Biblical Justice & HT - Part II

Even if human trafficking (HT) really exists -- even in Portland -- and all these millions of people are victims of heinous crimes, of crass greed, does it really affect you? After all you are not promoting this stuff and you're certainly not going out to buy anybody. Never have. Never will.

What is Edmund Burke supposed to have said, but nobody is certain? "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Something like that. The sin of omission.

Keith Green's song comes to mind, the one about the sheep and the goats, and you remember he was quoting Jesus out of Matthew 25. How in the last days, when he comes in his glory and sits on his throne, all the nations will be gathered before him. He will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

The sheep are those who do all kinds of good things and don't even realize they were doing all that good. To them, King Jesus says, "Come on in and enjoy my kingdom."

So the goats get to thinking something nice is going to happen to them, too, when all of a sudden, the King says to them, "Depart! Go away. Hell is your reward. For I was in desperate need and you didn't help me. In need like sick, hungry, thirsty, an alien, without clothes, in prison even, and you did not look after me."

Then the goats respond," When did we see you like this and did not help you?"

And the King replies, "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."

There it is again. Just doing nothing is enough to damn you to hell.

OK, so maybe the poor and needy and aliens and HT victims really are your responsibility. And you are just as guilty as con-artists and kidnappers, pimps and middlemen, johns and end-users if you don't do something about these people.

But if you are going to draw up a statement on HT, it has to say something more specific about HT, like people being captured and bought and sold and freed. And you wonder about this, because the Bible doesn't really come out and say that slavery is wrong, does it? Why even the New Testament writer, Paul, tells the slaves to submit to their masters, though it stretches the theological brainwaves to think he wanted little kids to submit to rape by their Roman owners. Maybe something else is going on in Paul's thoughts at that moment, more like what you are supposed to do when you find yourself trapped as a victim in human slavery and no way to get out. Perhaps his message of submission is not directed at the masters and what they should be doing about your well-being.

After all rape is victim status to the do-ee, even though you feel very spiritually and emotionally dirty afterwards. You tell yourself it is your fault and you notice other people blame you too, but it isn't something you've done. It's something that has been done to you, no matter what you were doing before it happened. And that is what happens when you are caught in human trafficking whether it is sex or labor or body parts, right? Someone's trapped you, snared you, lured you -- treated you worse than dirt. You just wish others saw it the same way.

But what about when you are a free person, a citizen with rights even, and you find someone else a victim? Jesus' famous story known as "The Good Samaritan" comes to mind, the one where a man on his way to Jericho is ambushed by thieves who beat him up pretty badly, steal everything even his clothes, and leave him to die on the side of the road. A couple of religious leaders (what is it with Jesus and religious leaders?) come along the road thinking nothing worse than self-preservation, see the victim lying there and decide to steer clear and move on quickly.

Then a Samaritan (something like an African-American in Alabama circa 1964) comes along and rescues the victim, fixing him up, taking him to an inn, telling the inn-keeper to look after him and that he (the Samaritan) will cover the entire bill. At which point, Jesus tells his listeners to "Go and do likewise."

That is not goat-like victim avoidance.

Stephanie Ahn Mathis, our OCCV executive director, adds that when you are going down that road to Jericho and you come to your hundredth victim, you begin to think that something is wrong with the road and maybe you ought to do something about it.

Something like what happened to Jeremiah when God called him to speak prophetically to the nations, "See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant." (1:10) Talk about building a new road. The prophet intends to build a new nation - a safe and just nation.

Biblical Justice & HT - Part I

You are thinking that no one is possibly FOR human trafficking (HT). Maybe people assume it is far, far away from their world or they don't think at all. Only scum like pimps and johns and exploiters and kidnappers and other kinds of lowlife are really FOR trafficking of human beings.

You and Bryan Colbourne, your fellow co-chair on the HT advisory committee of the Oregon Center for Christian Values, are working on a draft of your committee's Action Plan. You've been tasked to put together the section on biblical justice.

