Rescue the Oppressed, and Hold the Quotation Marks

There are a few issues where I cannot even pretend to be balanced and fair. So I have been agonizing over how to write this post.  It is taking me hours and lots of rewrites to try to strike the right tone. It starts to get super lengthy, and it starts to get accusing, and neither is what I feel belongs here.  Whenever I get into situations like this I sit back and ask, "What am I trying to accomplish?"

 I want you to know that there are experts, organizations, etc. out there that actively oppose or criticize the work of IJM and organizations like it.

When reading an article I usually try hard to have an open mind: however, I am not objective on the subject of human trafficking.  When I write papers on this subject, (I am researching one now) I have emotional reactions reading accusations against faith-based and feminist groups of trotting out charged images of the "oppressed", yes they put it in quotes like that, to promote an agenda of Western domination.   "Rescue" is frowned upon.  I am aware that the West often swoops in to interfere unwanted in the Third World. Is anyone else at this point seeing that scene in Hotel Rwanda where the people holed up in the hotel realize that the rest of the world is not coming to save them after all?

http://priceofsex.org/content/multimedia
When I watch Jenea's story, the snarky quotes around "oppressed" just wither.  If this were me, RESCUE ME  - yes, use that word, use the U.S. Marines, I don't care.  Raped 50 times a day? Am I thinking of anything but escape? These women are jumping off of balconies!

What I hope you get out of the IJM series this month is that the people that work for this organization put themselves in the way of physical, emotional, and mental harm to "rescue" the "oppressed."  They are lawyers who could be making lots more money and better names for themselves elsewhere.  They are undercover and aftercare workers who might need years of therapy to help them deal with the things they have seen and heard and been a part of.  These people are not trying to do anything but loose the chains of injustice and set the oppressed free.  I hope you come away understanding what they do and why they do it.  Oppression is not just a politically charged buzz word, and there are occasions for rescue.