Fresh Updates from RAC

This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

Somaly Mam was just 14 years old when a man claiming to be her grandfather took her from her village and sold her into slavery in a Cambodian brothel. After years, she escaped and has since secured freedom for tens of thousands of other young girls enslaved Southeast Asia’s brothels. She has been called the “modern Harriet Tubman.” Might she be considered in some ways, a modern Moses?

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This week we want to shed light on one of the most vulnerable populations in Israel. During the last five to ten years, thousands of asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa have crossed the Sinai Desert to reach Israel, on a perilous and heroic journey, like our own Exodus from Egypt.
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President Obama dedicated his speech last week at former President Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative conference to the issue of human trafficking. Speaking on the 150^th anniversary of the first issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Obama called human trafficking and forced labor “modern day slavery” and reaffirmed his commitment that the “United States will be a leader in this global movement” to eradicate it.

President Obama followed his words with concrete action, signing an Executive Order to Strengthen Protections Against Trafficking in Persons in Federal Contracts. The Executive Order requires all federal contractors to ensure that none of their employees or the employees of subcontractors have been coerced into labor, lied to about the nature of their labor, or forced into debt in order to get a job. It goes further by requiring that all international contracts, specifically military and state department contractors, do not employ victims of international trafficking or “modern day slaves.”

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I took a course last semester about violence in St. Louis, looking for a thought-provoking discussion about my school-year city. I started following the local crime section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; thefts, assaults, shootings and drug crimes seemed to dominate criminal activity in the STL. So a January 2012 article identifying St. Louis as a hub for human trafficking came as a surprise.

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