by Karolyn Hart

I am looking out over a perfect fall day on Lake St.Clair. The sun is warming, the seagulls are playing in the wind, and the only word to describe what I am witnessing is “peace”. Yet my mind is a thousand miles away and flooded with images of children.

Children who should be laughing, playing, napping and peaceful but who are instead being ripped from their mothers arms and forced prematurely into an adult world that will take their innocence and in many cases their lives.

I am in every essence living a life like most North Americans.

My home city of Windsor Ontario is making the news lately because of our devastating economy. The collapse of the automotive industry has not been easy on my friends and my family.  Many are without jobs and the future that was once filled with security and hope is at best uncertain. I am one of the blessed few.  Both my husband and I still have our jobs in tact.  A blessing I never take for granted.

Yet even as another negative headline fills my local paper I can’t help consider how abundantly blessed the Detroit-Windsor region is in comparison to the rest of the world.  Human Trafficking is currently a global epidemic. Legislators and politicians are beginning the arduous journey to fight against an evil that many in North America believe no longer exists.

Let’s call it the ugly name that it should be called.

Let’s call it something that is not modernized and does not make it sound abstract.  The word that it has been known for centuries and makes my stomach turn is slavery.

27 million people around the world are currently enslaved. More than any other time in human history and yet our headlines in North America make mere mentions of it.

I want every mother reading this post to do one thing for me.

At some point this week, you will check in on your precious little ones as they sleep and watch the restful rise and fall of their chests. I want for you, in that moment, to imagine the horror of them being ripped from your arms to never be seen again.  Worse than that, I want you to have the knowledge that they are alive but they have been sold and are someone’s slave.

If they are lucky, they will be working in a field or a sweat shop. Perhaps their owner will not beat them and give them a meal at least once a day.  If they are not lucky, they will be assaulted and violated in a way that no animal,  a grown adult, let alone a child should have to endure.

Imagine that nightmare. Are you sick to your stomach? Are you disgusted?

Mothers around the world are living your worst nightmare.  Every inch of our human being should be outraged. The abolitionists who fought so hard in the 1800’s had no idea this would still be continuing in the new millennium.

Over the last year I have read book after book on the history of slavery.

There is so much that North Americans share with those in the past. We cannot imagine it today, but there were many good people that told themselves that ’slavery wasn’t all that bad’. They refused to believe that people were taken in the manner they claimed. They referred to it as ‘humane’ and even argued that slaves were not ‘branded’ like they said and it was just stories that abolitionists made up to help their cause.

Today, we know the stories were not made up. There was no need to exaggerate as the incidences of abuse and the types of abuse were no less than horrific.

Two hundred years later nothing has changed - except that more humans today are enslaved. When I was uneducated I would hear the word slavery and think naively that I was so grateful I didn’t live “back then”. I was like most, believing that if there was “slavery” it was certainly not an epidemic and it was something happening “over there” in small manageable numbers.

If there is one thing of which I am certain it is this.

To bury my head against the brutality of this evil is to allow it fester and grow. Just as those brave souls that went before us, we must, become educated. We must also become activists. Shouting, yelling aloud, to anyone who will listen.

In the 1800’s abolitionists refused to take sugar with their tea when they discovered it was made by the blood of slaves. This tactic allowed every person whether on the street or living in comfort a way to protest the brutality of slavery.

Will you join me?

Times are tough - but are you willing to stand-up to evil? Are you willing to begin the simple task of inquiring about where the products you purchase are made?

The International Organization for Migration is urging consumers to not buy products made by migrants exploited for their cheap labour.

I am new to this journey and I am joining the ranks of those that are already in the fight. I am beginning with a voice. Sounding the alarm to those good women that read this blog, that love their children, and have compassion in their hearts for other mothers.

Are you willing to take the time to discover if the towels that you wrap your sweet babies in after a bath are worthy to do so? What if it was made on the sweat of a six year old child forced to work in a sweat house and collect remnants off the floor?

If it were you, if it were your child, wouldn’t you pray that other mothers would find out and stop the demand so that maybe one day your precious son or daughter could be returned to you?

Where do we begin?

We begin with knowledge.  We  must spread the word and spread it quickly.  Send this blog to your friends and to your family.  As I research and discover ways to make a difference I will post the materials here.

Next, take up the cause for yourself.  Speak with the leaders in your temple, synagogue or church.  Ask your children’s teachers what they teach on slavery in their classes. Write your local paper - just have a voice.

I know not where the future will lead, I only know that a future where children are enslaved is not something I want. So, I will fight and I ask that those who are disgusted and heart-broken as I am will fight also.

Filed under: Author Karolyn, Change the World, Work