I recently returned from a trip to California, where I attended the 2012 Not For Sale Global Forum. For those unfamiliar with Not For Sale, they are a growing movement united in a single purpose: to end slavery in our lifetime. I became acquainted with NFS about a year ago, when they contacted me about doing some work to promote one of their new-at-the-time platforms (Free2Work, an app that rates brands and industries based on their labor and supply chain practices and human rights policies). Having worked with them on numerous and varied projects, I decided the forum would be a good opportunity to put faces with the names and email addresses I had grown accustomed to working with over the past year. In addition to getting better acquainted with their team, I also expected to hear about the work they and their affiliates are doing around the world. What I was totally unprepared for was how profoundly the experience of the forum would affect me.
Over the two days I attended, I heard from TV personalities, business people, college students, politicians, creative professionals, and musicians — even an 8-year-old girl — all of whom have dedicated themselves to fighting human trafficking and slavery around the globe. Very few of them were from the same industry, but the term activist would be a fair descriptor for any of them.
I was asked on several occasions what my take-away was from the day, or what was standing out. I was surprised at how difficult it was to consolidate and articulate everything I had encountered. I sat in my hotel room trying to put all of the pieces together. Even at the airport and on the flight home, I struggled as I tried to sift through all of the new information I had encountered. In fact, I’m still working on processing everything from the event, and probably will continue to do so as time goes on. But at this point, I’ve got it boiled down to a couple of key ideas that are affecting the way I think and work and live.
First, the idea that human trafficking and slavery is unacceptable is one of the most important messages we are challenged with delivering to the world today.
Raised in a fairly conservative evangelical Christian community, it didn’t take much to convince me that taking advantage of people is unethical. But I was intrigued as I heard presenter after presenter share their stories without any mention of religion. It wasn’t until the forum was nearly over that we heard from any “churchy” folks. Best-selling author and pastor Francis Chan shared the story of his conviction after seeing his own kids in the faces of children eating from garbage heaps, and I couldn’t help thinking of my own daughter, a week shy of a year old. As I choked back tears at the thought of how far I’d go to protect her little hands and feet from the sting of poverty, oppression, and the chance —however remote— that she could be any of the girls in the stories we heard during the forum, my religious affiliation and political bias melted away. Attorney and author Bob Goff encouraged forum attendees that “whether God is really important to you, or he’s not really on your radar”, we can all agree that we need to focus on solutions. Behance founder and CEO Scott Belsky echoed this when he evoked Thomas Edison to remind us that “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” So the challenge is to move beyond lengthy, divisive, and often counter-productive postulation about why, and move on to how. Or, as Bob Goff so eloquently and simply put it, we need to “do stuff!”
Exploitation is everywhere.
This is the bad news. Although the forum started by exploring human trafficking in some of the places one might expect (think sex trade), I was surprised and more than a little overwhelmed as I learned about root causes that drive a $32 billion industry, of which sexual exploitation is only a small part. Participating in workshops and listening to activists from industries around the globe, I began to view my shoes, clothing, messenger bag, and gadgetry with cynical eyes. I started an inventory of the things I own at home —even the groceries I buy— and was tempted to give in to hopelessness as I considered the opportunities for abuse in the supply chains used to create the products that make my life more convenient. And then something happened. As NFS president and cofounder David Batstone took the stage in a limited edition NFS leather jacket and pair of slim fit Orange Label jeans, he asked us to consider how fashionable it really is to wear clothing that represents someone else’s suffering. “What if,” he continued, “freedom was literally woven into the fabric of the denim used to make your jeans?” For me, it was a glimmer of hope at just the right moment in the forum, as I realized that while the world is full of potential for exploitation, it is equally full of possibilities for liberation. So while it can be overwhelming to consider the reach of the problem, there is hope in the fact that there are simple, everyday ways to fight injustice. Would-be-abolitionists need not be intimidated by the scale of an unjust industry, because big solutions are often the result of small, practical gestures (the story of HOME soup and the Smallest Soup Factory is a prime example). Which leads me to my final (for now) thought…
Live more justly today than yesterday, and tomorrow more than today.
Once I started thinking about all of the everyday opportunities I have to join to the movement, my knee-jerk reaction was to inventory everything I own and throw out everything I discover is the result of an unjust supply chain. But I was reminded that throwing things away doesn’t undo the damage already done by those products. Neither does being wasteful bring any more dignity into the lives of those who are exploited. Instead, I’ll make future shopping decisions with the best tools I have available to me (the Free2Work app is an excellent tool). And when things like my clothes need to be replaced, I’ll consider ethically produced options first. Or, to borrow from the Not For Sale Store’s slogan, I will let my purchase be my advocacy.
I would highly recommend attending next year’s Global Forum to anyone. At the very least, I’d recommend a visit to Not For Sale’s website to learn more about their programs and affiliates, and how you can join the movement. I’m really grateful to the entire NFS team for the opportunity to glimpse the revolutionary work they do on a daily basis. As I continue to let all of the new information from the forum stew, it will be interesting to see what effects it has on my daily choices. But I am most excited about the huge impact those choices will make in someone else’s life, and specifically that “together we can end slavery in our lifetime.”