Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking

“S lavery still exists today.” That’s the super simple phrase someone said to be over a decade ago that introduced me to this whole frightening concept of human trafficking, a.k.a., modern slavery. It was a new concept to me at the time since slavery in that moment only conjured up images of days past with cotton picking on a southern plantation. I’m sure all of us by now have been introduced to the idea of human trafficking. But the author of Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Traffickingreminds us that the images in our mind’s eye of human trafficking may differ greatly from reality. The book Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking by Raleigh Sadler unpacks the concept of this 21st-century form of slavery, busting longheld myths on human trafficking, offering practical ways for all of us to combat human trafficking, and most of all, shining a light in the dark corners where the vulnerable hide.

Because that’s the whole concept behind human trafficking and slavery. It’s all about exploiting the weak and vulnerable. The author of Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking, Raleigh Sadler, dives into busting these myths:

Trafficking usually happens when victims are kidnapped and drugged.
Only social outcasts pay for sex.
Human trafficking = sex trafficking.
The victimized will always vocalize their need for help when given the opportunity.

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“No matter where I went, I would meet people who had been called to ‘end slavery.’ …Do we have the same passion for those experiencing homelessness [or] the foster care system? How can we focus on human trafficking at the expense of all the vulnerabilities that feed into it?”

Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking

My take on Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking

Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking shakes us out of our comfort zones and wakes us up to the human trafficking that’s happening in our own zip code, not just in Someplace-We-Don’t-Live, Europe. It talks of personal stories of human trafficking, including the own author’s awakening to the human trafficking conundrum. What I probably loved the most about this book is its practical takeaways of how we can all fight human trafficking now. In our own hometown. For example, we can fight human trafficking by what we choose to consume through the purchases we make and what we choose to watch.

The big takeaway I had was that if there is no demand for cheap labor (be it through sexual exploitation or general labor) then there won’t be any need for the vulnerables to fill in the need for supplying these desires.

Hope is still an option,