Great Idea: Pilates for Hope
Published October 30, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
I love it when people smarter and more creative than me have great ideas and post them on the inter-webs. That means I get to share those ideas with (and hopefully inspire) you! And some of my favorite ideas are when people turn their skills and passions into fundraisers for human trafficking. A couple months ago, we met a woman whose love of baking pies helped her fight slavery. And next week, an LA-based pilates studio will team up with Project Exodus for Pilates for Hope to raise money and awareness for human trafficking. Now I'm the kinda gal who chooses pie over pilates every time (to my belts' detriment), but an exercise-based fundraiser is great idea for a number of reasons.
First of all, Pilates for Hope is the sort of event you can duplicate in your town with a local fitness club or studio -- whether it's pilates, yoga, kickboxing, kung fu, spinning, or synchronized swimming. One of the great components of this fundraiser is that it offers private instruction. This is a tempting offer for novices like me, who are worried about showing up to a group class where everyone has her legs around her head and panicking that I can barely touch my toes. Plus, the lure of private instruction in any new activity can entice people new to both the exercise and the issue. And this fundraiser also offers massages and other treats to get people in the door.
But perhaps the most creative and practical part of this fundraiser is the way they involved a community partner that, on the surface, has nothing to do with human trafficking. At least, I've never heard of a trafficked pilates instructor before. By including community partners that can become invested in this issue, you are broadening your potential audience. You're also helping to draw attention to a local business. So really, everyone wins in this model of fundraising.
Putting together a succesful fundraiser is not a blindfolded and barefoot trip up Kilimajaro. It does take a little work and dedication, but it's a very attainable goal. Attainable like finishing your first pilates class or baking a delicious pie. And it's a goal that, when you reach it, feels great to more than just you. It feels great to all the abolitionists working to end human trafficking who rely on your innovation and support to continue to free slaves.
Photo credit: khatawat
End Human Trafficking's Top 10 Greatest Hits
Published October 29, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
In celebration of End Human Trafficking's 500th blog post this week, I've complied a list of End Human Trafficking's Top 10 Greatest Hits -- the ten most popular posts. It's interesting for me to see what you, the readers, have enjoyed engaging in the most. I hope to provide you with more of what you like. I would love your thoughts on this list and any suggestions you have for making the next 500 posts on the End Human Trafficking blog even better.
10. Sex Slave Training Video Game For Sale Under New Euphemism: I find a whole lot of disturbing nooks and crannies of the Internet in my research, but this has to be one of the most egregious ones. It's a video game that actually teaches young men how to train women as sex slaves. I wish I was making this crap up.
9. "Slave Next Door" Exposes U.S. Gov't Sanctioned Slavery: If you think the government stopped sanctioning slavery in the 1800s, you haven't read this book yet. And you should. The Slave Next Door tells many compelling stories of modern-day slavery in America, including one about U.S. government contractors using trafficking victims to build structures for the military in 2003. If you paid taxes in 2003, then that was your money they used to support slavery.
8. Children Are Sold for Sex in America's Capitol: My good friend and colleague, Melissa Snow, points out the disturbing fact that in Washington, DC, the capitol of the U.S., children as young as 12 are being sold for sex on the street, just blocks from the White House. President Obama, this is literally slavery happening in your back yard. It's time to do something about the taint of modern-day slavery in the U.S.
7. 7 Ways to Fight Slavery at the Grocery Store: Human trafficking seems like a huge and daunting issue, but we can make a serious impact as abolitionist with the small decisions we make every day, like what to buy at the grocery store. I list seven common items that are often tainted with slavery somewhere in the chain of production and alternatives to those items which are better for workers. The choices we make make the difference.
What Hillary Clinton Should Say In Pakistan This Week
Published October 29, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Hillary Clinton is on day two of her official three day visit to Pakistan, the first of her career as Secretary of State. I'm pretty sure that while she's there, she'll remember to talk about terrorism and the Taliban. I hope she might even slip in a comment or two about women's rights. But will Clinton mention the rampant debt bondage and slavery that makes modern Pakistan look more like 11th century Europe than a modern nation? And next to terrorism, is that even important?
To borrow some terrorism language, the situation of debt bondage in Pakistan is quickly deteriorating from a Code Orange to a Code This-Whole-Freakin'-Country-Is-Getting-Dragged-Back-Into-the-Dark-Ages. For example, according to TIME Magazine, at least three landlords have held as many as 170 bonded farmworkers at gunpoint on their estates since late September. Most traffickers have tools other than guns to keep workers enslaved, but the fact that these traffickers can hold their victims at gunpoint for months with no government interference speaks to the impotence of the Pakistani government in addressing debt bondage. In Pakistan today, 10% of men own 90% of the land. The vast majority of farmers are somehow indentured, and many of them are caught in false debts and held under the threat of violence -- they are slaves. Debt bondage is not the exception in Pakistan. It would be the rule, if there was any system of enforcement.
The U.S. government hasn't addressed this issue with Pakistan, in part because the Taliban, Al Queda, and all the other violent and extremist goings-on look like a much bigger and more important issue than some farmers not getting their due. Well I've got news for Secretary Clinton and all the foreign policy wons who think they can ignore slavery -- ending slavery in Pakistan will go a long way towards reducing terrorism and creating a peaceful, stable Pakistan.
