Human Trafficking and Quaker Lobbying
Our meeting has a certain monthly rhythm to its activities: meeting for business on one Sunday, introduction to Quakerism on another. The fourth Sunday of the month is for Peace and Social Concerns Committee. Well, actually it’s both for Peace and Social Concerns Committee and for Library Committee. The Library Committee was hard at work when I got to the meetinghouse, sorting book donations. After meeting, we had two talks. The first was on human trafficking. The second was John’s and Catgirl’s account for Peace and Social Concerns Committee (and several of us not normally on that committee who stayed to listen) of their trip to Washington, DC for the annual meeting of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I’ve already blogged a little about their trip, their blog posts, and their Tweets, but today, since they’re back home, we got to hear from them face to face.
But first, let me talk about human trafficking. At rise of meeting, Avra and a man whose name I forget, except that it also began with an A, spoke about human trafficking. Avra and her companion are not themselves Quakers, but rather two people from the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force who are speaking to churches and other community groups to raise awareness about the problem. Avra, though, had enough background in Quaker history to lead with the fact that human trafficking is a form of slavery, and Quakers presented the first petition against slavery in 1688. What follows will be my summary of what I remember Avra saying.
Human trafficking is the second biggest illegal trade in the world, after drugs and ahead of arms smuggling. Trafficking can involve smuggling people across borders, but it doesn’t have to. Any time people are trapped into work they don’t want through force, fraud, and coercion, it is trafficking. Trafficking is found all over the world, including right here in Orange County. Human trafficking involves sex work, domestic work, day labor, and work in sweatshops. Though some of those trafficked are adult men, Avra said that 80% of those trafficked are women and children. People who are trafficked are those in vulnerable positions, which can include undocumented immigrants, and also teenagers in vulnerable situations (the normal age for being trafficked into sex work, we were told, is about twelve to thirteen).
In Orange County, there has been a recent increase in anti-trafficking activity, with some conferences (or was it one conference?) at Chapman University, and the Westminster Police Department receiving a grant to work on human trafficking issues. The Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force is an outgrowth of that Westminster Police Department effort. They have been going to places where trafficked people may be brought, such as check cashing services (where they may be made to turn over the money from the cashed checks to the person bringing them) and free clinics, publicizing the signs that a person may be trafficked. For example, from a card I got after the talk:
Take a second look if you see someone:
- Accompanied by a controlling person or boss; not speaking on own behalf.
- With lack of control over personal schedule, money, I.D., travel documents.
- Who is transported to and from work; lives and works in the same place.
- With debt owed to employer/crew leader; inability to leave job.
- With bruises, depression, fear, overly submissive.
There is a National Human Trafficking Hotline that you can call if you think you know of someone who may be trafficked: 1-888-3737-888.
We heard about one success story, a girl who had been trafficked into domestic servitude in Irvine, but a neighbor became suspicious on not seeing her going to school like other children in the household and made a report. The girl was adopted by a different family and attended school and college.
Next, at the Peace and Social Concerns Committee meeting, Catgirl and John spoke. Catgirl has just turned thirteen. She said that she had barely known what lobbying was before she went on this trip, but had learned a lot about what made for effective lobbying. People from the staffs of Senator Richard Lugar and Representative Barbara Lee talked about what caught their attention. Personal visits, phone calls, letters, and email all have an effect, but there are certain things to bear in mind. Snail mail to Congress is now all irradiated. DVDs are likely to show up broken, and if you send brownies, no one is going to want to eat them once they’re through being irradiated. This process also means that snail mail is slow in arriving, so go for phone calls or email on time critical issues. But letters and postcards will also be read. Communications that are more personalized count for more than those that look like identical parts of one mass effort. Personal visits are always welcome; it is particularly good if you show up prepared and knowledgeable about your issue.
The FCNL annual meeting included meetings for business, break out sessions (like the one where the staff members talked about lobbying), meeting for worship, and worship sharing sessions. The meetings for business began, Quaker-style, with silence, but the break out sessions (some of which after all involved non-Quaker speakers) didn’t necessarily do so. Quakers present came from all over the country and from both Quaker meetings and Quaker churches. John particularly appreciated meeting those from Quaker churches and, despite the different forms of our worship, finding common ground.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation is the oldest faith-based lobbying group in Washington, DC, and so sometimes gets requests to train other lobbyists, such as Methodists. For example, the Community of Christ, a church which traces its roots back to Joseph Smith but which split with the LDS at the time of Brigham Young and has since evolved in a more mainstream Protestant direction, and which is now moving toward being a peace church, sent a staff member who is sharing time between FCNL and Community of Christ efforts. FCNL has built strong relationships with both Republicans and Democrats, so that it has sometimes been called on to testify to a committee or to suggest wording for a particular section of a bill.
CatGirl said her favorite part of the annual meeting was the session on preventing deadly conflict. An example of FCNL’s work here: During the post-election violence in Kenya, Quakers were active in violence prevention efforts (Kenya actually has one of the larger Quaker populations in the world). At the time, the State Department made an effort at violence prevention by getting local leaders to meet, but this effort was slowed by the fact that the State Department didn’t actually have a readily accessible allocation of money for this particular kind of work. This came to the attention of the FCNL, which lobbied for such a budget item, and got it, one of last year’s FCNL success stories.
That about covers what I remember of John’s and CatGirl’s reports; hopefully if I got anything wrong, John will correct me when he sees this on Facebook. CatGirl also has a recent blog post on Days Three and Four of the conference here.
Tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll give you the latest pirate news.