The Ugly Scar of Slavery

Slavery is an ugly blemish on America’s history, yet for all that we have managed to overcome since the days of 3/5 of a person slavery is not dead in the United States. Slavery is, despite the efforts of the United Nations and freedom loving countries, a booming market. Many people from Latin American countries and from Asia pay thousands of U.S. dollars to traffickers who will take them illegally to the U.S. To pay for this service most work in sweat shops, but many more will work as prostitutes. It’s not just the U.S., it’s global, and it’s much worse in other countries.

Human beings, forced to work for years under threat of death – or worse the death of a family member or child. Children, little girls who should be riding tricycles and eating ice cream cones are forced into prostitution.

The side effects of this disgusting reality are even more disheartening. The spread of AIDS and other STDs in Africa is in large part due to men who have sex with these women and children prostitutes, getting the disease from the child and taking it home to their wives, who give birth to children with life threatening STDs.

They money made from the slave trade is surely linked to terrorism, whether fundamental Islam, or other forms of terrorism in the local countries. Drugs are not doubt a partner industry with the slave trade, as is modern day piracy. A whole host of criminal enterprises are interconnected with the slave trade. And worst of all people’s rights as human beings are being violated, and the peace and security the rest of the world’s free people have is threatened by pandemic diseases, drugs, and o host of other illegal troubles.

So how can it be stopped? Well there is hope, and it begins with changing the lives of one person at a time. I strongly encourage you to research International Justice Mission. This organization is dedicated to the rights of human beings as creations of a loving God who made us ALL equal. The women of the sweat shops, the girls of the sex trade, and the men and boys of bound labor need your help.

One of the most powerful things you can do to help IJM and millions of slaves around the world is to write your state representatives, your governor, your Senate and House representatives, and the President. Let them know that you care about these injustices. It will make all the difference in the world when IJM lobbies in Washington for action.