Courage

It takes courage to open our eyes to the world and our place in it-- without distortion, without denial--and open our hearts to respond.

Certainly, in America today, we assume the right not to be treated as resources that can be bought, traded, or used as property.  Slavery in America was abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865, relegating the ghastly stories of the infamous African slave trade to the pages of history books. ??Hasn't slavery been relegated to the dustbin of history?  The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

But what if we look beyond the declarations?  How is the "human freedom project" working out?

The shocking truth is that an estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world are in slavery right now. More than two million children are exploited each year in commercial sex trade, despite international protocols and covenants.  We look back with horror on the days when slavery was common and accepted.  But in reality there are more human beings in one form of slavery or another than ever, and with the population boom "human coin" has never been cheaper.

Take a look at San Francisco, a socially conscious city known for its political activism.  Take a turn past the Neiman Marcus at Union Square, and keep driving just a mile or so, the world morphs with chilling abruptness into the streets of the Tenderloin, named years ago for the choice cuts of meat that officers working the area could afford.  Facing the danger of working here demanded extra compensation.

This is where You Mi found herself after being "lured from her home in South Korea by international sex traffickers, who had tricked the debt-ridden college student with promises of a high-paying hostess job in America."  You Mi is just one young woman who fell into the bondage of sex slave hell—in modern day San Francisco.  She is not alone; in the U.S. an estimated 200,000 children are exploited in commercial sex trade each year.  If sex trade thrives in a country that proclaims liberty and dignity for all, a country that champions emancipation and equality, a country that emphatically bans slavery and prostitution, then what of the rest of the world?

In Thailand alone there are an estimated 20,000 street children who represent ready targets for sex traffickers and perverted pedophile "sex tourists."  According to a special report by Yeni and Sai Silp, published in "The Irrawaddy: Covering Burma and Southeast Asia," for Burmese youngsters in a Thai border town, a day of grueling work hauling goods across a bridge earns them about US $1.00.  "Small wonder that some succumb to the temptation of taking money from pedophiles," who may offer $0.50 to $0.75 for an "assignation."  With no resources, protection, or recourse, tragic numbers of these "lost children" will suffer sexual abuse, contract sexually transmitted diseases, or lose their lives.

This is not cause for despair, but for action.  The groundwork is laid and progress begun in a global fight for freedom. We are in a new phase of a mission, articulated before the House of Commons in 1791 by William Wilberforce, leader of the movement to abolish the African slave trade: "Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal…and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour." 

Today governments are (at least officially) in agreement that slavery is unacceptable, and many organizations and individuals work every day to help spread liberty further.  Most of us modern Americans are able to depend on basic freedom as easily as we depend on the oxygen that fills our lungs to sing our national anthem.  There is no doubt that we love freedom.  Let's remember that this "land of the free" is also proud to be "the home of the brave."  Let's remember that we are citizens of a world where the fight to "let freedom ring" is far from finished.  Let’s have the courage to be conscious of how far there is to go, and keep those still in bondage in our thoughts, prayers, and conversations.