You think about that. If no one is FOR HT, why does it even exist? Sure, you've heard vague and pitiful stories from exotic places like Southeast Asia and Africa and occasionally some hint of it here in America with women being smuggled in from foreign countries, right? American women, aren't they into prostitution for the kicks or because they need money? At least that is what people assume. Sad that underage girls get caught up in it, too, but they can always leave that scene -- this is a free country after all. Maybe we do need to rescue them, get them cleaned up and headed in the right direction and everything will be fine. Or so people think.

What is HT anyway? You need a definition for your document, so you go online and you find a couple of helpful explanations. One is from the United Nations, which makes it automatically suspect to some people, but the wording is still useful, so maybe you can call it an "internationally accepted definition": "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation." Wordy, but its full-court solid.

Next you go to the ultimate source of all knowledge, Wikipedia. There in simpler English, it says HT is "people being tricked, lured, coerced or forced to work with no or low payment or on terms that are highly exploitative." It's considered trade or commerce in people, which has many features of slavery, doesn't require transportation or border-crossing. Victims of HT ... Whoa, stop the presses. There's the key word -- VICTIMS. These people are victims of a crime. Slavery, crime, victims. The words keep coming ... "prostitution, forced labor (including bonded labor or debt bondage) and other forms of involuntary service" -- and also "the sale of babies and children for adoption or other purposes." Whew.

Victims. Not prostitutes. Not laborers. And not just little kids. Cradle to grave, these people, every last one of them, are victims of greed. When the trafficker looks at these human beings, he (why is it always a "he"?) doesn't see persons, individuals. All he sees are dollar signs, like stuff you buy at Wal-Mart for 5 bucks and trade on E-Bay for 500.

HT exists because there is a market for the product. The product happens to be humans or, more precisely, human bodies or parts thereof. Lots of pretty girls and some pretty boys, too. But also human machines, little kids or adults that can make clothes or provide kidneys or farm fields or do really cheap labor because you and I assume they are better off than they would be otherwise. 27 million of them according to those that count such things, but nobody really knows. Because it is all underground. Out of sight. Often right under our noses, like right here in God-love-it America and super-sophisticated Portland.

Looking for Home

The boy, barely 13, huddles in the night, backpack and bedroll behind, sign in front, looking for anything - cash, a job, shelter, a friendly face. I reach in my pocket for a bill I've placed there for just such an encounter.

I'm outside Portland's Lloyd Center, mega-crossroads and site of far too many pre-teen girl entrapments by cunning pimps. This boy, he's no safer. Though fewer boys are trafficked for sex, there are plenty other forms of bondage laying in waiting.

Any kid sitting out on this night in this cold with a little bit of gear is not doing this for fun. It's no Boy Scout outing, this. Why does he sit there huddled against the pillars out of the rain and not in some nice, warm home surrounded by loving parents and siblings? Kids don't just up and run away from secure love. They tell me there are 1,500 street kids in this modern, prosperous city. Countless more are stuck in hellholes of "homes" wishing they could be anywhere but.

These most vulnerable among us have a snowball's chance in Tucson of making it to a prosperous and healthy old age, captured for posterity in one of those multigenerational family photos. The odds are extremely high their lives will be hell-filled with selling their own or others' bodies, selling drugs, numbing the pain with drugs or drink, living day-by-day on crime and the halfwits of their minds left over from all this abuse. Having escaped one hell, they will enter another. They've been lied to, beaten up by, cheated on by, and kicked out by all sorts of big people from parents to pimps to pushers to preachers to politicians. And they know they can trust only Number One.

We, who will sit in our comfortable homes and watch remakings of Dicken's tales this Christmas, are tempted to think such a dismal underworld is a thing of the distant past. But the ghost of Christmas Present comes to show us that countless little Oliver Twists and Orphan Annies remain among us -- only for them there are no Daddy Warbucks or Roses or Mr. Browlows to save them.

Or are there? A growing chorus of carolers rehearses, bent on doing something concrete to rescue, better yet preserve, these kids. Some work the nights serving them on the streets. Others plot complicated rescues of sex trafficking victims. Still others plod on bravely to heal broken families, provide foster and respite and rescue homes, and find ways to break the multigenerational cycles of poverty and abuse that feed these ravenous streets.

