Trevor Lanier   

On May 29, 2011, I landed in Las Vegas, a city internationally known for its extravagant shopping, fine dining, Cirque de Soleil shows, and high-stakes gambling.  I walked off the plane with excitement, but also with a preconceived understanding that there was more to this city than the glorious parts.

On this Mercy Movement trip, Charles Powell and I set-off to research and video the public elements of prostitution in Las Vegas, aka “Sin City.”  Honestly, I started the trip without much knowledge of the industry.  However, I soon discovered firsthand just how prevalent prostitution is in Vegas.  I wasn’t quite prepared for the deep, dark details, but who is?

My first eye-opening experience occurred during a conversation with Charles, in which he explained, “If we ever get in the situation where I get beat up, don’t stop filming.”  At first, this surprised me because it seems so contrary to what anyone else would say.  I half expected to hear “call the cops” or “get help,” but then I remembered it is not like Charles’ to be self-focused. It was extremely encouraging to see his commitment to this purpose, even in the face of danger.

After much preparation and anticipation, it was time to start working.  In conducting our research and recording, I was shocked to observe how easy it is to purchase sex in this city (human trafficking or pimp-forced prostitution is frequently involved).  Within an hour of walking down Las Vegas Boulevard, Charles and I encountered each of the following sex advertisement mediums:

1. Card Handouts – These are business card-sized handouts covered with images of nude females in sexually provocative positions that include the girls’ performer name, a tagline, and a phone number. For research purposes, I collected as many of the cards as possible to demonstrate how easy it was to obtain them.  At the end of the first night, I had fifty-nine.

1. Magazine Stands – On several street locations we found magazine stands filled with sex-ad publications. They are quite similar to the card handouts in regards to the content they advertise.  While observing the stands, we noticed that identifications numbers are located on the stands. This tells us that people rent these magazine stands from the county. Therefore, we can conclude that Clarke County, Nevada profits from the prostitution industry. I find this quite interesting considering prostitution is illegal within the city of Las Vegas.

1. Billboard on Wheels – Automobiles with billboard-sized sex advertisements attached travel up and down Las Vegas Boulevard showcasing pictures of beautiful, half-naked women. The billboard headlines read, “Girls to your room in 20 minutes.”  For this to be plausible, the girls have to be waiting on-call for their next job.  Typically, they wait in the hotel casinos or on the street.  We observed several of these women throughout the trip.

All of our time was spent documenting the previously mentioned subjects.  Everything was completed by dinner the last day, so Charles and I decided to partake in a meal at one of the Wynn hotel restaurants.  As we finished appetizers, our dinner was suddenly interrupted when Charles received a significant phone call.

The man on the other line was one of the most powerful pimps in Las Vegas (his client base includes several of the world’s billionaires).  A mutual friend connected the two, and they soon engaged in a lengthy conversation.  Hanging onto Charles’ every word, I silently wished I could hear both sides of the exchange.

Most of the conversation was spent establishing a bond, but they eventually reached the meat of the subject.  Charles wanted to give the pimp an opportunity to present his side of the story on camera.  This would be very beneficial because having the pimp’s input would add a versatile perspective to our video repertoire. However, the pimp eventually declined because he wasn’t comfortable sharing yet.  They agreed to develop a relationship over time and revisit the interview idea when appropriate.

Undeniably, this trip was an illuminating experience.  I am not sure of the ramifications just yet, but I look forward to the doors that were opened while we there.  Please continue to pray for us in our relentless battle against human trafficking and pimp-forced prostitution.

Modern Day Slavery in America and Abroad
– New Book Shows How Individuals and Churches Can Get Involved

In the 21st century, slavery still exists on every continent with the exception of Antarctica, and yet American schoolchildren are still taught that slavery was eradicated with the Confederacy in 1865. NOT IN MY TOWN: Exposing & Ending Human Trafficking & Modern-Day Slavery (New Hope Publishers), proves that slavery is sadly alive and well. The State Department will also be releasing their annual report on Human Trafficking during the week of June 19*, which will likely reveal that intervention is still needed.

No city and community are immune. According to the FBI, 15,000–18,000 people are trafficked into the US each year. Human trafficking ranges from labor in sweatshops, domestic servants, agricultural slavery and sexual exploitation. Cities like Atlanta and Las Vegas rank high in international trafficking because of their busy international airports. Forced prostitution is more commonly found in Las Vegas, sweatshops are frequently mentioned in New York cases, California and the Southeast are prime locations for agricultural slavery while domestic servants are found primarily in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Read the rest at Oregon Faith Report.

Not In My Town: An Interview with Charles Powell
Another Day Along the Way
Monday, June 20, 2011

Another day,
Human trafficking. What is it? What is being done about it? Including the topic as a news story or in a brief article or in a casual conversation isn’t enough. We need to know what is going on. We need to do something about it. Charles Powell, co-author of the new book Not In My Town, answers my questions and gives advice on what we can do.

