Raising awareness of child trafficking

Abolitionists from Amistad America and Love 146 gathered aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad to announce their joint commitment to liberate at least one modern day slave, hopefully more.

Human trafficking was labeled the most common form of modern-day slavery by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2011. In 2012 President Barack Obama announced the United States’ leadership in ending modern day slavery at the Clinton Global Initiative.

There are around 20 million people enslaved on the planet, according to Rob Morris, president and co-founder of Love 146. Love 146 is a New Haven-based international organization committed to the abolishment of human trafficking and child slavery. The organization partnered with Amistad America under the leadership of Amistad Amer- ica’s Executive Director Hanifa Washington.

“Partnerships is what it’s all about, partnerships between individuals, between groups, between cities, between societies, we can’t do it alone,” Washington said.

While one form of slavery ended, the treatment of “people like property” still exists, Morris explained.

Whether it’s “people in sweat jobs in Cambodia, or digging in diamond mines in Africa, being pimped out on the streets of Hartford or New Haven,” he said.

Morris urged people aboard the ship to remember that there are human beings behind the issues and the numbers.

“It wasn’t just about an issue or cause when I found myself with criminal investigators standing in a brothel in Southeast Asia looking through these glass windows at young children being sold like commodities,” Morris said. “It was just insanity to me, looking through those windows, seeing the life stripped from what we call modern day slaves, there was just this blank robotic stare in these children.”

But much like the strength displayed by Sengbe Pieh during the Amistad Revolt of 1839, there was one child that showed a sign of determination left — her number was 146. Morris guessed she was new to the brothel.

“She had not had the life stripped of her yet, she had this fight in her eyes, she was staring at us through this glass with a sense of determination,” he said.

Similar to the multitude the slaves aboard the Amistad represented, the girl remains a representation of today’s slaves, Morris concluded.

MARA LAVITT — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Amistad Voyages has partnered with Love 146 to end child trafficking and exploitation. Jim Ehrman, executive director of Love 146, addresses the gathering.