Ashley Judd at Harvard, on Human Trafficking

This presentation is about the issue of contemporary slavery.  It contains a richness of content and values.

Kevin Bales is among the top researchers on slavery.  Note how his Quaker values permeate his work. The actress and activist Ashley Judd talks freely of how her Christian values drive her activism. Note her criticism of Hollywood's portrayal of the exploitation of women, as well as her anger over pornography and the effect on young males. Of Timothy McCarthy, director of the Human Rights and Social Movements Program at Harvard, I do not think that it is an accident that he is a Catholic.

But most especially for my fellow members of the Communion and Liberation Movement, I want to relate, from Ashley Judd, an encounter that she had with a slave in India. It is the last two minutes of the video.

"I just want to share a story about a guy whose soul, the last time I saw him, was not yet crushed.  And his name is Mohammed. And he migrated to a slum outside of Mumbai looking for work because the push factors from the rural countryside in which he had been born were very strong.

"And he was sewing, and lived in a very small room not much larger than the size of this desk actually, with two other men.  And  they had a little space where they did their cooking and they had their bucket where they fetched their non-potable water. And he was one of the most gentle people I have ever met in my life. And I was very touched by him because I didn't quite understand how he could maintain such a sense of loveliness actually, while living and working in these abysmal conditions of slavery.

"There was a little piece of jagged mirror that he had tacked onto the wall. And in this one moment when he passed it, and I was passing behind him, our eyes met in the mirror.  I stopped and asked him, "Mohammed, what do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror."

He said, 'I see a beautiful child of God.'

And I said, 'That's what I see too.'

When I asked him how he stayed alive in those circumstances, he said that it was because he knew that he was sending beauty out into the world, because the quality of his work was so high."