Stawberry Fields.

On Monday a few of us met up with an organizer and it was critical conciousness because this person spoke on the issue that involves sex trafficking. Some people wouldn't agree that it is wrong, demeaning, immoral, and a lot more words that produce negative connotations. Some people think it's a cultural thing and that is a misconception I could argue against. When you take away the rights of someone, especially a woman's choice to be who she wants to be with, they lose apart of their spirit. I believe that their spirit is needed to fight for themselves and to stand up against what's not right.

Of course these things happen mostly in third world countries, but guess what? It's happening in our own backyard. It's happening with Filipinos. People who look just like your cousin. It's happening in the strawberry fields further North.

It's sickening. The first step is being aware. After that, you can decide.

Purple Rose Campaign.
WHY CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRAFFICKING OF FILIPINO WOMEN AND CHILDREN

*An estimated 20 million people, 90% women and children, are in the global sex trade

*The Philippines is the world's top exporter of women. In 2005, 750,000 women were exported to over 203 countries. 30% of the women being exported from the Philippines end up in the sex trade.

*While both Filipinos and Filipinas work overseas, the women stay abroad longer as their job contracts are more open-ended and their work continuing.

*Roughly 60% of Filipinas who leave for overseas become domestic labor--cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children of families who can afford servants.

*The second largest most probable work for Filipinas who go abroad is in the sex trade.

*More than half-million Filipina adults and children are in the sex trade in the Philippines, catering to tourists, American GIs on R & R, and local males.

*One-hundred fifty-thousand (150,000) Filipinas work in brothel houses, strip joints, bars and nightclubs in Japan, under the control of the Yakuza. When this practice started, the women were sold at $2,400-$8,000--an amount the women have to pay back to the owner.

*The Philippine government does little or nothing about these facts because part of the annual $8 billion remitted to the archipelago comes from prostituting these women.

TRAFFICKING IN THE UNITED STATES

*From the 1980s on, around 5,000 Filipinas are married to American men annually through the so-called mail-order bride agencies or the international match-making agencies. These agencies comprise a multi-million dollar business.

*Wife battery and control are usual features of these marriages, where the divorce rate is estimated at 70%.

*The fiance/husband/male client usually believes he has been taken advantaged of when the Filipina tries to divorce or leave him. His retaliation runs the gamut of mild (maxing out credit cards and making sure the court divides the debt between him and his to-be-ex-wife) to killing her, as what happened in a Seattle courtroom.

*Several young Filipinas were married to psychopaths and/or serial killers. Estelita Villa Reeves in Texas disappeared and the police discovered that her husband had married two others--a Latina and a Vietnamese--before her, both died mysteriously.

*An estimated 25,000 Filipinas have been brough into the US to work at brothel houses, bars, nightclubs and illegal sex farms in various states and in the vicinity of US military bases and camps.

*Some 25 sex tour operators in the US each send 15-25 men each month to the Philippines to engage in sex tourism. A Philippine Adventure Tour, for instance, costs $1,645 including RT airfare, hotel and guided tours to the bars where women are purchased for sex for as low as $24.

* Neither the Philippine embassy and its consulates nor the US government has any adequate program to deal with the problem. US legislators of Philippine ancestry focus largely on whether the women should be called "mail-order brides," the agencies "mail-order bride agencies," or some other term which would effectively hide the fact that women are being sold.