Proof through the Night (and Lunch)

Perhaps it IS just another word for nothing left to lose, but freedom, the theme of freedom at least, rang loudly for a lunchtime crowd in Union Square on March 3rd as a troupe of activists (People for Sale) played music and spoke about the pernicious trade of human trafficking.

Trafficking in persons is described as the recruitment (by any means, but be assured they are all cretinous) and control of people for the purpose of forced labor and sexual exploitation.

Amidst a gathering crowd of curious onlookers, local musicians belted out original compositions with the injustice of false imprisonment resonating from their core.

At the base of General Washington's hulking bust, the band played on as a scattering cloud of activists became walking sign posts (Would you buy me?) while disseminating literature that attested to the pervasive evils of a thriving commerce in human flesh.

Not as you might suspect, on some alien terrain beyond the jurisdiction of law and order, but throughout the modern civilized world, including here in America.

Lured with illusions of the promise land or stolen outright from their families like a villager on the shore of Renaissance-era Gambia, the spirits of these victims are subsequently crushed by the ominous servitude of the most heinous vermin that somehow manages to pass for human; the traffickers.

The literature reveals tellingly that "modern slaves", seemingly an anachronistic term and yet not, are expendable commodities with a $100 per-person price tag.

Thus, for the cost of one iPod Nano, these victims, mostly impoverished women and children, will expend two full lifetimes of grief in the vile provenance of modern day flesh peddlers and their slime-riddled enablers.

Lest you believe that slavery retreated in the dawn's early light at the close of the civil war, think again; within the United States alone nearly 200,000 people answer to a slave master. Where Land of the Free is both patriotic declaration and national identity, an additional 17,500 victims are herded in annually to reinforce the front line, like some broken army of the walking dead.

In the past year as we have witnessed the burgeoning astonishment of our populace with regard to the first viable African-American and female presidential candidates, that awe is usually qualified by the sentiment of something long overdue in our country.

When you pause to consider things long overdue in 2008, would you have imagined that ending slavery would be an issue still necessary to add to this list?

Learn more and join the campaign to Stop Human Trafficking; start with their website: www.thefreedomproject-ywam.com