Spirit in Action

Judy Hyde - Free The Slaves

Judy Hyde is a perpetual source of healing and fun for the world. She's been working for Free the Slaves for several years, finding ways to stem the record numbers of people - and especially kids - held captive for slave labor.

Broadcast on:: 04 Nov 2007
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helps Meat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ We've got a wonderful guest for today's Spirit in Action program. A woman who is an unceasing source of healing and fun for the world, Judy Hyde. She's traveled across Russia, clowning with patch atoms as they visited hospitalized children, and she's now singing with the choral group Kankora. But it's her work with "Free the Slaves" that brought her to Spirit in Action today. "Free the Slaves" works worldwide for an end to slavery, and there's more slaves to date than any point in the past. Judy will tell us about this modern day anti-slavery work and some of the other ways that she is faithfully following the readings of the Spirit. Judy, thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. You are very welcome, Mark. I wish I could see you in person. Yeah, but you're out there in the northeast and I'm over here in the midwest and between don't meet easily. You're active right now with a couple major organizations. One is called "Free the Slaves" and you're also doing stuff for GI rights hotline, and this is what's known as being retired, right? Yes, I guess so. So are you really in retirement and how much time do you put in these organizations? Well, actually, it's not clear that I'm in retirement. I must say that working for "Free the Slaves" has felt to me like my new work. It's a new career that I anticipated when I ended the work that I was doing before on children's legal rights. And I knew that I wanted to be working next for children globally rather than just at the local or state level. I had an inkling that, well, you asked me how much time I'm putting into this and I'm getting into a whole big story here, but let me go on with telling you a little bit about how I got into it because it's really, really interesting. I am a Quaker, which, of course, you know, and I very much have appreciated the role of the leading in my life. I've come to recognize them and really have a sense of when they are ones I can't ignore. The work with children's legal advocacy came about as a very clear leading at a very difficult time in my life when I really was dealing with multiple tragedies and really felt that I was too tired to lift up my head, let alone start a new organization. But the word came that this is the time and this is the time you have to do it, go forth. So I followed that leading and when I was about five or six years into the development of that organization, I read an article about child sex slavery in Asia, in the New York Times, and I had that same old thinking feeling where it's visceral and it feels like something is sunk inside me. I knew that that was an early warning signal for what was going to come next, which amused me as often leading to because it seems improbable, it seemed improbable. At that point in my life, although I had been a child advocate for 25 years and knew a lot about child protection, child mental health and community organization, I did not know a thing about working internationally. I did not have any contact internationally. I didn't know anything about trafficking of children. I just knew that there was an enormous gulf between me and my next work, but I just stashed it away and knew that I didn't have to do much, that whatever was meant for me to be doing would simply show up. Then life unfolded and I came to a logical, natural ending to my work with the Children's Law Center of Connecticut, which was the organization I had founded out of various tragedies. It was doing very well. It was now under the leadership of lawyers, which is what it needed to be anyway since I'm not a lawyer, and my role had shrunk there. So at the 10-year mark, we had a celebration and I left. Now, I don't know about your listeners and what their experiences have been or whether they can understand when I say that I sought the input of a psychic to say, "Okay, what's next?" Although I had already had this leading, nevertheless, it's always interesting to hear from different sources about what should happen once in life. So in California, I went to such a person and I was told when I said, "Now, I have sort of a weighty feeling about my life. I've learned all this stuff and surely I was meant to put it to good use in what was I ever to do for the betterment of the world." The response was, "Hmm, you can do anything you want, and that's all I could hear. That's all that was said. You can do whatever you want." Which was a very lifting, freeing experience. So that's exactly what I set out to do. I said, "Okay, what do I want to do?" And for the first year, what I wanted to do was goof off. So I dusted off my skill at playing bridge. I'm a life master in bridge, so that was sort of fun to get back into that. And I was able to commit to playing tennis on a regular basis and get my physical body where I wanted it to be. And then the leading started to push on me and come into focus. And the way it happened was that Friends General Conference came to New England. And I said to myself, "Okay, you're a goof off lady now. You have been going to FGC for many years, and now it's your turn to do some work." So I volunteered to be on the steering committee for that and ended up curiously as the Clerk of Evening Programs, which it was sort of a default thing. Many