I have said again and again, our attitudes can lead to bigger and more dangerous behaviors, and while we may think that we would never watch pornography or never use sex slaves, we shouldn't be so sure.  Our second half may have a small beginning, but once the separation occurs in our being, the second half can run rampant without our ever chastising it.  The language and theology and philosophy to deal with these problems has always existed, as we see in The Book of Discipline, we just haven't been thinking about it properly or using it.

David Mitchell

David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, has quickly catapulted into my top five favorite authors, of any genre.  He rocks.  Anyway, in one of his novels, Number9Dream, one of Mitchell's characters writes a poignant history of her enslavement that I want to share with you.  The novel is set in Japan, but it might as well be set in any so-called civilized country.  I'm going to italicize the part that I think is most important, because I have to remind people of the phenomenon of blissful, hopeful ignorance all the time.  Because we think we have made the world such a better place than fifty, a hundred, two hundred years ago, we ignore the realities that our own attitudes and ignorance create, and so we then vehemently reject the truth that there are 27 million slaves in the world today.  I hear so many voices ringing in my head arguing with me, "There can't possibly be that many!  I would know about it.  And in the United States?  No.  At least, no more than a few thousand."  What?  Are you serious?  That's more than ignorance; that's a harmful arrogance.

Without further ado, I will quote Kazue Yamaya's account with no further commentary.

"The doorbell rang.  I answered it, and three men barged in the door and snapped the chain my husband had trained me to use.  They demanded to know where my husband was hiding.  I demanded to know who they were.  One slapped me hard enough to dislodge a tooth.  "Your husband's case officers," he snarled, "and we [not my italics] ask the questions."  He and another searched the house while the third watched me to try to reassure my screaming son.  He threatened to maim my son if I didn't tell him where my husband was.  I called my husband at work and discovered he had phoned in sick that morning.  I called my husband's cell phone and discovered the number had been disconnected.  I called his pager--dead... My son watched with big scared eyes.  The two other thugs returned with a box of my husband's personal effects and all of my jewelry.  Then the bad news really began.  I learned that my husband had run up debts of over fifty million yen with a yakuza-backed credit organization.  Our life insurance policy had been doctored to name this organization as sole beneficiary in the event of his suicide.  The house and contents were their property if my husband defaulted on repayments.  "And that," said the most violent of the three, "includes you."  My son was taken into the next room.  I was told I was now responsible for my husband's debts.  I was then beaten and raped.  Photographs were taken "to guarantee my obedience."  I had to endure this torment in silence, for the sake of my son.  If I failed to obey their orders, the photographs would be sent to every name in my address book.

A month later I was living in a single windowless room in a buraku [not my italics] area of Osaka.  I was indentured to a brothel, and I was not allowed to leave the building or have any contact with the outside world, beyond sex with my customers.  You may doubt that sexual enslavement is practiced in twenty-first-century Japan.  Your ignorance is enviable, but your disbelief is precisely why such enslavement can prosper unchecked.  It happens; it happened to me.  I myself would have doubted "respectable" women could be forced into the sex industry, but the owners are masters of control.  I was dispossessed of every item from my old life that could have reminded me of who I was--except my son.  I was allowed to keep my son--this prevented me from escaping by suicide.  My customers not only knew about my imprisonment, they derived pleasure from it, and would have been implicated in the crime had it become public.  The final wall between me and the real world was perhaps the strongest: a phenomenon psychologists label "hostage syndrome"--the conviction that my fate was deserved and that no "crime" was being perpetrated.  After all, I was a prostitute.  What right did I have to bring shame to my old friends or even to my mother by appealing for help?  Better that they carry on believing I had disappeared overseas with my bankrupt husband.  Six other women, three with babies younger than my son, shared my floor.  The man who raped me was our pimp--it was him we had to beg for food, medicine, even diapers for our children.  He also supplied narcotics, in careful quantities.  He administered them personally to ensure we couldn't overdose... In time our old lives became detached from what we had become."

