NEWSSEX TRAFFICKING

In New York City, over twice as many people in prostitution -- many of whom are victims of sex trafficking -- are arrested than the johns, pimps, and facilitators who exploit them. But an innovative new program called "A Losing Proposition" could help solve that problem by focusing the NYPD's resources on arresting the men who buy and force women to sell sex. A hearing that could decided whether or not to expand "A Losing Proposition to all five boroughs will take place on Wednesday, October 19th, and New Yorkers and other activists have launched a Twitter campaign asking the NYPD to expand the program.

Here's an example of how broken the current system is: SG, a sex trafficking victim in NYC, was arrested 86 times for prostitution and loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution over the course of three years.  Her identity documents were kept in the possession of her trafficker, she was forced to sell sex in a house in the Bronx and on the streets, and she was trafficked to other states.  SG repeatedly tried to get arrested -- even asked police officers to arrest her  -- because she wanted to escape the horror of her day-to-day existence.  The police, however, never recognized her as a victim, and instead released her back to her pimp.

More than 1,000 people from around the world have joined a popular new campaign on Change.org calling on E! Entertainment’s hit show Fashion Police to end a segment titled “Starlet or Streetwalker”, which mocks and derides women and girls in the commercial sex industry.

“Starlet or Streetwalker” features a panel of celebrities who laugh at photos of scantily clad women and girls as they try to guess whether they are Hollywood stars or prostituted women.

After long week at work, one of my favorite guilty pleasures is Fashion Police on E! with Joan Rivers. You either love Joan Rivers or hate her, and I'm definitely in the fan camp. She's a fearless woman who speaks her mind, isn't scared of offending people and is incredibly self-deprecating -- all qualities I appreciate. She's also frequently side-splittingly funny and while her whole persona, and the concept of Fashion Police is obviously based on criticizing celebrities, mostly women, to the point of mean-spiritedness, it is often very very funny. Like I said, it's a truly guilty pleasure with the emphasis on guilty. But... while I'm sure that most celebrities think Fashion Police crosses all kinds of lines every week, for me they've now crossed the line from funny to incredibly offensive and damaging.

Fashion Police has a recurring segment called "Starlet or Streetwalker," which is exactly what it sounds like. The panel, made up of George Kotsiopoulos, Kelly Osbourne and Giuliana Rancic, are shown pictures of women with their faces covered. Based on the outfit, the panel then has to vote if the woman in the photo is a starlet or a streetwalker. If the woman turns out to be a celebrity, her face is shown, if its a woman in the sex industry, her face remains blacked out. The panel, the studio audience and I'm sure the viewers watching at home laugh at these women and their 'tacky, trashy clothing.' The first time I saw the segment, it took me a minute to realize that the women whose faces were covered up were actually real women in the sex industry. I then watched with growing discomfort as I realized that these women, poor women, desperate women, drug-addicted women, women under the control of a pimp, women who are victims of violence and exploitation, were being used to highlight wealthy celebrities' poor fashion choices. Haha.

Wyndham Hotel Group will become the third major U.S. hotel company, along with Carlson Companies and Hilton Worldwide, to sign The Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism. Wyndham’s decision to sign The Code comes after nearly 14,000 travelers signed a petition on Change.org, the world’s fastest growing social action platform.

San Diego native Tim Rosner launched the campaign after he read a CNN article about a child sex trafficking ring at a Wyndham property in his hometown.

On June 29^th, 2011, The Village Voice joined the war against human trafficking. But unfortunately, they picked up arms and stepped onto the field fighting for the wrong side.

I have been a long-time fan of The Village Voice. I can clearly remember leaving the theater where I saw RENT for the first time, screaming “To Absolut, to choice, to the Village Voice” at the top of my lungs, relishing in the progressive ideals they represented. But sadly, a decade later, I’ve lost my faith in The Village Voice because of the choices they have recently made: the choice to disparage and villainize a movement of advocates working to end modern-day slavery, the choice to fight fuzzy methodology with fuzzy methodology, and the choice to put their bottom line above basic human rights.

The Village Voice recently published an article which challenged a statistic often bandied about in human trafficking discussions: 100,000 to 300,000 children in the U.S. are victims of child sex trafficking. Those are gut-wrenching, soul-crushing numbers. And The Village Voice claims they might not be 100% accurate.

Just three weeks after Kanye West released the official edit of his new video "Monster," MTV and VH1 have both banned the video from air. The ban comes after a hard-fought campaign by Change.org members Sharon Haywood and Melinda Tankard Reist, supported by over 5,000 other Change.org members.

Haywood and Tankard Reist launched a campaign on Change.org asking for MTV to refuse to air the video unless Kanye removed the hyper-violent and misogynistic themes, after a teaser to the video leaked back in January. "Monster" is not the usual scantily-clad, hyper-sexualized women washing expensive cars with even more expensive champagne. The video features West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Nikki Minaj surrounded by the "sexy" corpses of women in lingerie. Other women dangle from the ceiling by chains. Behind Jay-Z, a dead, naked woman lies with her mouth wide open, bluntly indicating her last act was a sexual one.  And West practically rapes the dead bodies of two women in bed. The message of the video is pretty clear: women are sex objects and it can be erotic when they are killed in violent, sexual ways.

Earlier this month, the Hartford Advocate published a story about child sex trafficking in Connecticut, citing "pimp-paid sex ads in alternative newspapers like the Hartford Advocate" as part of the epidemic. Yet despite acting on the information that the sex ads in their own newspaper have been critical tools for child sex traffickers, the newspaper continues to profit from them. Will someone at the Hartford Advocate read their own exposé and stop accepting ads for what they have identified as child sex trafficking?

For five years, Dennis Paris trafficked girls and women into prostitution in Connecticut. Some of the girls he sold were as young as fourteen, just freshmen in high school. Paris also sold adult women whose heroin addictions he exploited in order to keep the money they earned for himself and prevent them from leaving prostitution. The details of the violence and coercion Paris used to control the women and girls he sold is detailed in the book The Berlin Turnpike, including the detail that Paris's favorite place to advertise for sex with his victims was the Hartford Advocate.

If you have two minutes to spare while playing around on Facebook today, you can help stop child sex slavery in the U.S. Despite recent high-profile cases of gangs pimping young girls at Wyndham hotels, the company has still not signed The Code of Conduct to Prevent Child Sexual Exploitation in the Travel and Tourism Industry. Will you leave a message on their Facebook wall asking them to sign?

Recently, police have busted two gangs for sex trafficking young girls at Wyndham hotels. At one California hotel, Wyndham staff acted as lookouts and accepted bribes from the traffickers, while they sold over a dozen girls as young as 14. At another Virginia hotel, Wyndham staff ignored 6-7 men per night coming and going from a room where a 15-year-old girl was being held in sexual slavery. Gang-run child sex trafficking at Wyndham hotels needs to stop, immediately. Here's what you can do: