Monday, March 3, 2008

Something real that happens in Raleigh

This may not be a shock to you, but it is disturbing regardless.

The News & Observer featured this article today. It includes the ease of finding prostitutes and even getting feedback via online websites. This is NOT OKAY!!!

As i have mentioned before, the group that I am part of, seeks to build awareness and free people from slavery, yes slavery that happens today. A lot of the slavery that occurs is sexual bondage. Some of these prostitutes are not participating willingly in these acts.

I just think its important for us to know a bit more about the potential harm that is going on behind the scenes in a market that is saturated with pornography and allows Johns to to chat "innocently" online about their recent conquests.

I'm entering an angered rant, so I will stop and just say I am thankful for the connectivity of our world in a many ways, but this is not one of them.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

not to mention the temptation aspect...especially for men..from what I'm hearing, there are many Christian men hiding in shame because of continued lapses in this area of their lives (made easy by internet opportunities)....how do we decry the injustice and also open up the avenue for forgiveness and redemption? we need both. love, mom

Shannon Smith said...

You mentioned in a previous post that there is a group out there that is suggesting a boycott of craigslist until they make changes to help prevent this. I wonder what measures they want to see put in place.

traci said...

The Specifics on that campaign are on this page .

Shannon Smith said...

How people can participate in the boycott: "Not using the Craigslist site until Craiglist makes a public resolution to eradicate human trafficking from its site"

I wonder what steps they expect craigslist to take to "eradicate human trafficking from its site". I also wonder how measurable that is.

They mention following in the footsteps of mySpace and Google to monitor better. From the point of view of a somewhat knowledgeable computer dork, I'm not sure how you would implement this. Of course, you could hire people to read every ad to verify if it is an ad for trafficking a human, but its unlikely that mySpace and Google are doing that.

Craigslist is pretty much monitored by its users. Instead of a boycott, a better solution may be for Love146 to encourage people to go to the site and look for ads that seem shady and have the people flag the ads as inappropriate.

traci said...

I like your idea Shannon. Last night we were talking about that at our Jubilee meeting. The idea is that it may be near impossible for a user managed website like craig's list to institute some of the changes that Love 146 is asking.

Mike Morrell mentioned the user flagging function and said that might be the best thing for a person to do.

Anonymous said...

Dear Traci & Shannon,

First of all let me thank you for your time and interest in this matter.

I agree, flagging inappropriate content is a good way to monitor Erotic Services section on Craigslist, however I have a fundamental problem regarding this procedure: A user can only flag the content once he/she has gone through the sexually explicit materials. But, one wouldn’t want children and teenagers to access such garish pornographic materials in the first place. Don’t you think so? So, what steps should one take in terms of ‘prevention’?

You see, Craigslist is not a porn site, it’s a utility site. So, it’s generally not fire walled by guardians, faculty members et al. Craigslist site exhibits local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide, in all 50 US states and over 50 countries. It gets more than 8 billion page views per month. I hope you understand the kind of reach and magnitude an ad in the Erotic Services is catering to.

We, from Love146 have been connecting to people from different spectrum of the society. Like, other national centers, student-bodies, law enforcement officers, media and individual abolitionists in order to generate awareness en masse.

We also helped to form a new coalition, End Internet Trafficking, to garner further support across the country from other anti-trafficking and anti-child exploitation organizations in appealing to Craigslist. Right now, the coalition is in the process of organizing an online public forum in April and a conference in September where Jim Buckmaster will be invited to speak and share his perspective. More importantly, this will be the public opportunity to challenge Mr. Buckmaster about Craigslist’s lackluster efforts to eliminate human trafficking from its site and to have a diplomatic and productive discussion on how to move forward. A successful meeting will end our boycott.

I hope you will join us in our efforts in eradicating sex trafficking on Craigslist and Internet in general.

All best,

Somanjana, Love146

www.love146.org