Human Trafficking Awareness Day

Today, as of a Senate resolution passed in 2007, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, and as announced by Barack Obama, this month is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. There are lots of crazy things going on in the blogosphere, from the mess that is the current state of HTML5 for folks who make websites, to the goodbyes to Emergent among emerging and missional church folks.

These crazy things are all important to me and deserve their own virtual ink, but at the moment I feel strongly that it is necessary to reflect today upon our brothers and sisters, all 27 million of them, oppressed by the world’s most lucrative criminal activity. I want to mourn for my own complicity in this system.

I want you to mourn for your complicity in this system.

Today, Julie Clawson wrote this:

We all participate in the system. Even if we don’t pay for sex – our cheap produce was picked by slaves, our clothes were sewn by slaves, our dishes were washed by slaves. We are all funding systems of slavery and human trafficking. We are all pimps.

If that pisses you off – it should. Don’t roll your eyes, or say it’s preposterous. Get over yourself and deal with it. Truth is truth even if it hurts.

She continues and gives really basic things that you can do today to try to fight human trafficking. Be encouraged by these things. I also want to draw attention today to folks who are dedicating their lives to ending slavery in all its various forms, and encourage you to see and support things they are doing.

• Not For Sale

  Not For Sale is an organization that strives to gather a network of activists to bring slavery to light and help bring action from them. They work in, and allow you to get involved in, a variety of areas, from awareness to policy to economics.

• Abolish Slavery Coalition

  This organization does amazing things in bringing awareness and seeking policy changes, but is also deeply entrenched in finding, rescuing, and providing for the aftercare of men, women, and children around the world who are caught in slavery.

• Polaris Project

  This is one of the largest anti-slavery organizations in the country, and works in a variety of ways, both in the States and abroad, to imagine a world without slavery.

• Call + Response

  This is a documentary, full of music and voices of activists, released in 2008 concerning the global slave trade. Since its release, it has been traveling to screenings around the country, with 100% of its profits going to fund global abolition projects. These screenings are still going on because the story seeks to touch communities, and has chosen not to sell DVDs to individuals yet.

• Innocence Atlanta

  My city, Atlanta, is one of the worst cities in the country for human trafficking. Yes. Atlanta. Innocence Atlanta is a group of wonderful people, several of whom we have met and talked with, who seek to expose the sex trade and rescue and rehabilitate victims of it in this city.

These are just a few of the things that are going on. These people and organizations reach into brothels and sweatshops, farms and villages, and also reach us in our churches and schools and boardrooms. Celebrate them, and join them.

• 11 Jan 2010
• Comments 0
• Posted In activism