The Price of Sex: Women Speak

The Price of Sex: Women Speak (Trailer) from CIR on Vimeo.

10 Things You Need to Know

So many good, important things for us to be reading.
I'm looking forward to learning more about the issues of child trafficking and exploitation from the following in the next few weeks:

• Aaron Cohen and Christine Buckley's Slave Hunter (packed in my bag for a quick weekend trip to Maine)
• The previously mentioned TIPS report
• The 10 Things You Need to Know About Human Trafficking Report, published by World Vision

The latter is a free, downloadable PDF resource that you can get on World Vision's site here.

Read; learn; grieve; act; tell me (and the people around you) what you think.

Work and photo copyrighted by World Vision; cover photo reproduced courtesy of Jimmy Lam; In Bangkok rain, a child sells flowers to passing traffic.

Faces of Slavery

Faces of Slavery from David Hepburn on Vimeo.

History Starts Now

Fashion is such a fun, artistic way to escape from reality. I love my In Style, Allure, What Not to Wear and Project Runway as much as the next girl. But I love high fashion even more when it makes a difference in the things that really matter in life.

On June 22 in NYC, lucky locals will have the chance to see a fashion show, in the front row, for $25--and benefit anti-child sex trafficking awareness at the same time. The designer will be revealed at the show, and word has it that fashionistas in the know won't be disappointed.

Check out History Starts Now for more info. I can't wait to see what they'll do to make a difference next. Best of luck with the show!

Required Reading: TIP Report

Today is an important day for anti-trafficking supporters.  The U.S. State Department has released its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for 2009.  

There's been some controversy in past reports about political relationships and diplomatic issues shading particular rankings among countries that still have a long way to go in terms of human trafficking--Japan, you know I love you, but my finger is pointing at you.  Another issue was the fact that the U.S. itself does not appear on the list, and our hands are far, far from clean in the issue of human trafficking.  However, the report will apparently begin to include the U.S. as of 2010.  Regardless of past controversies, I think that this is an important document that everyone who has an interest in advocating for the fight against trafficking should take the time to study.

You can view the report here.  I'm going to spend the next few days reading it in depth, and will let you know my thoughts.  In the meantime, check out one of my favorites (Diana Scimone!), as she already covered it earlier today.  

"With this report, we hope to shine the light brightly on the scope and scale of modern slavery so all governments can see where progress has been made, and where more is needed.  Trafficking thrives in the shadows, and it can be easy to dismiss as something that happens to someone else, somewhere else.  But that is not the case.  Trafficking is a crime that involves every nation on earth.  And that includes our own." Hillary Rodham Clinton

Sin City Earns Its Name

It's estimated that around 400 underage girls are prostituted in Las Vegas, every single night.

On Friday, Shared Hope International began a national awareness campaign called "End Demand: Kids Are Not For Sale." The campaign kicked off with a candle lit vigil and march in Las Vegas last Friday, June 12. Shared Hope has done two reports, released in 2008 and May, that name Las Vegas as a hub for child sex slavery in America.

Vegas has made quite a name for itself as an adult's paradise with no consequences--all the way down to its wink-wink slogan "What happens here, stays here." Regardless of how you feel about Vegas, I hope we can all agree that it's time to take some collective responsibility for making sure that child sex trafficking never happens there--and if it does, rather than simply "staying there," it's met with some serious jail time.

Life is Beautiful

Today we celebrated the successful run of our six-week fundraiser for Love146 called Tread on Trafficking.  The rain came off and on, and we had a BBQ at one of the Love146 Boston taskforce member's homes.  

It was great to get together with so many awesome people, both on the taskforce side and our faithful treaders.  I'm very proud to report that the grand total raised to fight child trafficking through Love146 was around $16,000 (!!!)

I think there's little better than gathering around a campfire in the sprinkling rain to eat hot dogs and cookies with people who share the same passion for these children that I do.  

I've been listening to this song by Vega4 on repeat today, and the words seem very applicable: 

our hearts, 

they beat and break;

yeah, life is beautiful. 

Aaron Cohen's Slave Hunter

Psyched for this book.  Aaron Cohen (@aaroncohen777) is getting ready to release a look at his crazy life as a modern-day slave hunter.

From the back cover: "Years of drug addiction and late-night partying led Aaron Cohen, one-time best friend and business partner to Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, on a path of spiritual discovery that has both transformed and endangered his life -- a path that has drawn him into the shantytowns of Cambodia and the hidden brothels of Latin America, across the sweltering savannahs of Sudan, up to the Dalai Lama's Himalayan retreat, and through the unforgiving jungles of Burma and the deserts of Iraq. At a time when more people than ever before are enslaved somewhere on the planet, Aaron Cohen is a slave hunter -- working to find and free human beings from various forms of bondage.

The flesh trade is the world's fastest-growing and most deadly illegal enterprise -- even more profitable and easier to hide than guns, drugs, and precious gems. Free from diplomatic restrictions and political agendas, Cohen is a unique asset to government agencies, think tanks, and anti-slavery organizations. He navigates the oppressive territory of pimps and drug lords, cloaked in the all-too-familiar world of substance abuse, oversized egos, and changing rules. Working alone and posing as a sex tourist, he slips into brothels, urged by madams to select from a lineup of women and girls as young as six. Sometimes he can save them from their captors, but more often than not, he must leave them behind, taking only the evidence he hopes will eventually lead to their rescue.

Struggling to make ends meet on his own negligible salary, Cohen faces temptations few could resist and witnesses atrocities his friends and family cannot understand. And though many assignments over the years carry him away from his ailing father, his commitment to protect, assist, and empower human trafficking victims -- and to disrupt the patterns that lead to all forms of enslavement -- is unyielding.

In a remarkable exposé of a sinister trade most of us will never experience first-hand, rocker-turned-antislavery activist Aaron Cohen reveals the fast-paced, timely, inspiring, and unforgettable story of a real life Slave Hunter."

As I'm writing this, it's a rainy Saturday night, and I'm watching the Sox in my sweatpants. But I WISH I was in NYC right now at Aaron's book party.  Congrats, Aaron!! I'm hoping I can be one of the first in line to get it when it debuts on June 23.

If you're interested in learning how ordinary people can make a difference in the issue of human trafficking, I hope you'll join me in reading--and be sure to check out the Abolish slavery site here.  

"Well... He IS Kind of a Baldwin"

As I noted last week, I've been tuning in to some less-than-quality reality TV lately for a special reason.  And I ended up watching Monday's 2-hour episode of "I'm a Celebrity..." tonight on NBC.com because I missed it earlier this week.  It was all worth it at around the 73-minute mark, when Stephen Baldwin got the chance to briefly talk about his charity of choice--Love146.

When I say briefly, I mean probably under a minute.  But those few words translated into around 5 THOUSAND HITS on Love146's website within one hour.  

The "celebrity" participants on the show talk about how it's one thing to write a check and think that you've done your part.  But the only thing we might value even more than our bank accounts is our time.  And to spend multiple weeks in the jungle to raise awareness about what Love146 does, about the issue of child sex trafficking, and hopefully some charitable financial donations in the process, shows real commitment for change.  Good publicity/time in the limelight aside--I'm tipping my hat to you, Mr. Baldwin.  I'll be voting for you until the very end. 

The Power of Vision

I've been thinking a lot about something that came up during one of our discussions in the Philippines on the Love146 trip.  We were talking about the power of the visual experience for both good and evil.  On one side of the spectrum you have the viewing child pornography, which is abuse in and of itself, but which can then also be a gateway into physically abusing a trafficked child in a brothel situation.  

On the other side of the spectrum you have projects like Witness.org, which I have mentioned several times before, and videos like the Love146 history that was the initial motivator for me to become more involved.

I continue to think about this on the heels of another visual tie to child trafficking: a recent display of paintings created by children who were child slaves and abducted girls in Gulu, Uganda.  The children were given an art therapy session by New York artist and newly appointed UN Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking Ross Bleckner.  The children's pieces are now for sale in the Lehmann Gallery.  You can see some of them here

and a few at the end of the short video below, in which Nicholas Cage and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon call for the end of human trafficking last month.

I remember a song that I had on a cassette tape as a little girl that said, "Be careful little eyes what you see."  How interesting that the simple decisions of what we choose to look at can have such an influence on the people we are turning out to be.  

San Jose Mercury News Reports on Child Trafficking

This is an excellent article by the San Jose Mercury News' John Boudreau.  "Globalization's Ugly Side" brought me right back to the Vietnamese slums of Cambodia and highlights the heartbreaking problem of child sex trafficking and traffickers specifically targeting the poorest of the poor.  He also lists a number of Bay Area charities and nonprofits that are addressing the issue.

Thanks for opening some more eyes, John.  

Photo by mvcorks

Yes I am Watching...

...and I know this is very old news, but wanted to make sure to note that everyone should be voting for Stephen Baldwin on "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!"  Don't feel like you necessarily need to watch it, because it's sometimes actually physically painful, especially when The Hills' Spencer Pratt opens his mouth--but you can vote for Stephen on NBC.com.

Stephen (probably most well known for his role in "The Usual Suspects") is one of eleven "celebrities" who are living in a jungle for a reality show and competing to raise money for their charities of choice.  Stephen is competing for Love146.  I wish that the show let them spend less time feeling tarantulas and more time talking about their causes, but I'm going to stick with it and I hope we can spread the word so that Love146 wins the grand prize.  

(Annnnnnd as I'm writing this, Lou Diamond Phillips just had his hand bitten multiple times by a pack of rats.  I don't understand why anyone would ever be willing to subject themselves to this.)

But regardless--thank you, and go, Stephen, go!