HTAC Conference, Part One

On Saturday, I attended the Human Trafficking Awareness Conference at Greenwood Community Church in Greenwood Village, CO. I forgot how amazing the houses are in that area, holy cow!

Anyway, a brief synopsis and then I'll give you some notes I took from the three morning speakers. I am so glad I went to this conference. Not only did it renew and increase my passion for this cause, but it actually helped restore some of my faith in the people of God. I have been very cynical lately as I look at the church's purpose in this world. I feel like too often the Church fights over issues that are stupid, small and unimportant and too often fails to be the people of God in the world. If Christianity has 2 billion adherents, don't you think that 1/3 of the population of the world could be a little better about changing the world? Instead we fight over the color of carpet in the sanctuary or staff salaries or whether we should build a 10 million or 20 million dollar building. I am pretty battle scarred due to the churches I've been in the past fifteen years, and I was beginning to turn away from the idea of the church being the hope of the world. This conference helped at least for now to stem the growing tide within me to just leave the church behind.

The other main thing I took out of this conference is that I am on the right path. Fighting Human Trafficking and Slavery is my passion, my main goal, my "one thing" with God. I'm not sure when I get to Ohio if I'll be able to be paid for my passion, but my hope is that I can find somewhere to plug in and make a difference. I made contacts with several people at the conference, and although the focus was on what we can do in Colorado to combat human trafficking, I was also encouraged by other people's passions and skills to make a difference.

In the morning, there were three keynote speakers: Larry Martin from International Justice Mission, who spoke on human trafficking from an international perspective; Bradley Myles of The Polaris Project, who spoke from a national perspective; and Seth Donovan, who spoke from a local perspective.

Here are my notes from Larry's speech:

- "Approximately 27 million people are enslaved today": National Geographic

- Southeast Asia is the "capital" of trafficking.

- Nearly 2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex trade. (UNICEF)

- What are the factors in trafficking? (1) the huge population explosion over the last thirty years; (2) rapid social and economic change around the world (which includes the fact that the price of slaves has gone down considerably); (3) government corruption (in the rest of the world, the number one deterrent to livelihood is the police).

- The differences between the old slavery (slaves from Africa for 300 years) and the new slavery (present day):
- O.S.: legal claim to slaves, N.S.: no legal claim.
- O.S.: slavery was expensive ($300 now); N.S.: slavery is cheap ($85)
- O.S.: shortage of available slaves; N.S.: surplus of available slaves
- O.S.: slavery was a long-term proposition (because they were so expensive, needed to maintain); N.S.: slavery is short-term (they're expendable because they're cheap)
- O.S.: ethnic differences were important (white slave owners, black slaves); N.S.: no delineation of ethnic differences (thai slave owners, thai slaves)

- International Justice Mission is a collection of human rights investigators.

- Injustice - the abuse of power to take from others. 2 factors are included: (1) coercion; (2) deception

- IJM investigators look for the truth and investigate to expose the truth; IJM lawyers figure out if there is enough to convict, and then "speaks truth to power."

- IJM's four-fold purpose: (1) Victim rescue; (2) Victim aftercare; (3) Perpetrator Accountability; (4) Prevention (through training international police)

Here are my notes from Bradley's speech:

- In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which is a law that criminalized trafficking of persons.

- 1st Purpose of Polaris Project: Public Awareness (through books, movies, media)
- Books: Not For Sale, Ending Slavery, A Crime So Monstrous
- Movies: TRADE, Holly, Carissa Project, Call+Response, Very Young Girls, Playground Project, Not My Life, Slave Next Door

- still needed: increased public awareness; harness and leverage media; deal with issues glorifying pimping.

- 2nd Purpose: Law And Policy
- 39 states have passed Anti-Trafficking Laws in the past six years.
- still needed: lots of laws still need to be updated (pimping laws were passed ninety years ago)

- 3rd Purpose: Immediate Help For Victims
- established a National Hotline for Victims of Trafficking
- still needed: hotlines need more publicity; increased call volumes for hotlines, more coordination among hotlines

- 4th Purpose: Victim Services
- Working with the Department of Justice
- a few states have started up funded victim services
- still needed: increased services for both U.S. and non-U.S. victims; new state and local funding

- 5th Purpose: Shelter for Victims

- 6th Purpose: Law Enforcement

(he started going really fast during this part because his time was almost up)

And about here my notes make no sense, because I was writing too fast. However, a cool thing did happen during his speech: he talked about how Lexis Nexis, a corporation right down the street from my house, is doing some amazing things to help combat human trafficking. I talked to him about it afterwards, and he gave me a couple of names of Lexis Nexis executives who are in charge of that program.

Here are my notes from Seth's speech (the first girl I've ever known to be named Seth)

- Colorado has huge trafficking problems, with the I-25 and I-70 interstates connecting right in the middle of Denver. Plus there are migrant farm workers, mountain communities etc. where we find trafficking problems

- one third of the 1200 homeless youth in Denver have been propositioned for sexual exploitation.

- human trafficking doesn't exist in a box: racial injustice is still prevalent today, people are still viewed as commodities, and slavery is foundational to the U.S. economy.

- Human trafficking will not be abolished until the demand is gone:
- Until the U.S. gives up the demand to have cheap stuff, there will still be millions of slaves working for no pay to produce the cheap things we consume.
- Until there is no demand for sex with young kids, there will still be millions of slaves providing for that need.

- When our values come into conflict with our checkbooks, there will be a change.

These were some amazing sessions. Next post will be about the rest of the day.