Rock against human trafficking

Rock against human trafficking: West Michigan band Sargent Avenue travels, plays Southeast Asia to raise awareness of crisis

Published: Monday, July 18, 2011, 6:01 AM Updated: Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 9:40 AM

By John Sinkevics | The Grand Rapids Press
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Courtesy Photo/Storytelling PicturesJordan Moore, left, and Jesse Harris perform with Sargent Avenue at the MTV EXIT concert in Thailand late last month.

Singer Jordan Moore never fully grasped the scope and horror of the world’s human trafficking crisis until he traveled to Thailand recently to see it firsthand with his Grand Rapids rock band, Sargent Avenue.

And he never realized just how “spot-on” the poignant song the band wrote about the problem, “Euphoria,” was until Sargent Avenue performed the tune in a jam-packed nightclub in Pattaya, Thailand.

“There were some women who were in tears,” he recalled. “Playing that song in that bar ... was the most powerful experience I’ve ever been part of. It was very intense. It was very emotional.”

That performance and the trip to Southeast Asia has changed the up-and-coming rock band forever, opening the musicians’ eyes to the shocking, widespread practice of modern-day slavery.

It opened my eyes, too — and saddened my heart — just listening to Moore relate his experiences recently in a downtown coffee shop.

“It’s crazy. I don’t think people understand, and I didn’t understand until I got there,” said Moore, 26, a 2003 graduate of Lowell High School, who helped form Sargent Avenue in early 2009.

“It was the most humbling experience I’ve been a part of. I felt helpless over there.”

As part of the two-week trip to Thailand and Cambodia in support of an anti-trafficking group calledTraffic Jam, band members had a chance to talk to children and young women victimized by detestable human traffickers who coerce victims into the sex trade business or into forced menial labor. (Get more info about Traffic Jam here, as well as more information about the crisis athumantrafficking.org.)

They also visited safe houses, where many young victims have found refuge — given new lives by anti-trafficking organizations.

And much of it was captured on film: Grand Rapids’ Storytelling Pictures shot more than 100 hours of footage for an upcoming documentary about Sargent Avenue’s trip and Traffic Jam’s campaign. A music video honed from Sargent Avenue concert footage in Thailand should be completed this week, according to executive director John Evans.

Photo by EarthtonesBack home: Members of Grand Rapids band Sargent Avenue are, from left, John King, Noah Henson, Jordan Moore, Jesse Harris and Chris Motyka (not pictured is Gregg Hionis).

Traffic Jam, a Colorado-based nonprofit group, convinced Sargent Avenue to submit its music for the project. Based on that submission, the band was selected to travel overseas in late June to perform with three popular Asian bands at the MTV EXIT (End Exploitation In Trafficking) concert in Chiang Mai, Thailand, an event designed to draw attention to the problem. The head of the organization had first seen the Grand Rapids band perform at 2010’s Big Ticket Christian music festival in Gaylord.

(Although the hard rock band with a melodic, industrial twist isn’t a Christian rock group, per se, “we’re believers” who’ve played a number of Christian music events, Moore explained.)

Band members had to finance the cost of the trip on their own, struggling to raise the $26,000 required and wondering before they left whether this was worth such a Herculean effort.

Now, Moore said he’d do it all over again because the cause is so important and the situation so dire.

“It starts at a young age. They (trafficked children) come from destitute areas and they don’t know what’s going on. Someone offers them a job as a receptionist, and they end up in forced prostitution,” he said, noting band members would sometimes see 60-year-old white males consorting with 13-year-old girls on the streets of Thailand’s cities.

Courtesy Photo/Storytelling PicturesGuitarist Noah Henson performs during Thailand's MTV EXIT concert, which drew about 15,000 people.

“They’re too ashamed to tell their families what’s going on. ... There’s a lack of life in their face, they’re empty. They’re lifeless.”

On the flip side, those rescued from that servitude are effervescent, thrilled to find a safe home, an education and a real job.