things in Mark and my life are by default. I think of myself as the quintessential "getting there under the tent flaps" kind of person. It's just sort of the way things have always worked. And there I am. I'm now ahead of this committee. And as Chance would have it, the year before at the conference, I'd gotten a hold of a copy of Kevin Bale's book called Disposable People. Kevin Bale figures very important in this story, so I mentioned his name. It was quite astonishing to discover that he was, in fact, a Quaker. And I had no idea that this work was going on, that modern anti-slavery work was going on, and that one of the principal forces behind this was a Quaker, who I'd never heard of. So I thought, "Well, who better to have come and talk to all the Quakers?" We got Kevin there, and I took a workshop with him as well during the course of that week, and I'm telling you that by the end of that week, I was so clear that this was where I should go next. Part of that clarity had to do, not only with the issue, which was going to involve me in children's issues globally, which had been on that map of mine for a long time. But because I thought that this was a really remarkable person, and I've run my life by finding who the really remarkable people are and locating myself near them in some way, so I could learn from them. I thought, "This person is on the caliber who, at this stage of my life, is somebody I can still learn from." I said, "Kevin, you know, if you want me, if I can be of any use to you, I've had a little experience in this and that, and the other thing, if I could be of service, I will." And he said, "Oh good, you want to go to India?" And my heart sang. I said, "No, I don't want to go to India. No, no, no." That idea seemed extremely overwhelming to me, but he was just so instantly open to me. He was just open in a really unusual way. I don't expect people to often respond that way in general. They don't. So that felt like a major green light. That fall, I went down to Washington. He says, "Of course, you know, there is an executive director in this organization, and she's going to have to sign off on this and see if this is going to fit with what she wants." But I went down to Washington to meet her, and to stuff and vlogs, and to begin the work. And I was blown away. I was blown away by the executive director, who was herself, totally remarkable person. Her name is Jolene Smith, and she's a phenomenon too. Now I've been at it for four years with them, and I'm still just as surprised at her as I was then. Just to give you one example of ways in which she's remarkable, she was 29 years old, and to celebrate her 30th birthday, she ran 52 miles. And she doesn't look at all like that sort, you know? You know, there's the website freetheslaves.net, and it's got a picture of the board and staff on there, and it's got your partner Helen on there. Which one's Jolene? Jolene's the executive director. I can see a picture of people. I'm trying to figure out which one she is. Well, she's the pretty young one. She's the one wearing the pink or something. I don't know what she's on there. Maybe you haven't looked at that picture on there. No, I didn't even know there were pictures there. There's a picture, but you're not in it. Oh, I sent them a picture. I'm not there. Well, this is a group picture. Group picture. Okay. You're not in there. Maybe you were taking the picture. I mean, Helen's in there. Okay. Before you go too much further, let's spell out what free the slaves is really all about, because most people don't believe their slavery, first of all. And your role, your official title, is the National Coordinator of Volunteers to End Slavery. What do you do in India? And does this not have anything to do with the US? What is free the slaves? Free the slaves is the sister organization of anti-slavery international in Britain, which is the oldest anti-slavery organization in the world. We're only seven years old. We are committed to ending slavery. It's that simple. There are 27 million slaves in the world right now. There are more now than any other time in history. By slavery, it's a very narrow definition. We mean people who are forced to work against their will under threat of violence or actual violence are not free to leave and are not paid anything for their labor. And finally, their labor profits to somebody else economically. It is surprising to people that we estimate that there are 27 million people who fit that category. And it's not going down. We work in a couple of ways. First of all, we have partners in different countries who we have identified as doing really good anti-slavery work. They are involved in rescuing and in rehabilitating both children and adults who have been enslaved. Some of our partners are in Ghana, where children are used in the fishing industry to do very dangerous kinds of work that adults won't do. It's often the case with child slaves. It's jobs that adults wouldn't touch. We have partners in India who are rescuing children from the carpet room and from a number of other kinds of industries like cigarette rolling and quarrying. Their commitment is to first of all, get kids out of it and second of all, take them to the rehabilitation centers which are called ashram and help those children get to a point where they can go back to their original villages. Not only survive, but also in some ways be leaders because now they're literate, which nobody else in the village probably is, really take on a leadership role and work to make sure that other children don't get enslaved. [Music] One night I dreamed I wasn't slavery, but 1850 was a time. Sarah was the only sign and nothing around. He's my mom and out of her life. A peer to lady leading a distant pilgrim band. First mate she said pointing her hand and make room for this young woman saying, "Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine. Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine." She said her name was Harriet Tubman and she drove for the underground for the railroad. [Music] Under the miles that traveled on were gathering slaves from town to town. Seeking I've been lost and found, setting those free that ones were bound to mount my heart. She was growing weaker and held on the wayside, sinking sand. Finally did this woman stand, she lifted me up and took my hand and said, "Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine. Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine." Who are these children dressed in hair? They must be the ones that Moses left. Who are these children all dressed in hair? They must be the ones that Moses left singing, "Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine. Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine." She said her name was Haint of mine. And she played more than the ground for the railroad. Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up to this train of mine. Come on up, I got a life line. Come on up, come on up, I got a life line. I hope you recognized Hollie Nier as she sang Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was one of the heroes of the Underground Railroad guiding slaves to freedom before the U.S. Civil War. My guest for today's spirit in action is part of a group called Free the Slaves and they are working worldwide to end slavery in the 21st century. Judy Hyde, he did the call of the spirit to this work joined with Kevin Bales and many others to face this lamentable blotch on humanity. Just how serious a problem is this slavery? Is it just a question of increasing sensitivity to adults and children's rights? Let's ask Judy Hyde. I had a question here. You gave the definition of slavery. And when you gave it, I said, "Well, yeah, okay, that sounds like parents make their kids do work. That could fit in that definition. Maybe not, maybe there are clauses that don't do it." No, this excludes all-parent-child relationships. So when you're talking about these children, how did they get away from their family? How did they get into doing the fishing or the cigarette rolling or that? I mean, they're slaves. Who's keeping them? How is this done? Often it's done by a middle person that the family knows. So the trafficker comes to the village. I'm talking about, let's say, Indian, because you know you can't make general statements that really cover all situations. All over the world, there's a different phenomenon that go on, but I'm talking now about India. Somebody comes into the village who is a known quantity of some sort, talks to the parents, and makes an offer to take the child to some other place and teach them something useful that they will need. It's usually a promise of education. Often the parents resist, and they know, can't. But sometimes that trafficker, that middle person, just wears them down and wears them down until they relent and say, "Oh, okay, can take them." And often the trafficker will promise to send back remittances for the child's labor. So it looks, you know, it sounds like maybe it's going to be a good deal. Never does the money come back from the child's labor, and the child certainly doesn't get it. That the child goes on some journey with this person to some distant city or distant village and is immediately put to work, doing a task that the child may not know how to do it all. It's never done before, and there's very harsh treatment as the child makes mistakes or doesn't do it right. There's a lot of intimidation, a lot of force used. And these children are often kept locked in to a dark room, maybe never let out, or maybe let out for very brief periods. They may not have any kind of toilet facilities. They just have to use a can, and they may be given only one, not very nutritious meal a day. So they're underfed, they're exhausted, they may have to work up to 14 hours a day. I'm also talking now about conditions in the cocoa plantations, are similar to this. So this is slavery when people in the U.S. think about slavery. They think about what happened with African Americans back in the Civil War or previous to the Civil War. And you're talking about children, does this slavery also happen with adults or is this simply misuse of children? Oh, it certainly happens with adults, for sure. There's a cut-off where usually we say anybody under 18 is a child and 18 plus is an adult. So we have a group of people in that 15 to 20-year-old range who are quite exploitable. Some of them are technically adults, some of them are technically children, but it's the same age group. It happens that they're particularly vulnerable to domestic servitude or certainly do sex work. But you brought up that people often think about slavery as something like what happened in the South in America, but there's a really, really important difference, probably a lot of differences, but one important difference is that slave owners in the South and in the United States back in those days had a big investment, financial investment in their slaves. They cost a lot of money. So they took some sort of care of them, tended to them if they were sick, fed them just as you would want to take care of your workhorse. You have to take physical care of it because it represented an enormous financial investment. And also you couldn't manage your crop very well if you didn't have good slaves. So let's say back then it would have been the equivalent of a $40,000 investment. Now in some areas and some circumstances you can buy a person for as little as $40. When something goes wrong with that person, you can just put them out, let them fare however they fare. So in the cocoa plantations of Cote d'Ivoire, children who get sick are just tossed out and they die, or children get beaten to death. And it doesn't matter because you can go out and buy a new one. So that's why Kevin Bales titled this book "Disposable People" to really reflect what is the current situation. [Music] Oh, blade of grass can I ask you? Where is the road to peace? Tell me please. Oh, singing bird, what are the words? To the freedom songs you sing, or how they ring? Use no song we have not sung, the freedom bells you ring we have not run. Oh, for you tell me now, oh. Yeah, the swings to fly in the voice to cry out freedom, beyond the border lines in our minds. It lies to see the mystery, the threads that bind all living kind across the sea. On next to me, plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. [Music] Oh, blowing wind, where do we begin? Have you any answers now? Can you tell us how, river do you know? Will justice ever flow, and will we ever see, all people free? The sun said the bird, and I'll reply. The grass began tonight, the wind to cry. Oh, I'll tell you now, oh. You have wings to fly in the voice to cry out freedom, beyond the border lines in your minds. It lies to see the mystery, the threads that bind all living kind across the sea. On next to me, plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. [Music] We have wings to fly in the voice to cry out freedom, beyond the border lines in our minds. We vise to see the mystery, the threads that bind all living kind across the sea. On next to me, plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. With wings to fly in the voice to cry out freedom, beyond the border lines in our minds. We vise to see the mystery, the threads that bind all living kind across the sea. On next to me, plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. Plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. Plant your feet on the ground, the world is turning round. That sweet voice is Sarah Thompson with Freedom Song. If you don't know Sarah's music, you'll have a chance to know her much better in the near future, as she's accepted my invitation to share her song of the soul. You'll recognize, though, that her version of "Turning of the World" is already the theme song for this program, Spirit in Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, part of Northern Spirit Radio, and my guest is Judy Hyde, part of a group called "Free the Slaves." Judy's telling us about how slavery works in the 21st century, and how her group seeks to free the millions of slaves around the world today. He said that there are more now than any time in history, 27 million slaves worldwide. What percentage of these are children? What's the demographics on this 27 million? Well, they're located primarily where you have the worst conditions of poverty, and often the most lax governmental controls. So that's where they tend to occur most in population. Children? I haven't got it on the tip of my tongue there, and I don't want to be spouting off numbers that I can't stand by. So I'm not going to give you absolute figures on that, but nobody really knows. Very, very hard to study, as you can imagine, because it's illegal everywhere in the world, so it's not easy to be sure about absolute numbers or percentages. But I didn't want to make this point. Although it is true that they're more now than ever before, proportionately to the population, they're fewer. A smaller percentage of the population is now enslaved than in former centuries. That's the good news. And the output, the financial product of slaves, is a much tinier percentage of the overall global economy than it was in historic slavery. So what can be done about this? It sounds like, to some degree, there are victims of the societies over there, and of economic circumstances. I think parents wouldn't normally part with their children, except under the diarist, economic, and cultural imperatives. What can be done about it? What is free the slaves doing about it? And what's your role in this, Judy? We are very excited at free the slaves, because we believe with all our hearts that we all together, working all together, can put an end to slavery. I think this goal of eradicating slavery as it exists now is not pie-in-the-sky idealism. I think it really can happen, and I'll tell you what is giving me hope. First of all, closest to the work of free the slaves is a book that has just been finished that Kevin Bales has written with the input of the whole team called ending slavery. It's coming out in September. We're going all over the country with it. It lays out a very highly articulated, practical plan for ending slavery. There are several domains that have to be worked in in order to end slavery, but we think that there are the resources and the experience and the will now to put those things together. Our own government began in 2000 by passing some of the best anti-trafficking legislation that exists, and we improved it some more a couple years later. Our State Department has just issued its Trafficking in Persons report, which is a tremendously influential report for the whole world because it's a report card on how countries are all doing in measuring up to all kinds of indicators of work that will do away with trafficking and slavery. And it has to do with things like, number