Happy and Blessed New Year From ALENOW.org

Why The Freedom Awards Are Important

Jolene Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Free the Slaves 

Free the Slaves created the Freedom Awards to celebrate today’s anti-slavery heroes and to catalyze additional innovation and resources to end slavery once and for all. The Awards program will define what successful, sustainable anti-slavery work looks like and build a vision of freedom for change-makers to adopt. 

In addition to the benefits derived by the Award winners themselves, the Freedom Awards program will:

	Dramatically expand the capacity and reach of grassroots anti-slavery programs.
	Proliferate creative and transformative leadership of people with the means to harness the energy and will of millions of people.
	Strengthen the infrastructure of the modern anti-slavery movement to last through the phases of abolition and the rehabilitation/reintegration of people who are currently enslaved.
	Provide inspiration and hope, through the personal stories and unquenchable determination of survivors of slavery, that will help fuel the anti-slavery movement through to eradication.

The longer term impacts of these Awards include defining, providing models for and disseminating what is known about ‘good practice’ of anti-slavery interventions at the community level, generating new knowledge about techniques for stopping slavery, inspiring increased funding and support for these interventions and informing responses to slavery at the policy level. The Freedom Awards will continually identify ‘the next frontier’ for the anti-slavery movement and demonstrate the next strategic steps that need to be taken to achieve a world without slavery.

The Freedom Awards are an outgrowth of Free the Slaves’ role within the global anti-slavery movement as an organization seeking to provoke innovative ideas and thoughtful reflection on what techniques have worked and which ones still need to be tried. Free the Slaves is guided by its work with community-based anti-slavery organizations in 5 countries where together they free people from slavery, help them rebuild their lives, and create fundamental change to bring slavery to an end.

The first Awards ceremony was held in 2008, 200 years after the law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States was enacted.

Each award salutes an individual who had significant impact on slavery both within the United States and elsewhere, and on the response of  Americans and others’ to slavery around the world. Their spirit continues on through the individuals and generations they brought to freedom, and today’s abolitionists who are inspired by their legacy.

Please visit the 2009 Freedom Awards page at FreeThe Slaves.net and watch the award ceremony video.

Human Trafficking is Al-Qaeda’s New Business Model

Human Trafficking and Terrorism? Sure it fits.

by Amanda Kloer

Terrorism is an expensive business, what with the cost of bomb-making supplies, training videos, and the constant recruitment of new suicide bombers. And Islamist terror-funders have the same recession issues as the rest of us. So to fill some financial gaps, Al-Qaeda has embraced a new business model which generates income from trafficking drugs and human beings. Law enforcement agencies have long agreed that one of the best strategies to fight Al-Qaeda is to cut off their cash and starve them out. And now, that strategy includes fighting human trafficking.

Human and drug trafficking has occasionally been suspected as a funding mechanism for terror, but has thus far been addressed primarily on a case-by-case basis. But more concrete confirmation of Al-Qaeda using trafficking funds came from Harouna Touré, who led an Al-Qaeda-affiliated criminal group in North Africa. Among other income-generating activities, they transported hashish to Tunisia; trafficked people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India into Spain; and recently kidnapped Belgian citizens for ransom.

The increased use of human trafficking to fund terror is something I’ve seen coming for awhile. The notorious U.S. and Mexico-based MS-13 gang has been reported to have engaged in talks with Al-Qaeda, and they have used trafficking as a funding source for some time. So Al-Qaeda has a mentor in the industry. Also, since the U.S. declared a war on terror almost a decade ago, officials have identified and disabled a number of funding mechanisms for terror. Better technology has made it easier to track money online, and thus harder to move money from legal accounts into the hands of terrorists without raising flags. So it’s natural that terror organizations would turn to organized crime activities as a means of financing their operations — and trafficking in drugs and people are the most profitable organized criminal activities.

I hope this connection becomes clearer to law enforcement over the next year, and they begin to identify combating human trafficking as a serious national security issue deeply connected with the war on terror. Human trafficking allows terrorist organizations to finance their operations, including recruitment and bombings. And the conditions in which human trafficking thrive — poverty, political instability and extremism, and lack of political freedom — also provide fertile ground for terrorism to thrive in. This is especially true of places in the Middle East like Pakistan and Lebanon which have significant trafficking problems and the potential for more serious terrorism as well. Only once we accept that ending human trafficking is important to national security will we be able to cut the flow of cash from modern-day slave labor to terrorist organizations.

