I started writing this months ago, and it kinda got lost in the shuffle until this morning. I woke up early and my brain went right to this. From my blog before : “The bottom lone is slavery still exists and children/people are still being bought on American soil. Only second to illegal drugs, the sale of humans is one of the largest illegal commodities sold in the world.”
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I live in a beautiful city. It’s absolutely gorgeous. A city surrounded by beautiful waters with the Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and Lake Union just around downtown. Seattle is an “indie” and “hipster” mecca. I’ve yet to find consistently better cups of coffee anywhere else in the country. (though Portland is close) And there are people who are more serious about their coffee tastings than their wine tastings. You can find some of the best freshest sushi here. There’s always fresh smells, fresh fish, green trees, and amazing micro-breweries. As most people in Seattle, I’m proud to live here and be a part of this over caffeinated culture. Seattle is full of people who love their communities, politicians who are idiots… really, we’ve got a bit of everything. There’s lot of gay pride. Whether it’s accurate or not, I’ve commonly heard people brag about Seattle having more gays per-capita than any city in the U.S, supposedly even more than San Francisco. And famously out of Seattle, grunge rock, Boeing, and Microsoft were all born.
Seattle is rich in history. It grew quickly as a hub for natural resources and later as main stop on the way to the Klondike Gold Rush. This city quickly grew as place where many men would come and rest, get supplies, and find a few mistresses on the way to their gold mining dreams. As a city built and fueled by idiocy and sexual pleasure, the city’s leaders quickly turned many of the main tourist destinations into a haven for sex shows, opium dens, and brothels. Seattle’s First Avenue, which runs through the heart of downtown past the famous Pike Place Market, was coined “Flesh Avenue” (seattlelust.com) for years. By the early 1980’s Seattle “cleaned up” the downtown area and pushed it’s sex culture a bit more underground.
On our city’s Capitol Hill, famous for it’s gay community and “indie-rock” clubs lies the beautiful Volunteer Park, a 48 acre locally “famous” for homosexual activity. I can’t remember ever hearing a specific warning, but somehow I’ve always just understood that you “don’t go into the park at night.” Most of the taboo likely stems from the 1950’s where the park was known for the “sex tunnels the homosexuals built.” These were a series of “tunnels” cut into the thick shrubbery where at night homosexual men would meet up for some casual encounters and as a Seattle Gay News article reads, “…at night the area belonged to straight, bisexual and, mostly, gay horny men seeking sexual relief.” (http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews34_03/page8.cfm)
Seattle is now one the nation’s capitols of sex trafficking and prostitution. As I write this I’m sitting a block away from one of the main trafficking spots in the entire country, Aurora Ave. This city that is known for its coffee, airplanes, computers, and indie rock generally turns a blind eye to the massive Scarlet Letter that covers this city. A hub for child prostitution, a den and nearly a safe house for those who force girls, recorded as young as 11 years old in this city, into prostitution. In one case I read about this year, a young girl was selling herself for as low as $15 on our streets.
A couple months I went to a Town Meeting hosted by Mars Hill Church aiming to bring attention to this issue. They also shared a lot of how to actually aid this issue. The biggest start… TALK ABOUT IT. It’s real. The girls are real. The guys are real. And it’s happening in your city. I want to see my city change and to stop slavery in our country, and beyond our borders. I don’t have much to help, but I’ll use what I have, my voice.
Get involved with one of these organizations. They will help inform and equip you. Invite them to your schools. Show your friends. Your voice counts and can make a difference.
www.just4one.org
www.onevoicetoendslavery.com
www.notforsale.com
www.sharedhope.org
www.thedefendersusa.org
www.IJM.org