Birthday girl!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

The family member that keeps the family's members updated on everything. :-) The most necessary position for a mom to have. ;-)

Slave trade anything BUT over.

I've been consumed in a book called "Not For Sale" by David Batstone. My cousin Sarah gave me the book at our last family reunion. You may not have a chance to read the book, but I strongly encourage to take a minute and read the following article written by my cousin and published in Emmanuel Research Review:

Not For Sale: An introduction to the topic of human trafficking

by Sarah Durfey, Massachusetts Co-Director of “Not For Sale”

As a poor farmer in the countryside of Cambodia, you are struggling to get by—hardly keeping enough food on the table for yourself, much less feeding your children and elderly parents. With so many mouths to feed you wonder if you will all survive another dry season. With these worries on your mind, you jump at the chance to give your daughter a better life. Your wife’s cousin visiting from a distant village promises she has a good job for your daughter, where she will get an education and be able to send money home to help the family. How could you pass up this opportunity?

You are a single mother in Moldova. Your son is growing up, and you don’t have enough money to pay for school supplies to send him to kindergarten. Your relative’s friend has offered you a job as a waitress over in Italy. You turned it down before. Now, you feel you have come to the end of your rope. There are no jobs in the Moldova and you are the only one who can provide your son with any kind of future. If you leave him now, you can go make enough money to send back, and hopefully return within the year. (Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It by David Batstone)

As a mother you try to hold back the tears as you watch your eldest son, 10 years old, walk off into the distance, but he must go find work. There is nothing here and too many mouths to feed. A passing traveler had once spoken of many job opportunities near Ghana’s Lake Volta. So your son marches off in that direction, along with a few other young village boys. You hope he will be safe, find work, and will be able to return with enough money to get the family through this next season. (http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=247)

Angry and upset you run out of your house—away from your mom’s screaming tirades and her boyfriend’s abusive words and actions. You run—not sure what to—but anywhere on the streets of Boston must be better than that hellish house. The first night you curl up in a dark corner, seemingly hidden from patrolling eyes. Without having captured much sleep you get up and stretch at the first noises of morning—or mostly due to the fact that you are in the way of the trash barrels being dragged out on the curb. That day you hang with a group of young people. As a girl, you feel you need to be tough—you need to fit in—but they seem chill, and offer you a smoke. Later they offer to share some crack with you —why not? The next day you have some more, and the money you grabbed out of your mom’s purse is quickly slipping away. You don’t even care—you want to forget the world. A few days later the money is long gone—you haven’t eaten and you can’t go another hour without a fix. You can’t help but think of the guy who offered to supply you with as much cocaine as you want in exchange for some kind of sexual services. You had refused then, but now? (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07kristof.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1241701476-C4dtHXJwOQaVscj7VEQsEA)

You have been tricked and your daughter has been SOLD You left hoping for a better job, but found yourself SOLD Your son arrived at the lake and was quickly SOLD You are desperate for drugs, and have been sucked into prostituting yourself; you are repeatedly SOLD…beaten and threatened with death for any attempt of escape.

Modern Slavery

Two years ago I thought slavery had ended with William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln. I had no idea how many people were being bought and sold today around the world. They are exploited for labor in fishing, farming, weaving, as well as for commercial sex. When David Batstone, founder and president of the Not For Sale Campaign, came and spoke at Gordon College, he shared a story of human trafficking that happened in nearby Worcester, Massachusetts. At that point I knew I had a part to play in bringing this slavery to an end.

Not only is slavery still happening, but research shows there are more slaves in the world today then ever in human history, even more than during the entire course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade! The estimated number today is 27 million people who are in conditions of slavery around the world, 80 percent of which are female, and just over half are children. (http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/)

The term “human trafficking,” used to describe modern slavery, is somewhat confusing because it implies people are moved from one place to another, which is often, but not always the case. There are many layers of complexity, but a simple explanation would be: someone being held by force, fraud or coercion, against their will, to perform services with little to no compensation. (http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/105487.htm)

As people are being enslaved all over the world, such as in India, Cambodia, Uganda, Brazil, China, Haiti, Peru, Italy, England, and here in America, grassroots researchers are sharing their findings at http://slaverymap.org to publicly display cases discovered around the world as an awareness, prevention, and advocacy tool.

Trafficking in the United States

Thousands are brought across our borders into the United States. Often they are tricked by the promise of a better life, education and a good job. Yet upon arriving, they find themselves in debt to someone who plans on exploiting their labor and/or bodies for sex until they work off the debt, which somehow only increases as time goes on.

Many United States citizens are also trafficked from their homes. Youth are abducted; talked into selling their bodies to make some money for drugs, or even college, and then are trapped. They are not allowed to leave under threats of death or harm to their families. Often the pimp convinces the girl he loves her and wants to take care of her. He buys her nice things in the beginning but later begins to abuse her and sell her off each night. She’s been brainwashed to believe he is her only protection.

Homeless children, runaways, and foster kids are at the highest risk of being picked up by a pimp/trafficker. The pimps know what to look for on the streets. They can spot the emptiness, which allows them to enter in and take hold of another life. Sadly the market is growing, and they can get a good sum of money for a young girl, especially a virgin. Drugs are used up after one use, but a person can be used over and over. Getting caught with drugs in your trunk is a straightforward criminal offense with harsh consequences. Trafficking however, can be easily disguised.

Restaurants, factories, and farmers can make a much higher profit if they do not have to pay their employees. They can force, rather than pay for overtime and control their workers every move. Traffickers may say it is just a business that it is only about the money. But these are human beings made in the image of God and they should not be for sale.

Trafficking in Boston

Within the city of Boston there are multiple forms and cases of trafficking. Sexual exploitation is the most obvious, as it is advertised on craigslist and other websites selling erotic services. The underground systems of forced labor in farms, restaurants, and domestic house servant/slaves throughout the Boston area are harder to track.

Here is an example of a forced servitude case, discovered in Boston in the neighborhood of Brighton:

Tahira Juma, a Boston University School of Public Health graduate student, and her husband Saleem Al-Khaboriof, an engineer, faced a federal lawsuit for "engaging in human trafficking and modern day slavery" in 2004. The couple came to Boston in January 2003, from their native country of Oman so that Juma could study at Boston University, according to the suit.

Naseem Mohamed Siraj, who had been a member of the couple's household staff in Oman, alleged that the couple threatened to abandon her in Oman with no money to return to her family in India, where she has three children, if she didn't come with them to Boston.

In Boston, Siraj was forced to care around-the-clock for four children ages 4 to 10 and was paid sporadic amounts totaling about $1,250 for 15 months. She had no bed and was fed only the children's leftovers, according to the suit.
She was never allowed to leave the home alone and endured "a constant barrage of verbal taunts, abusive language and disobedient behavior from the children," the suit claims.

When she vowed to leave, her employers "intimidated Mrs. Siraj by telling her that if she left, she would be arrested and thrown in jail." (http://slaverymap.org)

After the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2004, task forces were started across America to address the issue of human trafficking. Here in Boston the task force has been hard at work investigating, rescuing victims, and prosecuting traffickers, as well as networking, and building relationships between social services and law enforcement, students, faith-based communities, and businesses.

The Boston Task Force is directed by Karen McLaughlin, and is made up of various social services, the FBI, state troopers, the Boston Police Department, the General Attorney’s office, and many others. More information on the MA anti-Human Trafficking Task Force can be found at http://httf.wordpress.com/.

Boston is now home to the database for the all the task forces across the nation http://www.humantrafficking.neu.edu/ and there is a growing number of students and faculty engaging in the issue. Reaching across multiple schools, Human Trafficking Students http://humantraffickingstudents.webs.com/ in Boston hosted :Destination Freedom: A Learning Approach to Engaging the Issue of Human Trafficking/Modern Slavery” in April 2009.

How to Get Involved

The Not For Sale Campaign is a national organization, which is beginning to take root here in Boston. There are many opportunities for volunteering and active engagement at multiple levels to be a part of the modern abolitionist movement. Everyone can use what they love to do, and where they work to make a difference. We can help spread the word that slavery still exists, assist survivors of trafficking in meeting basic needs, raise money for a safe house, help to document cases, or participate in the investigation of potential trafficking locations.

There is also the consumer side of labor exploitation to consider. Often we are supporting slave labor by the purchases we make. The production of most chocolate, sugar, cotton, and other common products, are entangled in trafficking activity. Yet, we can decide to shop differently and support fair trade products that make a point to be sure there is fair wages paid to everyone down the supply chain. People can visit www.Free2Work.org which is a Wikipedia-style site, created to help consumers make wise choices, and to urge companies to change their policies to not be connected to slave labor throughout their supply chains.

There are an increasing number of churches getting involved in the Not For Sale “underground church network.” This is a vital and driving force in the movement as churches respond to the call to be instruments of love and righteousness in society. As the Body of Christ we are his hands and feet. We are called to give, and to serve. We have a hope that is greater than all of the brokenness and evil in this world. As Christians we must stand up against this oppression and let our words and actions proclaim the good news of freedom! We must help to rescue victims of trafficking from their physical bondage and share the amazing message of the hope that we have in Christ. It is a message of true healing and redemption from the scars of abuse.

We have a choice: will we take a stand and act to end this modern day slavery? Or will we sit back and let history take its course, and by apathy contribute to the problem?

Choosing to take a stand for justice will require living differently. We will need to pay more attention to where the food we eat and the clothes we wear are coming from. We’ll need to stand against the force of our culture’s perspective on women as sexual objects and the glorified pimp culture. We’ll need to reconsider our approach and perspectives regarding the women and young girls ensnared in prostitution by predatory pimps and the men who are buying. We need to take a stand and call out in a different voice. We need to speak up for those whom society has forgotten and demand the end of slavery.

The Sprit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. —Isaiah 61:1

Images provided by Not For Sale Campaign

About the Author

Sarah Durfey is the Massachusetts Co-Director of Not For Sale. She graduated from Gordon College in December 2008 with a degree in sociology. While at Gordon she was actively involved with many campus ministries and organizations to help initiate the start of an abolitionist group on campus, which has grown and joined forces with other Boston area schools in a student network. Sarah interned at the International Institute of Boston last spring, and is working to network and build the community around the issue of human trafficking within and around Boston. If you would like to learn more about human trafficking or what Not For Sale is doing in Massachusetts, Sarah can be contacted at sarahd@notforsalecampaign.org

Renewed

Lying in bed this morning I got the feeling that the sun was up waiting for me. Quietly, but presently it shone through the crack in my curtain and shade. I tossed and hit snooze. Then, I sensed that the Son was waiting for me. Another five minutes in bed and I'd have less quiet time. The Son of God wanted to meet me here this morning. I accepted. Got up, put the shade up and let the sun in. Went to the kitchen, readied my coffee, opened my bible to Proverbs 21 and let the Son in. Prayed with Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, and let the Son work in me.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day.

All in the Genes.

Where did the blonde get her genes? My Dad's side and my Grandma in her younger years. The Lord took her home this past February. Her genuine love for our family keeps us keeping on despite our differences.