Taken aback

I think some of my friends and relatives have been kind of taken aback by this blog and by what perhaps has been a shocking introduction to this issue of modern slavery--this "immoral trade," as Baroness Caroline Cox describes it.

Many people, of course, have had no idea that this problem even exists. And that is exactly what I and many others in the grassroots abolitionist movement want to change. Once this becomes a big item on the public agenda, it will become harder and harder for traffickers to operate with the kind of impunity they have now.

For example, the second-largest industry employing slave labor is that of domestic workers. Young women are offered a chance to come to the United States, study for a career and work as a nanny or housekeeper. But when they arrive, their passports are confiscated, they aren't given the education that was promised, they work brutally long hours, they are not allowed to contact their families or to leave the house alone, and many are sexually abused.

If the general public were aware that such things are happening in U.S. cities today, perhaps neighbors would make an effort to make sure the family down the block with the live-in nanny is not actually enslaving that young woman.

Sound far-fetched? Read what happened in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Louis Etongwe's story

Come on, everybody. I know this issue won't be everyone's "big thing," but we all need to find some way to help. At this moment, millions of people are living without hope that they will ever be rescued. Their hearts are crying out--or maybe their hearts are so scarred that they no longer cry. God says, "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?" (Isaiah 58:6, NIV)