President Barack Obama gave an important speech this past Tuesday on the  “modern day slavery” of human trafficking. On the very next day,  The New York Times ran an article  on the injustice looming over direct descendants of slaves here in the United States. Those descendants—the Geechee of Sapelo Island, Georgia—stand to lose their once “invaluable” land for the same reason that most traditional black and brown cultures have: someone else has noticed that a profit can be made by taking it.

The Sapelo Island dispossession is the latest example of the way in which our economy creates and thrives off of inequity. It comes during a year in which the systemic separation of people of color from their land, both in the United States and around the world, has reached a fever pitch. These larger issues require massive action by national governments and official international organizations.