Abolitionist Academy Week II

If you were in the class with me and you read something that doesn’t sound right, or that you want to add too, please feel free to leave a comment.

Day 6
The entire day was dedicated to Nola B., the executive director and co-founder of MISSSEY which stands for Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting & Serving Sexually Exploited Youth. MISSSEY is an aftercare center which serves youth of Alameda County, California. Nola was a former sexually exploited youth herself, so much like Henry and the relationships he was able to build with the children in Caraceen, Nola has also been extremely effective in related with and understanding the situations that these children get involved in.

Nola spent a lot of time explaining the common myth that many people hold with them, that prostitutes are there by choice. In the cases that Nola has treated, it is very clear that these children did not choose this life. It is true that in America there are a lot of alternatives to prostitution and there are also many services out there to assist those that have become a part of the industry. However, these services are completely useless if people don’t know that they even exist. The children that are tricked into prostitution are often naive to the services provided making the services are irrelevant. The most vulnerable population in the US is a child with a broken family or no family at all, a history of abuse, and without knowledge of services available to them.

Here’s how it happens:
Targeted children are those that already have low self esteem and are desperate for love and attention. It is easy to build trust with these children by providing compliments, small gifts (a blunt and a happy meal is common according to Nola) and promises of a better life and someone (the pimp) to take care of them. To a child who is either abused or ignored at home, these things all sound really good. Once initial trust is built, sometimes the child is drugged, typically with E so that the pimp can learn child’s past history, their hopes and dreams so that it can be used against them. Also, when the child starts acting up, the trafficker uses his knowledge of the child to build custom threats. (What sounds more scary? “If you don’t have sex with me I’m going to kick your ass!” or “If you don’t have sex with me I’m going to go over to your Aunties house on 5th and Broadway and find your favorite little cousin and beat the shit out of her!” That’s powerful.) When the girl does finally have sex with the pimp, he makes it believe that it’s the best he’s ever had, he tells her that her body is the best thing she has going for her and she has to be crazy to not be using her body to make money because she’s so damn good at it.
So at this point, the pimp has the girl under his control and he will rent her out to several men a night.

Usually, these cases are uncovered because the girl is arrested for prostitution. HOWEVER according to the TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) a child which is any person under 18 years of age cannot legally consent to part take in any sexual act. Therefore, the sex was performed by force and by definition is trafficking. So even though there are laws protecting these children, these children are arrested for prostitution. Nola has asked many people such as lawyers, judges and district attorneys how this happens, but they are all just as confused by it as she is.

It sounds unbelievable doesn’t it? It’s more common than you think. MISSEY has been operating for about 2 years and they have served over 200 children that have had these similar experiences. This is happening in our country! So what can we do about this? Be aware, and be an active citizen. Don’t turn away from a child who may look like they are in trouble or think that someone else will take care of it. If you think that this is wrong, then take responsibility.
The morning was spent listening to Nola explain her story and the stories of the children that she has helped. After lunch, it was time for us to help her. The purpose of slaverymap.org is to let others know what is happening and collecting data on the extent of slavery in the U.S. So we began to map the cases that she provided for us. Because they are not public cases, they do not have a lot of detail and they do not include names of the victims or the pimp in order to protect their identities. If you want to see some of the cases of the children MISSSEY has helped, look for cases on www.slaverymap.org in the Bay area (directly East of San Francisco for you Wisconsinites) and read about them.

* This entry referred to the victim as a female and the pimp or trafficker as a male, only because that is what is most common. Gender can be reversed in either role.

Day 7
Today was the only day that I didn’t take notes, and I regret it. But I will do my best to remember everything I learned. We spent the entire day in beautiful, unique Pescadero. Pescadero is a small farming community that is mainly people that have emigrated from Mexico. Some of them are illegal, but others are legal. This small town really helped me realize what Debt Bondage entails. Debt bondage is a type of trafficking (it can overlap with other types at the same time) where the person that is trafficked is deceived that they are going to be brought to a place where they will have a good job and they will be able to send money home to their family. For someone in Mexico, who does not have a lot of job opportunities, this sounds pretty good, good enough to sneak over the border. Once they arrive in Pescadero or whatever other small farming town, they are treated well initially in order to gain their trust. Then, they are provided with housing and they learn that the housing will cost them about 1/3 of what they are making. In addition they are over charged for other expenses. There are 3 months in the year when the people cannot farm and they are required to stay in the housing provided the landlord (cough- slave owner) so they need to save the little money they get to pay for that time. Also, there are many pay periods where the landlord (slaver owner) decides that they don’t want to pay and the families don’t have any other option but to keep working because they are most likely uneducated and don’t have any other work.

This is debt bondage, these people are stuck with nowhere else to go. Luckily for the people in Pescadero, they have La Puenta. La Puenta is a non-profit organization that assists the families of Pescadero by providing child care, language classes for adults and works towards protecting the families though legislation. Before La Puenta, there was debt bondage in Pescadero, in our country. Now that they are around, conditions have improved. However, there are other small towns where debt bondage is occurring.

