Photo credits: PhotoBucket/rmmcda
One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation,Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech, in which he decried the social conditions that still kept the Blacks socially enslaved. Although there are still many racial injustices in America, much progress has been made in some circles to allow people of color the same freedoms and privileges offered to others.
However, there is a much larger and darker issue of slavery in this era that affects every single person on this planet. For some, human slavery in the form of human labor trafficking looks no different than non-paid servitude did in the south 150 years ago. People are still forced to labor long hours in grueling conditions to provide products for lucrative incomes for their masters. Many of our favorite items, such as some chocolate, coffee, and clothing, are created by the blood and sweat of people who are “owned” as machines. These labor slaves are only 10-20% of the 27 million held in captivity or trumped up debt-bondage.
The remainder are coerced into the sex trades, and half of these victims are children. Luther’s speech could easily have references to Blacks (Negros, citizens of color, etc.) replaced with sex slaves, sex trafficking victims, or child sex trafficking survivors and the surrounding conditions of this vile trade as in the excerpts below. (Changed words are in bold italics)
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Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. . . .
But one hundred years later, the sex trafficking victim still is not free. . . . One hundred years later, the child sex slavery survivor is still languished in the corners of American society and finds herselfan exile in her own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. . . .
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all . . . would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens who have become prey to sex slavery perpetrators are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the sex trafficking victims a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of complacency and proclaimed ignorance of the problem to the sunlit path of social justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of social injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
. . .
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back. . . .
We can never be satisfied as long as the sex trafficked child is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of incessant physical, emotional, mental and sexual brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our children, broken and ravaged by a dozen or more daily rapes and demeaning acts,are sold in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the child’s journey is from a home of abuse to the life of greater abuse by the hands of sexual predators and pedophiles . We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity byinternet ads stating: “Barely legal–pleasures galore“ or “Hot & Sexy–young virgins to satisfy your urges“. We cannot be satisfied as long as arunaway child in Mississippi cannot live in freedom and safety and a sexually violated pre-teen in New York believes she has nothing for which to live. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”¹
. . .
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state ofCalifornia (or New York, or Nevada, or Florida), a state sweltering with the heat of injustice of child sex trafficking, sweltering with the heat of oppression of forced prostitution by pimps and gangs, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that our little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be subjected to violent images and realities of sexual abuse and depravity in their homes and the media.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, everywhere in the United States, girls will be taught that they are beautiful and valuable and honored. Boys will be taught that they are capable and respected and worthy. Parents and authority figures will know how to love and protect each other and the children, and teach them to love and respect each other. We will not tolerate sarcasm or putdowns, violence and abuse, dishonor or condemnation of our most precious commodity. We as a community will take a stand against the destructive habits of our day which decimate our citizens–pornography, rape, alcholism, drug addiction, physical violence. . .
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every man, woman and child will learn compassion and righteousness, and will know how to care for the needs of others without deception and manipulative exploitation.
This is our hope, and this is the faith in God’s greater power over darkness that we use as our guidestone. It is only when each person can see the ways our own behaviors and attitudes contribute to the objectification of other people, and we turn from those in dependence upon God, that we will begin to stem the pandemic of the moral evil of child sex slavery.
. . .
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3
It is fitting that the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. happens in the month of January, National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
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