Photo credit: The Chorizo Warrior

Become a leader in the anti-trafficking movement!‏

An important message from the Polaris Project,

Dear Supporters,

Would you like to be in Washington D.C. from January to May? Are you looking for a great organization to contribute your time? Are you interested in getting involved in the fight against human trafficking? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions you should apply to Polaris Project’s nationally recognized Fellowship Program.

We are accepting applications for Spring 2010. Polaris Project’s Fellowship Program is a formalized leadership development effort focused on training future leaders to serve in the anti-trafficking movement.  Based out of Polaris Project’s Washington, DC headquarters office, the Fellowship Program is one of the premiere leadership development programs exclusively focused on the issue of human trafficking and on providing young adults with training and on-the-ground practical experiences in the anti-trafficking movement.  

      

For more information on how to apply please visit our fellowship page today. We will be accepting applications until January 4, so send yours in ASAP! There are still open positions in the Public Outreach and Communications department, Development, Operations and Nonprofit Management, and the National Human Trafficking Resource Center.

We look forward to receiving your application!

Johanna Olivas
Program Associate
Public Outreach and Communications

Happy Holidays From ALENOW.org

By M G Jack

Happy Holidays!

This has been a very blessed almost first year of the awareness efforts here at ALENOW.org. What had started just as a way for me to spread awareness of the issues of Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery and Exploitation has turned in to something much bigger. This blog has received thousands of hits which I promised myself I would not count until its fist anniversary in March 2010. I have received emails, comments and well wishes from many readers. I have met some great modern day abolitionists one as young as 15 and a few contributed to this blog. This undertaking has rekindled my passion for social justice and has set others on fire to fight and bring attention to these modern day horrors and crimes.  I want to say to you all during this festive time of year Happy Holidays, God Bless and Pray for a joyous Christmas for the victims and freedom for those still enslaved.

Help Us reach our year end goal of $200,000.00 by Decemeber 31, 2009

Attempting to flee Serbia following Germany's invasion in 1941, the Mandil family was detained by the SS who suspected correctly that they were Jewish. Mosa pulled out this photograph to convince the Germans that they couldn't possibly be Jewish. After inspecting the photo the officers let them go and the Mandil family was spared.

Imagine a Christmas tree saving Jewish lives. This 1940 photo did just that. To promote his photography studio, Mosa Mandil took this picture of his children with a Christmas tree. With it, he later saved his children, and today the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is saving his memories. Millions of lives were scarred or destroyed by the Holocaust. But each individual was “one in a million.”

That’s why we are urgently trying to locate precious items like this before it is too late. Soon these stories and the evidence of humanity’s greatest crime will be lost forever.

·  Each object helps refute the growing number of people who deny or minimize the truth of the Holocaust.

·  Each testimony broadens our understanding of the Holocaust beyond the facts and statistics to the real life experiences of individuals … like the Mandils who narrowly escaped.

·  Each piece of evidence helps memorialize those who were murdered, and identify those who were complicit in this horrific crime.

The Museum is in a desperate race against time in more than 40 countries on 6 continents to rescue Holocaust evidence now, before fragile artifacts and documents deteriorate and while those who remember can share their stories.

Your support is needed to sustain our critical work in this increasingly urgent race.

Help us raise $200,000 by December 31 to ensure progress in our global efforts to fight Holocaust denial, antisemitism and hate, and genocide.

Please help us in this effort by making a generous year-end tax-deductible contribution today.

Sincerely,
Sara J. Bloomfield
Director

US human trafficking data

Human trafficking on the rise close to home

By Anita Kissée KATU News and KATU.com Staff

PORTLAND, Ore. – Often thought of as a problem occurring in some far away country, human trafficking is on the rise right here in Oregon, police say.

Exact numbers are hard to find but it is believed, in addition to all the adults, hundreds of local girls and even boys are victims of prostitution.

Police said they encounter up to five cases a week.

There are “little girls and boys that are being raped daily and there are men out there and sometimes women that are looking for that,” said Keith Bickford, a Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy and the head of the Oregon Human Trafficking Task Force.

Bickford hunts men like Jammie Smith who is wanted in Portland for reportedly forcing girls as young as 13 to walk 82nd Avenue and work local hotels.

“I can tell you right now, it’s the pimp,” Bickford said. “They’re very good at what they do.”

He said pimps can make $200,000 on one underage child.

Many are local victims who are runaways and one in three is contacted by a pimp within their first 48 hours alone.

“You throw out the fact I (the pimps) can give you a roof over your head and hot meals [and] this is what you have to do for me,” Bickford said about the tactics pimps use to ensnare homeless children into a life of prostitution. “They join right in, especially in the winter time.”

