The American Slave Trade

Not Quite a Teen, Yet Sold for Sex - Nicholas Kristof

This news story exposes the truth of human trafficking in America.  I'm sharing it because we have no excuse to turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to this injustice happening right in our own backyards.  This little girl, a normal American kid, went to her friend's house to sleepover after getting in a fight with her mom and was never seen again.  She was forced into sex slavery and wasn't allowed to leave.  Her pimp emotionally bound her, beat her, brainwashed her, made her feel like she was in trouble, and made daily threats against her life.  The story talks about many issues regarding our American blind eye to sex trafficking, how even cops will arrest minors in prostitution when they were trafficked into slavery.  How there are no spots for rehabilitation centers for these girls and boys because the need is too high.  There's 1000x the need than what is available.  And who is fighting for them?

There are so many complexities to injustices in the world.  Reading about the stalemate between South and North Sudan is heartbreaking, that ethnic cleansing is still happening and thrives despite the divorce and human rights violations are being committed on both sides.  How Hersheys Chocolate uses child slaves to get their cocoa beans.  How entire countries run on corruption and dysfunctional division.  That's why I am here.  To learn about what I can do to be part of the solution.  Because problems like these are complex, and none of us can just go in with sword and demand justice (in prayer we can though).  HOWEVER, does that mean we just throw our hands up in the air?  Oop.  Too hard.  I don't care enough.  Let someone else handle this.  I wholeheartedly believe we can't.  I wholeheartedly believe that everyone can make a difference, even just by learning about an issue.

Learn about human trafficking in America.  It's everywhere.  What's more, this is something that can be fought without negative externalities.  Better and more informed law enforcement, targeting the pimps and johns and not the prostitutes, criminal trials against the Pimps and the johns - all perfectly feasible goals.  Learn about it!  Then maybe we can STOP living in our deranged comfortable middle class mindset and pretending like a widespread, networked, global INDUSTRY doesn't exist.  It lives and breathes and feeds off of ignorance. 

- Katrina Doyle