About 15,000 fans turned out for thatMTV EXIT show, and Sargent Avenue performed several more times on the trip in bars and for organizations aiding children and women. Because many nightclubs host the same Asian bands playing classic American rock night after night, Sargent Avenue was a sensation.

“When we started playing, the bar just filled up. We were something different,” recalled Moore, who grew up in a musical family and later started at linebacker for the Ferris State University football team before immersing himself full bore in songwriting, guitar-playing and singing. He also works in sales for Audiospace, a production company that offers sound, lighting and video installation and integration.

Courtesy Photo/Storytelling PicturesKeyboard player Chris Motyka and the rest of Sargent Avenue hope to release their debut album, "Euphoria," later this year.

Sargent Avenue — featuring Moore, Chris Motyka on keyboards, John King on drums, Jesse Harris on bass, Noah Henson on guitar/vocals and Gregg Hionis on guitar — is putting the finishing touches on its debut album, “Euphoria,” named after that poignant track written from the eyes of a child caught in a trafficking web.

“This album is my life,” Moore said, adding the band plays music with a positive message. “We want to affect people in the right way.”

Moore also insisted that singing and talking about trafficking isn’t the same as rockers who inject politics into their shows, and I tend to agree.

“This isn’t politics. I’m talking about a cause. It’s the same thing as saying you should help out with the fight against cancer,” he said. “It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s about justice.”

Should human trafficking victims be allowed to remain anonymous?

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, shown on June 23, gave Congress 180 days to approve a new human trafficking law.

Mexico changes constitution to combat human trafficking

Mexico's president approved several changes to the country's constitution Wednesday aimed at cracking down on human trafficking.

President Felipe Calderon announced two of the changes - one that requires those accused of human trafficking to be imprisoned during trials, and one that guarantees anonymity of victims who denounce the crime.

"It is important that they can give their testimony to the authorities and to society without being at risk," he said.

Calderon gave Mexico's Congress 180 days to approve a new nationwide human trafficking law that will reform and streamline how authorities handle such cases across the country.

"There are thousands and thousands of cases, in a society that is still unaware of the seriousness of this crime," he said. "We have to break through this curtain ... that is hiding from the Mexicans a criminal reality that is in front of us."

With increasing frequency, he said, criminal organizations that ship and sell drugs and weapons have added human trafficking to their repertoire.

In addition to Calderon's speech, Wednesday's presentation included a video testimony from an anonymous woman who recounted how a man lured her into a vicious human trafficking network over the internet.

The man was in his 30s, she said, and she was in high school. He made her an offer she felt she couldn't refuse - work as an event promoter with a daily salary of 700 pesos (about $60), with food and transportation included. When she arrived in the affluent city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, the reality was very different, she said.

"He made me take drugs, and prostitute myself. There were no honest friendships for anyone. Only money was important," she recalled. "Out of fear I would obey the drug traffickers."

Earlier this year a report from Mexico City's human rights commission estimated that 10,000 women were victims of human trafficking in Mexico's capital, but there were only 40 investigations of the crime and three convictions in the city in 2010.

The discrepancy is an "alarming figure" that shows a need to improve laws and policies, according to the commission, which called the phenomenon a "new form of slavery."

On Wednesday, Calderon asked lawmakers and citizens alike to take action.

"We have to create a unified front to end human trafficking in Mexico," he said. "This front is not limited to police or officials, this front starts in the streets, in the neighborhoods and in the communities."

– CNN's Rey Rodriguez and CNNMexico.com contributed to this report.

Florida’s Tampa Bay Area ID’d as Major Hub for Human Trafficking

Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee joins forces with other law enforcement agencies to combat human trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery. The task is daunting, the drive to succeed steadfast and formidable.

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By D’Ann White

The 16-year-old mentally challenged girl was living a life of unimaginable abuse and daily degradation, said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee.

In a form of modern-day slavery, she was transported from one migrant farm worker camp to another, throughout Eastern Hillsborough County, where she was forced to commit sexual acts with anyone willing to pay her captor.

