At Least I Tried

Nicholas Kristof, one of the New York Times Op-Ed writers, first opened my eyes to a form of slavery I had never been exposed to before--children, as young as eight, and women abducted from their homes to work in seedy brothels all around Cambodia. I could not begin to fathom how one could justify subjugating a child and rob them of their innocence by allowing Western tourists to sexually assault them.

Today, the New York Times published an editorial piece by John R. Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former State Department ambassador. In the article, he attacks the United States Department of Justice for not wanting to end the sex trafficking industry in the United States and abroad, one of the hallmark humanitarian platforms that President Bush has staked his presidential legacies on. I, too, agree with Miller in that the public should excoriate the Department of Justice for its refusal to do whatever it takes to end this horrific injustice.

The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007 was introduced last year to, among other things, give broader powers to Congress, the Department of State, the Department of Justice, and other federal agencies to combat the pervasive sex trafficking industry. The bill passed almost unanimously in the House of Representatives, but is currently stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee. How the United States cannot get their act together and continue to ignore the eradication of rights for women and children who are trapped in the modern day slave trade is deplorable.

Although I am unsure of how everything is going to turn out in the years to come, I wish to get involved in tackling social injustice--maybe not sex trafficking per se (although I am open), but anything social injustice related. I watched the movie "Lions for Lambs" last night, and in the highly politically-charged movie, Robert Redford's character, a college political science professor, tries to logically persuade an apathetic student with utmost potential to care about society and get involved. In one of the more poignant parts of the movie, the student says, "You think it is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try. But what is the difference if you end up in the same place?" And the professor calmly responds, "At least you tried something."

When all is said and done, when I have to give an account for what I did with my one life, I want to say that at least I tried to make right some wrongs in the world in which I live in today. At least I tried.