The account continues, but this is enough to capture, despite its being fiction, the reality of the cruelty that sex slavery is.  And, of course, this story could have easily been about some other form of slavery.  It's all equally unexpected and horrible.

Unknowingly Supporting Trafficking

One of my major arguments in this blog and in my book is that we all unknowingly support human trafficking in some way.  The uniqueness of my argument is that I say it is not only the things that we do that support human trafficking, but the way that we think and talk, too; our very attitudes contribute to slavery, whether we like it or not. 

There are more tangible ways that we contribute to slavery, too, of course.  I don't focus on the tangible so much as I should, though that's partly because I truly believe that if we can change our very beings to be aware and compassionate of the humanness of others then tangible acts would become unnecessary.  In helping think about the tangible, my fiancee pointed out this article to me: Unknowingly Supporting Trafficking.  

If you have been concerned about slavery for awhile now, you may have thought about how buying clothes, chocolate (or coffee and other goods) that's not fair trade, and fruit can contribute to trafficking.  You've probably also given thought to the massage parlor industry, especially considering that this blog and my book have talked a good deal about some of those.  Still, it's worth the reminder that slaves are working in various industries that produce what we consume.  The article is a quick read so I hope you'll read it.  I don't have anything in particular to add to it except that I hope you will think long and hard about how you consume products: just because consuming products does not bring us face-to-face with another human being does not mean that we can stop being aware and compassionate of the humanness of others.

Belle Knox

If you have not heard of Belle Knox, then you can Google her and learn a whole lot very quickly.  Be careful when you do so, though, because she is what most people term a "porn star."  In my book, I did my best to refer to those working in pornography as "pornographic actors," trying to return some of their human dignity back to them.  Pornographic actors are human beings just like you and me, and yet the problem with pornography is that we are able to degrade what we view through a medium--usually a computer or TV screen--to less than human; and once we do that, it's not a far jump to degrading people that we actually encounter in life to less than human.  This is why I talk about pornography in my book and on this blog: the relationship between pornography and slavery is not a thin one.  We like to think that it is so that we can go on viewing pornography whenever we have the urge, or at least accepting its presence in our society; and all the while not confront the reality that we are also contributing to the attitudes that create and sustain slavery.

Belle Knox is an interesting figure.  By now you may have paused to look her up and read some about her, so my telling you who she is might be unnecessary.  But anyway.  She is a young student at Duke University, using pornography to pay her way through school.  If you spent a lot of time looking up Belle Knox, you might have realized that there's a lot of speculative writing about her that's not based in fact.  Worse, there's a lot of negatively biased writing about her, suggesting and implying that she is a scourge.  Worse, she has become a target for hate.  Pornographic actors are victims, through and through; just as slaves are victims.

Look, does anyone really think that Belle Knox is the first or only college student paying her way through school with sex?  And why is she not the only one?  Because pornography pays!  And why does pornography pay?  Because we are a society of hypocrites!  We put up a front to the world saying that we are a good person, trustworthy and an upholder of the universal moral code, and then in private we like to degrade and demonize others in a misguided attempt to feel power, love, and self-worth.  Pornography is a major business because of our hypocrisy. 

And we do not like to admit that we are not the good people that we portray, we do not like to admit that we are insecure, we do not like to admit that we do not love ourselves, we do not like to admit that we struggle to find worth, community, and an outlet for our desire for power, so we blame all of our inner struggles on others: the pornographic actors themselves.  That way, we can degrade them all we want while we take advantage of them through a medium, then turn off the screen and walk away as if nothing happened.  What happens, though, if we ever meet a pornographic actor?  Well, then the crap hits the fan, because then we have to acknowledge that there is a part of ourselves that we do not love, and that is likewise unable to love--the part of ourselves that would rather blame others for our faults--the part of ourselves that would rather laugh at, insult, and attack Belle Knox and her family for her existence, than to ever look inward at our own darkness.  Our negative reaction toward her and her family is indicative of just how desperate we should be to change who we are. 