An investigation in 2010 by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, U.S, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Clearwater/Tampa Bay area Human Trafficking Task Force led to the arrest of Mario Alberto Laguna-Guerrero, 25.

“This girl was rescued from a nightmare, which could only have gotten worse," said Gee. "The teamwork among law enforcement agencies cannot be underestimated when it comes to protecting children and the innocent. There is one less predator on the streets, and one more reason that this task force is so valuable."

If convicted as charged, Laguna-Guerrero faces a maximum penalty of life in federal prison.

That may be one human trafficker who’s now off the streets, said Gee. But there are more lining up to take his place.

According to the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, human trafficking involves the commercial exchange and exploitation of humans including forced prostitution and pornography, involuntary labor, servitude and debt bondage.

It’s a growing problem worldwide, recently rising to the second most common criminal activity behind the illegal drug trade. Currently, there are approximately 27 million people enslaved throughout the world with 2.5 million located in the United States. Each year, 600,000 to 800,000 more people are being trafficked worldwide, according to the coalition.

Florida, and Tampa Bay in particular, has been identified as a hub for human trafficking activity.

That’s one of the reasons state Rep. Rachel Burgin, R-Riverview, got involved.

“Florida is one of the top three states for human trafficking, behind New York and California,” said Burgin. “And most of that activity is taking place right here in Tampa Bay.”

Burgin displayed a Department of Justice map. The map uses circles to indicate where incidents of human trafficking are most prevalent. One of those circles sits on top of Tampa Bay.

Burgin said she was unaware of the severity of the problem until she happened to attend a national conference in Washington, D.C.

“I was seated next to a woman who started an international organization to stop human trafficking,” she said. “She told me about her international work and the significant increase in human trafficking over the past few years. I was surprised to learn how pervasive the problem is. I began looking into it and discovered that Tampa Bay is a hub for such activity.”

In fact, seemingly innocuous storefronts along Kennedy Boulevard and Dale Mabry Highway are actually fronts for human trafficking operations, said Burgin.

“You see them all over the place, massage parlors with signs that say they’re open until 2 a.m. seven days a week,” she said. “What kind of legitimate massage parlor is open until 2 a.m.?”

Other signs indicate directions to a rear entrance so patrons can enter the establishment surreptitiously.

“In these places, women are brought in, usually staying for no more than six days, and forced to perform sexual acts,” said Burgin. “The businesses are well-known by law enforcement. The problem is law enforcement must actually catch them in the act in order to prosecute them. And that’s very difficult to do.”

Working with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, Burgin authored a bill in 2009 designed to empower law enforcement.
In addition to increasing the penalties for those convicted of the crime, Burgin’s bill would require massage parlor employees to have identification on them at all times.

“One of the ways the traffickers hold these women hostage is by taking away their identities,” said Burgin. “Without a passport, visa or other documentation, these women can’t escape. They can’t travel, they can’t do anything.”

Her bill would require massage parlor employees to carry a valid U.S. passport, driver’s license or Employment Authorized Document. That would give law enforcement authorization to request identification, and determine who’s working illegally, she said.

That first year, Burgin’s bill passed the House but failed to pass the Senate. She reintroduced it last year, joining forces with Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa. This time it passed the Senate but the House rejected it.

Its failure baffles Burgin.

“There are differing opinions on what’s important in Tallahassee,” said Burgin. “Because they don’t have human trafficking there, I think it’s not perceived as a big problem. It’s not an issue people want to talk about or even acknowledge it exists. But it’s a very big problem in Tampa Bay.”

Undeterred by the Legislature’s acquiescence on the issue, Burgin plans to reintroduce her bill during the 2012 legislative session. This time she believes the it will get the attention it deserves due to the national attention the issue is now receiving.

On June 27, U.S. Sen. Mark Rubio, R-Fla., issued a statement on human trafficking based on a recently released report from the U.S. Department of State. “This important report is a chilling reminder of how prevalent this dehumanizing practice is all over the world,” said Rubio. “I am also concerned that Florida is disproportionately affected by this scourge, requiring our own vigilance.

