The Trafficking Blog

Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter just came out with The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today.  If you are looking for an informative book about slavery in the United States, this is almost certain to be a good one.  Kevin is a social scientist who’s been a huge resource and inspiration in the past for various people in the abolitionist movement and Ron is an historian who has written on slavery both ancient and modern.  They’ve been working together to put out The Slave Next Door, and a blog entry by Ron is included below with permission.

Kevin Bales is a man who brings the tools of social science to the problem of slavery.  Essentially, he learned one day that slavery–yes, actual slavery!–was a cause being agitated against by a few people at an event he happened to be attending, and he was horrified to learn slavery still continued.

He decided to make a difference, so he brought his skill set to bear on the problem.  The result was Disposable People, one of the most informative books one can read on the subject of trafficking. It garnered considerable praise and went on to inspire many modern-day abolitionists.

Julia Ormond, for example (the star of Sabrina and Guinevere in First Knight, among many other things, and a wonderful woman) learned a great deal about slavery from Kevin’s book when she was asked to become UNODC’s Goodwill Ambassador for Human Trafficking.  Her testimony before Congress on the issue was both informative and inspiring, and Kevin (along with many others) had a part in inspiring her to that.  He provides thoughtful analysis of a subject that most people are too discomforted to touch with a ten-yard-pole, and is president and co-founder of Free the Slaves.

–Terry Lee Wright

“A Blight on the Nation: Slavery in Today’s America”

The American humorist Will Rogers once said, “It ain’t that we’re so dumb; it’s just that what we know ain’t so.”

Certain things we know to be true. We know that the South kept slaves, and the North fought a righteous war of liberation. We know that the slave trade was legal right up to the Civil War. We know that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves, and that the United States has been slavery-free ever since. These things we know – and none of them are true.

On the other hand, most of us do not know that slavery not only exists throughout the world today; it flourishes. Slavery is legal nowhere, yet it is practiced everywhere. With an estimated 27 million people in bondage worldwide, this is twice as many people as were taken in chains from Africa during the entire 350 years of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. In seeking to place blame, we’re tempted to point to the “emerging nations” as the culprits, whereas in fact slavery exists in such “civilized” countries as England, France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, China…and the United States. Most Americans are clueless that slavery is alive and flourishing right here, thriving in the dark, and practiced in many forms in places you’d least expect.

As a student of history, I’d always assumed that slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment. Some years back, I had written nearly an entire book on the pre-Civil War slave trade when I stumbled on an account of slavery – in present-day America! My first response – a common one, as it turns out – was denial: “No way. Slavery has had no place here since the time of Lincoln.”

Only after extensive research did I discover that slavery has always existed on this continent, from the days of its European discovery right up to the present day. Christopher Columbus enslaved the Taino Indians, setting a precedent that was followed by every European power to claim land in the New World. Slavery became the social and economic order. After the Civil War, and for decades right up to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, planters practiced a form of debt bondage known as peonage, binding workers and their families to the land in an unending cycle of slavery. For over sixty years, our own government has enabled worker abuse and slavery through the mismanagement of its “guest worker” program. And now, with the global population more than tripled since World War II, and with national borders collapsing around the world, people – in their desperate quest for a way to survive – have become easy targets for human traffickers. And once again, America is a prime destination.

So how many slaves are we talking about? According to a U.S. State Department study, some 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States from at least 35 countries and enslaved each year. Some victims are smuggled into the United States across the Mexican and Canadian borders; others arrive at our major airports daily, carrying either real or forged papers. The old slave ship of the 1800s has been replaced by the Jumbo Jet. Victims come here from Africa, Asia, India, Latin America, and the former Soviet Republic. Overwhelmingly, they come on the promise of a better life, with the opportunity to work and prosper in America. Many come in the hope of earning enough money to support or send for their families. In order to afford the journey, they fork over their life savings, and go into debt to people who make promises they have no intention of keeping, and instead of opportunity, when they arrive they find bondage. They can be found – or more accurately, not found – in all 50 states, working as farmhands, domestics, sweatshop and factory laborers, gardeners, restaurant and construction workers, and victims of sexual exploitation. These people do not represent a class of poorly paid employees, working at jobs they might not like. They exist specifically to work, they are unable to leave, and are forced to live under the constant threat and reality of violence. By definition, they are slaves. Today, we may call it human trafficking, but make no mistake: It is the slave trade.

