Agents of Change: Perspective in the Battle; Perspective in the Classroom; Perspective in the World.
We sat in a circle. All 34 of us. Closely knit already, woven like friendships and family more than students and teacher. Our desks, touching our papers spread.
I handed out packets, pencils in their hands, the study of history aside, and began: “Slavery exists in the world today.” Their eyes looked up. “In your lifetime, slavery exists. There are 27 million people who are slaves right this moment, in this world. That is more than the time of Abraham Lincoln. More than anytime in history.” And their eyes held mine.
I went on to tell a story, about a friend of mine in India, being offered a man’s daughter, a four year old girl, for a dollar. For sex. I read a paragraph from the packet, accosting them with the price of slaves: $25 dollars today. They were $40,000 in the Antebellum South ($1,000 equivalent to $40,000 today).
They stared. Speechless. I told them about a friend in Southeast Asia, who saw young girls stored underground until nighttime fell and men came to defile them. About fathers in Africa who offer their daughters a better life in the city, only to be betrayed by the lure of the businessmen.
They write their responses. Quiet and pensive, but scrolling on paper: “How could someone do something like this with no sorrow or regrets?” “I am horrified; I feel sad and angry, shocked.”
We read sentences. Stories. Lives. Reality of fingers cut off, wrists hung and torn, skin mangled to smell of rotten flesh. The quotes of those who remain scare our own emotions, as we listen to theirs: “God created me to be a slave, just as he created a camel to be a camel.” “I am no star; I’m just a whore. That’s all.” “For ten years, I had no one to laugh with. For ten years, nobody loved me.”
The room is still. Quiet. Angst and anticipation crowd the corners. The students say nothing, do little except stare at me and their work, unable to respond, to answer. Tears threaten a few. My own heart pounds out beats. They pencil thoughts: “How can people come in and murder people? The kid name the rest – innocent men, women, and children alike?” “To slaves that slaves were hurt is an understatement. People fix cars of bikes better than they fix their slaves…These slaves are tortured, mutilated, punished so severe…”
I linger slowly, punctually over facts: details of capture, torture, selling, holding. I assign the paragraph: “Serious punishment includes the feared ‘insect treatment’ in which tiny ants are stuffed into a slave’s ears, and the ears are then bound tightly by a scarf. The slave is left tied u for several days, after which, Human Rights Watch says, the slave will do what he or she is told.”
I speak about 485 and 77, the junction between two major highways near us, and display the article from the Charlotte Observer about it’s slave passageway; its transfer of human life. She speaks: “Why are we not doing more to stop it?”
We are cold, hardened; now hurting. We are shocked, softened. We are perplexed, purposeful.
I stop. Pause. Breathe.
I armor them. My world changers: my warriors against battles I cannot fight alone. I give them places to be more. To be greater than a student in a desk, an adolescent in their home. Organizations, people, places to join with, to fight with.
So we start today. World changing. Going from content to coin collecting. Gathering a jar of coins to fight modern slavery. Loose Change to Loosen Chains. More than an issue. More than a reading. More than a class period.
We are more. We are students. We are agents. We are agents of change.
