27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves

By John H.D. Lucy

One man's cycling journey across the United States to fight human trafficking. Though the book is full of humorous and harrowing stories of the journey, like when John came face to face with death in the guise of a coyote, or maybe a hyena, the book is most powerful because of John's reflections on the personal and social causes of human trafficking/slavery in our world and in our country. Overall the book confronts the reader with the question: are you contributing to slavery in some way? Do our lifestyles unknowingly produce a society where slavery must exist? Does the way we think and feel cause a ripple effect ending in slavery? As John journeys across the country he asks all of us to journey deep within ourselves so that our very lives can encourage and embody a world free of slavery. The book contains all the information on human trafficking you will need to know, but John H.D. Lucy is no expert. His contribution to ending human trafficking rests in analyzing the life of an average person in relationship to the greatest evil humankind has ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781619275195

John H.D. Lucy

John H.D. Lucy is a writer from Hudson, Massachusetts. He graduated from Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and is also a graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., where he received his master's degree in theological studies. John is the recent author of 27 Million Revolutions for 27 Million Slaves. He currently lives in South Burlington, Vermont, with his wife, Danielle, and is training to become a pastor in the United Methodist Church. You can find John on Facebook at John H.D. Lucy, or follow him on Twitter @JohnHDLucy. Or you can find him at goodreads.com and follow his book reviews.

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Introduction

During the summer of 2011 I hopped on my bicycle and rode across the country, from Washington, D.C. to (almost) Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. For about a month and a half I did nothing but ride my bike on unfamiliar roads in unfamiliar places.

That should get your attention. If your attention hasn’t been caught, then I suppose all of my hopes for your reading this book have been dashed before you’ve even begun, and that would be very disheartening. Please keep reading, if for no other reason than to not depress me. Indeed, most of the reason why I decided to embark on the adventure across the country is to grab the attention of as many people as possible, because I wasn’t pedaling away for my own enjoyment.

Many people, before and during and after the trip, once they’re done expressing their amazement that someone would ever up and ride a bicycle across the country, have asked me what in the world possessed me. The answer is simple: I biked across the country to raise money and especially awareness for the fight against human trafficking, otherwise known as slavery. It’s an issue that demands extreme acts like biking across the country because, though it is such a serious and growing evil in our world, there is surprisingly little awareness of human trafficking. There are more slaves in the world today, right at this moment, than the total number of slaves held throughout all of history. Yet unlike the slavery that we learn about in our history books, much of the slavery in our world today is hidden or disguised. In fact, what many Americans don’t understand is that slavery is no less an issue here in our country, in our cities and quiet suburban or rural areas, as it is in India or Romania. I figured that something eye-popping needed to be done to make aware as many people as possible of this most tragic industry that is all around us:

27 million revolutions of my bike wheels for the estimated 27 million slaves in the world today.

High School

My hope is to get you interested in combating slavery. To get you started and to kick off the story of the bike trip, I’ll bring you back to the very beginning of our story: how I first became interested in the issue of slavery.

When I was a junior in high school in my hometown Hudson, Massachusetts, my teachers did their best to transform me into a good liberal. In general they failed completely because I am naturally the type of person that rebels against whatever agenda I’m being fed. It’s one of the reasons why I’m a professed anarchist, but that’s another story.

Perhaps the only lesson that really stuck with me from that year, other than calculus, came from a New York Times article. If I remember correctly, we were actually discussing the character of our democracy and our politicians rather than what I thought was the meat of the article. Of course I don’t remember who wrote the article or when it was actually written, all crucial factors in trying to dig up the article for your reading pleasure, but that article was about politicians in D.C. frequenting secret brothels to buy some time with sex slaves.

Now, I don’t mean to disparage the educational system in Hudson—it’s pretty awesome, actually. I simply mean to say that my particular teachers that year had a clear bent and, quite frankly, I love them for it. A little backtracking is necessary before inserting a compliment: I must give a shout out to Mr. Brian Daniels and Mr. Todd Wallingford; the former for helping me learn how to think about broader issues that are prevalent in our world today, and the latter for helping me learn how to develop a character capable of living through and confronting practical and lived situations with the best possible decision-making. The combination of these two great teachers who are now administrators formed me into a thoughtful enough person to never forget the real evil that the New York Times article presented to me.