Nor are native-born Americans immune from slavers; many are stolen or enticed from the streets of their own cities and towns. Some sources, including the federal government, estimate in the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens – primarily children – at risk of being caught in slavery annually. Although these figures may be uncertain, even inflated, the precise number of slaves in the United States, whether trafficked in from other countries or enslaved from our own population, is simply not known. The simple truth is, we’re looking at a crime that lives in the shadows; it’s hard to count what you can’t find.

What is particularly infuriating is the fact that this is a crime that, as a rule, goes unpunished. For the moment, let’s accept the government’s estimate of about 17,000 foreign nationals trafficked into slavery in the United States per year. Coincidentally there are also about 17,000 people murdered in the US each year. The national success rate in solving murder cases is about 70%; around 11,000 murders are “cleared” annually. But according to the US government’s own numbers, the annual percentage of trafficking and slavery cases solved is less than 1%. In 2007, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division obtained 103 convictions for human trafficking, with an average sentence of 9 years.

And to further complicate matters, when they are rescued, slavery survivors often deny their situation.  There are several reasons for this: the language barrier, a deep sense of shame, fear for their lives and those of their families in their country of origin, and a sense of obligation to pay their debt. In addition, the traffickers work to brainwash them to fear the police and immigration officials. And in some instances, they come to identify with their keepers.

We don’t yet know how President Obama will respond to the human trafficking crisis; it’s too soon to tell. But we do know that the response under the Bush Administration was inadequate on any number of levels. In a speech on trafficking, Bush once stated, “We’re beginning to make good, substantial progress. The message is getting out: We’re serious. And when we catch you, you’ll find out we’re serious. We’re staying on the hunt.” Strong words. But the unvarnished truth is, with less than 1% of the bad guys apprehended, and less than 1% of the victims freed, the flow of human “product” into America continues practically unchecked.

Finding out about the slave next door is the kind of knowledge you can’t “unlearn”; the only question is, what do you do with the information once you have it? It’s a question we must all answer for ourselves. We tend to think of our America as the country where slavery has no place; the dire truth is, we are pretty far from freedom, and it will take a lot of work and dedication – by the government, and by us – to make it so.

-Ron Soodalter

The Slave Next Door by Kevin Bales (www.freetheslaves.net)and Ron Soodalter ( www.RonSoodalter.com )

Majlinda, in River of Innocents, is a fictional character.  It’s hard for us to read her story even though we know she’s fictional, because it’s a hard story–but its message is profoundly hopeful, and she is valiant.  She’s a heroine.  She’s someone who shows us the strength we can find in ourselves when others need us, someone who acts as a surrogate mother to the stolen children around her because they need her to, someone who is broken but also forges herself into someone incredibly strong.  We are proud of her, and feel terrible sorrow for what she endured even when we see the dream of a world without slaves that her suffering is for.  And we know, fundamentally, that she is a fiction–a realistic one, one we can believe in, and someone who is real to us, but still a fiction and a character whose sorrows are meant to do good.  She suffers to show us the reality.  It wounds us to see it, but it also makes us stronger.  It gives us the hope of truly building that world without slaves, it gives us the hope of moving beyond a place where we buy and sell our kindred spirits for tuppence and a stiff drink.

But Majlinda’s name comes from someplace simple.  The month of May.  Springtime.  A taurus.  A name with a feminine ending so it doesn’t sound masculine to an American ear, but a name that sounds strong when it needs to be, like the summer wind.  An Albanian name, because she’s an Albanian character.

I came across this today.  A story from the guardian about another Majlinda.  An Albanian girl, thirteen instead of seventeen, trafficked to Greece, brought back to Albania and taken to Italy by speedboat, a year in Florence, moved by car to Amsterdam.  Trapped sometimes physically, sometimes psychologically, and enduring the things we don’t like to talk about.  Dark things, like Majlinda.  Beating.  The first rapes, the twenty clients a night.

After having a baby, she went to a group of Catholic nuns who reach out to prostitutes.  They helped her back to Albania, but her family was ashamed and told her she was dead to them.  She was in a shelter in Tirana when the article was written.  She was also seventeen years old after four years of being a slave.  That’s as old as River’s Majlinda was when she began her story.

The truth is, every victim is River’s Majlinda.  Every survivor, every person who goes through this terrible crime.  We let this continue, and we don’t have to.  Ask yourself what you can do, and you’ll find an answer.  It’s not nothing.  It’s something.  Even if it’s something small.

These stories make me sick.  They make us all sick.  These young women and men are our kin, born in a slightly different life and walking down a slightly different road, and then…

The rest is not silence.

It’s slavery.

So make a difference.  Stand up, and make a difference.  Talk, shout, scream, do, volunteer, donate, teach, ask, believe–even believing we can end slavery is a step–believe you can make a difference and then do.  Even a small one.  Isn’t the chance of freeing a slave worth a little effort?

I am pleased to announce the release of River of Innocents.

One of the worst crimes in the history of man is human slavery. Unfortunately, it didn’t end in the American Civil War; it was only outlawed. Today there are thousands of slaves in the U.S. and millions more overseas. They’re real people, just like you and me, but they’ve been sold or tricked or kidnapped into slavery.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought a tremendous fuel to the abolitionist movement in the time leading up to the Civil War. It helped to free the slaves, by making the slave human to the world.

River of Innocents is an Uncle Tom’s Cabin for today’s world, where slavery is still very much alive. Today’s slaves are real people, flesh and blood and beating hearts, and more of them are sold each decade than were sold in the entire 400-year-history of the African slave trade.

River of Innocents: In a world of stolen children and broken dreams, the seventeen-year-old Majlinda struggles to hold on to her humanity. She has no control over her life or even over her own body, yet where people are disposable, where rape is part of the normal day, and where guards watch her every move, Majlinda strives to create a family out of the stolen children around her and to give them hope when all they know is fear.

River is a novel about that hope and that terrible fear, about ideals in the face of despair, about the strength we find in ourselves when others need us, and about slavery as it is. If we are to end today’s slavery, we must first know of it; here is the story of Majlinda’s long struggle to be free.

www.riverofinnocents.com

River is what I’ve been working on lately–you can confirm what I’ve said about slavery via the “Slavery in the Media” link off of the web site, or by doing a web search for “New York Times Magazine The Girls Next Door” or “Human Trafficking.”

I wrote River because I learned about people not very far from me who were kept locked up and were rented out ten and twenty times a day and more. “Rented out” in the sense of “raped by men who paid to have sex with them.” On their best days, they might only be raped a few times.

When you learn about something this bad, one of the first things you do–after you can feel anything through the rage, the sadness, and the disbelief–is you ask “What can I do about it?”

River of Innocents was the answer. Uncle Tom’s Cabin worked 150 years ago: it made a difference and helped to free thousands of slaves. River of Innocents is Uncle Tom’s Cabin for slavery today. It is a part of what I can do–of what we all can do–to free the slaves.

Please read it, and talk about it, and spread the word: Slavery is real. Slaves are real. They’re in the world today, and we can help to set them free.

~ Terry Lee Wright

Please post this all on your blog–here’s a link to the html–or write your own message about it. Promotion code ttb7q530 gives a 10% discount at the publisher’s website through the end of May.

Remember, every day thousands of people are enslaved for the first time. Every day counts. We can make a difference–but we need to start now. Every day counts.