But Bickford said traffickers also prowl schools to recruit 12- and 13-year-olds, even those from solid families and churchgoers.

“If you’re being a good parent, you’re saying go to school, do your homework, eat your vegetables, go to bed, there’s a curfew, you’re (the parent) being responsible. [But] the pimp can go the other direction, ‘Well, you don’t have to come back at a certain time, you’re going to be the star of the show,’” said Bickford.

Oregon’s location is tailor-made for another category of victims, he said.

“You start throwing in the I-5 corridor, I-84, you have big waterways; the rivers are a great way to traffic people in and out.”

Those who are especially vulnerable are from poorer countries. Many in rural farm-worker communities are often trafficked by their own family and are too scared of outside unknowns to escape.

Portland’s location between Seattle and California also plays a part in the increase of human trafficking and the booming sex industry.

Police said, unlike drugs that are sold once, human victims can be sold over and over again, which make them more attractive to traffickers.

Agencies are formed to fight human trafficking in the United States

Reposted from: Examiner.com

Human trafficking is often thought of as happening in a far distant land. It is true that it happens in places such as India, Africa, and Haiti but many Americans are unaware that it is happening right here in the United States.

Every year, there are approximately 17,500 individuals who are brought into the United States for the sole purpose of human trafficking. This figure does not include people who are immigrants, runaways, displaced, or poor who are already living in America. Some reports state that number could go as high as 60,000.

Human Trafficking is actually defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons: by the threat or use of kidnapping, force, fraud, deception or coercion, or by the giving or receiving of unlawful payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, and for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor.” (Humantrafficking.com)

Christian author and speaker, Dillon Burroughs, realized the reality of trafficking when he was traveling. “I went on a humanitarian trip to Haiti and as I was researching, I realized there was slave trading and selling of people going on there. In one particular area, within a 24-hour period, you could purchase an underage girl, 9-years-old, for $150. I came back saying, ‘We have to do something about this.’”

Burroughs knew there were people trying to create basic awareness, but he wanted to do more. “I started partnering with a couple of organizations. Home of Hope Texas is seeking to provide aftercare services for former trafficking victims. Joshua’s Mission is involved more on the front end of doing research, creating awareness, and helping to partner with law enforcement officials to actually rescue people who are found in this situation.”

Burroughs spoke on statistics and how tragic the unawareness is in this country. “There are 90 cities where human trafficking arrests have taken place in the last decade. I just read a report about domestic minor sex trafficking that said approximately 100,000 people within the U.S. are exploited in some way. If you added all of the aftercare centers for minor sex trafficking victims, you would probably have about a 100 beds or so that people could stay in for long-term care secure treatment. That doesn’t even make the smallest dent in the problem that we have today.”

Aftercare and justice for traffickers are passions of Burroughs. “There are around 39 states that have specific trafficking laws that have passed since 2000,” he explained, “but the problem is that law enforcement does not always know how to identify trafficking issues. Traffickers are often times arrested and released on bail until trial. (If convicted) they could get a year and a half. This can vary greatly from state to state.”

Another problem is if a woman or child is brought to safety, many times they are too afraid to tell their story. “Sometimes the women are called back to testify and that is an emotional situation in itself,” Burroughs explained. “Sometimes the girls do not want to tell their stories so if you have someone who is not willing to testify, the case often gets dismissed or gets changed in some way.”

Fear is the main factor. “If they are international, they are told not to trust or they are told they could be deported.”

Home of Hope Texas is currently preparing their property to hold approximately 50 trafficking victims. The brand new site has had some enormous obstacles. “There are permits required and they are trying to raise about 1.5 million dollars for a first level building that will house 15 females,” Burroughs explained.

The organization is hoping to be done with this phase in the next year and a half. They eventually will have several housing groups “to minister to Spanish speaking backgrounds, Asian speaking backgrounds, and other nationalities,” Burroughs stated.
There are two main concerns for the staff of this facility. “If they are from a different country we have immigration to deal with. If they are from America, it is not as much of a factor,” Burroughs explained. “Also, you can’t have a shelter for a former trafficking victim without placing it in an undisclosed location with full state of the art security that will have to be monitored electronically and with people on the premises 24/7. This is an enormous expense over your typical care center.”

Houston Texas has “127 identified brothels,” said Burroughs. “Many times they do not shut them down because there is no place to put the victims. A lot of times they are taken to Salvation Army places or a homeless or teen runaway shelter and you can imagine these people are not going to be able to fit in. Especially if they are from another country and they have been trafficked into the United States. They don’t know English. They don’t know their rights. They don’t know where to begin and it creates a very difficult situation legally, not to mention the actual recovery from the sex trafficking itself.”

