Kevin Bales Quotes

• Slavery is theft - theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.

  Kevin Bales

  Children, Might, Slavery

  Kevin Bales (2005). “Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader”, p.5, Univ of California Press

  85 Copy quote

• Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone's labor; it is the theft of an entire life.

  Kevin Bales

  Slavery, Stealing, Obscenity

  Kevin Bales (1999). “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy”, p.7, Univ of California Press

  48 Copy quote

• Slavery is what slavery's always been: About one person controlling another person using violence and then exploiting them economically, paying them nothing. That's what slavery's about

  Kevin Bales

  Slavery, Violence, Persons

  23 Copy quote

• We have to make it clear to the multi-nationals that slavery is too high a price to pay for cheap goods

  Kevin Bales

  Slavery, Pay, Clear

  18 Copy quote

• It's as if all identity has been stolen from them, except their identity as slaves.

  Kevin Bales

  Identity, Slavery, Stolen

  18 Copy quote

• There are more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the transatlantic slave trade. Put another way, today's slave population is greater than the population of Canada, and six times greater than the population of Israel.

  Kevin Bales

  Israel, People, Live For Today

  Kevin Bales (1999). “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy”, p.9, Univ of California Press

  8 Copy quote

• It surprises people that there's actually a very large number of slaves in the world today-our best estimate is 27 million. And that is defining a slave in a very narrow way; we're not talking about sweatshop workers or people who are just poor, we're talking about people who are controlled by violence, who cannot walk away, who are being held against their will, who are being paid nothing.

  Kevin Bales

  Talking, Numbers, People

  51 Copy quote

• The factor that makes people extremely vulnerable to enslavement is the lack of the rule of law.

  Kevin Bales

  Law, People, Vulnerable

  Source: bigthink.com

  8 Copy quote

• Throughout all of human history slaves have been expensive capital purchase items. And today they're disposal inputs like styrofoam cups to an economic process.

  Kevin Bales

  Styrofoam, Input, Today

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. September 24, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• For some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn to see their lives with new eyes. Their reality is a social world where they have their place and some assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery, they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the frame of enslavement.

  Kevin Bales

  Eye, Reality, World

  Kevin Bales (2005). “Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader”, p.4, Univ of California Press

  18 Copy quote

• Ben Skinner's brains and courage take us into the belly of the beast and expose the ugly truth of modern slavery. Instead of sensation, A Crime So Monstrous gives us desperately needed insight and analysis. This is an important book, the first deep look into America's confused relationship with human trafficking and slavery today. Skinner's balanced dissection of our government's haphazard policies will be controversial, but it can also be the foundation for a new anti-slavery agenda, one that ends the political games being played with the lives of slaves.

  Kevin Bales

  Confused, Book, Games

  9 Copy quote

• We're up at almost seven billion people on the planet and most of that growth has been in the developing world.

  Kevin Bales

  People, Growth, World

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. September 24, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• Most of the people who come into slavery today, the people who enter into slavery for the first time in the present moment, are not captured, they're not knocked over the head, it doesn't follow the old sorts of mechanisms.

  Kevin Bales

  Slavery Today, People, Firsts

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Yes, twenty-seven million in slavery is a lot of people, but it is just .0043 percent of the world's population. Yes, $23 billion a year in slave-made products as services is a lot of money but it is exactly what Americans spent on Valentine's Day in 2005. If humans trafficking generates $32 billion in profits annually, that is still a tiny drop in the ocean of the world economy.

  Kevin Bales

  Valentine, Ocean, Years

  5 Copy quote

• If our kids were hungry, we'd step into slavery.

  Kevin Bales

  Kids, Slavery, Steps

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. September 24, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• The flow of people into the United States into slavery, it follows the other types of immigration into the United States, so people who are trying to build new lives, trying to build a better life.

  Kevin Bales

  People, Trying, Immigration

  4 Copy quote

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