Trafficking
By: Melissa Henderson
Everything we’ve heard about it so far. From the governmental problem to immigration and people doing it to escape poverty. I landed at the Atlanta International Airport at 8 am. During the walk to baggage claim, an announcement was made on the intercom, “Human trafficking is real and a serious offense. In the words of the MTA, If you see something say something. More or less it said something like that. But I’m not going to lie; I was mildly thinking about my escape route should I find myself in a trafficking ring on my way to my grandparent’s house. Not to freak you out, but what would your escape route be? Trafficking as a topic has finally made its way to Instagram. There’s no escaping this meme reposted on several accounts that the meme is now blurry and no telling where it originated. The few that are circulating talk about precautions we all need to take while traveling even in the U.S. “Double-check that the uber door isn’t on child lock and make sure the license plate matches the one on your app.” However, these are just small ways we can protect ourselves from getting kidnapped and/or raped in the digital age because predators are more strategic than they were in the 90s. ( Re: VSZ’s work in revenge porn speaks directly to women’s safety online regarding assholes.) However, double-checking if an uber door is locked is far from the issue. Taxi cabs have always been unsafe. After much scrutiny, Uber released a U.S. Safety Report for 2017-2018, revealing there have been over 6,000 sexual cases documented on the ride-sharing app. In a universe of nearly 4 million Uber trips happening every day in the U.S., which equates to more than 45 rides every second! That’s less than 1% but still. All lives matter. It’s right under our noses, and we don’t know how to stop it. We just deal with it. If you Google “human trafficking bust,” you will read about dozens of recent news stories about so-called “pimps” and their elaborate hostage schemes. But this is a very contentious issue that has layers of nuances that we can’t ignore. According to the National Runaway Safeline, between 1.6 and 2.8 million youth run away each year in the U.S. These are people under 18 years of age. Amongst the noise on Instagram, we were able to find @missingkid run by The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). This page posts about missing children and includes information on when they were seen last in the region. The page also posts updates for the few children that are located. People can comment and inquire. One photo of this 34
