The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking + Slavery in America

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AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with Kevin Bales, a leader in the abolition movement to end modern-day slavery. He estimates some 27 million people labor as slaves today—more than at any time in history.
In 2001 Kevin Bales founded Free the Slaves, the American sister organization of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights group. He has worked to liberate thousands of slaves in India, Nepal, Haiti, Ghana, Brazil, Ivory Coast and Bangladesh. He’s also helped expose modern-day slavery right here in the United States, where he estimates between 14,000 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the country each year.
Kevin Bales writes, quote, “There has never been a single day in our America, from its discovery and birth right up to the moment you are reading this sentence, without slavery.” Kevin Bales is co-author with Ron Soodalter of the new book The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today.

You can watch listen or read this unreal story here today from Democracy Now..
The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by “slavery”?

KEVIN BALES: Well, I’m talking about real slavery. If you look at slavery across all human history, and you sort of strip away the packaging, whether it’s racialized or religious-based, and you look at the actual core of the slavery, it’s one person completely controlling another one. They use slavery to maintain that control. They use that control to exploit them economically, and then they don’t pay them anything. But the key is the violent control.

AMY GOODMAN: Give us examples here in the United States.

KEVIN BALES: Well, a classic example would be slavery in agriculture in South Florida. People are lured into the United States, promised a good job, but when they arrive in Immokalee County in Florida, they find themselves at gunpoint, picking tomatoes, picking oranges, locked up at night, brutalized if they try to escape or brutalized if they try to protest in any way, obviously paid nothing. It’s a kind of slavery, you simply can’t walk away. And in some ways, that’s the key—one of the key questions we ask if we’re trying to decide: is this case slavery? The first rule of thumb is, we say, can this person walk away, even if it’s into a worse situation?

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about particular situations, people you have met, how you learn about these situations.

KEVIN BALES: You know, an amazing case that I know very well is that of Given Kachepa. Given was born in Zambia. He was an eleven-year-old when—and very active in a local choir, a boys’ choir, when a man from Texas heard them sing in Zambia, thought—and convinced them that if they were to come with him to the United States, they could sing in churches, raise funds to build schools, and improve their families’ lives in the extreme poverty of Zambia.
And he brought them over to the United States, got visas for them as a touring boys’ choir, and then enslaved them, so that they were taken from church to church, they were not fed regularly, they worked twelve- and eighteen-hour days, they slept all in one small trailer. If they complained about their treatment, they were denied food, they were beaten. And if they weren’t singing to raise money in this charity scam, they were given jobs like digging the holes for swimming pools.

He was eleven years old when this happened. Remarkably, it was actually at that time an immigration agent that figured out something was wrong, couldn’t quite understand what was wrong, but figured out something was wrong, and began to dig into the situation. And ultimately, Given was freed. He was an orphan in Zambia. And one of the families of a church where they had sung took him in. And now I’m just very excited, because I just got the news last week that he had finished university and passed his exams to enter dental school.

Don't think for a moment you and I aren't using products that come out of slavery in America. The coltan used in cellphones, to cocoa, coffee to sugar and cotton are all involved with slavery.
Our immigration control laws are set up in America to enslave people even making a distinction between Western Europeans and people from West Africa.

This is a story that needs to be told, do any of you think or have seen this criminality happening in America, I KNOW I've seen a side of this slavery in America

peace

_

Thanks for posting. And let's not forget all the sex slaves we have in the U.S. :(

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scb wrote:

Thanks for posting. And let's not forget all the sex slaves we have in the U.S. :(

YES, from legalized instituisionalized racism through the guest worker system to the largest prostitution. They also speak about this also in the interview.

AMY GOODMAN: You say that the majority of slaves, Kevin Bales, in this country are women who are brought in for the sex trade. How exactly does it operate?

KEVIN BALES: Well, it’s not quite the majority; it’s the largest proportion. Just under half of the people enslaved in the United States, we believe, are enslaved into prostitution.

The flow of people into the United States into slavery, it follows the other types of immigration into the United States, so people who are trying to build new lives, trying to build a better life. Many enter illegally; some enter legally. But the situation that turns it from smuggling or immigration into slavery is what happens when they get here, so that if they may believe they’re—they’ve got a real job, they may believe they have a legal job, but when they arrive, then someone says to them, “Actually, no. You do what we tell you from now on. If you don’t, you get hurt.” So it’s about the stepping into a criminal situation.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does it work? How do these women end up here? How are they lured here? How do they get in the country?

KEVIN BALES: Well, “lure” is the right word, because people are searching for ways to improve their lives and often just to get jobs to feed their kids. And recruiters around the world, whether it’s Central America or Eastern Europe or the Far East, say to people, “We have a job for you. We have a way for you to get to the land of plenty and have a better life,” and convince them and, interestingly, often get them to pay for their own enslavement, say, “We can get you there, but in fact we’re going to need you to pay a fee to cover your transport costs and so forth.” So, a lot of people who come into slavery in the United States walk into slavery and pay for the privilege of being enslaved into prostitution, agricultural work, domestic work, sweatshop work, you name it.

Peace

Commy

pay to be a slave...its hard to imagine. money rules in this land...no constitution or declaration or jury or law or judge...money rules.

dustinpardue

Geraldo actually did a great piece on sex slavery, focusing on oriental massage places. Some of those girls are actually imprisoned in those places. They girls are bought from a "distributor" and have the opportunity to buy their freedom over many many years.

TravisTheSky

A few years ago when I was still living in RI, there was a story on the local news about sex slaves. A massage parlour on North Main Street in Providence had young women imprisoned inside. They had been either lured or captured in Southeast Asia. They lived in a small room over the shop and were forced to prostitute. What baffled me was that even though the reporters and cameras got inside to document the conditions, nothing was done to free the women. According to the report, there is a loophole in Rhode Island law that allows prostitution if it takes place indoors, on business premises.

WTF did prostitution laws have to do with trafficked people being held in slavery?!?

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

pay to be a slave...its hard to imagine. money rules in this land...no constitution or declaration or jury or law or judge...money rules.

we should have a world without money right? damn you money!!!