The reaction to Belle Knox's career choice is not surprising to me in the least, but it is extremely disappointing.  Though Knox is not the first or only female or pornographic actor to be blamed for the sadness, badness, and madness of others, the fact that we still have so much room for improvement in ourselves frustrates me, and should frustrate you.  I applaud Knox's bent toward social justice, but I pray that her motive will go beyond the rights of sex workers and instead focus on changing the hearts and minds of citizens everywhere so that one day there will be no need, no demand for pornographic actors or sex slaves: where there is no demand, there will be no supply.

Houston Trafficking

I've decided that anyone who posts anything about human trafficking on my website, on my Facebook, or on the 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves Facebook page, I will write about it here, because as I always say: more awareness leads to wider-open eyes, and wider-open eyes leads to changed lives that end slavery and, for those who can, more energetic, tangible combating of slavery.  A friend posted this article to the 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves Facebook page:

Houston Trafficking

Parts of this article are amazing to me.  Amazing in the sense that I, despite writing a book in which I try to understand people in regards to slavery, cannot understand people.  Two things stand out to me.

First, the fact that most of the people found in the house, in the squalid conditions, are from Central America.  I almost laughed a little.  We self-dubbed Americans complain and complain about "dirty foreigners," usually referring to Mexicans or other Central/Southern Americans, coming to the U.S. and "stealing" our jobs... yet it is pretty clear that we are constantly taking advantage of those less privileged in the southern American climes.  Taking people from their homes in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and other countries, probably with the promise of better lives, and then traffic them into slavery in the apparently civilized United States, is absolutely cruel and terrible.  More than that, it's also an indication of how we are taking advantage of them all the time: we shine a beacon of hope, then force Central/Southern Americans, and other down-on-their-luck foreigners, to do jobs that many of us wouldn't dream about doing.  This is one reason why I am very proud of my in-laws: all of them are honest, hard-working citizens who will do anything it takes to support a family with the utmost integrity (not that my family isn't, but since I've been born I don't know anyone in my family who has worked in a factory or at McDonald's or anything like that).  In general, though, we take advantage of those less lucky than we are, and then we complain about the very problem we create by taking advantage of them.  We shouldn't be surprised that this attitude produces human trafficking in our country.  The filth that the victims in this story had to endure is worse than awful, but there is a more disgusting filth: American attitudes that create and sustain human trafficking in this country and around the world.  Our venom is pathetically misplaced and so terribly logically inconsistent that it's laughable.

If you've read my book, the following statement will seem like a repetition: attitudes are extremely serious, and changing our attitudes, what we say, and our lifestyles, we can change the world for the better.  Even if we aren't directly involved in human trafficking, we could very well be involved in the worst evil known to humankind.

Secondly, the police that responded to the missing persons registered surprise that so many people would be at the house.  It would seem that a native of Houston was the cause of uncovering the trafficking scheme, which should jar our conception--if we can read this blog and still hold this conception--that only non-Americans are trafficked.  But anyway, why are the police surprised?  I can imagine that any time you encounter a location of slavery you'd be dismayed beyond words.  And you or I, certainly, would be surprised.  But in 2012 86 people were found in a house in the Houston area.  Five years ago an equal or greater number of people were found in a house in the Houston area.  Clearly something is going on that you can't ignore.  Yet surprise suggests that it is being ignored, at least more than it should be.  I'm not trying to suggest that the enforcement agencies of Houston aren't aware of what's going on or aren't working hard to end human trafficking, but the tone of the article is wrong.  Rather than surprise, which suggests, "I can't believe this is still going on," the tone should be, "Man, we're working hard, but we should be working harder." 

We all need to work harder.  I can't possibly say that without also giving you the following link, which, after you click on it, fill out a few lines, will be your letter to your political representative to help end modern slavery.  The world will thank you.

Polaris Project

Children of God

A friend of my brother's who has read my book has become my new best friend.  She clearly has her eyes open more than I do.  I doubt reading my book had much to do with that, but I'm glad that she has read my book and begun to direct me to certain things because I have a blog that some people read and so her passion can have a greater range.  That's how awareness works: one person's awareness can make a second person aware, and then those two people might lead to four person's being aware, and then eight, and then sixteen, and so on; soon we have an army.