Since October of 2000, when the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was enacted, there has been small progress. More states are coming on board. More training is occurring in cities, but the awareness is just so slow moving. Burroughs wanted to help with this venture and created American Coalition of Abolitionists. “This is an online awareness campaign for people who care about this issue, want to help spread the word in ways to make a difference, contact representatives to make legal changes when they are pending, make sure that when working with businesses or buying products or goods that they are free from slave work. We also want to get the stories of victims out there with ways to help.”

If you are interested in getting more involved, contact the American Coalition of Abolitionists online. Call your local congressmen. Find out about your state’s laws and anti-trafficking task force. If there is not one, see what needs to be done. Every state is different. Refer people online and give stats and facts about human trafficking in the United States. Invite someone to talk to your local churches and state and city meetings. Find out if your local law enforcement and emergency workers are trained in the area of trafficking.

The Polaris Project, an agency fighting human trafficking, reports that “modern day slavery is the second largest criminal industry in the world, over 12 million people worldwide are trafficked for forced labor or sexual exploitation, and over 200,000 children are at high risk for sex trafficking and commercial exploitation in the United States every year.”

“My heart,” Burroughs concluded, “is that we have to create awareness as well as do what we can to help the victims. It is a tragic thing, as large as this is and yet so few people know about this.” 

Another great site is Shared Hope International.

Nestlé surrender to STOP THE TRAFFIK pressure

On Monday morning (December 7th) chocolate giant Nestlé UK will finally announce that Kit Kat is to be slavery free or fairly traded from January 2010.

But this good news is only partial. Though Nestlé have bowed to pressure from the STOP THE TRAFFIK campaign to clean up their act, they will also announce that this will only apply to their ‘four finger’ product. In other words, two finger Kit Kats and all of their other chocolate products will continue to exploit the chocolate slaves of the Ivory Coast from where Nestlé source most of their cocoa.

Over the last few years STOP THE TRAFFIK campaigners have put pressure on the big chocolate manufacturers around the world to eradicate the worst forms of child labour on the cocoa farms of Ivory Coast, West Africa where thousands of young children are trafficked, enslaved and abused to harvest the cocoa that makes over a third of the world’s chocolate.

Tens of thousands of our campaigners have written letters, sent emails and text messages, twittered, facebooked, made phone calls, worn t-shirts and, most importantly, refused to eat anything other than traffik-free brands of chocolate.

In response, earlier this year, Cadbury launched fair trade Dairy Milk in the UK and Ireland. However, when STOP THE TRAFFIK’s global campaigners continued to demand this policy be applied globally, it didn’t take long for the Dairy Milk fair-trade certification to spread to other parts of the world.

Weeks later Mars capitulated to STOP THE TRAFFIK’s “March on Mars” campaign, promising that their Galaxy range will be Rainforest Alliance certified in 2010 with their whole product range traffik free by 2020. We know, from a number of inside sources in the industry that these changes are directly due to the pressure that STOP THE TRAFFIK has exerted at community level.

Since summer 2009 STOP THE TRAFFIK has turned the heat up on Nestlé – a global giant with a poor human rights record – and in recent weeks has launched a new and hard-hitting Christmas campaign designed to bring the giant company to task.

STOP THE TRAFFIK has learnt that from January 2010 the four finger Kit Kats will be fairtrade and that this will be made public on Monday. However, Nestlé still refuse to budge on their two finger biscuits.

“We welcome the Nestlé announcement. We are relieved for the cocoa farmers and children in Ivory Coast. The surrender of Nestlé demonstrates that by making a simple consumer choice ordinary people can hold multi-nationals to account. Though we understand that it is hard to make all products ethical overnight, we want to see that this is more than a token gesture. So, we intend to keep the pressure on Nestlé until their commitment is global and product wide, like their competitor Mars. No chocolate should have the bitter aftertaste of slavery. Therefore our campaign continues”
Steve Chalke – Founder of STOP THE TRAFFIK and the United Nations Special Advisor on Community Action Against Human Trafficking

PRESS ENQUIRIES

For more information on STOP THE TRAFFIK activities, please email bex.keer@stopthetraffik.org or call the International Office on +44 (0)207 921 4258. Alternatively, visit the websites http://www.stopthetraffik.org/takeaction/chocolate/nestle.aspx and www.stopthetraffik.org