one, governmental corruption, law enforcement, prosecutions, history is up to now, been very, very low level of prosecutions of traffickers in the countries with the worst problems, and there are a lot of reasons for that, which I won't go into at the moment. But the U.S. can lean on governments to do what they say they're going to do, because since 2000 when the U.S. began in earnest making this be a big issue, governments have come up with plans in writing for what they intend to do. There is a real movement underway. There are now many more anti-slavery organizations. Some are working on particular areas of the world, or they're working on particular types of slavery, sex trafficking and sex work being sort of the most visible one, and perhaps the one that is getting the most concentrated attention. It's very tough to heal people who have been in these circumstances. There's a lot of work going on now on how to do that. Ellen Armstrong has been working on a manual for the rehabilitation of slaves, a very simple grassroots user friendly kind of manual that will help anybody in any country know how to go about it. So there's a lot of work now going on internationally on this. Another big area of work that is I think very difficult, but that is being addressed and is being tackled by our own government now with a new congressional resolution. It's also by Free This Lays and other organizations. And it has to do with certifying that a product is slave-free. This is very tough to do because you have a supply chain that is hard to trace back in many products, especially chocolate. The other exciting thing that gives me hope is that a lot of people like those who created wealth out of eBay, who have a sound foundation now, and they are very committed to ending slavery and are partnering with us in this. So financial resources are coming for us to do this work, and my job is what I do well. I have the best job in the house because I get to talk to the people all over the country who want to help. And want to know what they can do, and I can help them help. We had last night in Seattle, for example, a wonderful volunteer who I've never met, but I've talked to him on the phone who is putting on three concerts to raise money. A school teacher in Kentucky who got her eight graders excited about this issue, and she did some fundraising this spring. They raised $26,000 to free children in the fishing industry in Ghana. They rescued with their donation, 30 children. When you say that 30 children got rescued, was this mission impossible? And you sneak in and grab them and run off? No, no, no. In the fishing industry, it doesn't work that way. Our program is maybe hard to believe, but the way they work is that they go and talk to the fishermen who have these children under their control. And they persuade them to give up the children voluntarily. They explain that it's illegal for them to do this. They could get in trouble and put a little pressure on them, pressure of conscience. It doesn't work that way in India. In India, they have to do raids to get the children out of the carpet rooms. What do you mean by a raid? What do they physically do? What they do is they get the local police to go with them, them being representative of this organization. And they kind of try and sneak up, hard to sneak up, because sometimes there are police informants who will say, "Watch out, somebody's coming by today." But if they can pull it off, they suddenly appear at the loom, just run through the place and grab the children, terrifying for the children, but there's really no other way to do it. Put them in a car and take them away, and to explain to them what happened. Of course, the children are terrified because they've been told that if anybody ever comes that they should hide, because the people who will be coming will be awful dangerous people, so they've been scared off from this kind of thing. Somewhere, there's a child, a crying somewhere, there's a child, a crying somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying somewhere, there's a child, a crying somewhere, there's a child, a crying somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, there's a child, a crying, crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, there's a crying for freedom in South Africa. There's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. There's a new day coming, there's a new day coming, there's a new day coming. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a new day coming, there's a new day coming, there's a new day coming, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a child, a crying for freedom in South Africa. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a new day coming, there's a new day coming, there's a new day coming. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a new day in South Africa. There's a new day coming, there's a new day coming. That was Sweet Honey in the Rock singing a Zanyan Freedom Song. In the USA, we think of freedom as a problem in the South before the Civil War, or in South Africa before the end of apartheid, but my guest Judy Hyde of Free the Slaves tells us that there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, including perhaps 10,000 in the USA. Slavery is not history's problem, but it belongs to us today. Judy just told us a bit about how they go about the act of freeing slaves in the places that they find them. So, you don't have to participate in this? It's your hard-hearted country, right? No, I don't participate in that. No, I'm strictly here in the United States and working with people who want to help. But you do go out and