On looking away, and what it permits 

There is a way crises are discussed that keeps them at a distance—framed as rare, exceptional, or elsewhere. Human trafficking is often spoken about this way. But it is not distant. It is organized. It is funded. It persists, in part, because it is allowed to.

What sustains it is not only the networks behind it, but the conditions around it: the hesitations, the deferrals, the quiet agreement to treat what is visible as if it were uncertain. Silence, in this sense, is not empty. It is functional.

It is also, at times, protective.

To acknowledge the scale of harm requires more than awareness. It requires a disruption of what feels stable—politically, socially, personally. It asks people to question who they trust, what they have supported, and what they may have chosen not to examine too closely. For many, that cost feels too high. It is easier to minimize, to redirect, or to wait for a version of the truth that arrives already softened.

There is also the matter of proximity. Silence can preserve it—proximity to power, to comfort, to belonging within a group that would rather not be unsettled. To speak, clearly and without qualification, is to risk that proximity. And so the line is managed. The language is diluted. The moment passes.

But what is not named does not disappear. It reorganizes. It adapts. It continues.

I am not interested in amplifying noise. I am interested in practice. In returning to a single, consistent choice: to pay attention, to say what is real, and to resist the habit of looking away when something is difficult to hold.

This is not a call to do everything. It is a refusal to do nothing. To learn what this crisis looks like in real terms. To support organizations doing the work of prevention and recovery. To speak about it in spaces where it is easier not to.

Each week, I will keep this visible.

Within The Commons, this takes a specific form. A portion of what is built here—fifteen percent—is directed to the International Justice Mission, whose work focuses on addressing trafficking at a structural level. It is one way of ensuring that attention is paired with action.

The tote, tee, hat are not the point. The message is. Something you can carry or wear if you choose, that makes a position visible without explanation.

If you want something you can carry that makes your position visible, it’s in The Commons.

If you’d like to stay with this, the conversation continues in Part II.