Certainly the fact that D.C. politicians, among others, use their money and power inappropriately, to say the least, is appalling. But the real issue there wasn’t and isn’t the politicians or some flaw in our democratic system. The real issue is that young girls and boys were being held against their will so that these men could satisfy some unthinkable sexual desire. To this day I still ask the question, Who the frick thinks it’s fun to fool around with a four- year old? The real issue is that slavery—which I had learned ended in 1865 a few months before in my history class—still existed. A month before we had learned that the Civil Rights Movement put an end to all the tangible residual effects of slavery. Now, however, we were reading an article that matter-of-factly made clear that slavery is still alive, just hidden perhaps. To my high school-trained mind it seemed like a worse trick than learning that Christopher Columbus actually didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, and that even if he had we New Englanders probably wouldn’t want to promote that legacy.

Please don’t judge me, but despite being a shock my learning that slavery still exists was only an impressive piece of knowledge to me that others weren’t aware of throughout college. I like to think that I was a fairly good person even when first stepping onto the grounds of Saint Michael’s College, but nonetheless I was certainly the type of person who was more concerned about clearing out a space where my genius could be recognized and acknowledged. So through four years of college I took the little bit of knowledge I had gained from the New York Times article and occasionally tried to impress others, Hey, did you know slavery still exists? Oh yeah, well did you know slavery still exists in this country, too? In case you need clarification, that second question was sometimes necessary because pretenders to my throne of knowledge would claim to know that small amounts of slavery still exist in third-world countries. So for a few years I was the compassionate, knowledgeable kid on campus.

That’s where I’ll leave the story for now, gesticulating until the ripest of moments. Much like how my concern for slavery was planted but did not bloom for a long while, you will have to wait for the rest of the story. For once the rest of the story begins there will be no turning back. I will then tell of a nasty crash, crazy dogs, fires in Amish country, and even the time I almost died being chased for a mile by a coyote in the middle of nowhere (I’m still sure it was more like a hyena).

Almost Story Time

This book is that story: the story of pedaling 27 million revolutions for 27 million slaves, imminent coyote death included. My hope in writing this book is the same as my hope when I was biking: to bring to light the reality of human trafficking in as interesting a manner as possible. While on my trip I kept a daily blog. Unfortunately this book cannot recreate whatever excitement there might have been for readers following along day-by-day. I will do my best, however, to make the trip as real as possible for you, my precious reader, by telling my best stories while mixing in facts and information on slavery. All of this I will incorporate into some reflections on broader themes, such as hospitality and generosity, but everything will always tie back in to modern-day slavery. And, of course, my extremely witty humor and genius will make you laugh throughout. At least it should. After all, if we can’t laugh and be daringly hopeful in the face of even the most cruel evils of our world, then we are totally screwed. Lost. Defeated. Conquered. But I prefer to be a winner, don’t you?

So you have a feel for the book, everything is told more or less chronologically. As such, there are a few times in the first couple of chapters when I must say, as I’ll talk about later, or something like that. I apologize. It all makes sense, though, I promise. Chapter I is all background information: on the trip, yes, but facts and thoughts on slavery dominate the chapter. Chapters II and III contain the most seemingly tangential reflections. Don’t be disheartened about the usefulness of this book by these chapters. Yet I must say there is nothing irrelevant in this book: one of the major themes will be right thinking and right feeling as proper foundations for ending slavery, and in this regard Chapters II and III are excellent starting points. Chapters IV and V will really elucidate the importance of right thinking, right feeling, awareness, and possessing the right attitudes about oneself, others, and life in general. Chapter VI details the work we can all engage in to end slavery once we have established the right attitudes. Chapter VII offers a brief interlude and tells stories or copies news articles about slavery that I accumulated during the trip. Chapter VIII is, in my mind, the most significant chapter of all and the most worth reading. It deals with how we can and should order our lives to reduce our slavery footprint as much as possible. The final chapter renews the book’s themes and offers a hopeful vision for the path ahead, toward ending slavery in our world.

Hopefully you enjoy reading about my trip and my reflections, but more importantly I hope that you find yourself enlightened and perhaps motivated to better address human trafficking in your own way. The trip and my reflections can and should serve as a story-form introduction on how to think about and tackle all forms of injustice and particularly modern-day slavery. If our concern is not and will not be slavery, then perhaps the book will still be useful to you as we all seek to live a more full and content life.