Here's how it works:
Sex Buys Survival for Runaway Kids
Published October 28, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Nothing calls attention to an issue like an article in the New York Times, and this time the media giant has deigned to shine its blinding spotlight upon domestic minor sex trafficking -- sorta. Never once in the article does the author use the term "trafficking victim" the describe the children in question -- American kids who run away from home and end up in prostitution either for survival or under pimp control. But legally in the U.S., any child under 18 involved in commercial sex is a trafficking victim. Semantics aside, though, the issue of American youth coerced and forced into prostitution by pimps is a significant and growing problem.
Author Ian Urbina gives prostituted runaway youth a face in Roxanne L., a 16-year-old girl from Queens who was picked up for prostitution. Dan Garrabrant, the detective questioning her, has only one hour before he must turn her over to social services. If in that hour he can get her to admit that she has a pimp, he can get her off the street and into victim services. He tries everything -- pushing, commiserating, talking about other stuff, offering safety -- but nothing can get her to admit that she has a pimp. His initials are tatooed on her body, but she denies he even exists overt and over. At the end of the interview, Garrabrant is forced to release Roxanne to a youth shelter. Her body is found several days later, killed by the pimp she insisted never existed. Roxanne is not the first, nor will she be the last, child to die at the hands of her pimp.
Out of the 1.6 million children who run away from home each year, about one third (or over 530,000) trade sex acts for tools of survival like food, shelter, warmth, drugs to feed an addiction, or the promise of protection and companionship.
To Better Know a Country: Human Trafficking in Thailand
Published October 28, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Every year, the U.S. State Department releases a Trafficking in Persons report which rates countries on their efforts to combat human trafficking. Each week, I'll be providing a brief glance at human trafficking in one of those countries, based off the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, with my own (often snarky) analysis added. This is just a snapshot of what's going on in the country. For more information, you can check out the full text of the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report here.
This Week's Country..... Thailand
Basic Stats
- Ranking: Tier 2
- Status: Source, transit, and destination country for trafficking victims
- Political Stability: Solid as a rock, just as long as no one tries to end the rampant corruption that holds the system together
- Cash Flow: Best in the region, though tourism and sex tourism are a big part of that
- Do I Think They Care?: It's hard to turn down the huge influx of Western money that lax prostitution and child protection laws entice, even when it's the right thing to do.
Who Are the Victims and What Are They Doing?
- Women:commercial sex, forced labor, domestic servitude
- Girls: commercial sex, forced labor, domestic servitude, begging, sex tourism
- Med: forced labor
- Boys: commercial sex, forced labor in fishing and agriculture, domestic servitude, begging, sex tourism
101 Things to Be for Halloween Other Than a Pimp
Published October 27, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Here's how my Halloween usually goes: go out with friends, run into a guy dressed as a pimp, proceed to corner the pimp and explain why his costume is inappropriate and offensive. Yep -- I'm pretty much a buzz-kill. I would love to have a conflict-free Halloween this year (and one where my friends don't ditch me), but that's only going to happen if no one dresses up in costumes that glamorize pimping. Pimps are people who exploit women. Period. Yet Halloween glamorizes pimps like no other holiday. Maybe it's because their stereotypical attire makes an outlandish costume. Maybe it's because they are an easily recognizable part of American culture. There have been pimp costumes available on the Internet for a long time, but now even your dog can be a pimp. And as Kat over at Polaris Project points out, so can your pumpkin.
I know coming up with a Halloween costume is hard, so to help you out, I've provided 101 ideas for cosutmes that don't glorify criminals who rape women and sell them like objects. If you're thinking of dressing like a pimp, pick one of these instead, especially if you live in the DC area. Because you don't want to meet me and my feminist literature in a dark alley on Halloween night.
101 Things to Be for Halloween that Aren't a Pimp
- NASCAR driver
- Wizard with a pegleg
- Amelia Earheart
- Dinosaur
- Cat in a litterbox
- Zombie lumberjack
- Your mom
- Flapper
- Harlem Globetrotter
- Wall-E
Red Light Special: Travel in Ethical Style
Published October 27, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Are you sick of wasting your money on useless plastic crap made in overseas sweatshops? Do you want to use your money to vote for something you actually support - a hopeful future for former slaves? Then check out Change.org's weekly Red Light Special. Once a week, I'll be bringing you a product that heals rather than hurts, because the proceeds go to help victims of human trafficking. Shop Red Light Specials to be part of the solution, instead of part of the useless crap problem.
This Week’s Red Light Special…Luxury Travel Set
Travel can be exhausting, but you can arrive at your destination refreshed with this beautiful travel set made by trafficking survivors. The set includes a neck pillow, eye mask, and travel bag for cosmetics or toiletries and comes in orange or purple. With so much holiday travel looming before you, what better way to treat yourself or a friend than with a relaxing journey.
You can buy this item from the link above, or at http://store.madebysurvivors.com/Luxury-Travel-Set;jsessionid=0a0101421f43dd5e4e1db5d54da18ac1e3d41e4d592e.e3eSc3iSaN0Le34Pa38Ta38QbN10
You don't need any more stuff in your life, but survivors of human trafficking sure need a future. And you can give it to them with just the click of a mouse and the swipe of a credit card. So what are you waiting for?
If you know of an organization or business which you’d like to see financially rewarded for helping trafficking victims, let me know!
- 36,366
-
Amanda Kloer
Shelton Green
ECPAT-USA
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW)
