Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Trafficking of Persons: Lessons Learned
I am astounded by our ignorance. In the last three days I have learned more about human trafficking than ever before, and what most shocks me is that it is growing more rapidly and in more insidious ways then I wanted to think about. I never considered how sexist and discriminatory our prostitution laws are, for instance. How we chose to stigmatize women who are already victims of sex trafficking and further shame them and degrade them, stripping away their dignity, when, in reality, the demand for commercial sex is what should be punished. Pimps, who keep 100% of profits (common misconception is that women actually get a cut - this, I have learned, is FALSE) keep women in the sex industry through force, coercion, fraud, keeping women is a constant state of fear and forcing them to remain in that state, feeling helpless and hopeless to get out. I am disgusted with our judicial system, which criminalizes the act of prostitution, while our society glorifies pimping! What kind of world are we living in where women are punished for being victims of sex trafficking!!!!!! How is it possible that books, such as Pimpology and Pimp, are being sold in mainstream bookstores, where anyone could learn how to commit sex trafficking? As a society we tacitly condone the brutal exploitation of these women and children (average age of females "recruited" for prostitution: 12-14yrs of age), and encourage traditions that involve men going to brothels, strip clubs, and massage parlors seeking "consentual sex" with women, as if the women want to be there - another common misperception. Pimping women out is sex trafficking. It is illegal. It is brutal, exploitative, sexist, discriminatory, vile, and criminal. It is rape, but with money and a pimp involved as an intermediary. It is a part of our society which should be vanquished, and the johns who provide the demand should be prosecuted, and the pimps should be prosecuted, and the women should recieve services, just as any other victim of violence, abuse, coercion, fraud, or rape would deserve. These women and children so not deserve the stigma which has been attached to their work, they deserve understanding, compassion, and a shared sense of loss that we could let daughters in America be born into a world where, when they grow up they are all too often see as objects, property, and disposable at that. All women are human, and all humans deserve liberty at the very least. Sex trafficking not only denies womien and children their liberties, but it denies their very humanity. How can people be so blind? How could I have been so oblivious? How can we change this? End the demand for commercial sex, and end it now. It is not "fun" to sleep with a prostitute, it is active participation in a system of sex trafficking that shouldn't exist in any society. It is not a way to "relax," to avoid your own life and problems and wife and children (and daughters, who could easily be victimized along with 200,000 other high ris youth in America) and it isn't helping women to make an income, because pimps keep everything. So stop. Stop pretending trafficking doesn't exist. This is slavery. MODERN SLAVERY. Your mother, daughter, sister, aunt, cousin, niece - any of them could be victimized, any of them could have been trafficked and forced to have sex with strangers for money they will never see, forced to live a life they never imagined and feel powerless to escape. You know at least one person who has been a victim of a form of trafficking, whether you know it or not, and you know at least one "john" who utilized the sex industry, and was an active part of exploiting these women. Educate yourself, become involved, end the stigma and reduce demand. Pressure lawmakers to renew the Trafficking Victims Protection Act this year. This is our issue, this is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. This must end. Ignorance must end.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Racing Against Inequality
When I was growing up on the south-east side of Madison, WI, I did not realize that racism existed. As a 5 year old attending school for the first time, I was lucky enough to attend one of the two poorest and most racially diverse schools in the city. I say lucky because I was a blonde-haired blue-eyed White girl from the outskirts of the city, one of the only farm kids at the school. Most of my friends were Black or mixed, and most were working class or lower-middle class. I didn't look like most of my friends, and I remember meeting a boy in my class who had the most beautiful skin color and thinking that I wished I could look like him, that I hoped one day I would have children who were that beautiful. Not a single day of my life has gone by where I wasn't grateful for the chance to grow up believing that people were people, regardless of skin color.
One of my best friends went to a different elementary school and I remember when we first met how shocked she was that I knew Black kids and was friends with them. She had only met one Black person in the first decade of her life and was visibly frightened of them. I was horrified, and astounded. It had never crossed my mind to be afraid of a Black person, or to fear talking to them. The only boys who had ever bullied me had been White; the only girls who had made fun of my hand-me-down clothes were the "cool" White girls. I had always had a complex where I wanted to be Black, and here was this new friend of mine showing me just how pervasive and insidious racism is in our country, feeding on the ignorance and stereotypes we perpetuate. After years of friendship we have both been influenced greatly by that initial contact, and today she is engaged to a Palestinian, a man her 11 year old self would have been terrified of.
Only in my college years have I been able to come to terms with what I always considered "my accidental Whiteness." It was only after living in Ghana for a summer, where I felt more alive than ever before, that I realized my Whiteness was nothing more than a state of mind. I could not wish to be Black anymore, I had to come to terms with my skin color and realize that it had never stopped me from being true to myself and to my friends and family. I was honored when my Ghanaian host mother symbolically gave me her name; told my parents that she had become my mother on the other side of the Atlantic. Back at school, my closest friends invited me to come to a celebration honoring the Black student graduates at Ithaca College and Cornell, and I did not realize until I walked in that I was the only white female invited, and yet I belonged with these friends who are also my family.
I am glad that there is a presidential candidate who is candid enough to speak about the racial issues which this society too often tries to ignore or hide, as it does with issues of gender and class.
It is time for a national dialogue, it is time for those of us who came of age as the Towers fell and who are the children of Vietnam veterans, Second-Wave feminists, and Civil Rights marchers, to speak up about the issues that affect us, the inequality that our parents fought to end and that we remain embedded in.
We are a facebook generation living in a myspace era; even the language is narcissistic and indifferent to the problems of others. Yet so many of us have the desire to demand that change occur, to demand better funding for education, universal healthcare, and an end to a war that my friends have gone to fight in, some since they were 17, when it first began, and who today are on their 3rd or 4th deployment at the age of 22.
At a time when our government has taken away habeus corpus and implemented not only the Patriot Act but also the Military Commissions Act, and, until recently, the Protect America Act, there is too much fear in this country: fear of external threats, but among many of us who seek change and desire greater respect for our civil liberties and the abolishment of institutional and socially constructed inequalities, there is also fear of internal threats, fear that our voices will be silenced.
Some of our parents marched in the streets until their feet bled and their voices were hoarse, and yet they believed so sincerely in the principles for which they stood that those were small prices to pay compared to the toll that prejudice takes on us.
Today we have facebook groups to rally around causes, claiming to be a million strong. But we are too afraid to speak too loudly, too afraid to demand in person, out loud, that change happen. So now, when commentators and pundits marvel at the momentum of the Obama campaign, I wonder at their naiveté. Isn't it obvious? There is finally a voice that is speaking up eloquently and with fierce determination for the change we have secretly, and sometimes openly, been craving desperately.
I am turning 21 years old in one week, and as I look back on my young life I am struck by the brief but telling political history. As a toddler people my brother's age were going to the Persian Gulf, in elementary school I heard murmurings of the genocide that ravaged Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing that fractioned Yugoslavia, as a pre-teen I watched as the nation became obsessed with the OJ Simpson trial and with Bill Clinton's extra-marital affair, and then, in my first year of high school I remember telling my friend that joking about a plane flying into the WTC wasn't funny, only to find out it was true, mere months after a man was elected president whom I feared greatly for his politics and for the fluke that put him there. Since that time I have watched my friends go to war, watched my family tear itself apart because of political and religious differences, dated men whose skin color next to mine still makes people stare, I have visited and lived abroad, and in college I became a politics major, preparing for what I hope will be a lifetime of diplomatic efforts and commitment to social justice. Members of my family do not have access to health care, friends of mine cannot get on a plane without facing racial profiling, and I struggle to earn respect as a young, blonde, female politics teaching assistant.
It is beyond time for a president who understands what the south-side of Chicago looks like, who knows that there are countless people without adequate health care who deserve it, too many children like my friend who are growing up in segregated schools, and too many like myself who attended schools without enough funding and support to guarantee that the students would get to high school without getting shot in a gang fight or getting pregnant as children themselves.
I worked with third graders last summer who have been systematically disenfranchised and deprived of the kind of educational support they need in order to avoid being "left behind," and the support is not coming, especially not from a government which proposed a 1% decrease in the amount of education spending for the current fiscal year, while also clamoring for better implementation of flawed No Child Left Behind standards.
Let us finally, as a nation, recognize our role as citizens, and be brave enough to vote for the candidate who knows that these travesties exist, and who can articulate the problems and the kind of dialogue and change that needs to happen if the next generation is going to have a chance at a more peaceful and more equal future. Hubert H. Humphrey said, "What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it." That is the kind of patriot I have always been, and I am glad to be supporting a presidential candidate who, in my eyes, embodies that kind of patriotism as well.
