My introduction to human trafficking happened in 2011 when I read Kevin Bales' The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. I was struck not just by the magnitude of the trafficking problem, or that we even have such a problem in the 21st century, but also by how each individual's role in society, and within the international community, can affect the problem. It's not just buying cheap clothing from Wal-Mart or Forever 21; clothing that is produced using slave labor, often from children. It's not just the more salacious, and thankfully less pervasive, trips by Western males to places like Thailand to procure cheap sex, also often from children. It's not even the forced prostitution that happens within our own borders. The real effect, insidious and dangerous, is the willful ignorance of the mass public.