As a young adult, I would love nothing more than for those in my generation to move forward in life, with the courage to speak up about injustice and the guts to do something about it. Courage and guts could change a lot of things.
One Local Teen With a Voice
As a young adult, I would love nothing more than for those in my generation to move forward in life, with the courage to speak up about injustice and the guts to do something about it. Courage and guts could change a lot of things.
I know a major key to combatting human trafficking today is raising awareness. It is essentially an underground issue, not as in-your-face as a violent war or a medical epidemic.
I interviewed some of my classmates about what they knew about local and worldwide trafficking, how they learned about it and how they think information could best reach our generation. My classmates seemed to be very knowledgeable about the severity of the issue in our city, or at least where we rank in comparison to other cities. They had learned this information for the most part from the news and from talking to people outside of school. Some had done research of their own, wanting to know more.
A recurring theme, from the several students I interviewed, was that we don’t learn enough about trafficking in school and all of them answered very strongly concerning this topic.
Quite honestly I can’t remember a time in high school when a teacher has said, “Let’s discuss modern-day slavery,” and it’s not as if it wouldn’t have been relevant to any class discussion.
As with any current social justice issue, people genuinely do care, but they do not know enough to feel comfortable holding an intelligent conversation about it. Sometimes, we’re afraid to ask a stupid question or to say the wrong thing. Maybe it’s something inherent in American culture, but real discussions are far too rare.
I am coming to think that the first step in raising awareness about modern day slavery is having an attitude of humility. It takes humility to ask a good question, and to let someone know that we don’t know everything. And so, it takes humility to talk about something real, difficult and highly significant.
More often than not, human trafficking can feel like a distant problem, something not relevant to the lives of high school students or any of their friends. We assume it is far away from our daily lives. I think some individuals in my school would be surprised to know that a few of their friends may know people who have been trafficked, or have even been threatened themselves.
One girl in my senior class shared this:
I think more information needs to be spread. I know a lot about it because I’ve done a lot of individual research and have people I know in my life who were victims. I think school is a good setting to learn about it, because anyone can be caught up in it. Pimps blend in to everyday life more than we could imagine; before I knew all of this, I would have taken any theater audition opportunity from anyone. It can happen to anyone.
My heart was glad to hear from a peer who has an understanding of the consequences and the ripple effects of sex-trafficking in Portland among our age group. It would be a beautiful thing if we, as a society, could get used to having conversations like this, where we share the stuff that matters. That’s where change would happen. That’s how people would learn just how near some social justice issues really are to their own lives. That’s where collaboration could start, ideas could form, and hope could be spread. This is a lot to ask of our world, so I can just start with my high school.
