Picking Up the Pieces of Human Trafficking

Every day, women and girls across the country are working to integrate back into society after experiencing the trauma of human trafficking. In fact, according to one nonprofit group, one in four girls is sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood.

Wellspring Living has created two safe homes for victims in Georgia. One home is strictly for girls and teenagers, where the victims sometimes come in as young as 12. The second home is a safe place for adult women — they range in age from 18 to 35. But they all have something in common: they are survivors. It is an uphill battle. Many of the women are just concerned about staying alive and far away from predators. Both home locations are not known to the public and the therapists and employees work hard to keep victims safe.

There is also no ‘one size fits all’ therapy program. All the women and girls are different, as are their pasts. Some victims want to focus on going back to school, some want to stop using drugs. Others want to rekindle relationships with family members who are estranged.

Want to help in your state?

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families has a list of state and national programs across that offers counseling: Rescue and Restore Coalitions.

There’s also the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. It is open 24-hours a day. 1-888-373-7888 or National Human Trafficking Resource Center.

Learn more at Elizabeth Prann’s Fox News article: Picking up the pieces of human trafficking.

Farm Worker Justice

For decades, religious organizations such as the National Council of Churches, the Catholic bishops, and others have been working with labor organizers to try to improve conditions for farm workers, and there’s been some success, most recently in the tomato fields of south Florida, where immigrants harvest nearly all the winter tomatoes this country grows.

They are some of the poorest workers here in our country, and yet not for a lack of hard work. It’s not some dearth of industriousness. In fact, the reason is because the increasing consolidation of purchasing among retailers. So where you have the fast food and food service and supermarkets squeezing their suppliers and demanding ever cheaper costs for their tomatoes, that’s resulted in growers squeezing their farmworkers, and that’s why farmworkers haven’t seen a real wage increase in upwards of three decades. Florida’s tomato workers are usually paid by how much they pick, traditionally getting about 45 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket they fill. That means to make a day’s minimum wage, each worker has to pick two-and-a-half-tons of tomatoes a day.

But things are slowly starting to get better for Florida’s tomato field workers. Last year, after more than a decade of patient organizing work, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers reached a landmark agreement with growers and corporate tomato buyers like McDonalds and Burger King. The agreement gives farmworkers a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they pick. Now that doesn’t sound like much, but that one cent increase translates into an additional 32 cents for every bucket picked by workers. That in turn will boost each farmhand’s pay by about $5,000 a year.

Farmworkers want work with dignity. Where every worker, every person who goes to the fields feels pride in being part of the agricultural industry that is putting food on millions of tables every day and that the worker is getting paid enough to put food on the table of his own home.

However the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and its allies in religious and faith groups say they have much work left to do. That includes a new national campaign focused on  supermarket chains which have declined to  participate in the penny-per-pound pay agreement. There are three principal sectors of tomato retail: fast food, food service, and supermarkets, and now the leaders of the fast food industry are on board. The leaders of the food service industry are on board. All that remains are the supermarkets.

Learn more at Saul Gonzales’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly report: Farmworker Justice.

Trader Joe’s Signs Agreement in Labor Victory

Trader Joe’s, known for being really more of a snack emporium than a grocery store, can now be known for something else; buying tomatoes picked by people with basic human rights.

Feb. 9, it became the second grocery store chain– the first was Whole Foods– to sign an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group based in Immokalee, Florida famous for its successful Fair Food campaign.

By signing a Fair Food agreement with the CIW, Trader Joe’s pledged to buy their Florida tomatoes only from companies that comply with the CIW’s list of working conditions. The agreement also includes an increase in price for tomatoes—one penny per pound—to augment workers salaries.

Learn more at Yael Chanoff’s San Francisco Bay Guardian article: Trader Joe’s signs agreement in labor victory | SF Bay Guardian.

Lenten Devotionals

The Lenten season is a time of spiritual renewal and coming to know God — not just know about Him — in a deeper, more meaningful and personal way.  One of the ways to do that is developing in ourselves God’s heart for justice and life.  To assist you on that journey of faith,  we offer the following devotionals:

Fast For Freedom Prayer Guide combines the spiritual disciplines of prayer, scripture, and fasting with the aim of ending modern-day slavery.

40 Days For Life Devotionals seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion in America.

What’s the Role of Faith in Fighting Slavery?

On February 2, faith leaders gathered in the U.S. capital to pray. What difference will it make? What is the role of prayer, worship, and faith in ending social problems that I care about, like extreme poverty and modern-day slavery?

People of faith have this pathway to freedom wired into their DNA. People from every branch of faith worship and pray, daily reframing their worldview around the principles and values of a transcendent dimension. Their prayers do not accept the world the way it is, but for what it could be. In our churches, synagogues and mosques we teach that every individual is created in the image of God. That belief yields special attention for the vulnerable, the powerless, and the exploited. As the prophet Isaiah wrote: “Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

One of the great Christian leaders of our time, John Stott, phrased it well: “It is exceedingly strange that any follower of Jesus Christ should ever have needed to ask whether social involvement was their concern. Spiritual disciplines, like prayer and worship, create space for God to come and create transformation. Once transformed, the follower of God works to transform the world.

Learn more at David Batstone’s CNN Freedom Now article: What’s the role of faith in fighting slavery?

