Monday, April 11, 2011
I’m in Fresno today, instructing the Human Trafficking of Minors course for the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force. A year ago the OCHTTF received a grant from the California Emergency Management Agency to create this course. I was invited to be one of 50 “subject-matter experts” from the fields of law enforcement, victim services, legal aid, prosecution, and research, among others. I now occasionally assist the OCHTTF in teaching the course. So far this morning I’ve been discussing the broad range of circumstances that have led to an explosion of human trafficking, and misery, in the past twenty years around the globe and across our county.
We discuss globalization, economics, international migration, social factors, violence and, in particular, how children are exploited via the commercial sex trade, domestic servitude, and other forms of forced labor. The lecture is filled with acronyms; CSEC, DMST, PTSD, TVPA, NGO, USAO, and the list goes on. It can be a bit overwhelming for some, because today’s forms of slavery are complicated, often blurry, and require a broad skill set, and nuanced view, to detect. Shades of gray run throughout our work.
Tomorrow will mark 150 years since the start of our nation’s Civil War, a conflict leading to the deaths of over 620,000 citizens. More Americans died during the Civil War than in all our nation’s conflicts since. The Civil War tested our nation’s resolve on two issues; ”…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
President Lincoln, speaking at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetary at Gettysburg, reminded his audience that our nation would not tolerate succession, nor slavery. Great battles were fought, and lives were lost , to free the slaves. The following year, 1865, passage of the 13th Amendment (legally) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.
Most Americans view slavery from this paradigm of black and white; it is the history of our country and how most of us learned about slavery. Today, most Americans are shocked to learn that slavery still occurs in our country, and in much broader, complicated ways. Teaching about slavery today, our discussions go beyond (figuratively speaking) black and white, to understanding federal and state laws, continuums of control and violence, Stockholm Syndrome, gender-bias, principles of supply and demand and economic elasticity. It isn’t always easy to explain or, for anti-trafficking professionals, to integrate into our response to the trafficking of slaves.
Ultimately, these modern complications, these shades of gray, must be understood if we are ever to abolish slavery. But 150 years ago Americans took up the fight because slavery was wrong. It is still wrong. And that is pretty black and white.
