I just read one of those horrible books that everyone should read. It’s called Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It and it’s written by David Batstone, former editor of Sojourners magazine and long-time social activist. Batstone reports that there are somewhere around 27 million slaves in the world today, even though slavery is not lawful anywhere in the world. This book describes how it happens. Beginning with his own discovery that his favourite Indian restaurant in San Francisco was staffed by slaves, he takes us on a tour of slavery around the world. He tells us about: Young girls from poor rural communities recruited to work as waitresses or domestics in the city, only to find themselves forced to work as prostitutes Family groups in South Asia imprisoned on the premises of brickworks or rice mills, forced to work long hours to pay off fictitious debts and hunted down if they try to escape Children abducted to serve as soldiers and “wives” in
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson