By Demetrius Moffett

I want to give honor and say thank you to the West Orange Stark football program for giving us an opportunity to become galvanized as a community.

The way the village comes out to support these mighty warriors as they engage in the mortal combat on the grind iron in front of thousands that fill the seats of modern coliseums.

Our daughters line the side lines to promote excitement and encouragement that helps our sons of thunder to excel in battle.

We have children that are faithful with sounds of the fight song confirming to our young gladiators that they are more than conquers.

We as adults whether we have children in the district or not are in attendance to claim what we say is ours.

This is great, however once the season has come to an end, are we treating them as people or a product? Are we continuing to invest in them at the same level or greater during football season or are we selling them off? Are we selling them the illness of illiteracy? Are we selling them to the pedophilia of poverty? Are we selling them to the concept of incarceration?

The hard truth is if we are not investing we’re selling.

Illiteracy, poverty and incarceration are major players in the human trafficking area.

What would our communities be like if we valued our children as much if not more than those who are looking to in slave and exploit them? These sick individuals are using the same concept to dominate our children that we should be using to develop them and that’s using a “bought in” village.

In the village of human trafficking, the entire village has bought into the concept of domination and destruction of children.

We, the village of development, everyone who is aware of the deterioration of the family need to buy in and raise our level of investment.

A study done by the University of Texas concludes that there are an estimated 300,000 plus victims of human trafficking in Texas. Out of this estimate 79,000 are minors and youth victimized for sex trafficking with another 234,000 adults victimized for labor trafficking, ergo slavery.

I believe that if we as a village can’t get pass our own personal issues and work together for the good of our village, our village may one day become a concentration camp.

Concentrating on illiteracy, poverty and incarceration. Investing or selling, how much are our children worth to you?