Today is Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery in the US! But… was it really the end? Is slavery in the US really abolished?
First, let me take a detour with something I’ve seen in Mexico. This doesn’t have to do with my current mission, but a previous one more than a decade ago, while I was in Mexico City with YWAM (Youth With A Mission). We took a day to go to the red light district to pray for the women there. The men in our group kept a short distance so we could watch and protect the women in our group as they talked with prostitutes and heard their stories.
What they heard was appalling.
Some were working as prostitutes to pay off debt. Some thought this was the only way they could provide for their children. Some had been there since they were children.
None of them wanted to be there.
I know there are exceptions. I know there are sex workers who choose that route. But there are many who were forced into it.
Now you may be thinking, But that’s third-world Mexico. That could never happen in the US. But it can and does. I don’t know how much. Unfortunately, as a man, I am not who the victims of sex trade will open up to. They don’t trust me because they’ve known too many men who just wanted to use them. I don’t blame them.
I have a friend in Bellingham who helps with a ministry rehabilitating women who have been rescued from sex trafficking. That’s right, Bellingham, Washington. About as first-world as you can get. And it’s happening there.
Yes, let’s celebrate Juneteenth. It’s when the last of the legal slaves were freed in the US. Legal slavery is now abolished. But don’t forget how much work we still have to do.