Find Your Voice. . .Break the Chain
This website has a forum for writing petitions for social reform. One of the causes listed is human trafficking. By going to this site, you can write a petition by providing a title and description of your petition, background information about the issue and why it is important for others to join. Then you select the elected representative you want to target. Next you write the form letter you want sent to your target. People signing your petition will add their name to this letter. They will also be able to add a personal message, or edit the letter content if you select that option.
Below is an article posted on this website written by Amanda Kloer who has been a full-time abolitionist for six years. She currently develops trainings and educational materials for civil attorneys representing victims of human trafficking and gender-based violence.
America: Land of the Free, Home of the Slave
"America is so often a contradiction in terms. It is a land of immigrants, for whom immigration is a contentious, sometimes even violent issue. It is a land of immense wealth and plenty, where millions of people still live in poverty. It is a land thick with shrines to liberty and dogmatic in its worship of personal choice and self-determination. Yet it is also a land where thousands of men, women, and children still live in slavery. Yes, America may be the land of the free, but it's also the home of the slave.
Modern-day slavery is woven into the social, political, and economic fabric of the U.S. just as much as antebellum slavery was on the first Fourth of July, over 200 years ago. While the exact number of people trafficked in the U.S. is unclear, estimates indicate that around 15,000 foreign nationals are trafficked into the U.S. each year, and around 100,000 Americans (mostly children) are trafficked within America.
Slavery in America affects men, women, and children. It happens in big cities and small towns, immigrant communities and native populations, middle-class neighborhoods and poor ones. In the U.S., slaves can be found in brothels, construction sites, fields, factories, private homes, strip clubs, meat processing plants, hotels and restaurants, and Internet sites. Slavery is woven through the American experience just as much as if not more than the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial or the Liberty Bell.
But America doesn't have to be the home of the slave. It could be the country is strives to be, the country it deserves to be. It could be the land of the free. Period. But it needs one person to help make that dream a reality. And that one person is you.
This 4th of July, between the barbecues and the bathing suits, take five minutes to take action against modern day slavery in America. Sign one of Change.org's many petitions to end human trafficking or create one of your own. You have the power to end slavery in America and around the world.
To continue in my brief tradition of quoting Fredrick Douglas on the 4th of July, 'Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. … This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.'
You cannot love freedom but not engage in agitation for social change. You cannot hate slavery but do nothing to act against it. But you can celebrate America today by changing slavery.
Happy Fourth of July!"
Prayer Focus:
Ask God to begin to move on the hearts of America about the truth of human trafficking in our country. Ask God to reveal what is being hidden and bring His light into the secrets in this darkness. Ask Him to help those who are passive in their regard for this atrocity become active in some way to bring about change to end slavery in America. Ask God to give those who lack courage the boldness to take a stand against any trafficking in their local area. Ask God to give Americans a zeal to make America become the land of the free as our forefathers hoped that it would be when they wrote our Constitution and established our government. Ask God to bless America with a heart that breaks the things that break His heart including human trafficking within our borders. Praise Him for what He is doing to answer this prayer through World Vision and other Christian organizations that are making a difference and mobilizing an army of activists in the movement of anti-human trafficking.
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