Please call or email your city council member and the at-large members. Possible script:
Please don't prolong this any longer.
Get rid of all the confederate monuments that are on city property.
We do not want to send a message that human trafficking/slavery is OK.
The civil war was fought by the confederacy to keep human trafficking/slavery legal. No monuments glorifying their horrific mission should be honored.
It’s a bigger issue than just the statement that we we do NOT condone #HumanTrafficking . We also do not condone or want to perpetuate the #JimCrow era.
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. It is an extreme form of labor exploitation where women, men and children are recruited or obtained and then forced to labor against their will through force, fraud or coercion. Trafficking victims are often lured by false promises of decent jobs and better lives. The inequalities women face in status and opportunity worldwide make women particularly vulnerable to trafficking. https://www.aclu.org/other/human-trafficking-modern-enslavement-immigrant-women-united-states#
Join the conversation and tell us what you think. Slavery was once legal but that didn't make it less horrific. The United States slave trade didn't target white people, but that didn't make it less horrendous. This website wants to make a distinction:
In the 16th – 19th centuries, the Transatlantic slave trade brought millions of people from Africa to the Americas with the intention of enslaving them. People were enslaved because of who they were; their lives and livelihood were seen as unimportant compared to the value of free labor they would provide to the slave owner. This differs from human trafficking in that traffickers intentionally find and exploit the vulnerabilities of their victims, and while anyone can be subjected to human trafficking, not just anyone could be subjected to slavery.
This website offers this to the conversation:
What’s the difference between human trafficking and slavery?
Technical definitions of “slavery” and “human trafficking”, as well as related concepts like forced labour, child labour and bonded labour differ slightly legally, but there are enormous overlaps between them. Many of these terms are commonly used interchangeably, as ultimately they all involve practices that exploit or abuse someone physically or psychologically for profit.
What is the difference between the slave trade, slavery, and human trafficking? The slave trade was outlawed before slavery was outlawed. From this website:
In January 1807, with a self-sustaining population of over four million enslaved people in the South, some Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective January 1, 1808. The widespread trade of enslaved people within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of enslaved people automatically became enslaved themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining population in the South.
From Wikipedia:
Southerners reasoned that if slavery was good, then putting more people into slavery must also be good, and that if trading slaves in the South was okay, then trading them from Africa must also be okay. Conventions of Southern planters repeatedly called for the trade to re-open. This of course was a non-starter in Congress. When trying to repeal the slave act failed, some turned to simply ignoring it.