Essay: Vivian Morrow
ESSAY: VIVIAN MORROW THISTLE FARMS + EDEN HOUSE
There is a young girl in the old New Orleans airport, posted on a Blue Campaign poster. She never sleeps, cannot speak, and cannot leave. All she can do is hold eye contact with those who seem to notice her. We meet every Christmas, her image fading as the poster wears down. I met her when I was 13, on the way to visit my grandparents. We shared a physical resemblance; the same eye color, hair texture, age, and skin tone. But still, we looked so different. Alone, her arms hug her chest. White letters are plastered on the faded paper: “Can You See Her?” I soon noticed that she was posted everywhere, in the restroom, in Starbucks, and on the sliding glass doors. Despite her obvious presence, nobody seemed to pay her any attention. It was too easy to simply walk past her in the rush of the airport. As I continued out onto the street, she stared at me from the side of her Blue Campaign ad, posted on a street lamp, the colors almost completely bleached by sunlight. I finally held eye contact. We were face to face: me, a safe well-cared-for 13-year-old girl, and her, a representation of the grooming and human trafficking of young women. It was then I knew that I had a responsibility to see her; a responsibility to help her. As I read the faded letters on the bottom of the poster, I found a mission. I wanted to discover why an underground slavery system was not receiving more attention and what people were doing to help. Over the last few years, I have focused my efforts on Thistle Farms and Eden House-- organizations with similar missions: to “heal, empower, and employ” women survivors of human trafficking. Working in the Thistle Farms enterprise, I met graduates of their rehabilitation program. The volunteer coordinator, Jennifer Clinger, helped me answer the questions I had about trafficking. After spending time working with program graduates and reading Jennifer’s memoir, Delivered, I further understood what human trafficking is, how non-profits were able to help rehabilitate those who had fallen prey, and how traffickers chose these victims while operating in the shadows. Defining human trafficking is an important step in understanding how the crime operates in silence. The United States Department of Justice defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery” (Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000). Given the long definition, I was curious as to what common knowledge about trafficking might be. I asked the people around me what they understood about the crisis. The frequent answer danced along the idea that trafficking was horrifying and illegal, but people were unsure of how it worked or who was involved. Wondering what caused the lack of caution about such a predacious industry, I contacted the Eden House staff, asking what they knew about the public view of human trafficking. A reason for the lack of public knowledge is
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