CHANGING LANES: Unwrapping our comfortable, suburban lives - Hingham, MA - The Hingham Journal

By Katherine Bennett
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jan 16, 2010 @ 01:00 PM

Hingham —

Have you ever avoided a home improvement project? Perhaps a nagging feeling about a place in the basement that has “seepage” was something you could push away. After all, just avoid that part of the basement — it’s not like you need it to function. Several years later one of your children develops mysterious respiratory symptoms.

After months of playing detective, you learn that your child’s ill health is related to a severe mold allergy. You diligently clean everything to remove any mold spores and establish new standards for cleanliness. Still, your child does not improve. Ultimately you learn that your ventilation is the culprit — spewing mold spores as air circulates through the house. When you call in the experts, you learn that the spot in the basement with water seepage was the point of contamination. Dampness crept into the drywall behind the paneling, and ultimately proved the perfect breeding ground for mold.

At this point your child is still sick, so you are willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of basement mold. Paneling is ripped down and black mold is everywhere, it is overwhelming. It takes a small fortune to demolish and rebuild a part of your house that was easy to ignore. But if the problem is to be fixed so your child grows up in a healthy environment, the expense is non-negotiable.

In many ways, there are parallels between that unpleasant home improvement project and the problem of human trafficking domestically and abroad. It’s easy to get wrapped up in our comfortable suburban lives and avoid the “wet spot in the basement”. Yes, we hear sad stories about exploitation, but we stay busy with chores and activities in the parts of our lives we encounter everyday.

But then our children start manifesting attitudes of entitlement about material things. They shock us with their lack of innocence regarding sexual practices. Something insidious is infecting the souls of our children and it doesn’t matter how often we take them to Sunday school. Perhaps one might step back and say, “It’s just human nature...” but I think it’s more than that.

We like to think that in an upper middle class town with a good police force, our children are safe from the more unsavory elements of society. The world is full of tragedy, but our immediate circumstances are not. But, just as a ventilation system within a home invisibly impacts the health of the occupants, we are influenced in so many ways by the global community we are linked to through trade and the Internet’s ability to disseminate information. Unless we choose to cut ourselves off from the world and go live in a hut somewhere — that “wet spot” that exists our homes will still impact our homes.

By partaking in the upside of being part of a global community, we (knowingly or not) participate in the ugly underbelly of exploitation that enables Americans to have a standard of living that is much higher than the rest of the world.

How does this play out? First, we have more cheap “stuff” than any generation has ever had access to. Suddenly, because of global capitalism the goods we want can be bought for astonishingly low prices because people in other countries are enslaved/not given a living wage to produce those items. Our children grow up with a skewed sense of the amount of “stuff” they should have because we do not pay the full price for the goods we are receiving.

Secondly, we are guilty by association for the lack of respect for human life that is present in many dark corners of the world. If the United States turns a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of millions of women and children by not imposing political consequences for that behavior, our government is enabling abuse to continue. Despite the economic downturn, the per capita consumption of American citizens drives much of worldwide production. What we “demand” the world “supplies”. And the Internet is the window that we and our children view everything through.

The depravity of individuals willing to treat the bodies of women and children as commodities finds access to a worldwide market of individuals who would like to silently partake in evil that was previously inaccessible. Sexual addictions are fed, and the world supplies to America what it demands.

Have sexual exploitation and slavery always existed? Absolutely. But bucolic suburban havens were generally uncontaminated by these crimes against humanity. Today, however, we no longer live in the Garden of Eden. Globalization is the tree of knowledge and we are no longer blissfully unaware of the evil that often occurs so that the demands of America can be met by the world.

In the past 10 years there has been exponential documenting of domestic and international human trafficking. Monday was the international day of awareness of human trafficking and President Obama issued a proclamation declaring January 2010 National Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention month culminating in a national Day of Freedom on February first.

Even celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan are jumping on the bandwagon of promoting awareness. Knowledge is the first step, but knowledge without action is implicit acceptance. We communicate to the next generation that cheap goods that come to us because of exploitive labor practices are “their loss, our gain” unless we take active steps to buy only buy fair trade items. We imply that the use of human beings as sexual objects is acceptable as long as it happens to people outside our socioeconomic caste when we do not demand action to end all known sexual exploitation.

Our children may listen to our words, but it is our actions that reveal to them the priorities we feel are important. The window of the Internet reveals the downside of globalization. Like it or not, our children are looking through this window and forming opinions about the value of human life.

So, as citizens and parents who now have the burden of knowledge —what can be done about “cleaning up the wet spot in the basement”? We can respond enthusiastically to government efforts to curb a problem that didn’t seem to directly impact us. The Massachusetts Senate is currently revamping Bill 58 to deal with the complexities of dealing with victims and perpetrators of human trafficking. This bill has been stalled for years. Let’s let our politicians know we expect decisive action. Contact Karen Mclaughlin of the Human Trafficking Task Force for more information on political action you can take at MclaughlinKa.bpd@ci.boston.ma.us.

If you prefer a more personal contribution you can become involved with Kim’s Project, an organization designed to help rescued victims rebuild their lives. You can do something as simple as buy a gift card to Target that they will see goes directly to helping victims. Email kimsprojectfjc@yahoo.com.

If you would be interested in working with a faith-based organization, you can financially back a variety of safe house/ emergent care facilities for newly rescued victims. Contact sarahd@notforsale.org for contact information.

There is much to be done, and as awareness increases, the magnitude of the task ahead seems greater. Yet we have a moral obligation to the generations ahead not to bury our heads in the sand. It’s time to “clean out the basement.”

Katherine Bennett is a mother of four, advocate for local nonprofits, and a freelance writer living in Hingham.

CHANGING LANES: Unwrapping our comfortable, suburban lives - Hingham, MA - The Hingham Journal