Category — Author: Katherine Chon

Ten years ago I was a senior at Brown University when I learned about human trafficking from a local newspaper article.  A detective described six women who were brought in from Asia, forced into prostitution in a business that was disguised as a massage parlor. One of the women had cigarette burns on her arms.  They weren’t allowed to leave.  It was the first time that I learned that slavery still existed. It did not exist just around the world, but in my own backyard in Providence, Rhode Island. [Read more →]

When I was in London last April, I walked into a local convenience store for a chocolate fix to help relieve some jet lag.  I browsed through options for chocolate, looking for bars that I wouldn’t necessarily find back home in the United States.  My scanning stopped when my eyes fixed on a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar that looked like this:

Here were my immediate thoughts:  Cadbury?  Fair trade?  When did this happen?  This is so exciting! Oh, but why don’t I see the little Fair Trade logo on the Cadbury eggs?

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Sex trafficking thrives when landlords comply, turn a blind eye, or fail to monitor how their properties are being used.  This was the central message behind the DC Stop Modern Day Slavery group’s online petition on Change.org that launched on Friday March 4, 2011.  More than 300 community members have signed the petition, calling for Jerry Schaeffer, the property owner of the four-story building at 1215 Connecticut Ave., NW, to take action by closing down a brothel disguised as a legitimate massage parlor on the fourth floor. [Read more →]

February 14, 2002.  Nine years ago, today, a single sheet of paper filed with the Rhode Island State House gave birth to Polaris Project – an idea that ordinary community members need to come together to fight slavery once again.  While our work helps to bring freedom to anyone in any situation of human trafficking, we made a purposeful decision to make “VDay our BDay” to recognize our part in a broader movement to stop violence against women and girls. [Read more →]

Coming shortly after Craigslist’s decision to close its “Adult Services” section in the U.S.,  The Washington Post closed a chapter in its own history of advertising for brothels that have involved human trafficking and other violent crimes. [Read more →]

It is difficult to call out friends in the nonprofit sector.  The job of the language police is not a popular one as they are too often ridiculed for being overly sensitive to “harmless” words.  However, after I received my third email invitation to “pimp my nonprofit,” I realized how deeply our culture has normalized the use of words which connote violence.

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Black and white animal-printed lounge chairs and couches.  Deep pink and purple mood lighting.  DJ-spun tracks thumping through the speakers and floors.  Champagne-filled glass flutes and cocktail glasses.  From the appearances of the room, I could have been in any number of swanky and exclusive nightclubs in New York City.

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As I waited in line to make a purchase at Barnes & Noble today, I started scanning over the items in the “Gift Ideas” display. Right next to a Harry Potter wizard kit and a Hello Kitty jewelry kit, I saw “Pimp My Pumpkin” emblazoned on a small shiny box. [Read more →]

Our world struggles with modern-day slavery and most of us do not know about it. The struggle lurks in the dark and does not make for polite dinner conversations.  We want to think that we live in an idealized world that is free from pain and based upon justice. However, the existence of human trafficking tarnishes our self-image as an improving and evolving just world. [Read more →]

If Alex Haley were alive today, he would be celebrating his 88th birthday this week. Famous author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, Haley went back seven generations in his family to tell the story of Kunta Kinte, a young man captured in Gambia and sold as a slave in Maryland in 1767. [Read more →]