Some things make my blood boil. And while usually it's just me throwing a temper tantrum for no reason, there are legitimate reasons in this world to be outraged. There are even some things which I think require outrage as a reaction. War crimes, human rights violations, human trafficking. Or, another word for that last one: slavery.
A survey I did here last week in response to a Liebster award asked me about artificial intelligence and how I feel about the possibility of it existing in our society in the future. This is a subject about which I have some grave ethical concerns, because we just haven't figured out as a society how to treat other people. And I kept thinking. And thinking, and thinking. At which point I realized that while I've brought the subject up before it's been awhile since I've talked about my outrage at the continued existence of slavery in our modern world.
There are a million injustices in the world over which we can get outraged. Hunger, poverty at home and abroad, animal rights, children's right, domestic abuse, mental health rights, the covering up of war crimes, unjust wars ... everyone has their own pet cause. And to get outraged at each cause just takes too much energy. We put our blinders on.
But this is the cause that I care about. This is a cause I think that everyone should get just a little bit outraged about. It's not a simple issue, and it's not easily confined to just one specific group of people. This is sex trafficking. This is kidnapping. This is migrant workers tricked and trapped into forced labour. This is men, women, boys, girls. This is what I get outraged about.
We've only come so far as a society when we don't open our eyes and see that yes, this still happens. Slavery may be against the law in Western society, but it still happens. This is one of our most basic, fundamental human rights and there are too many people in the world that have that right torn away from them.
There's only so much that I can do to fix things, but at the least I can use my voice. People are not property. You cannot own another human being. Full stop.
I can't give you all the facts, but I can give you a couple of resources to start with.
Not for Sale
Anti-Slavery
Yeah, I agree with you. Thanks for sharing this, talking over and over and over and over again of this things, awareness... is the only thing that will make us , everyone take action.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me sad and sick in the stomach too... and it happens everywhere. Last year they found a whole warehouse full of Chinese girls that were offered a great life, a job, a way out, and then... their passports were taken and they were forced into slavery. You know the stories. It's awful, and I can't believe it still happens (which is why it enrages me when people get all upset about the holocaust, which, of course, was hell on earth, but do nothing to stop the atrocities that are still happening today).
With things like the Holocaust it's such a hard balance. Because remembering that and honouring the people who lived through past injustice is important, but the power of moving past an injustice is that it spurs us to fight for more in the future.
DeleteStories like the one you just told there break my heart. And there are so, so many stories just about identical to it.