Anyway, this post isn't about how awareness works (technically, all my posts are about how important simple awareness is, since I really believe that simply being aware is indeed half the battle).  This post is about the following video that Pamela, my new best friend and hero, pointed out to me:

Child Sex Tourism

Please watch the video.  The video was enough to convince me to sign up for upworthy.com's daily e-mail.  There's also a petition to sign at the end to help stop child sex tourism.

If you don't read on, that's fine, it means that you watched the video and then didn't have time for any more reading.  Good!  Watching the video and not reading more is better than not watching the video and reading more.

As I commented to Pamela, while watching the video I thought a lot about pornography in general.  I feel more strongly than ever that my emphasis on pornography and its relationship to modern slavery is justified, because more strongly than ever I see that our attitudes towards pornography are the same attitudes that will later justify propagation of slavery and child sex tourism.  One of the experts in the video talks about how men are sitting behind their computers in far-away countries virtually abusing the ten-year old Sweetie mentally and bodily, and then once they get off they also shut off the computer, go back to work and think nothing of what they've just done to a ten-year old girl.  Is pornography not the same?  We sit behind our computers or TV screens, directing the action (in the sense that we can choose and search out for whatever type of pornography we want), virtually using and abusing--a high percentage of pornography nowadays is about abuse--the bodies and minds of women and men, and then once we get off we shut off our computers and TVs and think nothing of what we've just done.  Child sex tourism is obviously a far more cruel and heart-wrenching phenomenon, but do you see how our attitudes toward pornography can quickly escalate to child sex tourism?  And then virtual child sex tourism can quickly escalate into face-to-face child sex tourism.  And then face-to-face child sex tourism can turn into local child sex abuse/slavery.

At the bottom of all of this is an inability to see everyone as a child of God.  When slavery in the thirteen colonies and the United States was at its height, slave-owners did not want their slaves to be educated in religion.  Why?  Because slave-owners, as heartless and/or ignorant as they may have been, knew that God probably didn't look kindly on enslaving fellow Christians: once someone accepted Christ as his/her savior, well, then that slave was... was... was a real person!  Oh my goodness!  We can't enslave real people!  I don't mean to say that we all need to be religious or that we need to educate slaves in religion.  Since post-modernity began its reign, I'm not sure that being religious would save a slave in the worldly sense.  I am saying that we all need to see all other people as children of God.  We don't need to be religious or even believe in God ourselves to do that.  All we need is a sense that if a person is alive, then they are just like us, a real, live person.  When we allow pornography into our lives or into our society, we acknowledge in some small way that not all people are equal.  In that case, some people are worth physically or virtually taking advantage of, worth using and abusing. 

Even if we aren't talking about pornography, there are far too many of us going around thinking that only people of the same or higher social status as ourselves are real people.  There are others of us who go around thinking that only our friends are real people.  Stop for a second and consider whether you are one of those people who don't truly believe that all persons are indeed persons.  If we think about the way we and our acquaintances talk and think, we will find that we are often or come close to being someone who doesn't view all persons as persons.  And that is our problem.  There's far too much devaluing of real, human persons going on.

Want to end child sex tourism?  Want to end slavery?  Then evangelize.  Whoa, that's a scary word.  It shouldn't be scary, though, when we are evangelizing to the radical yet not-so-radical idea that all persons are actually persons.  If we do that, then no one will be able to use and abuse another human being and then continue on with their life as if nothing happened.  We are all children of God, after all.

A Book Review

I recently read Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, Snuff.  If you don't know what Discworld is, I encourage you to look it up.  I encourage you to look it up not because I'm too lazy to describe it but because I just spent thirty minutes trying to describe Discworld and realizing I wasn't doing a good job.  Basically, though, it's a world of comic fantasy that I highly recommend, if you're interested in either fantasy or laughing hysterically for hours. 

