Lit circle letter 1

This month, my book is called Ending Slavery by Kevin Bales. This book is about slavery happening around the world today. I picked this book because I have been wanting to read this book since the beginning of the school year. But I never actually got the chance to. I had a pretty good idea about what the book was about. When we watched the video on the TED talk from Kevin Bales himself about slaves around the world today, I really wanted to read it.

"If you could buy a fully equipped, brand new car for $40, do you think your relationship to your car would change? If your car were that cheap, you would begin to treat it as something to be used and discarded. Why even fix a flat tire if the whole car costs less than the repair? Most slaveholders feel that way about slaves today."

This quote gives you a good idea about how slaves are viewed today in this world. That people can just replace them. That they aren't worth anything. Or hardly anything at all. Kevin compares a brand new car with a cheap price to a slave. Just like brand new cars, slaves are able to work and do all kinds of stuff their "master" wants them to do. He talks about how slaves back in the days were expensive because the population wasn't that high. But now that the population is so much higher, it is easier to find slaves.

He also talks about where slaves come from. Its the families that aren't modernized. The ones that are living on poverty. The ones with children who can't go to school because they can't afford it. Then some fancy looking person comes along and tells them about how the children will be working some place far away from there and supporting their families, making them want to go. Only after they leave and have no idea where they are and how to get back home, they realize what they had gotten into. I don't find it very shocking that there are many slavery going on in the world. In fact, I have already known that. I am pretty sure a lot of people have or had already known this too. But none of us are really doing anything about it.

Almost all of us are just going "oh it will never happen to me, so I don't have to worry about it." Maybe you aren't in slavery, but someone you know might be. And you wouldn't be able to help that person get out of it if you are just sitting there doing nothing about it.

Reading the stories of these children in this book was extremely sad and heartfelt. This book really god so far. I think that I am going to really enjoy this book till the very end.