Enlightened and motivated or not, this book should be approached with its unique niche in mind: an account of slavery by a non-expert. There is a limit to the number of stories and reflections that I can include here, but the real limitations are my knowledge and experience. Yet that, I think, is precisely why this book makes sense. Expert opinion and experience often effects a sense of alienation in us ordinary folk. No matter how hard the experts and experienced try, most ordinary readers will not relate. Generally we might read of various atrocities, feel disgusted, think something should be done, read about how we can help, then put the book down never to think of it again. The fact that I am not an expert and have very little experience should help you relate to my story and my reflections, all of which will help us ordinary folk grasp our role in the fight against slavery.¹

One piece of advice while reading: read the footnotes. I know that footnotes are usually annoying and seemingly useless, but I promise that my footnotes are generally interesting. Only a few footnotes are citations, the rest are fun comments or facts that simply don’t fit neatly into the narrative.

Now that your bags are packed and seatbelts buckled, are you ready for an adventure?

¹ Plus, you will find that I do not hesitate to dive into the nitty-gritty, especially in the pornography chapter, not only to reveal myself as one of you but also to avoid dancing around vital thoughts and topics that too often are ignored either because they are too messy, and not formal, or because no one wants to admit that they are not as righteous as they seem.

Chapter I: A Great Many Beginnings

A warning: I think this is the longest chapter in the book. I wanted to divide it into two chapters, but then I’d be left with one completely useless chapter. In the end I decided that it makes sense because everything you read in this chapter occurred prior to the first day of the bike trip. You’ll learn how I prepared for the bike trip, the name of my beautiful bike, and, most importantly, the majority of the chapter will enlighten you as to the hard facts and stories of modern-day slavery. Skip over the stuff under the heading preparations at your own peril but do not skip over anything else, that would be silly. After all, I imagine you’re reading this book to learn more about slavery/human trafficking.

Return to the Story

Somewhere between my junior and senior years in college I decided to become a pastor. As a United Methodist at the time I figured I should go to a United Methodist seminary, landing at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Within the first few months of arriving at Wesley someone had posted a flyer for the first annual D.C. Walk to End Modern-Day Slavery. Thankfully I had gotten to know my roommate well by that time, Joel Walther, and thankfully he is a much better person than I am, and thankfully his fiancée at the time, Megan Walther, also cared about slavery. If I didn’t have the two of them agree to go with me I’m not sure that I would have, since I am a rather shy and insulated person. Clearly none of that affects my cockiness, but oh well.

The motivation I had for attending the walk had a lot to do with the New York Times article that I had read a few years before. Upon seeing the flyer for the walk I suddenly remembered the horror and disgust that I felt but suppressed when learning that slavery still exists. More importantly, though, I also remembered how frustrated I had been that my junior-year class read the article in order to talk about politicians rather than the fates of the young girls and boys. It seemed like a blindness had pervaded the classroom. And that blindness was only confirmed in my college years when I brought up the issue of slavery and few people knew or seemed to care. Maybe it was the fact that I was then in seminary, I don’t know, but as I planned to take part in the walk I realized that I, too, was blind. What did I know about slavery except that it exists? I had read one little article and the only take-away was that slavery exists and few people know about it. What a fool I was to think that I had penetrated into some kind of enlightenment. My cockiness was temporarily shattered.

At that first annual D.C. Walk to End Modern-Day Slavery, my eyes and heart opened. The first thing that popped out at me was the number being thrown around: 27 million. 27 million slaves in the world today. More slaves in the world today than the total number of slaves throughout history. The slavery that I learned of in my junior year of high school, that we all learn about in this country and wish we could forget, didn’t even come close in terms of numbers. 27 million slaves in the world today.²

How is it, I wanted to know, that there could be 27 million slaves in the world today and I not know about it? I mean, it’s not that I think I should know about everything and I certainly don’t think that I or anyone should care about everything, but 27 million is a huge number. 27 million people is about the population of Venezuela and Afghanistan, and more than the population of Australia, Chile, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and a whole host of other countries that I think even the least educated Americans could recognize as countries. Yet somehow 27 million slaves escaped the notice of a fairly well-educated young adult throughout my formative educational years; educational years spent at some solid institutions, too. Something was and is wrong with that picture.

