hmTv at HMTC Podcasts 469: Influential Origins with Alan Mindel and guest Simon Deng P3 on hmTv
hmTv | Influential Origins Ep. 469
Influential Origins with Alan Mindel and guest Simon Deng (Part 3) featuring Charles Jacobs
In Part 3 of this gripping series, Alan Mindel is joined by human rights activist Charles Jacobs to explain how the world finally confronted the hidden reality Simon Deng described: modern-day slavery and mass atrocities in Sudan and beyond. Jacobs traces his own path from civil rights idealism to shock and outrage after reading a report that Black Africans could be bought and sold for as little as $10 to $30. What haunted him just as much as the truth was where it appeared: buried and ignored.
Jacobs recounts breaking the story in major American media, forming the American Anti-Slavery Group, and uniting communities that were being targeted in different places, including Black Christians from Sudan and Black Muslims from Mauritania. He reveals a hard lesson in advocacy: mass murder did not move the public, but the word “slavery” did, because it struck at the moral nerve of a country that once fought a civil war over human ownership.
The episode delivers a stunning on-the-ground account of slave “redemption” missions led by Christian Solidarity International, where money was used at border regions to free enslaved women, children, and families in real time. Jacobs describes witnessing liberation firsthand, including a Passover moment that connected ancient memory to modern emancipation.
Simon Deng then connects past to present, explaining why the October 7 attacks in Israel felt chillingly familiar to him. He shares how he traveled to Israel repeatedly, marched with South Sudanese allies in solidarity, and sat with hostage families, sometimes in silence, simply holding hands and offering the one thing survivors understand best: presence.
This episode is a powerful meditation on moral clarity, the failure of global institutions to act, and the obligation to recognize evil patterns wherever they appear. It is not only history, it is a warning, and a call to witness.