solace san francisco

a few years ago, President Obama designated January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month. While that is a seemingly thoughtful gesture, with the intention to bring attention to daily atrocities, i am left feeling like there should be a candid conversation surrounding this topic.

there are countless organizations – small and large scale, Faith based and secular – who have aimed to rise to the challenge to end “modern day slavery”. some do an incredible job of bringing about relevant awareness and proactively support and empower those victimized. sadly, most seem to simply encourage what is now known as, slacktivism.
[slacktivism is essentially when an individual sees a picture or link, takes the sound bite and/or image into account, is momentarily outraged or inspired, clicks 'like' or 'RT' and then goes about their day. occasionally, the person will even buy a tee or item in support of this and then move on, feeling as if they have done their part to help. most of us have done this at least once.]

we live in a world where oppression is found economically, politically, socio-economically – the list goes on; where a large portion of people continue to choose the path of least resistance and the more affordable over the more ethical when they spend their hard earned money. we have allowed ourselves [rightfully] to be swayed by tragic stories of vulnerable children and women who are exploited while ignoring the fact that men are frequently left out of the conversation. resources for males who are victims and survivors of trafficking are often without resources. no one in their right mind thinks that trafficking is good or right, but the stories and “how did this happen” elements get lost along the way.

during a recent last meeting with our SF team, we spoke at length about these things, got mad, yelled a lot, surfed the web to research if we were right about anything or if we were just being judgmental jerks. what we landed on was this:

for us, this issue is bigger then the headline grabbing stories of those bought, sold and abused in ways we cannot fathom. if we are gong to say we will be change-makers when it comes to trafficking, we have to look at the whole picture.
an organization can specialize in a niche and do exceptionally well helping those within it, but what about in everyday choices and how we live?

we are a community that is well intentioned and our desire for more makes it easy to justify not doing more. example: it’s easier to go to a big box retailer who holds speculative public records of labor violations and buy a T-Shirt for $5 versus buying a similar shirt which was created under an umbrella of respect and ethics to all those involved, start to finish…for $35.

that’s a high price for being an ethical consumer.

so, we’re thinking out loud now:
what can we all do for the other 364 days of the year, to make change for those oppressed in the worst ways? what can you do as an individual to begin to make a difference? what can our communities that we all have influence in do with you, to spark real change?

we don’t expect to change the world from a semi-snarky blog post. but we have made choices to buy and live with others in mind that can benefit or suffer from our choices.

if you live in SF/the Bay Area and want to meet up with us to talk about what we can do when it comes to human trafficking, drop us a line. if you live outside of SF and want to continue this conversation, email us so we can invite you to our upcoming online meet up.

we don’t claim to have all the answers, but we do have a desire for change as we are able to make it happen. today is a reminder to us that our actions will speak louder than words to what could happen next. we are grateful for the freedoms we do have and grieve for those who do not.