Source: Cable News Network, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Churches Join Freedom Sunday

What is it about the contemporary church today that situates it within the movement to end modern-day slavery? Kevin Austin, Not For Sale’s Director of the Abolitionist Faith Community, explains that “We have been given freedom, so we respond by creating freedom for others through hope-infused, prayer-filled smart activism.”

More than 4,000 churches in 100 countries have already responded to this call to action by registering for Freedom Sunday on February 26, 2012. The message they seek to disseminate is clear: Set the captives free … by praying, fasting, and giving for freedom. Manifested within this global celebration of freedom is the potential for churches to become further engaged in the movement to end human trafficking. Freedom Sunday can transcend the framework of a one-day event and serve as a transformative learning experience for churches to become long-term “agents of redemption.”

Join the movement! Click here to register your faith community.

Department of Defense Urges Troops and Civilians to Watch for Human Trafficking

From the nightclub waitress you meet on deployment to the young man who launders your uniform at the dry cleaners back home, Defense Department officials are warning military members and civilians to be on the lookout for possible victims of human trafficking.

The request for vigilance is part of an effort throughout the federal government to stop human trafficking, a form of modern slavery that forces millions of men, women and children from every country of the world into forced labor, prostitution, involuntary servitude and debt bondage, according to Department of Defense (DOD) and State Department officials. Some 2 million children are believed to move through the global sex trade each year, according to the State Department’s annual assessment on human trafficking.

John F. Awtrey, Department of Defense director of law enforcement policy and support, said ““We don’t want our service members to be inadvertent supporters of trafficking. It’s a crime; it’s a criminal business enterprise. And the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who say, ‘Well, I just go there to get some drinks,’ if it’s a place where the women working in there have been trafficked and are being held against their will, then you’re supporting that business.”

Learn more at Lisa Daniel’s U.S. Department of Defense article: DOD Urges Troops, Civilians to Watch for Human Trafficking.

Investors Urge Business Transparency

A coalition of 80 institutional investors are urging Congress to support the Business Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act (HR 2759). This  proposed legislation would require companies to disclose efforts to identify and address the risks of human trafficking, forced labor, slavery, and the worst forms of child labor in their supply chains.

Modeled after the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2012, the proposed federal legislation, unlike the California statute, is not limited to retailers and manufacturers. If enacted, the legislation would be applicable to any publicly-traded or private company currently required to submit annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as long as the company meets an established annual gross receipts threshold. Companies would be required to include the required disclosures in their annual reports to the SEC.

In urging Congressional leaders to prioritize the bill, the investors stated that the proposed legislation “reflects the realities of the marketplace, which increasingly requires that companies be sensitive to social and ethical issues, including human rights, in their operations and global supply chains, and create human rights policies, as well as due diligence processes to evaluate, monitor, and strengthen these policies.”

Learn more at Sarah A. Altschuller’s Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law article: Investors urge Congress to prioritize proposed transparency in supply chains legislation.

Creating Change on a College Campus

“Free sex! Get your free sex on campus!” I shouted these simple words across Georgia Southern’s campus. Some students looked at me funny, and others tried not to make eye contact.

“What’s the catch?” “What is this really about?” “What does sex stand for?” Numerous questions, which all led to the same answer: “free sex.”

“Can I have Matthew?” “I want Jessica!”

When it was all said and done, 50 cans of “sex” were given out and each can had one of five names on them and a description of the “person”. Inside each of the cans was a piece of paper that said, “Did you know that sex trafficking could be that easy?” as well another piece of paper that directed them to a Web site with more information. I, along with a few other volunteers, was able to utilize guerilla marketing tactics to raise awareness of human trafficking, which led to a great response from the students on our campus and great conversations about the issue.

In thinking of the creativity of our generation, I am reminded of the book Shake the World, in which author James Reilly explains how Millennials have become successful by responding to ordinary events in extraordinary ways. That is exactly what students need to do on college campuses around the country – take the simple idea of raising awareness about human trafficking and make it extraordinary.

You have heard the Mohandas Gandhi quote, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Let’s go out and be the change that will end human trafficking around the world in our lifetime.

Read more at Stephen Warner’s Huffington Post article: Creating Change on a College Campus.

Minnesota Human Trafficking Should Concern Catholics

According to various reports, Minnesota is consistently in the top 10 most-active states for human trafficking. One organization that monitors juvenile sex trafficking indicated that there was a 50 percent increase in trafficking numbers in Minnesota in 2010. These are children who pass us on the street, children we come across daily. Their age is usually between 12 to 14 years old.

Minnesota has a human trafficking problem and it’s time for Catholics to take action.

In an address to the 2002 international conference on slavery and human rights, Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote: “The disturbing tendency to treat prostitution as a business or industry not only contributes to the trade in human beings, but is itself evidence of a growing tendency to detach freedom from the moral law and to reduce the rich mystery of human sexuality to a mere commodity.”

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI echoed another condemnation of sexual slavery by Pope John Paul II in his “Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women”: the “hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit.”

As long as we, as Catholics, support the false cultural dichotomy between “bedroom” issues and social justice, we will not be effectively taking on the fundamental social causes of sex trafficking.

Learn more at Jessica Zittlow’s The Catholic Spirit article: Human Trafficking Epidemic Should Concern MN Catholics.