see these sites sometimes? Well, I did do some research in the Ivory Coast, in Togo, in Haiti, and then we had partners in India provided me information for this research. And my particular project was to look at programs for kids and to see what techniques they were using to help children who have come from the worst circumstances and forms of child labor and slavery. To get a sense of what kind of work was going on in these four countries. In Haiti, I actually was looking at children who had been in domestic servitude as what are called "restive acts." Restive acts are children who are kept in families as servants and who live in very, very harsh circumstances treated worse than animals. That's been my hands-on work, but right now, my main thing is to be a resource for people who want to help, also to accompany Kevin Bales on his book tour now to bring to the several sites throughout the country information about how we can end slavery. You mentioned as part of your research one of the places you went to Togo, which is where I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and you and I have in common that we speak French. Is there slavery going on in my beloved Togo? I'm afraid in all of Africa there is all kinds of slavery going on. I'm most familiar with child slavery, so I can't speak too much about adult trafficking, but I know it's going on. Togo is a particular problem with child prostitution and also using children in agricultural settings. Is there slavery still in the United States? We did a report on that a couple years ago, and our conservative estimate at that time was that there were 10,000 people, but the state department has much higher figures, and they think that about 300,000 people get trafficked into the United States each year if I'm remembering that correctly. So the answer is yes, it's very hidden, but right here in our state of Connecticut, and I'm sure if people pay attention to their newspapers, everyone's in a while, you can recognize that this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's going on around wherever you live. I don't know about Wisconsin, but here in Connecticut we have a little agriculture, and recently there was a story of Guatemalans who were held captive on some farm in Connecticut. It's very hard when you think you're being taken for a legitimate farm job, you don't speak the language, and before you know it, they've taken away your passport, or if you had one, so you have no documentation. You're just kept somewhere, and you're not paid, or maybe paid only enough just to buy food to live on, but not paid any kind of real wage. So there have been some notorious cases in the United States, but here in Connecticut we have a task force on trafficking. The experience of this task force, and I think in maybe in some other states, has been that it's really a very tough thing to get a handle on here in the United States. It's very hidden, and often very well organized, with organized crime being behind it, for example, in sex rings, they bring females in, whether they're over age or under age, just keep them in a town for a week or so, and then they quickly move them to some other town, and it's been very tough to do the necessary police work to break into it, because the police won't know exactly what they're dealing with, whether these women, females, are there by their own consent, or against their will. They usually don't speak English, and they are, anyway, very unwilling to speak to law enforcement for a number of good reasons. It's a very difficult thing to get a handle on. There is a house in New Orleans, they call the rising sun. It's been the ruin of many poor girls, and me, oh God, I am one. If you had to listen to what your mom must say, you'd be at home today. But I was young and foolish old. Yeah, yeah, you let a gala lead you straight. Go tell my baby, my baby sister. I don't do as I as I have done. But young and I was in New Orleans, they call the rising sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going back to New Orleans. Your race is almost fine. I'm going back to New Orleans. There is a house in New Orleans, they call the rising sun. It's been the ruin of many poor girls, and me, I'm one. Your one, oh God, hand me your blood in one. You pull down, you are one. The song was House of the Rising Sun. You perhaps have known versions of it by the animals or other musicians. But that one was from Peter Paul and Mary's album Lifelines. And that was B.B. King sharing the vocals. Of course, the song is about house prostitution for women trapped in the sex trade. Today for spirit and action, we're talking about an effort to free the slaves, including the women kept by force in the sex trade. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, my guest, Judy Hyde, active with free the slaves. Their website is freetheslaves.net. Judy founded Children's Law Center of Connecticut. She's clowned in Russian hospitals with patch atoms. And she's done spirit-freeing Quaker workshops with me. There's just no end to her devotion and creativity. I want to go on, Judy, actually go back to some of what you talked about. What's motivating you, what you're working for you. You came to this work as a leading in Quaker Province. And it's not the only thing that you're doing right now. Do you feel like you fulfilled your leading, that you are fulfilling your leading faithfully? Because you also have this work that you do with the G.I. rights hotline, right? Talk about that work. There's a national network of volunteers who give information to anybody who had questions about their status in the military or their wish to get out