Kudos to Trinity (and a little preaching!)

I'm really proud of Trinity and I just wanted to let you all know about a really cool thing she helped do last night for her job. The League hosted a forum on women trafficking. Trafficking means many things, but to boil it all down, it has much to do with prostitution of young women and girls, sometimes as young as 8 years old! These "prostitutes," better known as victims in my opinion, are forced into their prostitution, basically through modern day slavery. The women that were on the panel discussed their efforts to combat this through the legal system. They have successfully put somewhere around 30 pimps behind bars, but this only scratches the surface of this terrible epidemic in Atlanta. And Atlanta only scratches the surface of it in our nations cities, not to mention internationally.

Even now though, the only way for the victims to get help out of their bondage is for them to be arrested as prostitutes! Imagine, an 8 year old girl being held legally responsible for being a "prostitute!" As if there was any choice in the matter for her - that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. The saddest part to me is that while many people might be sympathetic to the plight of an 8 year old, they are not so much so for a 13 year old, or a 20 year old. This is plain and simply outrageous as far as I'm concerned, and they are just as much victims as the 8 year old. Would you ever say that the slaves were responsible in any way for their bondage? Neither should we say it about most of America's prostitutes!

Anyway, this post turned out to be a lot about the problem discussed rather than about how proud I am for Trinity and the League for all the work they did to put the forum together and get over 50 people there, including someone for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution! That just goes to show how good the forum was though, because it got me thinking more about the issue than about the forum itself! To get back to the issue one more time, I need to say that this is seemingly a problem in every major American city, not just Atlanta, and the politicians need not ignore it anymore. Politicians from both parties are too caught up in their "baby-kissing" games to help real-life babies out of their misery! I say this not to discourage but to challenge us all to use the democratic voice that we have. As Jim Wallis says, for better or for worse, it is the nature of politics to see which way the wind is blowing and just follow it - but the good thing is that we get to decide which way the wind is blowing if we want to.

So, I know I'm getting a little preachy hear, but the women at the forum just inspired me. They are just regular people like you and me, and one of the women ended up having a meeting with President Bush about this, and now Attorney Generals from states throughout the country are building cases against these pimps! That's amazing, and it makes me believe that there is more to life than our daily grinds, IF we choose to go out on limbs for others. And if you ask me that's what the gospel is about - doing unto the least of these...