Missed Half the Sky on PBS October 1-2? Don’t Worry, There’s a DVD

I stumbled across Half the Sky on PBS on October 1st, and I was enthralled. Half the Sky author Nicholas Kristoff treks around the world educating us about efforts to fight slavery (aka human trafficking). He went to Sierra Leone with Eva Mendes, Cambodia with Meg Ryan (hosted by the courageous and inspiring Somaly Mam), Vietnam with Gabrielle Union, and more. It was such a eye-opening experience to these famous women, who took time from their busy schedules to touch and listen to precious girls who’ve had their innocence stolen.

If you missed Half the Sky on PBS, you can stil order a DVD to watch it on your own.

Not For Sale 2012 Global Forum: “Justice for the Bottom Billion” – Are you going?

Not for Sale is hosting the 2012 Global Forum, “Justice for the Bottom Billion”, November 1&2 in Silicon Valley.

Featured Speakers:

• Jeremy Affeldt – Pitcher, San Francisco Giants
•  Leila Janah – Founder, Samasource
•  Sarah Ferguson – Duchess of York
•  Nancy Duarte – Founder & CEO, Duarte Inc.
•  Francis Chan – Pastor and Best-Selling Author
•  Jaida Im – Founder and Executive Director, Freedom House

The Global Forum is more than a conference. It is a personal, face to face gathering that will leave you inspired, equipped, and more plugged in as an abolitionist than ever before. You’ll hear what is going on in the movement to end slavery, recent developments and new strategies to fight human trafficking, as well as intimate break-out sessions from some of the leading abolitionists around the world.

Register or find out more information at Not For Sale Global Forum

National Day of Johns Arrest – Did your city participate?

In August, many cities’ and counties’ law enforcement agencies participated in a National Day of Johns Arrest.  It’s a start at a coordinated effort to tell men, “don’t buy women for sex.” People debate about whether prostitution should be legal, but evidence increasingly shows that legitimizing prostitution makes sex slavery worse, not better.  Here’s my conclusion… legal prostitution creates an incentive to supply cheap prostitutes, and human traffickers are willing and able to provide.  In places where prostitution is illegal, arresting the prostitutes and pimps has little effect and further victimizes the women, many of them underage.  On the other hand, Sweden has shown that when they focus on making buying prostitution illegal, and direct their law enforcement efforts at the buyers of sex, the incidence of prostitution goes down, and so does human trafficking.

Imagine for a moment if there were zero customers for commercial sex.  There would be no prostitution, and therefore no sex trafficking.  Of course, there will never be zero customers, but you get the idea.  Reduce demand, and you’ll reduce the market for sex slaves.  Yes, we need to continue to rescue and rehabilitate sex trafficking victims.  But we also need to focus preventative efforts on reducing demand.  One way is to educate men and boys that it’s unacceptable to buy women for sex.  An additional step is to focus law enforcement efforts at arresting prostitution customers.  There should no longer be a “boys will be boys” attitude about prostitution, because that response ignores the victims — the girls and women who are too often coerced into providing sex to the “boys.”

Fortunately, US law enforcement is slowly starting to turn attention away from the prostitutes/victims, and realize that the problem won’t go away until customers stop buying.  Those are my opinions based on the reading I’ve done.  Please leave a comment with your thoughts. Find out if your city/county participated. Urge law enforcement in your community to focus their vice resources on fighting demand.

You can read more at Demand Abolition

http://www.demandabolition.org/how-we-work/national-day-of-johns-arrests/

Or view a press release, also at Demand Abolition

http://www.demandabolition.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/OperationBuyerBeware.pdf

For more research, check out the book The Johns by Victor Malarek on the Non-fiction books page.

Not My Life – view the trailer, help launch the film

“Not My Life is the first documentary film to depict the horrifying and dangerous practices of human trafficking and modern-day slavery on a global scale.

 

Filmed on five continents over a period of four years, Not My Life unflinchingly, but with enormous dignity and compassion, depicts the unspeakable practices of a multi-billion dollar global industry whose profits, as the film’s narration says, “are built on the backs and in the beds of our planet’s youth.”

 

• Follow Not My Life on facebook or twitter
• You can help tell others.  Donate by September 20, 2012 to the launch campaign on indiegogo
• Buy the DVD at notmylife.org
• Host a screening
• Not My Life is included on my list of Movies / Films / Documentaries about slavery and human trafficking

FAQs for Human Trafficking Victims, But No Answers

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, and it’s got me thinking and reading about the issue more than usual.  I found an excellent site with FAQs about Human Trafficking, and it’s worth checking out.  However, I had another thought regarding the FAQs of a trafficking victim.  I don’t know because I’m not a victim of human trafficking, but I strongly suspect that the frequently asked questions of slavery victims are quite different than the questions from most of us seeking information about this topic.  My intent is not to be disrespectful to victims in my ignorance, or even overly dramatic. But I do hope to provoke thought.  Naturally, I don’t attempt to offer answers at this point.

These are my guesses, and please click here to add your own guesses at victim FAQs:

• Will I be beaten (by the men who rape me) tonight?
• Will my children ever be able to go to school?
• How come God never seems to hear me?
• If I try to escape, will they kill my family?
• How can I get enough johns to avoid getting beaten by <insert pimp’s name>?
• Am I going to get AIDS from this guy?

As I mentioned above, here is a link for the site that prompted my post

• Polaris Project Human Trafficking FAQs

Please leave a comment with your reactions or your own guesses at victim FAQs.

Human Trafficking Awareness Day (Don’t Tell the Victims)

Today, January 11th, 2012, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the U.S. Many organizations are sponsoring events to mark the day, hosting speakers, prayer vigils, fundraisers, etc. There is even an international group of remarkable women climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro as part of The Freedom Climb.  I was thinking last night about how I might want to observe Human Trafficking Awareness Day so that I could be aware throughout the day that slavery still exists not only around the world, but in Silicon Valley where I live.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to attend one of the public events in my area, so I’m going to have to participate online, and in my own private way.  I plan to make a couple of posts here in the blog, partly to keep the issue in front of me, and also to spread awareness to readers.  I’m currently reading A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner, so I’ll spend some time reading and thinking about the issue tonight before bed.  I’m also going to be talking with one of my kids tonight, and the topic will come up, if only briefly.

But it occurred to me as I was considering options for helping raise awareness of human trafficking, that there’s one group of people that don’t need to be made aware of the problem — the victims.  A man in India who works in a brick factory because of bonded debt slavery, and can’t protect his wife or send his children to school, doesn’t need to be told that slavery exists.  A girl kidnapped from Mexico and smuggled to San Diego to be commercially raped multiple times a night until she is either rescued, or becomes too old, sick, and unattractive to be profitable to her pimp, doesn’t need to be reminded about human trafficking.

So don’t bother to tell the victims of modern slavery that today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, because they don’t need to know.  They are aware every moment of every day that they don’t have the freedom to go where they want and live as they choose.  Someone more powerful than them is exploiting them for profit, and it’s going to take someone else more powerful — you and me — to not only rescue them, but to help them with the rehabilitation that will be required to give them new hope.

Please click here (or on the speech bubbled next to the title of the post) to leave a comment with your choices and observations about National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day – What will you do?

(Carl’s update note on November 8, 2012:  The next National Human Trafficking Awareness Day will be January 11, 2013.  You can start preparing now. Make a plan with your family, friends, church group, organization for how to spread awareness about slavery and human trafficking on and around that day. One way to prepare is to read a book or watch a movie to get educated, inspired, and be ready to join the movement.)

January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the U.S. by act of the Congress.  President Obama has declared January to be Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention month.

