Fighting Slavery Today

Abolitionists ended the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Slavery, however, has not been abolished. Slavery remains a brutal and ugly fact of life today.

Millions of people suffer in slavery. Millions. At least  twelve million. Maybe as many as twenty-seven million.

Slavery has other names. Euphemisms hide the fact that we are talking about slavery.  Slavery is called human trafficking, or sex trafficking. Slavery is called bonded labor, or  forced labor. All of that is simply slavery.

Slavery takes many forms.  Slaves work as field hands, harvesting crops. Slaves work as seamstresses in back-alley sweatshops. Slaves work as kidnapped fishermen, and as abducted child soldiers. Slaves work as common laborers so deeply in debt that their obligations can never be repaid.

Slavery was the topic of two front page stories in The New York Times just last week.

On Thursday, April 5 we learned of a thirteen-year-old girl in India sold into slavery by her uncle. This child’s owners are doctors. They have plenty of money.

But they barely fed their slave. They paid her nothing for her work. They beat her if her work did not meet their expectations. They used closed-circuit cameras to make sure she did not take extra food. And this story is by no means an isolated instance. In India alone there are an estimated thirteen million  “workers” between the ages of five and fourteen. To learn more, click here

In another story, appearing on Saturday, April 7, we learned of widespread sexual slavery happening in Spain, with women abducted into prostitution and held there against their will. See details here

Slavery happens not only in countries remote from us, like India. Slavery is happening right here. Including, for example, in Quincy.

This is so according to a report by Paul Taylor, an investigator with the Massachusetts licensing division. He told his story on the WGBH series “Sexual and Human Trafficking in the Boston Area.”

Paul Taylor saw women being taken against their will back and forth between Quincy and Dorchester in a van whose windows were blackened. They were being held in a home in Dorchester equipped with a guard dog and security fence. The full details are in the transcript of the WGBH broadcast; click WGBH Sexual Trafficking

The most effective organization in Boston fighting slavery here by helping children trapped in prostitution is a national project based in Boston called “My Life My Choice.” The project is dedicated to rescuing girls who are being sexually commercially exploited. That’s the term for children trapped in the sex slave trade. “Sexually commercially exploited children.” To learn more and to support My Life My Choice, click here

Our likely mental image of prostitution is out of date. This business is no longer primarily conducted on street corners by women propositioning men. Prostitution happens instead primarily through the internet. Pimps place advertisements on websites geared to that purpose.

One such website has received a great deal of attention, as well as much well-deserved condemnation, in recent weeks. The site is called Backpage. Shockingly, it is owned by the Village Voice company, the one that publishes the liberal Greenwich Village newspaper.

The Village Voice is making money from child prostitution arranged and supported by the website that it controls. How much money? The group monitoring such matters found that Backpage makes 22 million dollars every year by selling ads for prostitution.

The Village Voice knows this is happening, but insists on its right to publish the ads. Here, in the Twenty-first Century, the Village Voice is in the slave trade and profiting handsomely from it.

To urge the Village Voice to shut down the adult ads on Backpage, click here

Here is another immediate way to work on the abolition of slavery: pressure our Congress to pass The Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Twelve years ago, Congress passed that law. Under it, the federal government increased its efforts to protect victims of trafficking. The law strengthened efforts to prosecute traffickers. It allowed for increased prevention measures. The law provides funding for programs that help victims of trafficking, including shelter and legal services.

The law expires unless Congress reauthorizes it. This happened three times before: in 2003, 2005 and 2008. All three times, Congress routinely reauthorized the law before it expired.

Last summer a bill was introduced to do the same again. The bill had wide bi-partisan support. The introducing Senators included both of our Senators from Massachusetts.

But the bill has not passed. It is caught in the ongoing legislative stalemate of our Congress.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act has expired. It must be renewed. To learn how to join the effort for renewal, click here

Slavery is an abomination that should long ago have been eradicated. It is up to us to continue the fight to ensure that the slaves go free.