i wanna be an abolitionist!

"...we journalists tend to be good at covering events that happen on a particular day, but we slip at covering events that happen every day - such as the quotidian cruelties inflicted on women and girls."

- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

I agree! My central beef with journalism, stated by my favorite NYT journalist and his wife. Who wants to read about the quotidian? Everyday cruelties will not sale papers.
Oh, and another pretty large flank: the layout editor who named my piece on the closing of Hilo's beloved bakery "O'Keefe's is Toast." They get to write the headlines, manipulate and hack articles to death, and watch as the journalists get chewed out by the readers.
So, good bye journalism, hello politics.

I wish I had read Half the Sky before attempting to fight human trafficking via the Word, before even knowing the Word. I just thought Christianity as an emancipatory tool was a novel idea (yup, I was a novel believer, yet I still do want to believe in the power of hope). Ahh, and I confess, I did really want to see Thailand! Surely, hope is a fine place to start, but I wonder how effective prayerful organizations like Garden of Hope and International Justice Mission will be if fundamental issues go unresolved.

If the collapse of communism and the rise of capitalism is the event that opened a space for these Asian sex markets to boom, then isn't capitalism and globalization the problem "aid" must first fix? Or does the problem run even deeper than that, with sexism? Or did capitalism create sexism? Or did religion?

Or is it more practical to actually do like GOH and IJM, and tons of other secular NGOs and IGOs, and start on the periphery - with raiding brothels and microfinancing "liberated" women?

To each his (and her) own, I say! In such instances, I really do think it's better to do something rather than nothing. Is it possible to further fuck up a situation that is this fucked up? I doubt it. Yet, we must be vigilant and learn from our mistakes.

Problems like sex trafficking, which in reality is a misnomer for slavery, are daunting and seem to lack a solution that's big enough. I already learned from that Thailand trip that Christian organizations are not my thing. Yet I worry that academia, my next pursuit, will be too focused on attacking the core. Can I fight on the ground and engage in theory, without compromising my actions and thoughts?

Cheers to hope:
"Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a problem than an opportunity."