What are you going to do to build awareness for you and others?  Click on the speech bubble symbol above this post (or here) to leave a comment and share your plan for observing National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Here are some ideas on how to observe it:

Attend a public event or prayer vigil – http://www.ipjc.org/events/humantraffickingawarenessday.html

Get one of these books on human trafficking to educate yourself

Get one of these movies on human trafficking, or watch one on Netflix

Donate to an organization that fights human trafficking, such as the Not for Sale Campaign, Polaris Project or one of the organizations listed on the left bar of this page

Volunteer with an organization that assists victims of human trafficking such as GEMS-Girls or one of the organizations listed on the left bar of this page

Buy a product that is Fair Trade Certified or Made by Survivors

Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with The Freedom Climb.  (If you can’t make it to Tanzania by Wednesday, perhaps just sponsor a climber or one of their causes. 🙂 )

Please click on the speech bubble icon above this post (or here) to leave a comment with your thoughts, ideas, plans for National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

My Sister Project – Made by Survivors

Made by Survivors has a way for you to team up with trafficking survivors from around the world by sharing your compassionate heart, your creativity, your time, and even your shopping! The My Sister Project was designed to connect women and girls around the world and help make it a better and safer world.  Share a survivor sister’s story, tell your own sister story, buy a survivor’s products, write a blog, or simply join the Made by Survivors family and learn more about the abolitionist movement.  Click here to learn more.

Slavery Map – Is there Human Trafficking in Your Town?

The Slavery Map shows where documented incidents of human trafficking have occurred: in your town, and around the world.  The Not For Sale Campaign created this map so that you can see where trafficking cases have been confirmed.  I learned about The Slavery Map from the excellent book, Not For Sale by David Batstone. (get more info in my list of non-fiction books)  The goal of the book and the campaign is to equip individuals to become abolitionists who…

• Are aware of human trafficking in their community
• Recognize signs of human trafficking
• Report current situations of suspected bondage to the US Human Trafficking Hotline 1-888-3737-888
• Report documented incidents of human trafficking to The Slavery Map

Backpage.com’s Adult Section: Freedom of the Press? or Profiting from Sex Trafficking?

Village Voice Media has an online ad section called Backpage.com.  One of the sections is “Adult”, and critics say that occasionally it’s used by sex traffickers to sell sex with minors.  Backpage.com defends the practice as free press.  They use the analogy that just because people sometimes send illegal material through the mail, we don’t shut down the post office.  They also claim that if they don’t sell the ads, someone else will.  Critics want them to either remove the adult section altogether, or require identification and photos for all Adult ads to prevent sexual abuse of minors.   It’s a similar situation to Craigslist, which last year shut down its paid adult services section after persistent pressure from a variety of sources.

The NY Times has an article on the subject titled Fighting Over Online Sex Ads.

Should advertisers be free to accept ads, when they don’t control the content, and when there is a significant risk that the ads may be used to sell sex with minors?

Is this a strictly legal issue, implicating freedom of the press?

Is this a moral issue where a business needs to respond to public pressure and proactively protect minors from being sexually trafficked?

What do you think of the analogies that Backpage is using?  Is there a similarity between someone using the Adult section of Backpage.com to advertise prostitution which turns out to be sex trafficking of a minor, and someone using the postal service to transport illegal material from one person to another?  Does it make a difference to you that the advertising is broadcast by an unidentified poster to all readers, while the post office is transporting material from one identifiable source to a specific addressee? 

What about the argument that if Backpage.com shuts down its Adult section, those people will advertise somewhere else?  For instance, when Craigslist shut down its paid adult services section, how many of those customers went to Backpage.com, and other such alternatives?  Is this similar to a community attempting to move an adult bookstore or theater out of a high traffic downtown neighborhood? 

What about the critics?  Is their request to have Backpage.com require positive ID of those advertising in the Adult section reasonable?  Would it help the situation? 

Do they have a right to have Backpage.com shut down the Adult section on moral grounds?  Is the possibility that minors might be trafficked sufficient to warrant shutting down the Adult section? 

What arguments are most persuasive to you?  Please add your thoughts and comments.