Pam shared a story of oversees human trafficking on cocoa plantations. Americans spend 13 billion on chocolate. The major candy vendors have not made substantial progress on ensuring. 80% are women and children. 70% are trafficked into sexual slavery. Slavery is second most lucritive crime in the world. It’s happening all over the United States. Some estimate 300,000 children in the US are enslaved. Pam shared about what the trafficking looks like in Denver. The truth of the matter is that many “good” people know about specific situations but chose to do nothing.
What can we do?
1. Awareness. Abolisionist estimate that it will take 10 years of awareness efforts to educate the general populous about the issue so that (like domestic violence in the 1960s).
2. Get Invovled. Pam detailed some organizations that are involved in directly working against human trafficking and some instances of people going into these fields (especially oversees). (http://www.ijm.org/, http://www.polarisproject.org/, etc)
What can we do here?
Gary Haugen’s books bring a lot of hope: http://www.amazon.com/Good-News-About-Injustice-Witness/dp/0830822240
Not for Sale has chapters: one meets at Greenwood Church, Second Wednesday of month. 7pm. Next one is December 8th. Next organized activity is to “adopt a truck stop” where members are going to bring literature and fliers at local truck stops to raise awareness among truck drivers who might come into contact.
IJM has a “Abolisionist Guide” for churches. http://callandresponse.com/takeaction.html has a great number of places to get into. Fair Trade coffee. There are Fair Trade Certified product lists are available. More information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade.
Conant has a hotline for Denver. Polaris is doing a CSEC training for at risk young people around Denver.
Not for Sale has a Slavery map of the US.
More was discussed that I didn’t get to type in, but it was a great conversation. Thanks to Pam Harvey for making it down to see us.
