When slavery isn't abolished—but outsourced | Bonnie Nixon | TEDxJacksonville

Every dollar carries a hidden cost. Ecosystems destroyed, cultures erased, and people exploited. Lives lost. Literally lives lost. Much like the mine workers here in the Democratic Republic

of Congo who dig for cobalt that ends up in our cell phones and in in our laptops, we call this today modern slavery. There are 28 million of them. Think about that number.

28 million men, women, and children who work for nothing. We're taught that slavery was It wasn't. It was outsourced. I learned about this at a very young age. You see, my grandfather grew up in Cape Town, South

Africa under apartheid. It's a racial caste system where they used different terms. And he used to speak of colored people with ill will. And at times he'd refer to our friends and our

schoolmates and say horrible I remember running into my mom and saying, "Mom, why is granddad talking that way?" And she simply said, "Bonnie, he knows no different. He grew up that He believes that colored people exist to work for the white man." That moment stayed with

me. It caught taught me something uncomfortable, but essential. That systems like racism, fascism, extractive capitalism, they don't just because we rename them. Let's talk about modern slavery and what it is.

These are vulnerable people, mostly They every day are abducted, coerced, threatened, and trapped in debt. Their documents are taken, their movements are controlled, their labor is stolen. I didn't come to this work casually.

I led ethical sourcing programs at at Walmart, and at Mattel. I teach sustainable supply chain at UCLA and the University of Southern Last year, I completed a PhD doctorate asking the question, "To what extent are large global corporations addressing

modern slavery in complex supply chains?" Throughout my 6 years of research and throughout my 40 years in this career, I knew that we could do something different. I was asking this question, uh the answer was sobering. Who are these people?

These are the people that mine the gold, the minerals that end up in our jewelry. These are the people that grow, sew, and dye our clothes. They also work at the refineries and the petroleum places

where the rayon and the nylon and the polyester come from that's also in our clothes. They're the people that cut down the trees in the Amazon so we can get those Amazon delivered packages at our door every day.

And they're the people who pick and process the food we eat. They are vulnerable people. In my 25 years or so specifically working on these human rights, I got to visit fields, factories, farms, forests,

petroleum factories, refineries, and landfills like this. And I'd often come home and feel really upset about what I saw and knew that this needed to change. I work at one of the the largest port complex in the United States.

It's called the San Pedro Port Complex. It goes between Los Angeles and Long Beach. And I get to watch thousands of containers come in every day and get moved around by ships, trucks, and trains.

And inside these containers is our our flowers, our food, our computers, our construction materials, and our toys. I get to witness that every day, our addiction to stuff, and who really pays for it. Inside these containers, much of the goods are stacked on

wooden Those pallets come from rain forests in the Amazon, in Indonesia, in Malaysia, where many indigenous cultures are losing centuries-old livelihoods. Let's talk about a supply chain and what it is. They start with the design of a material, the concept.