Cheaper than a piece of metal

The city of Winona hosts the Frozen River Film Festival every year. It's four or five days full of speakers and independent films, mostly centered around a common topic. I think this year's theme was food, but I am never in Winona, much less attending festivals, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

What I can tell you was that on Saturday at 1:00 they showed a film about human trafficking. I was there. I was there with a row of friends in tow. A doctor from Mayo Clinic came to speak about the trip he took to India that opened his eyes to the horrors of the buying and selling of human beings - no, of children. James Levine told us about the commercial district of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) where streets upon streets are lined with booths selling metal, food, fabric, and women. Apparently one girl in particular caught this doctor's attention. She was wearing a sari with rainbow trim and writing in a blue notebook. Maybe this caught his attention because, as a doctor, James Levine had always believed that education was always the answer. Education is always seen as the step up to the ladder of success. And here was this little girl, being sold behind a booth on a dirty street, reading and writing, and still trapped in sexual slavery. She was thirteen.

Thirteen.

Dr Levine continued that it was often cheaper to buy a young girl for the night than to purchase a piece of metal on the next block. He went home from that trip but could never get this little girl out of his mind. He went on to write a book, called The Blue Notebook. It's a novel he wrote, inspired by the little girl in the rainbow-trimmed sari. This book is now available in 22 languages and being sold all over the world. He's never seen the little girl with the blue notebook again, but he can only hope that his words are speaking up for her and the 27 million others still in slavery today. Her message can be carried across the world without even knowing what it was she was saying.

I haven't read the book yet but it's on my list. Dr Levine was a fantastic speaker with a passion behind his message. I hope you'll check it out on your next rainy reading Saturday.

_________________________________________________
Quick facts:
Traffickers made $31 billion in 2008 just by selling other people.
An estimated 8000-12,000 people are prostituted in Minnesota alone. - mcbw.org
731 women have been reported as sex trafficking victims in the last three years.
Minneapolis is in the top 13 cities for sexual exploitation.

Be informed.
Then become engaged.

What this isn't

This was going to be a New Years Resolutions blog, but I'm not a big fan of resolutions. I don't usually make them, and follow-through is even more rare. I figure, if something is important enough for me to change, I'll do it, and if not, well, good luck.

Then I thought I could write about what I've been up to over break and post a few pictures. Well I've seen alot of friends and family and played my share of board games, and you can look at pictues on facebook.

I haven't written much about slavery or human trafficking recently, but I also haven't been up to much. I'm still reading articles and looking up organizations and doing my best to stay informed. I know I'll have some events on campus next semester but we haven't started much since Nikki and I are both away.

So for all the things this blog isn't talking about, I thought I'd fill you in on the latest developments for my future:

There are none. Future developments, I mean. I started looking at grad schools again once I realized pursuing a Masters in Social Work wasn't necessary and I could probably find something more engaging. I found all sorts of great Masters programs - International Human Rights, International Peace Studies, Global Studies with an emphasis on just about any country. Study abroad programs in England, Australia and Germany. But there's that $51,000 a year pricetag, and that foreign language requirement that I've been trying to ignore for the past four years.
I've been looking at job listings, too. I just discovered my dearly beloved change.org has a section of job listings all over the country. By all over the country we mean that most are in Washington DC. Wrong Washington, folks. Anyway, there are some sweet jobs out there but very few in fighting Human Trafficking. I'll give it a few months before I apply anywhere since I'm not very mobile til mid-May, but that doesn't stop me from looking.

Both of my Dove Promises just told me to slow down, take notice, and savor the moment. I think that's chocolate speak for "give it up and relax, you'll figure it out".

It's on her list

Black Friday is not for the faint of heart. Early morning, mad shoppers, crazy deals...mall cops...in-store infomercials. The fun never ends. According to the t shirts of 3 frenzied women, they averaged a total of 13 hours of shopping on black Fridays for the past six years. These people are crazy.

We chose to join in with our own form of crazy - you guessed it, social activism. My friend Nikki and I paired up with the God's Child project and Breaking the Chains and went to the Mall of America to tell shoppers about modern day slavery, which meant getting up at 3:30am and to the country's biggest mall by 4:30. Technically it wasn't a protest or a demonstration, but we did have a sign, some rope, and hundreds or thousands of fliers. Department stores opened at 5am so we worked our way through the mobs of people, telling them about slavery and asking them to check out our website. By the time we had made our way to the front of the line and the Macy's doors were opening, the mall cops were there. Apparently MOA is private property and they do not appreciate protests, demonstrations, or the solicitation of information. We fell into the last category, and were escorted off of mall property, with the promise to be arrested if we returned that same day. Fortunately the camera crew from TLC was also there, making a documentary on the mall cops at MOA. We gladly signed the release form with hopes of our cause being televised. Yeaaaah social activism.

