Opinion: Sex + money

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Most people who have heard of human trafficking imagine it in a far-off place.

Major news networks have exposed us to Southeast Asia’s unfamiliar streets. In these reports, undercover journalists use hidden cameras and the final product distorts faces to protect identities – this all leaves us detached from reality. It helps us put a barrier between our lives and what is happening in the world.

In 2007, a group of college students set out to study with PhotogenX – a non-profit that trains students to use photography and media to connect people to areas of social injustice.  As they trekked through 20 different countries they found a common theme in many communities – a theme of exploitation where a few individuals were buying and selling other humans for personal profit.

As these students began research to understand the scope of what they were seeing, it became obvious that exploitation didn’t just happen in far-off, foreign lands. It happened in the United States. It happened in their hometowns.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 800,000 children are reported missing every year, 58,000 of which are abducted for primarily sexual reasons.

According to the U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report, an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 individuals are trafficking into the United States each year.

Boulder, Colo. may appear to be sheltered from some of these statistics but just last month, on Oct. 27, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a news release, “Boulder man pleads guilty in connection with human trafficking prosecution for harboring illegal aliens and tax-related charges.”

Opas Sinprasong is a restaurant owner running establishments in Boulder, Louisville and Broomfield. Sinprasong sponsored Thai nationals’ admission to the United States, required substantial paybacks from the workers who arrived and forced them to work 26 to 32 hours of overtime per week in his restaurants on lengthy contracts that were tied to their families back in Thailand.

It is difficult to realize people are being taken advantage of this close to home. The students working with PhotogenX decided to travel throughout the United States, gathering information and talking with CEOs, authors and politicians.

As they put it, “What started as a global search became a national search for human worth.” The product is an upcoming, full-length feature film documenting their search to understand two of the most powerful forces in the world – sex and money.

Today’s new abolitionist movement is calling it modern-day slavery. But as Ben Skinner, author of “A Crime So Monstrous,” points out to the Sex + Money crew, “The term slavery has become devalued in its modern use … what we are talking about is people who are forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, and by that mere definition there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history.”

Slavery may have been abolished in the United States in 1863, but with the numbers being reported today we are far from being a “free” nation.

I look up to those who fought for other people’s rights throughout our colorful history, but it is time for our generation to be the modern abolitionists – to use our voices, education, talent and access to stop heinous crimes against humanity. It is not just our opportunity to do so. It is our responsibility.

“Sex + Money, A National Search for Human Worth” will be touring throughout the United States in 2011. Find out how you can help bring this film to Boulder, watch the trailer, read the bios of the students involved and find ways be a modern-day abolitionist at http://www.sexandmoneyfilm.com/.

Darcie Nolan is an undergraduate student transferring into the CU School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She is also the founder of Eye See Media, an internationally-based magazine dedicated to bringing stories of social justice. www.eyeseeonline.com

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Darcie Nolan at [email protected].