What’s happening in your neighborhood?
Posted by Amanda , Monday, March 29, 2010 12:32 PM
Speaker: Ro Potter
Topic: Human Trafficking
Staring into the face of the nasty, gross injustices in this world is a hard thing to do, but that is exactly what we did this past week. My heart was a mess—some days I literally felt like it was ripping out of my chest. The pain and anger from hearing stories of girls who were trafficked, abused and beaten was overwhelming. The intensity of last week is difficult to explain with words, but I need to try. I need others to understand what is happening in this world. It is not pretty.
For those of you that don’t know what human trafficking is, it is defined by the UN as being the recruitment, transportation, or harboring of a person by means of threat, force or deception for sex, labor, slave-like exploitation or the removal of organs. There are an estimated 27 million people in slavery today. To put that in perspective, there are 20 million people living in New York. Imagine every single person in New York being enslaved…along with another 7 million on top of that. Crazy, huh?
Trafficking is a huge industry and pulls in at least $32 billion a year. If you buy a girl through a trafficker, you can make back the money within one week by selling them as a prostitute. People are pulled into the industry of trafficking because you can buy a person and use them countless times without having to keep paying or getting more resources. They use people in all spans of the world, not only in prostitution. People are being enslaved to make our clothes, our chocolate, our coffee, our household furniture and appliances. Do we know where our things are coming from? Children are used as soldiers, used to murder and kill against their will. They are used in other forms of labor: housekeeping, construction, casinos, strip clubs, hotels, nail salons, massage parlors. The possibilities of where they are being used are endless.
Trafficking is happening everywhere. It could be happening in your local town, a rest stop by your house, in your suburban neighborhood. It’s not just in the cities or in poor areas. This is a real problem and it’s close to our homes. People get trafficked into the United States all the time.
“Everyone can fight human trafficking. Knowledge is power. Talk to a friend about human trafficking. Watch a documentary, educate yourself. Talk to government representatives. Ask them what your city is doing to fight trafficking,” says Ro Potter.
Fighting this is probably going to cost us. If anything, it will break our hearts. But is it worth it? Yes.
It’s easy, at least for me, to feel disgust and abhorrence for these traffickers. But it’s important to remember that they are human too and something in their past has led them to this place. It’s also important to remember that this industry is fueled by the demand. Men want cheap sex, easy gratification—so they buy a prostitute. We want cheap products—so they force young children to work for free to make those products. Someone needs an organ—so they drug someone and remove the organ without their consent. We have the responsibility to know where our stuff is coming from.
There are a million things I can say about human trafficking. Mostly, I just think we need to realize that God has a huge heart for this issue. These people, women, men, children—they never escape God’s eyes. He can’t get away from the pain they are going through. And what’s close to God’s heart should be close to ours. God wants us to bring justice for these people. If we aren’t doing that, if we aren’t listening to what He is saying to us…He will find other ways to do it. We can see that through the many secular organizations that are doing amazing things to stop these injustices.
So…the question is:
Are we listening?
