Reserve Bank of India

what do you think of slavery in 2010?

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ABOUT THIS ARTICLE? Bitter Harvest Slavery isn't history - and we're reaping its fruit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Kimberly French You, in all likelihood, own items that were produced by slaves: Chocolate. Hand-woven carpets. Cotton. Coffee. Tea. Tobacco. Sugar. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Oranges. Grains. Clothing. Sneakers. Soccer balls. Gold. Diamonds. Jewelry. Fireworks. Steel. Glassware. Charcoal. Timber. Stone. Tantalum (a mineral used in laptops, pagers, personal digital assistants, and cell phones). Products in all of these industries have been found made with slave labor, then sold in the global market. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IN THIS ISSUE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boycotts Don't Always Help Meet the New UU Abolitionists What Your Congregation Can Do -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO From the Editor: Will we be abolitionists this time? uu&me! Related Stories and activities for children FROM THE UU WORLD ARCHIVES Holdeen India Program: Tranforming Lives among India's 'broken people' Looking Back: Slavery among the Unitarians -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RELATED Abolition Today: Bill Sinkford, Charles Jacobs, Fancis Bok, and Vivek Pandit (UUA General Assembly 2003) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ADDITIONAL READING Slavery Is Not Dead, Just Less Recognizable (CS Monitor 9.1.04) 21st Century Slaves (National Geographic 9.03) Modern-Day Slavery (Palm Beach Post 2003) The Social Psychology Of Modern Slavery (Scientific American 4.02) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More items that you consume every day are tainted by slavery in less direct ways. “Your computer terminal may be made in Japan, but that company may reward executives with sex tours of enslaved prostitutes in Southeast Asia,” says Barney Freiberg-Dale, founder of Unitarian Universalists Against Slavery, one of several Unitarian Universalist groups working to fight modern slavery. All of us who are lucky enough to be housed, clothed, and fed every day benefit from prices kept low by slave labor. Global companies we invest in, or whose stocks are part of our mutual or pension funds, provide higher returns because they buy from suppliers that pay workers very little—or not at all. As participants in the world's largest consumer economy, with its drive for lower and lower prices, we contribute to the global economic pressure for slave labor. We are all complicit. But didn't slavery end in the nineteenth century? Many of today's new abolitionists admit to having held that same assumption, until a news story or pamphlet or lecture shocked them out of it. Or you may have thought the reports of human trafficking that periodically make the news—such as sex slavery rings or forced migrant farm work—were isolated cases, somewhere far from you. I did. The truth is that slavery exists in virtually every country of the world and in almost every U.S. state, according to human rights organizations, scholars, government agencies, and journalists. A growing antislavery movement has been hard at work documenting and exposing this troubling fact. Surveying their reports and interviewing antislavery spokespeople is eye-opening, answering not only my question about the nineteenth-century “end” of slavery but raising other questions as well. In fact, legal slavery did end. Slavery is illegal in every country of the world. Nonetheless there are more slaves today than ever before: 27 million, twice as many as the number of Africans enslaved during the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, according to a calculation that slavery expert Kevin Bales calls conservative. Bales, a sociologist at Roehampton University in London who spoke at the UUA's 2003 General Assembly, estimates that 50,000 people are forced to work as slaves in the United States today. How can this be? If slavery is illegal everywhere, how can there be slaves, and in such numbers? In the United States our image of slavery is defined by our own horrific history. The antebellum slavery that was practiced here is called chattel slavery, meaning one person is owned completely by another and can be inherited as property. Today's slavery is different. Simply put, slavery is one person forcing another to work without pay, using the threat of violence or psychological manipulation. Ownership no longer defines slavery. When slaves could be legally owned, when buying slaves required a substantial financial investment, there was an incentive for owners to take care of their “property

Public Comments

1. simple... i wish it never existed. be prepared to receive many justifications of slavery.no matter how many facts you bring to the table, some human beings will not care rather they will think your over exaggerating.its a sad world where human beings believe other human beings should not be treated equally
2. Minimum wage is slavery. Indentured servitude...being two weeks away from not being able to pay bills. You are working for someone who is working for someone who is working for someone else. We will always find a way to control the weak. But don't for a second think that we aren't slaves to something.
3. I agree with Akilah. We are all slaves and it cant be helped. If you work you are being forced to prostitute yourself to someone else. If you dont work and live off unemployment or welfare, you're owned by the government even more so. Slavery is just a way of life, in my opinion. In more "civilized" countries, they just try to make it more comfortable. It still sucks though.
4. It sad to think the chocolate that I once enjoyed lint and nestle know the cocoa then buy is harvested by slave children. With no protected gear. I signed a partition against slave chocolate trade. In western country like Australia teenagers work at fast food stores and supermarkets. I think they have nothing to complain about as they are getting training in job skills for a good job later. The work condishion are checked and their lives are not indanger as they have safety equipment. Also guide line insure they only work so long.
5. I have another question pertaining to slavery-when one person works and gives a big portion of their earnings to support someone who is NOT working-refuses to work-and does nothing but take and take and take-and make more and more babies that we continue to have to pay for. (because we all know that the more babies you have here in America-the more money you get in a monthly check-or through HUD and Section 8-or medicaid-or food stamps-and thats a fact!! Selling babies is illegal but having more and more to gain financially is perfectly fine) Is this not also slavery??? YES this is also slavery- and please do not tell me we "owe" this-This is the biggest and most rediculous form of slavery-and its legal!!!!!!!
6. is sick!