This small town is slowly dying. It’s ironic but the agriculture sector finds itself competing with imports that are coming into the country from Mexico and other places that are cheaper, and it’s cheaper because labor in Mexico, along with the standard of living is much lower. If the Mexican that come here are paid the same that they would make in Mexico, there is no way they would be able to survive with our price of living. This isn’t just happening to the immigrants. I feel like anytime a person is working full time and working hard and they aren’t making enough money in order to survive in their own community, debt bondage is occurring. It happens everywhere, even in Eau Claire with some of the families that I work with through Jumpstart. When two parents are working full time at minimum wage and they can’t support their family, something is definitely wrong.

After the Pescadero trip, we went to meet David Batstone! The man who started the entire Not For Sale movement. He was very good at explaining to each and every one of us that we all can have our place in ending the global slave trade, no matter what talent we have it can be put to use. He is very optimistic about the potential of ending slavery in our lifetime. One of his biggest current projects is www.free2work.org, which were learned much more about the next day.

Day 8
Today was a huge eye opener. Dan from “As You Sow” a non-profit that works towards making supply chains more transparent came in to talk with us about his four year project on the state of the cotton industry in Uzbekistan. If you look on the tag of any shirt you wear, it will say the country that the item was produced. However, it fails to mention where the cotton to make that shirt was grown. Even if you call the manufacturer and ask them where they got their raw materials from they will have no idea. There are about 15 to 25 tiers of the supply chain, depending on the product. This is done on purpose so that it is difficult to find the instances of forced labor. Uzbekistan is the second largest exporter of cotton in the world, and practically every person that picks the cotton is a slave, adults and children. There are an estimated 2 million children in Uzbekistan that work the fields instead of going to school, and 70% of the country is unemployed. The country can afford to pay the adults to work; the upper class is making plenty of money to do so. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the country has been taken over by KGB agents and they have abused their power by requiring forced mass mobilization of the population to pick cotton.

My words can’t do this injustice enough justice. Today, in the 21st century there is a billion dollar enterprise that is enslaving millions of people for their own benefit. And the worst part of it is, we are all supporting it. Not on purpose, I know you are all good hearted people, but we are. Because we are so obsessed with cheap clothes and more of them, the cotton industry is insanely profitable.

Dan also talked about the mining industry in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). There is mass forced labor there to mine Colton, which ends up in all of our computers, cell phones, and other electronics.

I am not telling you all of these things to make you feel bad that is not my intention. I want you to feel empowered, I want you to be armed with the information about the world so that if you choose to you can live your life differently, you don’t need to be a professional humanitarian to change the world, you just need to do your part to not make it any worse, because if we all did that, it would be a beautiful thing.

Day 9
Today we met a fantastic, wonderful, words cannot describe man named Kelly who works with SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation). As a child, Kelly was sexually exploited for 18 years and did hard drugs for 16 years. When he was 7 years old, he was gang raped. I can’t imagine having the life that he has had, and yet he is strong enough to help rehabilitate other boys who went through the same thing that he did. Kelly explained that the after care services at SAGE are a peer-based model of services. People choose and are a part of their rehabilitation because they KNOW where they have been and only they can know what they need.

The problem with sex trafficking is on the demand side, reduce the demand and it will reduce the supply. SAGE also created a John School to reduce the demand for sexually exploited women, men, and children in the San Francisco area. If someone is arrested for buying sex, instead of going to jail and having it on their record, they can go to the John School and learn about the crime of prostitution, them and their role in the global system of exploitation. Over 9,500 people have been through the John School, at least 67% do not reoffend. These schools exist all over the country, and they have been successful in reducing the demand.

Later in the day, Killian, one of the workers at Not For Sale, explained to us www.free2work.org. This project praises companies that have allowed themselves to be transparent, they have allowed Not For Sale traced their supply chain and it was found that they do not have any slave labor in their production. (One of the big companies is Manpower, based in Milwaukee!) It’s a great website, and if you want to learn more about good companies to buy from, check it out.

Day 10
Ahhh what a bitter sweet day. It was sad to leave all the people that I have grown very close with over the past two weeks, but it is also very excited because I get to go to PERU!! Anyways, the morning of the last day we had Mike Duffy, a professor at USF come and talk to us to help send us on our way. One line that he said to us that really sticks out in my mind is “It’s unfair to comment on something if you haven’t experienced it.” I know that I needed to go to Peru or to go somewhere to see the tragedies that I have been commenting on for the last year. I need to know or I will never change it.

Mike also talked about how no social issue stands alone, that they are somehow all connected. If you are working toward bringing water to poor communities, you are helping prevent trafficking because people will stay in their cities and work instead of going to cities and being exploited. There are millions of examples from poverty, education, and environmental protect. They are all connected. Find you fight, and fight it with all you have.

The rest of the day was spent brainstorming with Kique and George about Peru. Where we will be going and when, exactly what we are looking for and different organizations to talk to.