One of my best friends went to a different elementary school and I remember when we first met how shocked she was that I knew Black kids and was friends with them. She had only met one Black person in the first decade of her life and was visibly frightened of them. I was horrified, and astounded. It had never crossed my mind to be afraid of a Black person, or to fear talking to them. The only boys who had ever bullied me had been White; the only girls who had made fun of my hand-me-down clothes were the "cool" White girls. I had always had a complex where I wanted to be Black, and here was this new friend of mine showing me just how pervasive and insidious racism is in our country, feeding on the ignorance and stereotypes we perpetuate. After years of friendship we have both been influenced greatly by that initial contact, and today she is engaged to a Palestinian, a man her 11 year old self would have been terrified of.
Only in my college years have I been able to come to terms with what I always considered "my accidental Whiteness." It was only after living in Ghana for a summer, where I felt more alive than ever before, that I realized my Whiteness was nothing more than a state of mind. I could not wish to be Black anymore, I had to come to terms with my skin color and realize that it had never stopped me from being true to myself and to my friends and family. I was honored when my Ghanaian host mother symbolically gave me her name; told my parents that she had become my mother on the other side of the Atlantic. Back at school, my closest friends invited me to come to a celebration honoring the Black student graduates at Ithaca College and Cornell, and I did not realize until I walked in that I was the only white female invited, and yet I belonged with these friends who are also my family.
I am glad that there is a presidential candidate who is candid enough to speak about the racial issues which this society too often tries to ignore or hide, as it does with issues of gender and class.
It is time for a national dialogue, it is time for those of us who came of age as the Towers fell and who are the children of Vietnam veterans, Second-Wave feminists, and Civil Rights marchers, to speak up about the issues that affect us, the inequality that our parents fought to end and that we remain embedded in.
We are a facebook generation living in a myspace era; even the language is narcissistic and indifferent to the problems of others. Yet so many of us have the desire to demand that change occur, to demand better funding for education, universal healthcare, and an end to a war that my friends have gone to fight in, some since they were 17, when it first began, and who today are on their 3rd or 4th deployment at the age of 22.
At a time when our government has taken away habeus corpus and implemented not only the Patriot Act but also the Military Commissions Act, and, until recently, the Protect America Act, there is too much fear in this country: fear of external threats, but among many of us who seek change and desire greater respect for our civil liberties and the abolishment of institutional and socially constructed inequalities, there is also fear of internal threats, fear that our voices will be silenced.
Some of our parents marched in the streets until their feet bled and their voices were hoarse, and yet they believed so sincerely in the principles for which they stood that those were small prices to pay compared to the toll that prejudice takes on us.
Today we have facebook groups to rally around causes, claiming to be a million strong. But we are too afraid to speak too loudly, too afraid to demand in person, out loud, that change happen. So now, when commentators and pundits marvel at the momentum of the Obama campaign, I wonder at their naiveté. Isn't it obvious? There is finally a voice that is speaking up eloquently and with fierce determination for the change we have secretly, and sometimes openly, been craving desperately.
I am turning 21 years old in one week, and as I look back on my young life I am struck by the brief but telling political history. As a toddler people my brother's age were going to the Persian Gulf, in elementary school I heard murmurings of the genocide that ravaged Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing that fractioned Yugoslavia, as a pre-teen I watched as the nation became obsessed with the OJ Simpson trial and with Bill Clinton's extra-marital affair, and then, in my first year of high school I remember telling my friend that joking about a plane flying into the WTC wasn't funny, only to find out it was true, mere months after a man was elected president whom I feared greatly for his politics and for the fluke that put him there. Since that time I have watched my friends go to war, watched my family tear itself apart because of political and religious differences, dated men whose skin color next to mine still makes people stare, I have visited and lived abroad, and in college I became a politics major, preparing for what I hope will be a lifetime of diplomatic efforts and commitment to social justice. Members of my family do not have access to health care, friends of mine cannot get on a plane without facing racial profiling, and I struggle to earn respect as a young, blonde, female politics teaching assistant.
