Sometimes when a word and its usage have a long, colorful history, we forget the truth for which the word stands. Dignity is one of those words-and we have to bring it back, because right now, there are too many human beings in the world who don’t have it and have never known it. Modern-day slavery is robbing millions and millions of men, women, and children of their dignity (some estimate the number to be as high as 27 million).

In the U2 song Crumbs from Your Table, which laments the nagging tension between scarcity and abundance, Bono speaks of “dignity [that] passes by.” For millions who are caught in the horrors of debt bondage, forced labor, and sex trafficking, dignity does pass by, every day. With their dignity absent, these individuals’ humanity necessarily wanes and wears thin. And every day we, the privileged ones in a developing world, have the opportunity to make sure that dignity is restored to all who suffer the gross oppression of modern-day slavery. When we take this opportunity, we move closer to a world where restored humanity confronts and subverts dehumanizing suffering.

An emerging grassroots organization called Stop Child Trafficking Now (SCTNow) has the potential to lift the darkness and ignorance that so penetrate the American psyche about human trafficking. SCTNow uniquely targets the demand side of the problem – the predators who desire and prey upon the young victims. Some estimates put these children as young as 2 to 3 years old, and our moral sensibilities rage, but the feeling can pass as quickly as it came, and we feel helpless to do anything to approach, understand, or affect the problem.

Lynette Lewis, co-founder of SCTNow, was in the same situation a year and a half ago. She deeply grieved over the sufferings of all the children who were trafficked and forced into slavery, children in the United States who did not necessarily come from troubled backgrounds or broken homes. People often assume that trafficking of persons is a problem only in other nations, not a reality to be dealt with in the United States. Lynette and the staff at SCTNow want to make sure that they dispel that myth and emphasize the pervasiveness of trafficking here in the US.

To better get at the heart and mind that drive SCTNow’s bold mission, I spoke with Sundy Goodnight, the organization’s National Campaign Director. Her passion is contagious, especially when she describes howSCTNow is uniquely positioned to make a tangible, measurable dent in the number of trafficked human beings. Sundy’s liveliness and conviction not only woke me up physically (it was 9:30am and the caffeine from my Starbucks “redeye” was just starting to kick in), but also emotionally and spiritually. She reminded me that this is an injustice that cannot be watched or analyzed from afar. The suffering is real and tragic, and the victims of this brutal oppression need the sure promise of our help.

Sundy, speaking from her experience as a trauma counselor, wisely remarked that “when a girl is sexually abused or violated…trauma creates silence…[and] shame, guilt, and condemnation follow her the rest of her life.” As if this wasn’t saddening enough, Sundy continued, “The fears are louder than the truth of what she [the victim] is living.”

SCTNow takes a simple approach: go after the demand (the predators), so that the supply (human persons) is compromised. The philosophy behind SCTNow rightly assumes that other methods to alleviate the problem of sex trafficking – whether it is rescuing victims, rehabilitating them, or taking down the pimps who run the brothels and trafficking rings – are useful and necessary in their own right, but do not get at the core of the problem: demand. If predators are found out and brought to justice, SCTNow’s logic goes, then deterrence will curb demand, which will then irrevocably decrease supply. SCTNow has over 100 men who, once they receive enough funding, will assemble themselves as special operatives teams to build cases and track down predators, and then hand over those cases to local law enforcement. Remarkably, these special ops team members are retired Navy seals and counterterrorism agents who have voluntarily joined the cause and pledged to work in the field for little pay.

After my conversation with Sundy, I walked to the subway with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I figured that Stop Child Trafficking Now’s strategy will work well, and in turn help abolish modern day slavery altogether. On the other hand, cynicism fed my thinking that SCTNow’s vision might be too grand, too expensive, and unsustainable.

For the sake of the thousands of children who are trafficked in the US each year, I will quell my cynicism and feed my hope – hope that many more people will become involved with the emerging anti-trafficking and anti-slavery movements. We lose our dignity if we knowingly let it pass by our suffering neighbor. Stop Child Trafficking Now is a convicting light to our ignorance and inaction to make sure that dignity no longer passes by the victims of human trafficking.

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