Episode 57: Does the Recipe for Freedom Only Involve the Four “P’s” of Human Trafficking: Prosecution, Prevention, Protection and Partnership? What about Power and Privilege? Part II

The need to move from a rescue and restore paradigm to a human rights paradigm is ever present. Early on in the U.S. the human trafficking movement began as a white movement made up of second wave feminists and evangelicals who saw criminal justice as allies in an attempt to solve the problem of slavery. This led to a doubling down of white privilege, enforcement, and patrol of people of color. To end human trafficking, we need to address root causes and create sustainable emancipation. In asking the question “What are we not looking at?” and “Who are we arresting?”, Dr. Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick enables us to focus on structural barriers related to the movement and asks us to look at the larger issues associated with modern slavery and forced labor. As a scholar focused on social movements, Dr. Choi-Fitzpatrick discusses his book “What Do Traffickers Think”, and in doing so, provides us with a deeper understanding of labor traffickers and the realities of blocked opportunities and unrealized equality. Most importantly he focuses us on the need to adopt goals and a vision that sets the movement on a course to end modern day slavery.