Anyway, I wrote this book review on Goodreads and thought that I would share it with you.  If you are on Goodreads, then you can find my review and click to "like it."  I encourage you to "like it" so that others may see it.  Unfortunately, though the book is clearly about the drug and slave trade, because it is a part of Pratchett's running Discworld series--a running satire on everything--I doubt that many people who have read the book will have the same, necessary perception of the book as I do.  Whether you are on Goodreads or not, I encourage you to read Snuff, because it is a fantastic (see what I did there?  Discworld is fantasy, and I just said a Discworld book is "fantastic"... ha ha), non-direct look at how certain forms of slavery develop such a strong hold in our world, all the while being hidden from the public eye.

(Note: I've taken out some of the review that focused more on the style of the book)

"Regular Discworld copper Sam Vimes goes out to the country with his wife, Lady Sybil, for a vacation... until he finds trouble, as Vimes always does, and then has to take down a drug and slave trafficking racket.  Because of my own experience and involvement in fighting slave trafficking (check out my book, 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves) I love and appreciate this book.  Sam Vimes is, in a sense, the last person you'd expect to respect the rights of perceived lower-species (in this case, goblins), which makes the anti-slave purpose of the story all the stronger.  We can all learn a lot from the rough-and-tumble Sam Vimes about why we need to take on modern-day slavery with much more enthusiasm and strength.  Pratchett also perceptively connects the drug trade to the slave trade.  A wonderfully meaningful story is Snuff.

One of the most powerful comments that I've ever read in a Pratchett novel gets repeated by Vimes in various forms throughout the book, "You could have done something."  If you read my book, you'll learn that, indeed, when we are faced with an evil like slavery, we all can do something.  Little changes in our life, our attitudes and/or our lifestyles, can make a big difference in the world.  As the rough-and-tumble character that he is, Vimes has something specific in mind when he says, "You could have done something," but even if we disagree with his notions of literally fighting back, we should still hear his words ringing in our ears... "You could have done something."  Slavery is unacceptable in our world today, and we can all do something.

Another great aspect of this book is that it shows how hidden slavery can be.  Vimes shows up in the countryside and everything seems clean and fine.  No one likes the goblins (the potential slave population) because they are poor, uneducated thieves who can barely speak the language.  At first Vimes thinks that this is such perfectly normal behavior that he doesn't give it a second thought.  It's not so much a question of, "Who cares about the goblins (or, who cares about the poor, uneducated, possibly foreign population)?" but rather a question of, "Who even thinks about the goblins?"  The answer is, "no one really," because we all walk around with our eyes shut focused on the lives of the wealthy, hoping that one day we might join their ranks.  We might care about the rights of all people, but our eyes aren't open enough to see all the people.  We aren't a true community in any sense.  This is how slavery becomes hidden, this is how there are 27 million slaves in the world, many of whom are in the United States, without our knowledge.  If it weren't for Sam Vimes's inclination to find trouble, he wouldn't have known what was going on because he wouldn't have opened his eyes.  And by the end of the story, Vimes hasn't even necessarily accepted goblins as equal, but he does come to understand, by viewing the horrors of slavery, that all people, including goblins, are indeed people.

...

There's nothing inherently wrong with an action novel about dismantling drug and slave trafficking.  That's quite good, in fact!  I love it!  Let's write more of them! If you have never read a Discworld novel before and have a beating heart, you will love this book [and find yourself wanting to fight slavery all the more!].  But if you are familiar with Discworld, you have certain expectations that are not met. Which is okay, of course, since I'm not sure that I want to laugh while reading about the drug and slave trade.  I just wish I had some forewarning that my life experiences with slavery would come a-haunting.

And it's possible that Pratchett realized that this shouldn't be a proper Discworld satire.  There is a point in the novel when Lady Sybil, Vimes's wife, loses some of her power over Vimes and decides to just become a supporting wife as Vimes goes out to make the world a better place.  This is a powerful transition.  Yes, Snuff may not be what I was expecting or even hoping for as a Discworld novel, but, as Lady Sybil recognizes, what are expectations of a Discworld novel in the face of the drug and slave trade?  Nothing.

