By Linda Shepard
C & G Staff Writer

ROCHESTER HILLS — Speaking before a packed crowd, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain delivered a speech focused on the world’s vulnerable.

“Last year the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British and American slave trade in 1807,” McCain said May 7 at Oakland University. “Nearly 56 years would pass before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, signaling the end of slavery in the United States.

“Human trafficking — slavery, by another name — exists not just in places like Thailand, Kuwait and Venezuela. It is a serious problem here in the United States,” McCain said. “The State Department estimates that between 15,000 and 18,000 human slaves are brought into the United States, many of whom are forced into the sex trade, every year.

“It is in our nature as Americans to see the good in things, to face even serious adversity with hope and optimism,” McCain said. “And yet, with so much good in the world, for all the progress of humanity, in which our nation has played such an admirable and important role, evil still exists in the world.

“It preys upon human dignity, assaults the innocence of children, debases our self-respect and the respect we are morally obliged to pay each other, and assails the great, animating truths we believe to be self-evident — that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — by subjecting countless human beings to abuse, persecution and even slavery.

“As president, I'll increase cooperation and communication between all agencies of the federal government by establishing an inter-agency task force on human trafficking,” McCain said, “whose purpose will be to focus exclusively on the prosecution of human traffickers and the rescue of their victims.         

“Confronting evil has never been easy — in our age or any other,” McCain said. “But the failure to do so affects even those who are complacent with our own blessings and secure in our human rights. America was founded on the belief in the inherent dignity of all human life and that this dignity can only be preserved through shared respect and shared responsibility.”

McCain also addressed religious freedom. “No society that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way,” he said. “And no person can ever be true to any faith that believes in the dignity of all human life if they do not act out of concern for those whose dignity is assailed because of their faith.”

Outside Oakland University’s Shotwell Gustafson Pavilion, a group protested McCain’s stand on the war in Iraq. “War is over, if you want it,” the protestors chanted, along with a chant of “Who needs peace anyway? Vote McCain.”

“McCain is not talking to me right now,” said Jason Bauer, Oakland University student, who held a sign stating, “It’s time to turn around America.”

“He doesn’t really realize the important things in our generation,” Bauer said. “No one at Oakland University has health care, the cost of tuition is rising and we can’t find jobs after we graduate. He’s not talking about that.”