Do a search of your local news media and chances are you will find stories in your community about men, women and children who have been stolen from home and turned into prostitutes, field laborers, nail salon workers, and any number of human slaves.
Human Trafficking harms people in Thailand, Honduras and the United States. Law enforcement from Portland, OR to Fort Worth, TX are creating special units specifically targeting the crime and and finding ways to help the victims. Our borders are not only crossed by those choosing to come here, some of the crossers are forced to come here. Some of the missing children and teenagers and adults from your community may now be held against their will somewhere nearby or may have been sent elsewhere, where the chances of them being found are nil.
Human Trafficking is HERE and it is not going away. Part of the reason it thrives is because it's ignored and avoided. It's other countries, other people. It's not us. But it is.
So what can we do about it?
We can spend the day learning about Human Trafficking. We can learn 11 things we didn't know before. We can start in our own towns and states. We can learn about legislation and advocacy groups who provide counseling and shelter to rescued slaves. We can call our local police departments' Human Trafficking unit and ask if they need teddy bears or blankets, clothing or medication.
We can donate time, resources or money.
Today at 1:11 pm, you can donate $11 to the Polaris Project https://www.polarisproject.org/... where
this small amount can go a long way. If 100 people donate $11 they can house, clothe, and provide food for a survivor for one whole month.
We can go to any of these links and find even more to read the stories and learn what action we can take.
http://www.polarisproject.org
http://www.dna-prokids.org/...
http://www.freetheslaves.net/...
http://www.humantrafficking.org/
We can read articles like these and find more
http://www.oregonlive.com/...
http://humantrafficking.change.org/...
But most importantly, we can take what we learn and share it. If you are on Facebook, please go to the Polaris Project and grab their awareness day image as your profile picture and change your status to:
... asks my friends to acknowledge "National Human Trafficking Day" by learning something about human trafficking. It's happening somewhere in your community. It's children, men, women taken & sold, used for labor & sex, drugged & raped. It's in the cities, the suburbs & the rural areas. Trafficked human beings are dumped & left to die in anonymity. Learn something. Do something. Share this. Please.
This isn't a Democrat/Republican, Red State/Blue State, National/International, One race/Another race, man/woman, child/adult issue. This is a human issue. Please LEARN, ACT, SHARE.
Thank you.
Jennifer
(please forgive grammar and spelling errors: I am taking advantage of my son's nap time as quickly as I can.)