Education and advocacy of our citizens and public servants to stir them all to action are key. This past Monday the Oregon Center for Christian Values, dedicated to just such education and advocacy, invited me to join its board. I felt as if I had found "home" wrestling tough matters of systemic suffering and public policy with them. As co-chair of OCCV's Human Trafficking Advisory Committee the past few months, I've been helping a small team forge a plan of action, complete with well-crafted statement viewing the HT nightmare through the lens of biblical justice. No one I've met is FOR human trafficking, but it will take more than mere intentions to end it.

Last week, Stephanie Ahn Mathis, OCCV's Executive Director, was invited to an important press conference. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon's senior U.S. Senator, announced plans to introduce a bill authorizing federal funds to set up rescue shelters for sex trafficking victims. Local organizations, raising funds for just such a shelter in our city, have been hampered by a dismally weak economy and high unemployment. Federal funds are woefully short as well. But we sell these kids over and over again whenever we refuse to act. And so Stephanie represented OCCV at that press conference because we believe that the time to act is now, not after some future recovery.

Meanwhile that boy huddles somewhere in our city tonight waiting for more than a handout. No kid picks that life as the life of choice. Sin has gotten him to that place - sins of family, of society, of those who do nothing. Repentance is in order, a repentance that includes serious changes in the agendas of this state's Communities of Faith and of "we the people" ourselves.

Veterans Day PDX-Style

My pacifist son, Stephen, warmly greets his older brother, Robert, on Facebook, "This is the last Veterans Day you won't be a veteran." In January, Robert joins the United States Army.

As people across the nation salute those who have served in the Armed Forces, my mind goes to a stat I heard on the radio. One out of three veterans is homeless. I tend to be skeptical of statistics, especially in a country such as ours where statistical abuse is one of the leading forms of rantings. Apparently, the problem of homeless vets was getting better until five years ago, with the situation worsening since. But one out of three?

There are lots of factors in such grim reports. A leading concern of struggling veterans is PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the bane of combatants and sexual abuse victims. While we didn't hear much about PTSD until Vietnam, even the "Greatest Generation", as they call those who fought in the Big One, had its full share of veterans who came back with their insides torn up, even if their outward, physical selves looked whole and robust.

We stereotype people, not the least those we identify as homeless. The number of people without their own homes -- rented or owned -- has skyrocketed the past couple of years, as much the fault of catastrophic medical bills as of the preferred suspect -- financial mismanagement. But not all the homeless are on the streets or in shelters. Many hole up with family, friends and strangers or make do otherwise. Here in Portland, there is a division of labor with the city serving the single population and the county working with homeless families. Kids, through no fault of their own, account for a high percentage of those homeless stats. 1,500 alone are street kids, without guardian as well as homeless.

I wonder how many of the non-vet homeless are also victims of PTSD and other trauma-induced disorders -- poverty and abuse often, but not always, go hand in hand. And as much as we want to blame our current social breakdown on more recent culprits, a perhaps surprising fact is that multigeneratonal abuse and poverty go a long ways back. If we didn't heal the wounds in 1900, we probably were dealing with the effects of those unhealed wounds in 2000.

I was early for my appointment with Naomi Lambertson, co-chair of the Oregon Center for Christian Values. Veterans Day closings were creating an extended morning boom at Peets' Coffee Shop in the Lloyd Center district, the holiday encouraging a more leisurely attitude among coffee drinkers.

A woman was peddling a local paper. The rag -- "Street Roots" -- is published by an organization with the same name, an organization by the homeless promoting the concerns of the homeless. "Jan" graciously answered my questions, explaining how out of every dollar, she was able to keep 75 cents. Jan was aggressive in a very charming sort of way and she answered that 9 out of 10 people she approached responded warmly, even if they didn't buy a paper. Occasionally a heavy tipper more than made up for the other 10%.

Prompted by what I hoped were my nonintrusive questions, Jan shared about her son, apparently quite a scholar, studying political science at a college in California. He was obviously the star in her otherwise dark world. I have no idea the causes of her homelessness. She did venture that sometimes she slept outside and sometimes found a welcome in someone else's digs. Jan is not a war veteran, at least not a foreign war. But she's obviously fought some battles of her own and keeps on fighting through some unnamed inner resolve, perhaps because of her son.

