01/04/2025
I want to talk about slavery.
I want people to ask more questions about this issue. I want us to be unafraid of challenging what we’ve come to understand about freedom — what is the real cost of freedom? Who truly deserves it, and why?
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. This annual observance offers an opportunity to raise awareness and reflect on the growing issue of slavery.
Slavery is one of the most persistent, increasingly complex, fastest growing and ever-evolving crimes in human history.
Slavery relies on systems that reward the practice of commodification—the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things (objects, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals) into commodities to be bought, sold, and consumed for profit.
Enslaved people exist in systems that benefit from cheap, forced, or unpaid labor. They are present in spaces where labor practices go unchecked or where actors lack accountability for abuse, intimidation, manipulation and exploitation.
Enslaved people are often the most vulnerable—marginalized by race, age,
gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, disability, and s*xual orientation,
ethnicity and or religion.
Enslaved people are often the unacknowledged workers behind the fashion we wear, the electronics we use, and the food we consume.
Enslaved people are human beings.
As consumers and citizens, we must ask ourselves these questions: What does freedom truly mean? Who gets to be free? What is the value of a human life? How much is a person’s time and energy worth? How are we unknowingly supporting systems that keep people trapped in cycles of oppression? And, perhaps most importantly, what cultural norms, ideologies, and systems do we perpetuate every day that sustain the practice of slavery?
This month encourages us to examine the underlying cultural behaviors that perpetuate such exploitation.
The solution to slavery will demand our collective courage and creativity to imagine and create a society where the value of ALL human life is not measured by the profits it can generate, but by the dignity and freedom that every person deserves.
