Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves

Bales (Understanding Global Slavery ) provides a guide for eliminating the plague of slavery that continues to this day, involving some 27 million slaves worldwide producing $13 billion in goods and services. Bales provides a thorough overview of slavery, including its history, its methods, the lives of its victims around the world, and the conditions under which it flourishes (modern slaves “are cheap, and they are disposable”); most importantly, Bales has put together guides to action at every level, from the individual to the community to the United Nations, in a six-point plan that includes protecting, arming and cloning “the liberators”; enacting and enforcing effective antislavery legislation; and perhaps most important (and overlooked), helping freed slaves heal (“liberation is just the first step on a long road”). Alongside those goals, Bales also considers practical matters, including fund-raising, increasing awareness among the general public and convincing governments to pay attention: though “[a]ll political leaders denounce slavery,” its numbers are still up, “perpetrators go uncaught... and the minimal resources needed to rehabilitate freed slaves are not available.” Shocking, saddening, angering and inspiring, this volume reveals in full a side of the global market many Americans simply do not know about, clueing readers in on “the extent of their own involvement in global slavery” and the unthinkable injustices that could be taking place even in their local communities. (Sept.)