My girlfriend at the time, Heather Smith, deserves a shout out as well because she, more than anyone else I know, made women’s issues real to me. As a man it is sometimes easy to think that in this day and age all of the worst evils society has known no longer exist: slavery, sexism, racism, etc. Heather showed me that there are still some obvious cases of sexism against women, and many subtle cases of sexism that even the most well-intending men could perpetrate. Granted, women aren’t the only victims of sexism, but the fact that women often have to deal with sexism beyond unequal pay grades unbeknownst to me helped me understand a little of why and how 27 million slaves could escape my attention: slavery doesn’t apply to me. Or so I thought at the time.

Still, the fact that I am not myself a slave and do not own slaves and do not know anyone that is a slave cannot explain why my education did not at any time include the modern-day horrors and realities of slavery. I was absolutely shocked, disappointed, and aghast when at that first annual walk I stood around with no good explanation for my lack of awareness. It was then, during the walk and reflecting on how I and many other people I know could have missed the real evils of slavery, that I decided I needed to play at least a small part in raising awareness about slavery and the 27 million slaves who are suffering as I write and as you read.

Clearly, then, the first thing that I needed to do was become aware myself. I took two steps to solve my problem of ignorance: I took home from the walk a book by E. Benjamin Skinner to read, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery; and I discovered an organization that I planned to research and maybe be at least slightly involved with, Polaris Project.

My friend Megan Walther and I both began reading Skinner’s book almost immediately. It was good having a friend to read it with because some of the facts and real-life situations that Skinner details were a little too disturbing to internalize by myself. What’s great about Skinner’s book is that he acts as a journalist, going to the places in Haiti and Romania where slaves are bought and sold and records the experiences and situations that he witnesses. Of course, that also makes the book disturbing because the reality of slavery in our world today is, indeed, disturbing. Funny how disturbing circumstances can disturb us. Sometimes when we think of slavery as a set of statistics we can manage. But when slavery becomes a real person our mind tries to shut off out of self-preservation. Skinner also has experience talking with and interviewing the government bodies and other organizations that fight human trafficking, both effectively and ineffectively.

A Crime So Monstrous

One of the first paragraphs of Skinner’s book reads: Human bondage is today illegal everywhere. But if we accept that one slave exists in a world that has abolished legal slavery, then, if we look closely, we soon must accept that millions of slaves exist… Whatever the total number, it was [is] big. And, to me, meaningless.³ I agree with Skinner’s analysis. Does it really matter if there are 27 million slaves or ten million? Or five million? Or one million? Definitely not. I don’t think anyone can truly argue that there are only one million slaves, but even if they could, one person in slavery poses a serious problem in our world today. If one person is held in slavery today then that means that slavery is possible, and the simple fact that slavery is still possible in our world despite our history and our supposedly progressing civilization should shock us into action.

Based on that, as I will sort of argue in later chapters, slavery should be a focus of our attention even if and when we totally eradicate all societies of the practice. We cannot allow slavery and the forces that lead to slavery even a glimmer of hope. So, I hope that none of us get caught up on the huge number of 27 million arguing, That’s not possible! I would have heard if there were that many! Many people have argued that with me and, quite frankly, it’s entirely erroneous. Because of the nature of slavery today you wouldn’t have heard if there are 27 million slaves and, again, the number doesn’t matter anyway. Let us agree that slavery exists in our world today and that it is the last thing that anyone should fall victim to.

There is a whole lot more that I wish I could include from Skinner’s book. Of all the resources from which you can learn more about modern-day slavery I recommend Skinner’s first. What I will do is give you an excerpt from the very beginning of his first chapter. Skinner starts you off with a shock that I think all of us should experience.

For our purposes, let’s say that the center of the moral universe is in Room S-3800 of the UN Secretariat, Manhattan. From here, you are some five hours from being able to negotiate the sale, in broad daylight, of a healthy boy or girl. Your slave will come in any color you like, as Henry Ford said, as long as it’s black. Maximum age: fifteen. He or she can be used for anything. Sex or domestic labor are the most frequent uses, but it’s up to you.