It is beyond time for a president who understands what the south-side of Chicago looks like, who knows that there are countless people without adequate health care who deserve it, too many children like my friend who are growing up in segregated schools, and too many like myself who attended schools without enough funding and support to guarantee that the students would get to high school without getting shot in a gang fight or getting pregnant as children themselves.
I worked with third graders last summer who have been systematically disenfranchised and deprived of the kind of educational support they need in order to avoid being "left behind," and the support is not coming, especially not from a government which proposed a 1% decrease in the amount of education spending for the current fiscal year, while also clamoring for better implementation of flawed No Child Left Behind standards.
Let us finally, as a nation, recognize our role as citizens, and be brave enough to vote for the candidate who knows that these travesties exist, and who can articulate the problems and the kind of dialogue and change that needs to happen if the next generation is going to have a chance at a more peaceful and more equal future. Hubert H. Humphrey said, "What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it." That is the kind of patriot I have always been, and I am glad to be supporting a presidential candidate who, in my eyes, embodies that kind of patriotism as well.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Insomnia
It's strange how much we depend on sleep to get by. Yet all my life I have struggled with nightmares, and now I feel childish saying that I still do. But the truth is, as we age there are so many more things to become afraid of and paranoid about. Not to mention how restless I have become, as though uncomfortable in my own skin, in my own house. It seems as though I should always be doing something, completing another project, preparing for the future. To live in the present sounds like a luxury when I am so preoccupied with deadlines and the potential for missed oportunities. How can I live in the future if I don't work now to create it in the image I imagine for it? How can I become comfortable in my skin, in my sleep, in my home, when I am responsible for ensuring that tomorrow I am still here, with a home, with a future? Anxiety is a nasty beast, and anyone who hasn't experienced it on a level beyond the typical likely has no idea what a treat that is. Are there people in the world who can think of just one thing at a time? People who are able to get in bed at an early hour, turn out the lights, and let their dreams come as their heads hit the pillow? How does one manage such a heavenly existence? Napping comes much more easily than sleep, probably because without sleep at night my body needs moments of the day to stop functioning. Still, sleep is as much a part of my problem as it is the solution. When I do fall asleep, it is with great trepidation, as I am usually awoken by terrifying dreams, which follow one another in quick succession, blending story lines and adapting to my various sleeping and waking moments. At night I will come up with a number of excuses, such as writing this blog, to avoid getting into my bed, where I will once again have to confront the sandman. I have no fear of the dark, but of what nightmarish figures my imagination will conjure in such a setting. Still, sleep, when peaceful, is one of the most precious experiences, allowing the mind to trasport you through the constructs of time and space that imprison our waking states, and instead we can take on an alias for each new dream, and new passports with which to peruse the world of the sleeping - one of endless possibility. So as I end this self-indulent post, wish me luck, that tonight, for even a few hours, I may enjoy the timelessness and boundlessness of pleasant sleep, putting my anxious mind to rest.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Pithy Poetry
"My parent's worked,"
she told me over dinner,
as if my brother didn't,
as if health care's a privilege,
not a right.
But my siblings went to college,
where they stocked up on knowledge,
so they could find work,
but the system won't work for them,
So when she told me they deserved it,
I said "That is bullshit,"
and gave her a piece of my mind.
My sister's children get medicaid,
'cuz their dad can't get paid,
despite four years in college,
making the grade.
He's been measured and weighed
and found want.
And my brother, with his nose to the grind,
works all the time,
yet can't seem to find
a way to pay off undergraduate loans.
So he lives in a trailer -
don't you dare call him trash,
because he busts his ass
but our government couldn't care less.
So I said to her, listen,
I don't mean to be bitchin',
or moanin', groanin', or preachin' to you,
but I find it offensive
when you tell me your family
is worth more attention than mine,
So the next time you talk about health care
and welfare,
don't think about wasting my time.
-KMS 11/2007
she told me over dinner,
as if my brother didn't,
as if health care's a privilege,
not a right.
But my siblings went to college,
where they stocked up on knowledge,
so they could find work,
but the system won't work for them,
So when she told me they deserved it,
I said "That is bullshit,"
and gave her a piece of my mind.
My sister's children get medicaid,
'cuz their dad can't get paid,
despite four years in college,
making the grade.
He's been measured and weighed
and found want.
And my brother, with his nose to the grind,
works all the time,
yet can't seem to find
a way to pay off undergraduate loans.
So he lives in a trailer -
don't you dare call him trash,
because he busts his ass
but our government couldn't care less.
So I said to her, listen,
I don't mean to be bitchin',
or moanin', groanin', or preachin' to you,
but I find it offensive
when you tell me your family
is worth more attention than mine,
So the next time you talk about health care
and welfare,
don't think about wasting my time.
-KMS 11/2007
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Superfluous Quips
I only just realized how scary Mitt Romney really is. His primary speech actually frightened me.
I look forward to voting on Febuary 5th, in an election where I can freely stand up for my principles and not be concerned with who is going to get the nomination, but rather show my wholehearted support for social justice and true Democratic ideals, not the watered-down centrist babble that our top runners use to pander to the independents and moderates. Still, I must admit that 2008 has a better line-up than 2004 did in that regard.
What would Ron Paul actually do if he were in office? Get rid of the Fed? Ah, of course. Why didn't I think of that? Honestly, I take Colbert's campaign more seriously than Paul's. Still, I am glad Paul realizes the seriousness of the devaluation of the dollar. How can the people who gripe about Kucinich wanting to pull the troops out turn around and campaign for Paul? His islolationist policy makes me nervous, and seems to go too far. But better Paul than any of the other Republicans.
I thought Republicans were the ones who supposedly wanted small government, but I guess it's really just a matter of where they want to spend our money. That must be how the current administration gets away with expanding the powers of the executive beyond imagination, while Democrats who want our money to go towards reforming our public services - education, health care, minimun wage - are called "big government." Yet the programs that the Democrats want to strengthen and the way they call for those programs to be managed is from the bottom up with local and state governments exercising greater discretion over the allocation of funding. Instead, we have Republicans putting our tax dollars towards heightened security and military operations that we wouldn't need if it weren't for the combayive foreign policy and rhetoric that the current adminstration has promoted.
What we need are leaders in our country who want America to be as strong as it can be (anyone who thinks I'm not a patriot better pay attention) because our citizens are what make America great, and if our government isn't safeguarding our interests and ensuring our health and economic prosperity, than in my opinion that government is not fulfilling its duty to the American people. So I am a Democrat, and in Europe I would be a Social Democrat, because as much as I value my personal liberty, I believe that my liberty is tied into the liberty of others, and until we are guaranteed health care, quality education, and a living wage, our liberty remains unfulfilled.
I look forward to voting on Febuary 5th, in an election where I can freely stand up for my principles and not be concerned with who is going to get the nomination, but rather show my wholehearted support for social justice and true Democratic ideals, not the watered-down centrist babble that our top runners use to pander to the independents and moderates. Still, I must admit that 2008 has a better line-up than 2004 did in that regard.
What would Ron Paul actually do if he were in office? Get rid of the Fed? Ah, of course. Why didn't I think of that? Honestly, I take Colbert's campaign more seriously than Paul's. Still, I am glad Paul realizes the seriousness of the devaluation of the dollar. How can the people who gripe about Kucinich wanting to pull the troops out turn around and campaign for Paul? His islolationist policy makes me nervous, and seems to go too far. But better Paul than any of the other Republicans.
I thought Republicans were the ones who supposedly wanted small government, but I guess it's really just a matter of where they want to spend our money. That must be how the current administration gets away with expanding the powers of the executive beyond imagination, while Democrats who want our money to go towards reforming our public services - education, health care, minimun wage - are called "big government." Yet the programs that the Democrats want to strengthen and the way they call for those programs to be managed is from the bottom up with local and state governments exercising greater discretion over the allocation of funding. Instead, we have Republicans putting our tax dollars towards heightened security and military operations that we wouldn't need if it weren't for the combayive foreign policy and rhetoric that the current adminstration has promoted.
What we need are leaders in our country who want America to be as strong as it can be (anyone who thinks I'm not a patriot better pay attention) because our citizens are what make America great, and if our government isn't safeguarding our interests and ensuring our health and economic prosperity, than in my opinion that government is not fulfilling its duty to the American people. So I am a Democrat, and in Europe I would be a Social Democrat, because as much as I value my personal liberty, I believe that my liberty is tied into the liberty of others, and until we are guaranteed health care, quality education, and a living wage, our liberty remains unfulfilled.
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