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A Door of Hope in the Cycle of Exploitation

An Offer Too Good to be True A young girl is given a job offer that seems too good to be true. It is. She ends up exploited. She is rescued, and placed in an emergency aftercare shelter. This story has become a familiar one. All around the world, peo

Sex Trafficking and the Carceral State

Last week The Daily Beast reported—in a sensational title, “Sex Trafficking Victims, Not ‘Prostitutes,’ Finally Getting Help (and a New Name) in Court”—that New York has set up a new provisional court system that tries to funnel arrested sex workers

After Aftercare

Eradicating slavery means a commitment to combating the underlying causes of exploitation, and recognizing that the road to true recovery for survivors is one that does not end with emergency aftercare. After Aftercare Many shelters and organizations

Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) – a Vanguard in the Fight Against Child Trafficking

In just its first year of existence, the non-profit organization Operation Underground Railroad (www.OURrescue.org) has already rescued over 250 victims of human trafficking in eight different countries, and a majority of those are children. We have

Mind Control

January is human trafficking awareness month in the United States. Acknowledging this, I want people to understand how human trafficking requires mind control. In order to understand what this means we need, first of all, to know what the mind is, wh

If not us, then who? An invitation to action.

As I wander though Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center gift shop, the noise of the everyday world slips away and the quiet of this splendid building soothes me. It is a place where there is plenty of space to think, to reflect a

Dispatches: On the Ground in Lithuania

Yesterday the End Slavery Now team met up with anti-trafficking activists in Kaunas, Lithuania. During our first day in the country, we learned about efforts here, the effects of the U.S. T.I.P. Report, state-run homes and impacts on three young wom

Slavery-Freedom Continuum

As I stated in a previous blog post, “slavery is a social phenomenon existing on the far end of a continuum of oppression.” The model below represents the continuum that I am referring to. Slavery is one extreme. Freedom is the other. There are mult

Songs for Freedom: Ending Child Slavery in Haiti

Songs for Freedom Have you ever had one of those moments that you just know you won’t forget? I had one of those a few months ago, watching Haitian youth singing for a new vision in Haiti - one without restavek - at Restavek Freedom Foundation’s So

Three Suggestions for Antislavery Organizing on Campus

One of the largest antislavery groups to emerge before the Civil War was one of the most unlikely. Located in the isolated northwest corner of Ohio, the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society attracted over 500 members. Led by a rural schooltea