The Missing
Imagine if one day, New York City was suddenly devoid of human life. Canyons of steel, concrete and glass, eerily silent, with only the wind moving along the streets of the city that never sleeps. Eight million people, gone. Nobody knows where they are, or what happened to them. Was it aliens? Was it some sort of conspiracy? Zombies? Imagine the response. The military and every agency with an acronym would be converging on the place to find out what had happened. CNN would have to by another channel just to cover it. We wouldn’t see the president in public for weeks. Twitter would go fail whale in about 30 seconds.
A month later, Los Angeles is equally empty, just as mysteriously. Almost four million people, gone without a trace. Panic would be rampant in California, and the government would impose martial law in a heartbeat. The president wouldn’t see the light of day for months, not until they got to the bottom of the whole thing. People would be scared to leave their houses. I know I would be. The US would have no other topic of conversation. Twitter…still fail whaled.
The next month Chicago goes missing. Over two and a half million people, gone over night. By now, even the military would think twice about going out alone. Panic would be pretty close to a normal state of being. Bets would be made on which city was next, and when, because humanity is like that. And when Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix turned up empty over the next three months, we stop being surprised, because now it’s a pattern, something we can predict. We’re still scared, but we’re accustomed to it by now. Everyone knows someone who went missing from one of those cities. And as San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco and finally Austin join the list, the number of people with direct connections to “The Missing” as the media might call them, grows. Websites, candlelight vigils, blood drives, donations and support groups would all spring up around The Missing as their number broke the 27 million mark.
On the surface, it sounds like the plot of a thriller or a science fiction story. It begs for a mysterious force that is abducting huge numbers of human beings for some deep, sinister purpose. Anyone who has read some of my blogs will find that number familiar, though. Twenty seven million people. That is the number of people who are currently being trafficked around the world today. Enough people to empty the fourteen largest cities in the US. And that’s just an estimate. No one really knows because it’s a very secretive business. No aliens, no secretive society behind it. Just one factor: human greed.
I really wish it was just a story. So do millions of people who disappear from their lives every day. Women who wake up to a drug induced stupor knowing that thy are going to be forced to have sex with multiple strangers that day, or men who will wake up facing day of hard labor with no pay and abuse at the hands of their “employers”. But this…this is reality. Their reality.
There are people who are trying to make a difference. Recently, over forty thousand college students raised $2.6 million at the Passion 2012 conference. President Obama declared January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. For years, The A21 Campaign has fought to help trafficked women from around the world not only find freedom from their captors, but from the way of life imposed on them, while seeking to bring justice to those who deal in human misery. CNN’s Freedom Project regularly reports on efforts to curb trafficking, and the impact it has on people all over the world. We can all help, even if that help is miniscule in scope. A mountain can be reduced to a desert by a man with a spoon in a thousand years. A thousand men and women can do the job a lot faster.
I urge anyone who reads this, DO something. Contribute. Spread the word. Raise awareness. Be aware of the signs of human trafficking. Share this link, or, even better share the link to The A21 Campaign.
For my part, I blog about it, and I contribute. It isn’t much, but it’s something. My readers make a difference, because part of their purchase price is contributed to The A21 Campaign. Together, we can level that mountain.