of the military. We answer military-related questions. Those of us who work on this are interested in helping anyone who is caught in the military system and doesn't want to be. Not that we often know how to get them out. It's very tough, but we want people at least to have the help and support and information that they could use to figure out their dilemmas, which there are many. So what do you do and how much do you do this? Well, I take two-day shifts. Take calls from Connecticut or it actually goes through a national hub. But we're responsible for Connecticut and we have Pennsylvania. So taking two-day shifts means two eight-hour shifts. You sit on a phone for eight hours. But we don't have to be at a particular location. We just call in to the greater meeting and see if anybody is trying to reach us and then we call them back. It's not a high volume of calls, but it's very tough. I find it very difficult because military law is very, very complicated and it's not an area of expertise that I really want. But I just really think it's very important for our meeting to be doing something to help people who don't want to be in the military anymore. When you say that you're doing this with the Quaker meeting, do you mean that the Quaker meeting that you're part of cooperatively does this? It's a project, yes. So you're one of several volunteers who do this? One of five, and there are five of us doing this together. Can you talk about specific cases? Can you mention what happens, what kind of calls you get and how you're able to help with the people we're calling in? Well, a common kind of call is a young person who has signed up for the National Guard and then discovers that they're not suited for that. So they want to know what will happen because they don't go to their drills. What the powers of the military are to force them to do anything. So we explain that. So that would be one kind of common call. I'm not going to talk about any specific calls, but I've dealt with several people in the National Guard. Then the people who have medical problems and feel that the military is not recognizing their level of difficulty and impairment. People with head injuries from combat who are not getting processed out, or somebody who had seizures and wasn't getting the proper kind of neurological evaluation to demonstrate that there was a combat-related injury, that sort of thing. This must feel at least a little bit confusing to be a pacifist leaning Quaker and working with the military system. I hate it. I hate it. It's very hard for me, too. Because I also get on my email at least 20 to 30 messages every day either about people's military problems through the hotline or about all the things that are going on now in terms of military recruitment and terrible case stories that are coming through. So I'm faced all day long with one story after another about the ways in which people's lives are being ruined. And I hate it. That sounds a little bit depressing. Maybe we should end a positive... Something a little more light-hearted. Yes. How about we end with something a little more positive note? How about you and music? Is there anything positive on that front? No. Is there ever... Yes. I must say that the antidote to having to face the problems, the worst kinds of problems that human beings can concoct for one another, the best antidote in the world to that is music. And as kind of part of my own spiritual leavening, I have been very involved in supporting and being part of not as a singer, but as an audience member, a professional corral here in Connecticut called Coincora that does absolutely the most civilized music in the world. And as you can see, I'm a little biased, but I've been on the board for 12 years and now the president for three years. I've just retired from that role, but I'm absolutely relishing that this summer they have allowed me to sing in a workshop and doing a concert this weekend. So, the first time I am singing with Coincora, and I'm a happy camper. Well, I'm glad you've got the positive notes going on, sounding in your world as well as what's happening overseas that you're working on. We've only scratched the surface of your life, Judy, and I mean, I know so much more about you. I know about your clowning across Russia. With Pat Chat, I'm happy with another one of those people I was talking about before that I said, "Oh, there's somebody I want to be around." So, I went and beat around him. All the way across Russia. So, we scratched the surface on the children's law center. By the time you're 100, I'm imagining you're going to be working about 20 different jobs, saving the world in all the vital ways, and you'll be part of five little algorithms. Listen, I don't have any pretensions about me saving the world. No, sir. I tell you, that's not my sense of it at all. It's a very big world, and there are lots and lots of us out there doing lots of interesting, wonderful work, and I'm just one tiny... You know, I just love that thought that you're doing what you're doing, and it's a vibrant community to be part of. So, I do not see myself as saving the world. I'm just happy to be able to go out and play a little bridge now and again, you know? Well, I'm thankful that you've been faithful to your meetings, that your meetings have brought so much good to the world, and I look forward to decades more of following the exploits of Judy Hyde. Thank you, Mark. It's been great to be with you today. Thanks, Judy. Bye. My guest for Spirit and Action today has been Judy Hyde of Free the Slaves. You'll find them at freetheslaves.net. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)