It was then 5:30am and I was in the cities. My mom and sister were about to start shopping so I took a big breath and joined the madness. I got some sweet deals on Christmas gifts but lacked the enthusiasm of the most serious black Friday shoppers. And then we went to Slumberland Furniture. I am not, at this point in time, in the market for furniture. However, this place has amazing sales. As we walked in the door we were handed tickets for $25 of free merchandise, with no minimum purchase. All table-toppers were 75% off. Therefore one could find a candle, vase, or other sweet table topper normally priced at $100, take 75% off making the price $25, and then use the coupon. Three women walked out of the store with $300 worth of items without spending a cent. I had to check my reflection in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t wearing a ski mask, ‘cause I felt like I was robbing the place. I left with these sweet urns.

Take that, consumerism.

Ending Slavery

We're currently working on a couple campus events for the fall! I need to figure out how to create some sweet promo flyers, but we will be showing a video produced by the International Justice Mission called At the End of Slavery in a few weeks. IJM is sponsoring the Weekend to End Slavery November 14-15, but that snuck up on us a little too fast. We're holding our event the 19th now, with a freedom store coming the first week in December. I'm no good at planning committees but all my policy and non-profit propoganda from class is making me think about politics. I'll let you know how that develops.
Til then, check out http://www.slaverymap.org/ - just in case you didn't realize there are slaves in your own backyard. There's even a reported case in Renton where I grew up.

The Global Forum

A month or two ago my friend Nikki suggested we go to the Global Forum to end Human Trafficking in October. It sounded great and it's something we're both passionate about, but it was in San Diego, and we're in Winona. And we had school. And hotel and airfare would be expensive. And it would be mostly proffesionals/abolitionists.

Needless to say we decided to go.

It wasn't hard to convince my roommate Helen she also wanted to go, and then the school gave us $300 from some diversity fund we didn't know existed to help cover costs. The way our fantastic seniorslidesemester schedule worked out, I only missed one day of class. I happened to have an important presentation scheduled that day, but something about my sweet talking skills or the fact that I control my proffessors caffiene addiction paid off. (Oh the joys of working at a coffee shop in college!)

The conference was October 8-9, so we packed up the car and headed to the cities to stay with my parents Tuesday night. My mom's a great sport and brought us to the airport early Wednesday morning. Our flight got in early enough that we had almost a full day in San Diego. Being college students, we took about 3 modes of public transit to get to our hotel and that ate up most of the afternoon. But it was warm. It was sunny. It was fantastic. I texted my mom Thursday morning to tell her I swam laps outside in the warm sunshine. She texted me two days later saying it was snowing.

The conference was fantastic. There were about 700 professionals, volunteers, law enforcement officers, social workers, researchers, politicians, musicians, business owners, ambassadors, and lots more. I learned so much from everyone I talked to. It wasn't a conference to tell us statistics or what Human Trafficking is - these were all people who knew the facts and were actively doing something about it.

Thursday night we had a concert, too. Brant Christopher, the lead singer from Dispatch, Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club came and played a sweet acoustic set for us. They also showed some fantastic photographs that broke my heart.

I became really interested in supply chains. The fact that so much of what we buy has been touched by a slave at some point along the line is sobering. We've all seen fair trade coffee and chocolate and that's fantastic, but what about cotton? What about pieces of our cell phones? What about the clothes I'm wearing right now? (http://www.stopuzbekchildlabor.org/)

It was encouraging to be around so many people with the same passions who could point us in the right direction. I have a stack of business cards and phone numbers of people all over North America (and the globe, actually) I'm saving for next year when I'm looking for a job. I have internship possibilities running around in my brain. I know that people are actively doing something to stop slavery. I am so inspired by the people we met and talked to. We brought back some new ideas for raising awareness, money, and new leaders in Winona. I got to hear messages from people like Francis Chan and David Arkless telling me "Don't let people calm you down!" and "We have to be on the absolute edge of our comfort zones." I don't think it's too niiave to say we can make a difference, and the movement has already started.

"Just because it's not my family doesn't mean that what's going on isn't an emergency." - Francis Chan

San Diego for awhile longer

Last week when I joked about being stranded in San Diego, I meant the actual city, outside in the sunshine, not the stuffy, air-conditioned airport. Just thought I should clarify that, since, you know, this is where I've been sitting for the last 2+ hours. The flight to Denver is delayed because of ice (what?) and thus the connecting flight to Minneapolis is delayed about twenty minutes so hopefully we'll make it to our flight in that twenty minute window.

Our trip was fantastic. We met lots of sweet abolitionists, researchers, ambassadors, volunteers, students, rockstars, roadies, speakers and activists from around the world. We talked about legislation, supply chains, slavery, trafficking, and new ideas. We're leaving with new friends, information, and inspiration. More on that later - we're off to grab some starbucks and probably play another 7 games of banana grams.