After decades and decades of being interrupted while speaking… by those overly eager, or who are convinced that, if they do not speak ‘up’, will not be heard…

I learned a trick.

Because what an annoying thing… !!

Dealing with those who can not wait for their turn to join the conversation!

Whatever the rationale (or rationalization made by interrupting me…)

But a good story, we can ‘see’ and even feel the impatience of the listener coming.

They radiate this, (if you’re attentive).

But if it’s still like that, and the person that interrupted you continues (surprise, surprise !)… Stay polite, let the other finish his thought then say, “if you do not mind, I would like to return to what he was talking about. ”

So after having finished what you had to say, you can also add: “I’m sorry for going back to what I was saying… I just wanted to explain myself well before we changed the subject. “

Clearly, it is not us that has to apologize, but being super polite (with someone very rude), we force this person to join a higher level of communication… instead of the lowering ourselves.

(Suggestion by Ruli Rottemberg writer and producer of the show “Sex and the City “)

After yesterday’s post… Oh my…

It was very hard to fall asleep. Very hard.

Injustice is something that I can not stand and because of it, I have fought a lot during my life.

I believe that we have to give everybody, ‘All the rights’ we want for ourselves…

But, thank God, yesterday the stock of Valerian and Rescue Remedy was on hand! 

My mind, body and spirit were fully prepared, late at night, to continue the fight against slavery!

How I wish that life (human and animal alike…) was the purest freedom!

It is difficult to believe that we can say we are ‘free’ while still others are not (and still under oppression!)

Freedom has so much to show to slaves who have never seen it…

I’m glad that History does not teach fatalism. On the contrary, shows that a handful of people who managed to alter it.

Look at the map current of slavery in the world …

Numbers of slaves:

• green= less than 500.000

• light orange=500.00 to 5 million

• dark orange=more than 5 million

• blue= no slavery or no data
“ Let freedom never perish in your hands.” (Joseph Addison)

 And always remember, when buying something: specially coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, fruit and clothes… Remember to look for the seal to fight slavery:

“Those who deny freedom to others do not deserve it themselves.” (A. Lincoln)

Many people in America think that human slavery happens in every other part of the world except here…

But the U.S. State Department says the opposite: 14,500 to 17,500 human beings coming from 47 countries arrive in this land, per year, thinking they will have decent jobs, but then are forced into prostitution.

Traffickers tell victims that if they go to the police, they will be deported and their families murdered… that they “can only return home when they have finished paying the “bondage debt” which is more or less at $10,000, plus every meal, lodging, clothing, condoms or taxi ride.

Considered “property of the captors”, these people are kept ‘in line’ by constant threats of violence and death and hidden in broad daylight (behind double doors with locks and iron bars).

To get here, the suffering is enormous: traveling in horrible conditions inside the trunks of cars, going hungry and unbearable heat.

Later they are forced to have sex with 20 men a day.

A few days per month, the slaves are ‘exchanged’ for protecting of gangs, where they experience beatings and gang rape.

They work every day, even if sick and often without a condom, at the request of customers.

In 2010, 566 cases of human trafficking were investigated by U.S. Immigration, 388 resulted in the arrest of 165 individuals found guilty… This is because of help from few good Samaritans, such as the taxi driver Joaquin Huerta, who tired of carrying this type of victim, decided to do something about it (went to the station Univision TV and reported it).

And what can we do …? If we suspect that someone is the victim of this horrendous crime?

→CALL:

ICE – 866-347-2423 – toll free 24 hrs. a day, or

“Polaris Project – 888-373-7888 (that attends in several languages)

→Volunteer at:

C.A.S.T. – The Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking – http://www.castla.org

→EDUCATE yourself by visiting the website of the United Nations: unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/index.html

Or the website of the University of Massachusetts: gvnet.com/ humantrafficking

→GIVE to:

“Free the Slaves”

VYou can help with your time or money: www.freetheslaves.net;page.aspx?pid=335.

Be sure to pass this information through a link, Twitter, Facebook …If you believe in freedom, become an abolitionist TODAY. Spread the word about it.

Internationally, human slavery is the third largest and fastest growing crime.

How do we change old habits?

Those we have cultivated all our lives?

I love what Mark Twain said:

“You do not break an old habit just by throwing it out the window. You have to go down  with it.”

Slowly as well as deliberately. Walking it down the stairs requires a commitment… You have to take the first step and then another, and the next…

Until you reach the door!