“With the input from Sen. Rubio, maybe it will become more of a priority,” said Burgin.

As law enforcement has discovered, a disproportionate number of the victims are from other countries, said Burgin.

“They’re either tricked into coming here with the promise of a job or they are sold into slavery by a relative,” said Burgin. “They come from all different countries – Asia, the Middle East, Central America, Africa and Europe. Every person’s story is different but they have one thing in common – they are being forced to work in unpleasant environments under duress.”

What’s especially disturbing to Burgin is the changing profile of the victims.

“It used to be most of the victims were in their 20s,” she said. “Now the biggest age group is 13 to 17 years old. It’s a horrible crime. And we need to find a way to protect these children.”

Everlife

State Attorneys General Join The Fight Against Human Trafficking

ATTORNEYS GENERAL UNITE TO FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING

McKenna announces presidential initiative against modern-day slavery

June 23, 2011

CHICAGO—Attorney General Rob McKenna announced his 2011-2012 presidential initiative to combat human trafficking nationwide at a June 23 launch event in Chicago following his installation as president of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG).

Flanked by members of his hand-picked leadership council, McKenna led a panel discussion on the “Pillars of Hope: Attorneys General Unite against Human Trafficking,” focusing on four “pillars” or goals in the fight against human trafficking.

McKenna discussed the importance of national leadership in identifying victims of human trafficking and providing them the hope and services they need to escape their current situations. He also stressed the importance of identifying, tracking and holding accountable those who traffic in humans and those who purchase their services.

“Human trafficking is a $32 billion global industry driven by trafficking profit. It’s the fastest growing and second largest criminal activity in the world, tied with arms and after drug dealing,” McKenna said. “Yet for many this heinous crime lurks in the shadows. It’s time to bring it out into the light, to bring hope and resources to victims and to bring justice to traffickers and those who buy victims from them.”

Additional panelists included:

• North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, 2010-11 NAAG President;
• Ken Thompson, Senior Vice President and Global Chief Legal Officer, LexisNexis Legal & Professional;
• Massachusetts Attorney Martha Coakley, Leadership Council;
• Alice Hill, Sr. Counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security;
• Mary Anderson, Senior Advisor to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Leadership Council;
• Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, Leadership Council; and
• Shamere McKenzie, a youth survivor and advocate.

The presidential initiative will also focus on:

• Holding traffickers and abusers accountable;
• Mobilizing communities to provide hope and care for victims; and
• Raising public awareness and reducing demand.

Video of the panel discussion will be posted on the NAAG Web site by 4 p.m. Central Time.

The presidential initiative is a year-long commitment by the NAAG President to bring the resources of his presidency to a specific national problem, culminating in Presidential Summit in Seattle in March.

Just another reason to love Rachel Weisz

Exposing Injustices, the Real-Life Kind

Andrei Alexandru/Samuel Goldwyn Films

Rachel Weisz, as a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990s, in “The Whistleblower.”

By ARI KARPEL

Published: July 28, 2011

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“TERRIBLE injustices are happening all the time,” the actress Rachel Weisz said, “but only some of them make it to the screen.”

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Vanessa Redgrave in “The Whistleblower.”

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Monica Bellucci in “The Whistleblower.”

And most of those arrive in documentary form these days. The few features with a message that do make it to theaters often have a single individual at their center, like Karen Silkwood or Erin Brockovich, or a pair, like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who become the audience’s guide through a murky subculture.

Add Kathryn Bolkovac, an American police officer, to that list. She is portrayed by Ms. Weisz in the new film “The Whistleblower,” opening Friday. It follows Ms. Bolkovac’s real-life assignment as a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990s, a job that exposed her to a world of international workers complicit in and in many cases fostering the international trade of young women for sex. Ms. Bolkovac’s investigation led to her firing.

“There were so many people in the same situation as her,” Ms. Weisz said. “They saw what was going on, and they didn’t respond in the way that she did.”

