This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Unbound Conference put on by a group called The Freedom Initiative, who works along with many other great groups in Seattle who are trying to bring an end to modern slavery. It was a great conference, with speakers who talked about every aspect of slavery from lobbying the government and prosecution of offenders to understanding victims and how to care for them. A lot of the information was stuff I already knew from my work with People of Purpose and Seattle Against Slavery. It was good to hear again and be reminded of, but I really resonated with what David Batstone (president of Not for Sale) said in his keynote address: “We focus so much on spreading awareness, which is good, but now is the time for action. The only way to end slavery is to come up with new paradigms and put them into practice.” That’s a paraphrase, I didn’t write down the exact quote, but I think I’m conveying the main idea behind what he was saying. He shared some of the new, creative ideas that Not for Sale is putting into practice and challenged us to figure out what each of us could do personally, then proceeded to give us a list of options for personal action, so we’d have no excuse for not doing something. So I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last few days, trying to figure out what my own personal response should be, and I decided to start by writing this blog to challenge others to respond as well. As one of the other speakers, Kevin Austin, said we shouldn't need more statistics in order to convince us to do something. There are an estimated 27 million slaves around the world right now, surely we don't need more convincing. Heck, even if they find out tomorrow that there's only 50,000 people in bondage or even say a mere 500, that's still too many as far as I'm concerned.
Often I've heard that ignorance is what’s holding back change, which is why I think so many anti-trafficking groups focus on awareness campaigns. I felt really convicted when David Batstone said that he sees selfishness as the greatest hindrance. Wow, that hurts. I mean nobody wants to be ignorant, but to know about the problem and be too selfish to do anything to solve it is even worse. I definitely know about the problem, so I've decided that my next personal step toward ending slavery will be to be aware of which products and companies use slave labor and stop purchasing them. It's not going to be easy, so feel free to hold me accountable! I don't know if I'll ever meet any trafficking victims face to face, but if I do, I don't want to have to tell them that they were forced to work in inhumane conditions under threat of violence because I was too selfish to change my habits as an American consumer.
So what will your response be? Maybe you agree that something needs to be done, but you don’t know how to respond. You can start by using some of the resources made available by Not for Sale, International Justice Mission, and other anti-trafficking NGO’s. Here’s some great websites to check out:
www.slaverymap.org -- Don't believe that slavery happens in your own backyard? Check out this website to see cases of trafficking around the world. Keep in mind these are only the cases where perpetrators were caught, and someone reported it to the makers of the website. This is only a tiny percentage of the total amount of trafficking going on.
www.callandresponse.com/33responses.html -- Check out this list of 33 ways to respond including sending medical supplies to survivors, spreading the word, volunteering time, and donating money.
http://chainstorereaction.com and http://free2work.org -- Be a wise consumer. Refuse to purchase products that were made with slave labor. Check out these websites to see which companies are working to have slave free supply lines.
http://www.ijm.org/justicecampaigns and http://seattleagainstslavery.org/legislation.aspx -- Make your voice heard by writing your senators and representatives or by signing petitions to support better anti-trafficking legislation.
http://freedomsunday.org/church-planning-guide/ -- Get your church to participate in Freedom Sunday.
There many other resources available, but those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Hopefully at least one of them is a way you can get involved personally.
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