We chatted amiably until Naomi showed up. As Naomi and I walked away in search of a shop with vacant seats, I thought of Jan, reminding myself that in this cashless age, it is still good to carry some pocket change. I also thought of all the war-ravaged "veterans of foreign wars" as we called them when I was a kid -- and of all the veterans, young and old, victims of other wars closer to home, the wars on poverty, abuse, indifference and hatred. And I thought of my sons -- and daughters -- and prayed that, whatever might come their lot in life, they would follow Jesus by never growing calloused toward the poor, the so-called "worthy" or otherwise.

A Time for Action

Amazing to think that the difference between a bill passing or not passing in the Oregon State Legislature this past spring was a push by our tiny team at the Oregon Center for Christian Values. But that was precisely the case with Senate Bill 839, otherwise known as the “Confidentiality Bill,” which in the end passed both houses unanimously.

Simply put, the Confidentiality Law provides anonymity to rescued victims of human trafficking. A lobbyist for another nonprofit with ties to OCCV alerted our leadership who sent a volunteer to testify. Why would the bill not have passed if there was no opposition? Voter interest or lack thereof made all the difference in the world.

That was the start of OCCV’s involvement in domestic human trafficking concerns, an area of vital need we are now addressing alongside related issues like poverty and health care. Last night we had the second meeting of the OCCV Human Trafficking advisory committee. We reviewed various recommendations for a course of action in the next couple of years and decided to meet again on November 9. What we agreed on last night was that in the November meeting we will come up with a specific plan of action to present to the OCCV board for their approval before the end of the year.

We’re particularly interested in pushing through a bill in February’s short legislative session. There is no funding available for anything that is money-intensive, so we are thinking that a simple step low in cost concerns may be the best option for now.

This bill, at least as it is currently envisioned, would require the posting of the Polaris Project hotline wherever alcohol is sold. This national hotline number is 1-888-3737-888. A piece of legislation like this seems so minor compared with the massive need facing us, but every step counts. The ubiquitous posting of this hotline would promote the issue itself, much as the amber alert has done for missing kids, and raising awareness (education) is key to getting more extensive legislation passed in the next session.

A more aggressive approach would be to pass something along the lines of the New York Safe Harbor Act, but there is no way to get such a major bill through the state legislature in this biennium. The problem is not opposition, but lack of state funds and also a lack of time due to the very brief nature of February’s session. New York passed its bill a couple years back and the governor duly signed it, but to this date, there’s been no money to implement it. So the feeling is to push for the hotline bill now and then go for the bigger bill in 2011, when, hopefully, budgeting concerns have eased.

Why is a safe harbor act is so important? The city’s sex crimes unit works along the guidelines of the safe harbor act already, treating minors as victims instead of criminals. However, the police in other units arrest and treat the girls as adults (prostitutes), because it is the law they have to follow. Even if they go light on them, they are not approaching these underage girls as victims.

There are many levels at which we can address human trafficking – national, county and city, as well as state. On the city level, we can advocate with City Commissioner Saltzman to get more personnel into the Sex Crimes Unit. Presently there are three personnel, counting a sergeant, for a city the size of Portland. There is a great need to push for more officers "out there". Apparently it is more a matter of priorities and citizen response in contrast to funding, as the idea is to transfer existing personnel from other units. On this issue, we also do not have to wait for a legislative session to begin.

On the county level, I understand Commissioner McKeel's office is considering a "john school". While this was tried by Multnomah County back in the ‘90s, lessons learned back then could ensure a much better run this time. The idea is to go with something like the D.C. or San Francisco model, with a "school" for first offenders. Talks could be given by the D.A., judges, ex-victims, etc., as a means of showing what impact the johns' actions are having. Each john would be charged a $1,000 fine to attend the school. If they comply both to the fine and to school attendance and they don't commit a second offense within 6 months, then the 1st offense would be kept off their record. A second offense would go on their record.

This school is a way of working to stop the john activity up front. And it seems to be having some effect in these other cities. The fine money in San Francisco is divided between the D.A.'s office to help prosecute the crimes, the Police Department to help them in their pursuit of these criminals, and for victim services. Basically it is relatively cost neutral. It could be done here on a county-wide level to fight prostitution in general and as a way of getting at those who encourage sex trafficking, since the market is consumer driven.