So at the end of the day I of course really liked this book for its focus and its story.  Sam Vimes is, in a way, your stereotypical conservative, American Southerner.  If even he can find it in his heart to respect lowly, poor foreigners who can't speak good English--I mean, goblins, and fight to keep them from being enslaved, then so should we all."

Idle Hands

There's a lot that I could write about idle hands.  You know that saying, idle hands are the devil's tools, or whatever the saying is.  I find that to be mostly true and particularly relevant to human trafficking.  But right now I'm not going to go into that.  Instead I'm going to take a more circuitous route and talk about how wasting our time with ridiculous things harms the fight against human trafficking. 

For if you have idle hands, you probably aren't using your time wisely.  This is something that I know a whole lot about, especially recently.  Fortunately I don't think that I do a whole lot of mischief in any form when I have idle hands.  I do, however, play a lot of stupid on-line games when I have idle hands.  That and I read a lot about sports.  Of course there are times in our life when we need to unwind and calm ourselves, at which time playing games and reading about or following sports can be healthy, if not downright necessary.  At what point, though, do our idle hands grow addicted to such mindless activity?

I don't have the answer to that question.  All I know is that it's a necessary question: when our idle hands addict us to mindless, useless activities (80% of what we do on Facebook, Pinterest, ESPN, etc. is mindless and absolutely useless), we quite obviously will have less time to do something productive.  By "productive" I don't necessarily mean that anything tangibly productive is happening.  Productive activities can include reading the news (real news, not ESPN) or surfing the Internet (on useful websites like Polaris Project or IJM) or chatting up a friend (friends in Congress especially).  Doing any one of these activities can be productive in many ways.  In terms of human trafficking, these activities can be productive in keeping ourselves aware of the latest updates on our journey to eradicating the world of slavery.  And I don't know how often I have to say it, even to myself, but awareness of what's going on is a major first step.  G.I. Joe knew what he was talking about.  All we have to do is transfer our mindless addictions to mindless productivity.  It doesn't take that much energy to read or chat.

I'm as much to blame as anyone.  I have never been all that good at keeping up with human trafficking bills before Congress, news stories, or recent investigations into human trafficking.  Lately I have been particularly bad about it, though, as my idle hands have diverted much of my time and energy into the most useless and lazy life I can imagine.  When there are people out there needing our help, I and we can't let such things happen to us.  There are simple, productive, and much needed things that we can be doing to bring us closer to total liberation.

Koto

The other day my fiancee and I learned that a particular restaurant that we like, Koto, has suspect business policies regarding its hibachi chefs.  There are a number of lessons from our new knowledge.

1)  The more we talk about human trafficking with our friends and family, the more we can share knowledge and suspicions of businesses that may be in violation of simple good manners towards our fellow men and women.  In this case, my fiancee had been talking about my new book with a co-worker.  By talking to the co-worker my fiancee learned that she is somewhat involved in local human trafficking organizations who have red-flagged Koto as a possible violator. 

2)  We need to be ready to change our lives and habits at a moment's notice if we hope to put an end to slavery.  My fiancee and I love going to Koto, especially since we live right across the road.  Now, though, we can't in good conscience do so.  Of course, my fiancee's co-worker said that Koto is a possible violator, and it's perhaps not a great thing to remove our business from Koto based on suspicions, but then why not?  There are many other restaurants to go to if we must eat out.  A lot of restaurants are possible violators, and we just have to keep an eye out.

3)  Indeed, we need to keep an eye out.  My fiancee and I had remarked, the last time that we were at Koto, that the hibachi chefs were susceptible to mistreatment.  They come over here to the States hoping to make a good living for themselves, in a state--Vermont--that is notoriously good for foreigners to move to.  New American residents who don't speak much English must rely on the reputation of a state like Vermont or the reputation of the American dream.  If all that they have heard and believed turns out to be false, then they won't know until they've already been sucked into slavery.  We talked about this... and yet didn't decide to do or research anything.  We should have. 

We all should learn how to be more proactive rather than simply think and wonder and talk.  Although, as I said in lesson number one, talking can go a long way.