When Will It End?

I'm sure that nearly everyone on the planet has asked themselves this question. Today, being the 145th anniversary of the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution gives us pause to consider the means and methods of slavery that are still with us today. Although many slaves were treated as well as prize animals on a farm, some with "benefits", that is not saying much if you look at the quality of life that livestock enjoy today. Anti-slavery legislation passed nearly a century and a half ago, yet we are still grappling with the inhumanity that led to buying and selling of humans. Anyone who is paying attention realizes that child labor, domestic abuse, oppression, human trafficking and wage slavery are still rampant in our culture. The combined effect of these vile and reprehensible activities scar future generations and limit the ability of millions to achieve their full potential. In the darkest hours and sometimes in broad daylight, these activities continue to crush souls, deny basic human rights and funnel dollars to overlords who ignore both the spirit and letter of the law. Although most sentient beings realize, on some level, that this is wrong, it is allowed to continue for the sake of greed, profit and ancient methods used to wreak fear and havoc on populations for centuries. I have spoken of this phenomenon before and the best way I have found to name it is power and control.

What is needed is a serious and clear-headed understanding of the fact that this sort of power is unjust, corrupts humanity and is born of fear and a sense of lack. The control side of the phenomenon is dehumanizing for the perpetrator as well as the victim, because it is futile to base one's self-worth on arbitrarily foisting your reality on another or trying to "own" another just as surely as it is to be a slave to another. There has been a push to "end child abuse" on Facebook recently. Millions have changed their profile pictures to their favorite childhood cartoon characters. It is hard to imagine how making this sort of ripple in the digital realm can make positive change occur, but if someone would explain that to me, I might follow suit. There seems to be no end to the daily abuse of children, yet we are becoming enlightened to the fact that we do not own our progeny. I often wrestle with the issue myself. As a father, my purpose seems to be to teach my children right from wrong as well as how to survive in this world and the pitfalls that await them. Often their successes and failures lead me to wonder at how they came to where they are and how it is possible for them to both make ignorant choices and simultaneously reflect such deep insight. As often as I feel ignored, I develop greater respect for their independent growth. Dictating the conditions of the lives of others is truly a double edged sword. Parents who learn to wield it skillfully with deft precision and compassion are rewarded with insightful and confident children while those who lack sensitivity and/or humanity often create another generation of hostility and rage.

The old saying that "Children learn what they live..." is an excellent parable for our challenges and a valid guide for our behavior in this day and age. Just as in the environmental arena, we need to learn to see the full scale of our impact on the world around us to make sense of our daily choices and how they impact other travelers on Starship Earth. Power and control always come from feelings of lack and always lead to oppression. Domestic abuse may be the best publicized form of it, but all human rights issues boil down to this on sad fact. Perpetrators feel that they have the right, nay the responsibility to oppress others. When you are privileged, you know it and the right to exert power and control comes with that. It sounds odd but the Calvinistic belief that the oppressed bring it on themselves or deserve their station in life is still alive in our culture today. How many times will a child hear the words, "He just snapped." or "Boys will be boys." and a dozen other platitudes that are designed to cover the ass of those who would perpetrate violence? How many jokes will be told, just today, that dehumanize women and children? These are the cultural signals that allow us to diagnose an extremely sick culture. Children really do learn what they live and we, as adults, need to create positive change that will lead to a better world for the next seven generations.

The best thing about the recent economic slump is that El Norte', the land of milk and honey that supposedly existed North of the U. S.-Mexico border has lost some of it's luster. Flight to our country for economic refugees has dwindled, not because of the border fence, not because human traffickers have left the border region, not because we have spent billions in trying to make an example of those who cross over the arbitrary line in the sand, but because if these people are to be poor and denied basic human rights, they might as well do it in their homeland. Why flee to a place that has fallen on hard times if you can have the same quality of life right where you are? Human trafficking still occurs, but in this one discreet location on the face of the Earth, the rate has dropped significantly. Instead, we find more slaves coming from Asia, for both the sex trade and for our service sector jobs.

I wish that someone could tell me the difference between slavery of a century and a half ago and the methods employed by the thousands of China Buffet outlets across our great land. Typically, the employees are told where to live, how long they must work, and at what tasks. They are allowed no days off, required to work from morning to night, are fed special food that is infinitely cheaper than what is sold to the customers, and each month they are required to send money to the person who managed to get them into this country in the first place. Imagine paying $1,000 per month for the "right to work" at a restaurant, having no time to call one's own, and none of the benefits that most other Americans supposedly enjoy.

Unions have worked hard to defend basic human rights of workers, but industry has relegated most unions to shadows of themselves. Those that survive are under constant threat through the courts, political wrangling and outright attack in the media. Most of the advances that had been made have been eroded and we are once again falling back into a two tier system of wage slavery for the average man and exponential growth of incomes amongst the elite few who dictate our every action. My own union has recently allowed all of it's members to cover a one dollar or more, per day, liability (tax) on our wages because our employer arbitrarily decided that they didn't want us parking in their parking lot. If I had the option of riding mass transit to work, I wouldn't complain, but for heaven's sake, why should I pay for the right to leave my car at the job site? This seems trite when compared to the folks who risk their lives to be smuggled into our country, but are we not risking our lives daily on the highways for our employers as well? The superslab that leads to my place of employment is the most dangerous stretch of highway in the state. Risking one's life for the "opportunity" to work makes no sense, but I feel compelled to do it because I am in a profession that I love.


Finally, I want to return to the inequity created by the recent housing crisis in The United States of America. I am one of those paying a mortgage that is based on a fictitious appraisal. I told the bank when they gave me the loan that I could never sell the house for what they said it was worth, but they explained that by the time I would want to sell, that it would be worth far more than my obligation. Several years have passed and my mortgage is more than double what I could be paying in rent. Recent repairs, which always come with home ownership make the cost of living in my 680 square foot home well over $1,000 per month. The fact that I have experienced a 1/3 drop in income because of the current economic crisis matters not to the well-heeled individuals who are depending on my monthly payments, nor am I able to scrimp and save any more on my personal budget. I have tried repeatedly to get them to consider refinancing to a more sane arrangement, but to no avail. Is it any wonder? If anyone was confronted with the choice, do the right thing and make less money, or continue to do the wrong thing and get paid, I guess we all know which side to come down on. Or would we?

Doing the right thing sometimes means that we are rewarded in ways we cannot imagine. When my children exceed my expectations for instance, there is no way to put a dollar amount on that feeling. Respecting another as we would like to be respected is it's own reward. Knowing that we all deserve the right to our humanity and to be treated humanely, has the power to change the world. Please, make this a topic of conversation. Keep these things in the public consciousness. Speak of them often, turn up your own radar to detect abuse when you see it, and do not tolerate business as usual with respect to slavery in any of it's forms. We need to stand together against this vile human failing. Abolition of it from our culture can only come from vigilance. To tolerate injustice is to be complicit. We can only be as strong as the weakest among us and our freedoms are in jeopardy each time someone is abused.