I’ve asked about how we can work on solving the pimp side of problem. What I hear is that, with pimps as well as the victims, the issue is a state problem primarily with the fairly broken foster care system, which produces a high percentage of prostitutes and pimps. But such systemic issues need long-range approaches.

It is so easy to be overwhelmed with the need or to throw up our hands in dismay at how slowly things move. Yet even small steps are better than no steps. It takes time to build a base for advocacy and education, something we as a committee and OCCV are committed to doing.

The worth of a child

I’m watching my biological daughter and my respite foster daughter, “Sally”, count plastic lids. They are going through our recycling bin looking for lids my wife can use for a school art project. I promised the girls 2 cents apiece for every lid they found, whether my wife needed them or not. Those she doesn’t use will go back in the plastic bin to be taken to the recycling center next week. No cash value, just trying to save landfill space.

Unlike plastic lids, all kids have immeasurable valuable in God’s eyes. I think about the plight of girls the age of my own bio daughters right now doing tricks for nameless johns mere blocks away. How were these children tricked into this hell of a life? Was it the promise of rare love turned into the most garish nightmare of degradation by a pimp, barely older than “his” girls, who had also experienced abuse and violence and hatred that turned him into a fiendish abuser?

But didn’t the girls’ disappearance into the streets, my sheltered heart cries, didn’t it create alarm in the minds of their parents? Weren’t the police called when at the age of 12 or 13 these girls didn’t come home on time after middle school? What about neighbors or friends or teachers? Didn’t anyone in this vast city notice, other than the pimps and their obsessed johns?

Some of these kids – the girls and the pimps both – come from homes where parent or parents have to work all kinds of hours for subsistence wages to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. Somewhere support services and community involvement alike have broken down or been stretched far too thin.

Sadly, far more of these girls come from abusive homes to start with. The reason the pimps are able to groom them is because they already have extremely low self-esteem. Girls who God values beyond measure are treated like trash at home and as worthless pocket change on the street.

I watch my Sally and my bio-daughter playing on our back deck. They are counting up their newfound wealth in pennies. 402 lids = $8.04 each for a special trip to a craft store tomorrow.

Sally is one of several children who call the same woman “Mommy”. Mommy, an overwhelmed soul, is a former foster child herself, who way too young was thrust into parenthood without much warning and even less training.

I’m reading a book about the plight of foster kids who age out, meaning they turn 18 and are suddenly on their own – no family, no support services, nothing. As Martha Shirk and Gary Stangler describe in On Their Own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system, some states do have helpful laws that provide for foster children who want to remain under foster guidance until age 21. But most states don’t. I can’t imagine my own kids suddenly released from protection at age 18 or even 21, let alone these foster kids.

I read the rumblings in today’s paper, those who complain about deadbeat dads and welfare moms. Who decry American socialism. Who insist that social services be cut for “the least of these”. I understand. When there is no money, there is no money. And where we live, almost all state funds already go to public security, education and social services. You cut one and you exacerbate the problem with all three.

So, I ask, why not promote abortion? That seems to be a logical answer. It would solve the problems of unwanted kids, too many kids, street kids, and underage pimps and prostitutes, and in turn it would save all these kids a whole lot of misery. It would also save untold billions in taxes.

I think of the effort going into caring for Sally. We met her counselor recently, a sharp young professional woman who loves Sally and does a lot to help her. There are all kinds of people involved in Sally’s life – and lots of tax dollars and private contributions as well going to make sure that Sally grows up healthy, wholesome, and happy. Whole teams of workers fight to keep the Sallys of this world from those hellish pimps and johns.

Sure, abortion would save money, oodles of it. So would cutting Sally’s support services and abandoning her to the fate of the streets. We do profit when the pimps steal these girls away – we save lots of money in taxes and nonprofit fundraisers. Let the johns who’ve abandoned their own kids provide for these poor girls with their pocket change.

Abortion would be the easy answer if it were not for the fact that these “fetuses” are children God dearly loves. Devalue life at that stage and you go on to devalue life at every other stage, too. Moreover, you cannot work to preserve lives before birth and then abandon them to hell after birth. At least that is what I as a Christian believe with all my heart.