Her crusade, which was widely covered by the European press after she filed (and won) a lawsuit in Britain for wrongful dismissal, drew Ms. Weisz, who in turn hopes to attract audiences in a season when Hollywood’s prime concern seems to be the plight of superheroes and young wizards.

International sex trafficking has figured in the plots of the Liam Neeson film “Taken” (2009) and countless episodes of the television series “24” and “Law & Order,” but such narratives tend to present the victims as a mass of nameless women and its perpetrators as foreign deviants. “The Whistleblower,” which makes one of the victims a crucial character and uses graphic scenes of abuse, implicates the United Nations, the State Department, private contractors and nongovernmental organizations in the sex trade.

Thirty years ago Hollywood studios might not have hesitated to intimate such criminal activity, back when films like “Serpico” and “All the President’s Men” triumphed at the box office and awards ceremonies. The director Larysa Kondracki and her co-screenwriter, Ellis Kirwan, who came across Ms. Bolkovac’s story while both were pursuing master’s degrees in film at Columbia University, spent much of the last eight years researching sex trafficking and trying to get the film made. “I love documentaries, but I wouldn’t even know how to make one,” Ms. Kondracki said, adding that she had drawn inspiration from 1970s and early-1980s films that combined socially significant messages and thrilling plotlines. She said later: “I was young and naïve. I thought: ‘Of course they’re going to make my film. It’s brilliant!’ ”

But even “Silkwood” (1983), the true tale of a woman who died in a suspicious car accident while trying to expose the reckless endangerment of workers in a nuclear power plant, would not have been made if Meryl Streep hadn’t been interested in the role. “Karen Silkwood was a difficult person, a very interesting, difficult person,” said Nora Ephron, who wrote “Silkwood” with Alice Arlen. “We felt very free to write her that way because we knew that it wouldn’t frighten Meryl. And because it was Meryl, she would seem slightly more ‘likable’ than she was on the page.”

Likewise “The Whistleblower” was independently financed only after Ms. Weisz was on board. It had its premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was sold to Samuel Goldwyn Films for distribution. But “The Whistleblower” still has to battle popular perception that a film “inspired by true events” is little more than TV-movie material. “The hardest thing to do with these movies is to make them movies,” said Ms. Ephron, who has not seen “The Whistleblower.” “The trick is to make the movie about something other than what it’s specifically about.”

The film’s espionage aspects are showcased in the trailer, and its marketers are positioning it as a “thinking person’s thriller,” said Peter Goldwyn, head of acquisitions, by focusing on promotional events with human-rights groups and women’s organizations. The movie was shown at the recent Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York. Marianne Mollmann, advocacy director of that organization’s women’s rights division, said “The Whistleblower” was an effective tool for getting the word out even though it simplified the issue by, for example, conflating sex work and trafficking. “They are not one and the same,” she said. “But the film does not distort the issues, it simply loses some detail.”

Ultimately Ms. Kondracki would like her project to serve as a whistleblower itself on treacherous bureaucracy, a subplot that she toned down. “It was too much information and, frankly, people were bored,” she said. The movie includes some horrific sequences, including a rape with a pipe. Still, Ms. Weisz said, this is a light “version of it, believe it or not.” She added, “In real life there were girls doing this as young as 8 years old.”

Few movies achieve cultural change of course. It is debatable whether “Silkwood” had any tangible effect on the nuclear power industry. But coming as it did a few years after “The China Syndrome” and catastrophes at Three Mile Island and Love Canal, the film helped to raise awareness about the energy source’s potential dangers. Another new film, “5 Days of War,” depicts the 2008 invasion of Georgia by Russia.

“I hope that it will get people on an emotional level,” Renny Harlin, the director of “5 Days of War,” said. “Wars like this happen all the time, around the world. When they see in the news these conflicts taking place, I hope that people will just think about these things a little more after seeing this film.”

Ms. Kondracki agrees. “There’s a bigger goal, and that is information and exposure.” Sex trafficking continues, she added, because “no one is putting pressure on governments to stop it, and there is no accountability. It’s laziness.”