Skip to 0 minutes and 10 seconds For the last 20 years, I’ve traveled the world, often going undercover, meeting people in slavery and learning about their lives and how they might come to freedom. That knowledge and the experiences and voices of many other experts, including freed slaves, have gone into this course. It is four weeks of exploration, study, and debate that will not just illuminate the reality of slavery today, but how we can bring it to an end, and all that time, learning from the rich history of past anti-slavery movements. Together, through this course, we’ll explore the size and the shape of slavery today. We’ll trace how slave-made goods reach into our lives, and how we can act against slavery as consumers.
Skip to 0 minutes and 53 seconds We’ll see how ethnic and religious conflict is driving people towards enslavement and how enslaved people are used to destroy the natural world, making a major contribution to climate change and global warming. We’ll learn about enslaved resistance and how satellites can now help us find and liberate enslaved people. And perhaps most importantly, we’re going to listen to the voices of enslaved people– from the past and from today. And we’re going to learn from them the true lived experience of slavery. To bring you this knowledge and lead our exploration, we’ve assembled a remarkable team of experts– policy leaders, historians, activists, and evolutionists. The 45 million slaves alive today are the smallest part of the global population to ever be enslaved.
Skip to 1 minute and 40 seconds Their economic output, about 100 billion pounds per year, is the smallest fraction of the global economy ever produced by slavery. Slavery is illegal in every country. Pushed to the criminal edges of our global society, the truth is that slavery is standing on the edge of its own extinction. We stand at a turning point in human history when slavery, with the right resources and solutions, can be brought to an end, when we can destroy forever the great lie that some people are less than human and can be enslaved.
Skip to 2 minutes and 18 seconds And we are counting on you to help figure out how best to bring slavery to an end, working together with us on this course, exploring, and challenging, and together, building a world without slavery.