I listen to my girls laugh and watch them lug their coins to their bedrooms and thank God they are both alive and well and brightening my day with their joy. And I shudder to think that anyone could ever abandon or harm them – before birth … or after.

One Elusive Fact

This morning I sit across from Corie in her office looking out over East Portland and, in the distance, Mount Hood shrouded in morning clouds. Corie Wiren is a young, energetic … bureaucrat. Pure and simple. As a citizen proud to be paying his taxes to support Corie and others like her, I tell her I salute her for the the work she is doing as a bureaucrat. Officially, she is chief of staff for Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel. She is there to serve.

I am in Corie’s office in search of one elusive fact. Stephanie Mathis, executive director of the Oregon Center for Christian Values, and I are presenting at the International Justice Mission’s advocacy training day on Saturday. In this conference focused on international human trafficking, we’ve been offered a few minutes to talk about the local problem, right in our own back yard.

There are few hard facts about human trafficking anywhere in the world. Just endless anecdotal evidence and far too many occasional victims to prove the problem is real and that it is big.

Somehow the victims “over there” are easier to see as victims. Corie talks about the perception people often have of Portland’s sex trafficked girls – that somehow they got themselves into it, that they just don’t fit the nice poster child photo we like to have of people we want to rescue. Fact is, these girls don’t even act like they want to be rescued sometimes – angry and fighting off their rescuers. I remember what my lifesaving instructor said years ago, that the drowning victim will often attack the lifeguard come to the rescue.

I think of this when Buddy stops by for his monthly home visit this afternoon. Buddy is our supervisor in the Morrison respite foster care program. A gentle guy with an unblemished Boston accent, he’s talking with us about a very angry little boy who has been in nearly 30 foster homes already, a sad child that those who look after him in the program fear has little hope of making it in life – so much damage from unspeakable abuse when he was younger still overwhelms him and all those who come to his aid.

In the morning appointment, I ask Corie what the key problems are that we need to tackle to solve the local human trafficking crisis. Rescuing the girls today is important, but by tomorrow even more will take their place. It is a demand-driven market. We talk about some ideas and how OCCV can partner with the Commissioner’s office to affect change. But what strikes me is how much our broken system of foster care and messed up homes is churning out tomorrow’s prostitutes and pimps.

As Buddy brings up the same thought this afternoon, Kim and I immediately think of our sweet respite kids. 7-year-old Y___ comes to mind and our hearts weep for her future.

It’s five till 10 am and my time with Corie is almost over. I bring up my biggest question of the day – what hard facts can she give me on the size of the sex traffic problem in Portland? No one really knows those numbers yet, she tells me. The girls aren’t lining up for a census. Actually, the girls don’t stay put very long in any one place. Their pimps move them around on a well-known West Coast circuit – Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and then back to Seattle and around again.

The Portland Mercury reported in February that in a major multi-city sting operation, the FBI netted seven underaged girls in four hours in Portland, making our fair city number two after Seattle in number of “incidents” in this operation. No one questions the problem is here and that it is serious, but no one really knows how big a problem it is.

Then Corie throws a very chilling statistic at me: there has never been a human trafficking case prosecuted in the state of Oregon. There have been cases prosecuted for sex crimes in general, but none for forced prostitution. You can’t convict without a witness and getting a victim to testify against her pimp is nearly impossible, especially when the victim is a kid for whom the world has shown only injustice and brutality from date of birth.

Where do we start?

Start out with a problem as big as human trafficking (HT) and you quickly get inundated with data and advice. Step back. Focus. Prioritize. What is it you yourself need to accomplish?

All of a sudden it feels like everyone is getting on this bandwagon. Like me and OCCV. Other organizations have been at this issue for a while now and even more are rolling up their collective sleeves. Some think they are called to organize everyone else. I’m inclined to shy away from those kinds of folks. I’ve often noted that the Spirit is quite capable of getting folks organized without a lot of human intervention – as each person does his or her part.

There’s the key, each one doing his or her part. Ditto with groups and organizations.

I’m in this issue through the Oregon Center for Christian Values, an advocacy group, which means we focus on pushing for legislation and educating the general public in Oregon on concerns we feel are crucial that Christians should be concerned about. Like human trafficking right in our own backyard.

So, as the human trafficking subcommittee of OCCV, our first task is to do our homework. As a researcher, I like to start my homework by asking questions. I have five:

1. How extensive is the HT problem on our local level and what forms does it take?
2. What are the causes of the local HT problem and what can be done to fight those causes?
3. Who is already involved in doing something about the local HT problem and what are they doing?
4. What else needs to be done?
5. Of this “what else”, what should we in OCCV be doing?

I’ve been asked to serve with Brian Colbourne of Salem as the committee’s co-chair, particularly to gather the needed data. Then on October 19, we as a subcommittee will meet to make some recommendations as to where as OCCV we should focus our priorities. Since we are an advocacy group, we are particularly looking to see what, if any, legislation we can get behind for the next Oregon legislation session this coming February.

Basically the role of our team in the next few months boils down to these steps:

1. Study resources on HT, including books, other print and online materials, organizations, government officials and other personnel to develop a thorough picture of the problem.
2. Survey the existing HT problem and the work of existing groups fighting HT in Oregon.
3. Analyze all this data and determine what else needs to be done.
4. Pray and determine what shape our role should take in the coming months.
5. Advocate by a) educating, b) pushing for changes in laws or new laws or funding, c) recruiting personnel (volunteers, etc.) and d) raising funds as needed.

When I look at all this, it sounds so sterile, so non-emotive. But I remember what my friend, Dick Foth, has often said, “Do what you can do.” (Emphasis on “can”.) Reminds me of Paul’s words in Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.” That includes all the mundane but necessary stuff like tracking down vital data and figuring out what is going on and why.

How will they be set free?

27 Million slaves right now in our world. Compare that with 3.5 million in America at the beginning of the Civil War. My mind wants verification. My heart demands action. What I first need, as the TV detective used to say when I was a kid, “just the facts, mam.”

E. Benjamin Skinner, in A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery (2008), agrees with an “unassuming scholar” named Kevin Bales (Disposable People, 1999) on both the difficulty in ascertaining the estimate and on the definition of who those slaves are: they are people (men, women and children) 1) compelled to work, 2) through force or fraud, 3) for no pay beyond subsistence. To be a slave, you have to meet all three criteria. Even if the stats are off a few million, the faces overwhelm.

I wonder if that definition includes those boys in Afghanistan, so abused that they believe their kidnappers’ lies about jihad and no longer want to be freed. Like Patty Hearst, a kidnapped heiress, who joined her captors’ cause in the 70s. They call it the Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological shift that occurs in captives when they are threatened gravely but shown acts of kindness by their captors. As much as they fear their masters, they remain loyal to them.

What about women prostitutes who are no longer minors? It is a question that comes up at a meeting of the Human Trafficking Series sponsored by Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel’s Office and the Clark County Soroptimists Club. In this meeting, Wynne Wakilla, the program’s coordinator, has invited several experts to speak on state, national and international laws affecting human trafficking. During the extended Q&A, one attendee asks who is doing something about the women in local prostitution who are not minors. If they started out coerced at age 13, are they now still victims at age 31? Or are they off the screen as far as those we need to be rescuing whether they want it or not?

Whether they want it or not. The Afghanistani boys, still boys, on the TV, the ones kidnapped and brutally abused by the Taliban, they were freed against their own will, but are now so emotionally brain dead they would yet give their lives for a cause that has all but destroyed them. Some of them, the expert says, will never recover. Does a woman at 31 still give her body to her pimp and his johns because of the money she earns or because she’s an emotionally battered hulk of a person, completely victimized by her masters?

I do “get” how shame and abuse can imprison a person for life unless forces outside of that person intervene to bring healing and wholeness. I do understand as a Christian that Jesus has come to free us from all bondage. As the preacher said yesterday morning, he is our Savior in every need. I do understand that this same Jesus has called us to set others free, regardless of how they understand their bondage, regardless of how their slavery is defined.

Jesus’ inaugural address, taken from the words of the prophet Isaiah, comes to mind: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. . . . He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners … to release the oppressed.” (Luke 4:18-19) The preacher last night quoted these words of Jesus: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21) Jesus goes on a couple lines later to tell us we are to free people as he freed people.

I met with Bryan Colbourne again yesterday afternoon as we map out our immediate strategy for doing as Jesus has called us to do. Bryan is the chair of the advisory committee on Human Trafficking for the Oregon Center for Christian Values. He’s organizing a meeting in Salem, the state capital, hopefully in October.

I’ve got some other basic nuts and bolts stuff going – contacting some leads, surveying what is already happening, following up on those who say they want to be involved. Doesn’t feel like we’re setting anybody free yet. But information gathering, networking, educating and advocating are all steps in the process. As necessary as they are mundane.

What else did Jesus say in John 20? Oh yeah. We are to do it, mundane tasks and all, in the power of the Spirit.

The First Step

“Human trafficking.” The phrase conjures up kidnappings and slavery and all sorts of sordidness in far away exotic places. Outside of the sinister, sleazy types who profit from human trafficking, who wouldn’t oppose it? Truth is, we all profit from it. And it goes on all the time and in some not so very far away or exotic places. Like 82nd Street and lesser known alleys in my town. With kids not unlike my own respite foster children and classmates of my own biological teenagers.

In the movie, “Amazing Grace,” the British politician and antislavery crusader, William Wilberforce, is getting to know the woman with whom he will soon fall in love. In attempting to show how closely she has followed Wilberforce’s cause, she talks about how she has altogether given up sugar. Antislavery activists of the day, mostly staunch Christians and equally staunchly secularists, were working hard to show how such commercial treats as sugar were directly tied to the abominable slave trade. They finally won their epic battle by bringing the cause home and by learning how to understand their political opponents.

Great epic movements can be captured in ninety minutes of cinematography, as “Amazing Grace”, “End of the Spear” and “The Mission” have shown. But what is cut out and left on the editing room floor because it will only put us to sleep are the countless hours of mundane discussions, committee meetings and numbing processes that go into making the great moments of these movements screen-worthy. Rosa Parks sitting defiantly on the wrong seat of the bus is forever etched in our cultural memory. But there were a lot of far less dramatic hours leading up to that standoff that made that standoff possible.

Monday night I attended the initial meeting of a subcommittee on Human Trafficking. It was by no means a cinematic moment. Seven of us gathered in the poetic “Earth Room” of the First Covenant Church in Northeast Portland. We were volunteers summoned by the Oregon Center for Christian Values to sort out what the OCCV, an advocacy group, should be doing about human trafficking in our home state.

Brian, the committee chair, and Karen represented the board of OCCV. They, with other OCCV leaders, have been drawn into the human trafficking cause as part of the organization’s larger commitment to advocating on behalf of the poor in our state. Three others who showed up, all women, are already deeply involved in various other organizations fighting human trafficking. Juan and I filled out the group as wannabes.

I had met with Brian the day before at a local coffee shop (I drank passion iced tea with sugar). He asked me about my background – missionary in Asia, Pentecostal/Charismatic, Evangelical to the bone, thorough-going theological conservative. His eyes got big. Isn’t that some sort of an oxymoron, a Pentecostal committed to social justice?

I smiled back. He has similar roots, but as he is young can be forgiven if he is a bit out of sync with those with whom he worships. I, on the other hand, have been both committed to my community of worship and to social justice longer than he’s been alive and am now at a time in life – closing in on senior citizen discounts – when I am supposed to have life neatly sorted out. Perhaps oxymorons are not supposed to age.

Pentecostal social justice advocates are few and far between, or so it seems, as I return from twenty years overseas to adjust to the current American religious and political scene. Fact is, I’ve been waiting decades to find likeminded activists with whom I can celebrate the other half of my spiritual heritage, the heritage that was lost in the Great Divorce a century ago. [“Great Divorce” draw a blank? Stay tuned.]

As I explained to the committee, I see the cause of fighting human trafficking as a bridge between Christians who fight personal sins and suffering and Christians who fight corporate sins and systemic suffering. Girls do not get into the “world’s oldest vocation” because they “just want to have fun.” I, a cross-cultural agent, want to be a bridge builder. But it starts with nuts and bolts like extensive, boring research, endless committee meetings, and mind-numbing canvassing.

We’re still a long way from rescuing the girls down on 82nd Street. But we have, as the Chinese saying goes, made the hardest step.