Before you go, let’s be clear on what you are buying. A slave is a human being who is forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Agreed? Good. You may have thought you missed your chance to own a slave. Maybe you imagined that slavery died along with the 360,000 Union soldiers whose blood fertilized the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Perhaps you assumed that there was meaning behind the dozen international conventions banning the slave trade, or that the deaths of 30 million people in world wars had spread freedom across the globe.

But you’re in luck. By our mere definition, you are living at a time when there are more slaves than at any point in history. If you’re going to buy one in five hours, however, you’ve really got to stop navel-gazing over things like law and the moral advance of humanity. Get a move on.

First, hail a taxi to JFK International Airport… With no baggage, you’ll speed through security in time to make a direct flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Flying time: three hours.

The final hour is the strangest. After disembarking, you will cross the tarmac to the terminal where drummers in vodou getup and a dancing midget greet you with song. Based on Transportation Security warnings posted in the departure terminal at JFK, you might expect abject chaos at Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport. Instead, you find orderly lines leading to the visa stamp, no bribes asked, a short wait for your bag, then a breeze through customs. Outside the airport, the cabbies and porters will be aggressive, but not threatening. Assuming you speak no Creole, find an English-speaking porter and offer him $20 to translate for the day.

Ask your translator to hail the most common form of transport, a tap-tap, a flatbed pickup retrofitted with benches and a colored canopy. You will have to take a couple of these, but they only cost 10 gourdes (25 cents) each…

You’ll want to head up Route de Delmas toward the suburb of Pétionville, where many of the country’s wealthiest thirty families—who control the nation’s economy—maintain a pied-á- terre. As you drive southeast away from the sea, the smells change from rotting fish to rotting vegetables… You’ll pass a billboard featuring a smiling girl in pigtails and the words: Give me your hand. Give me tomorrow. Down with Child Servitude. Chances are, like the majority of Haitians, you can’t read French or Creole. Like them, you ignore the sign…

…There are more than 10,000 street kids, mostly boys as young as six, some selling unprotected sex for $1.75. Haiti has the highest prevalence of HIV infection outside of sub-Saharan African, and Haitians who believe sex with virgins protects against, or even cures, AIDS have driven up the price of such intercourse to $5.00. Haiti has also become a magnet for sex tourists and pedophiles. One left a review of the children in an online chatroom [you can find many of these chatrooms online if you looked for them]: The younger ones are even more kinger (sic) than the older women… Park on the street and tell them to go at it!!!!!!!!!! If anyone sees you they just ignore you. No police but the multi-national military force is still here. Locals say that the main contribution of the peacekeepers to Haiti’s economy comes via the brothels. Opposite a UN camp on an otherwise desolate road outside of Port-au- Prince, Le Perfection nightclub does booking business…

You are now halfway up to Delmas, and slaves are everywhere. Assuming that this is your first trip to Haiti, you won’t be able to identify them. But to a lower-middle-class Haitian, their status is written in blood. Some are as young as three or four years old. But they’ll always be the small ones, even if they’re older. The average fifteen-year-old child slave is 1.5 inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter than the average free fifteen-year-old. They may have burns from cooking for their overseer’s family over an open fire; or scars from beatings, sometimes public, with the martinet, electrical cables, or wood switches…

These are the restavèks, the stay-withs, as they are euphemistically known in Creole. Forced, unpaid, they work from before dawn until deep night. The violence in their lives is unyielding.

These are the children who won’t look you in the eyes.

Haiti? Of course there are slaves there, you might think. But I hope that the beginning of Skinner’s book makes real the torment and vile sadness that our society has allowed into our world so close to us. Slavery is alive and well and not far at all from where you work and live, either physically or by time and travel. Even Skinner’s book, which has a clear global frame of reference, notes that cautious officials in the U.S. government estimate that traffickers turn up to 17,500 humans into slaves on American soil every year. Of those slaves some are transported here as slaves from other countries, but many are immigrants trying to make a life here before falling into slavery; and many are American citizens. The issue of child slavery is no less damning in this country than it is in others: The average age at which a prostitute first sells her body is fourteen.⁴

And it’s not just Haitians or foreign-born Americans doing the trafficking. The story above alone should show us how easy it is to buy a slave and return to the country—Skinner negotiated with