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.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, August 24, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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.
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.
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