Chris: Charles, tell us about your new book. What is the main theme?

Charles: Not In My Town tells the whole truth about human trafficking in the US that most Americans have yet to hear about and then absorb. The book’s main theme is best described as a two year odyssey of discovery of America’s ugliest crime: modern-day slavery. Dillon Burroughs provides the research and I investigate the problem up close and often undercover. Our research has revealed that, for the most part, the Evangelical church is peacefully co-existing with trafficking in their town. Even though some may say, “Not in my town.”

Chris: Why did you write it?

Charles: Not In My Town came as a result of a two year investigation into human trafficking here in the United States. It seems that most of the organizations that I encountered addressing modern slavery were focusing exclusively on international trafficking. Not enough people were investigating the problem here in the US. I always like to work with and for the underdog.

Chris: As you have investigated and learned about the industry of human trafficking, how have you personally been affected?

Charles: Greatly. But not like you might think. I have been amazed at how the evangelical church in the US is peacefully co-existing with human trafficking in their communities. Christians drive their cars past brothels disguised as massage parlors, billboards promoting Asian spas and read the Sunday paper sports sections containing ads for strip clubs. We have made peace with our enemy and the price of human life is very high, but we are never greatly affected until we are forced to pay the price ourselves.

Chris: Why aren’t more people doing something about this?

Charles: Most people don’t know that this problem is right under their noses, while others do not believe that it exists. Still others are just unaffected by slavery; they don’t want to know about it. The two responses I get from people when I speak in churches is (1) “This is horrible… How can I join the fight against human trafficking?,” and (2) “I don’t want to hear anymore about this – it’s more than I can handle.”

Chris: How do you hope readers respond to your book?

Charles: I hope that people will be challenged to fight the problem of modern slavery, in whatever way it manifests itself in their community. I would like to see grassroots efforts begin all across our country which will sweep the scourge of slavery from our country once and for all, but nothing will happen until people get outside the four walls of their churches and take the fight to the streets using every legal, moral and ethical means to win the day.

Chris: How can we help?

Charles: (1) Pray for me and Dillon Burroughs and all the volunteers at the Mercy Movement. Our work can be dangerous. (2) Buy Not In My Town to learn about the problem of human trafficking in the US. (3) Give generously to the Mercy Movement because travel is necessary and costly. We need to purchase numerous electronic devices to aid us in our investigations.

Chris: What are ways people can purchase the book?

Charles: You can buy it from your local bookstore or through www.Barnesandnoble.com or Amazon.com. I can be reached for speaking engagements by dialing 706-245-3143 or by emailing Charles@mercymovement.com.

www.mercymovement.com

www.notinmytown.net

Chris: Charles, thanks for your friendship and your honesty. We need to be informed about the pain around us. Any other thoughts?

Charles: Thank God for everything in life you have overcome. You are made perfect when you draw from the worst moments in your life and become something greater than you could have ever been without the struggle. As a child I wore braces on my legs. I was weak and frail and frightened of everything. I was ostracized because of a disability with my legs. Everything I experienced as a child made me the man I am today. I am strong for the weak and frail. I am brave and fearless for those who are frightened, alone and seeking someone to help. I am grace and peace and mercy to all who need understanding and unconditional acceptance. For those who profit in any way from human trafficking and prostitution I am sure judgment and a day of reckoning are coming swift and certain.

Along the way,
Chris Maxwell

Powerful Statement: We have made peace with our enemy and the price in human life is very high. (Charles Powell)

Read at http://chrismaxwellweb.com/not-in-my-town

Recently, San Diego native Tim Rosner launched a campaign on Change.org asking Wyndham Hotels to prevent child sex trafficking at their properties, after a sex trafficking ring selling girls as young as 14 was discovered in a Wyndham hotel in California. Now, another sex trafficking ring has been busted using Wyndham properties near Washington, DC. Will this latest scandal finally inspire the company finally do the right thing?

If you’re anything like me, you find yourself outraged at the continued abuse toward young women forced into child sex slavery. It not only takes places in other nations; it takes place in our nation.

The tragedy of our time is not that slavery continues to exist; the tragedy is that we continue to allow it to exist.

But it doesn’t have to continue.

You can do something now to help.

By simply completing the petition below, you’ll join the voices of others who are working to change the lives of those trafficked in America’s hotels. If enough of us act, results will take place.

Even if just one child’s live is spared the misery of sex trafficking, we can rejoice and say it was worth the effort.

Will you help?

Sign the petition here. (639 and growing!)

When I was asked to write this column, I was told to avoid using too many “figures and facts.” While I have used “figures” in my writing as a necessity, I’m not a guy who likes to lean too heavily on statistics unless I know the scientific methods used to obtain them. As for “facts,” in my experience people tend to trust them at face value and then show very little indignation when they are proven wrong. What I want to share in this column is the truth . . . the truth is unchanging and that is what brings me to my topic: the economy of human trafficking.

Trafficking is about money. At the end of the day, the traffickers themselves care precious little about what they are trafficking. If little brown furry bunnies were worth billions of dollars when smuggled across international borders into the US, then that is what they would sell. Bunnies would be the commodity of choice. As it is, the most profitable products are drugs, guns, and people. From my research, the people who are trafficking women into the United States for sexual exploitation are mainly large criminal organizations, usually with a shared ethnic background, such as Russian, Albanian, Chinese or Korean.
Crime can make strange bedfellows. Recently Hizballah (Hezbollah), classified by the US government as a terrorist group out of Lebanon, has been linked to trafficking in guns, drugs, and presumably people (they usually go together) under contract so to speak for Mexican drug cartels near the US border. Their aim is not political gain—it’s money, pure and simple.

The answer to the problem of international criminal organizations trafficking people into the United States is not more law enforcement, not more prisons, nor more politician’s promises. Traffickers don’t fear law enforcement and prison—these are factored into the operation’s overhead. But, they do fear common everyday people like you saying “No more!” to trafficking in their own communities. They fear people leaving the comfort of their homes. The criminals are absolutely terrified of church and civic and grassroots political groups who decide that enough is enough and take action in the streets. More laws and moral statements do not bring social change . . . people do. That was proved by the American civil rights movement.

In my next column, I’ll share some specific ways you can fight the organizations that profit from prostitution and human trafficking in your town.

You can also keep up with the latest Mercy Movement research and happenings as they happen as well. Follow us @mercy_movement on Twitter or Facebook. Help stop slavery starting NOW!

The lunch counter area was located on the left side of the building and was set off from the rest of the store by a chrome-railed four foot high fence with a gated entrance which reminded me of saloon doors from a cowboy picture. All along the rail were  a number of orange booths with white Formica tables, but to me the real stars of the lunch counter were the eight chrome stools covered in orange naugahyde all planted straight and deep along the lunch counter like so many live oak trees in the Laurel city park. Behind the counter lay delights the likes of which young boys dare not dream. It was a place where Ice cream sundae’s, chocolate malts, hamburgers and a menagerie of other pleasures were all magically conjured using machines that aroused the eyes the ears and all the others senses.

Every time we shopped there I carefully crafted an argument for mother that we should treat ourselves to lunch seated at the counter even if it was still a little early in the day for lunch. We were kind of poor so we didn’t order a large meal usually the Blue Plate Special. My mother would eat the meatloaf and I would eat the mashed potatoes and gravy which came with her meal and we would split the yeast roll. As far as I was concerned the whole thing was a meal fit for kings all served at a real lunch counter like on TV. It was all really quite wonderful and I would have been content to take every meal there for the rest of my life until one day when I asked my mother about the signs posted over the counter. She was always so very patient with me and my sister when we asked her questions, so she read them all out loud to me and the explained what they meant. One read “Blue Plate Special,” another read “Chocolate Malts,” still another read “Fountain Drinks” then she stopped reading leaving out one sign. For some reason I had to ask her what that sign read.

I pointed to the neglected sign and asked, “Mama what does that sign say?”

She leaned over close to my ear and told me that she would tell me about it later, but I was not content with her answer so I asked even more insistently . . .  and more loudly.

“Why can’t you tell me what that sign says right now?”

My question, tone and insistence had gotten the attention of the man behind the lunch counter who was not pleased with my curiosity and was giving my mother looks that inferred I should be quieted.

She whispered again.

“Charles . . . that sign reads ‘Whites Only.’ It means that only white people can each here.”

Whites Only.

Whites Only.

 I looked at the sign for a few seconds and observed that it appeared markedly different from the other signs posted above me. The other signs used colorful scripts with whimsical drawings that might just tantalize a sick person right out of a coma, but the “Whites Only” sign was printed in cold block letters printed with black ink on white paper.

It looked very official.

It looked like it was the law.

The law written among the lunch specials and it wasn’t meant for me to read or notice. The system was designed for me to want the lunch special and chocolate malts and they invited me to consume fountain drinks until I almost burst, because I was qualified.

I was  . . .“Whites Only.”

I was incredulous with regard to the matter of this “Whites Only” thing. When you are six years old mothers hold all of the wisdom of the universe. So I asked questions about the matter as if I was making a legal argument the likes of which Clarence Darrow would have been proud.

“But Mama . . .  I see black people right across the store shopping for soap, but they can’t sit here and eat with us?”

It just didn’t make any sense.

“Yes Charles that’s right.” Then I asked the perennial kid question.

“But Why Not?”

My attention to the question at hand was interrupted by the counter man angrily slapping my mother’s check in front of her and telling her he would take the payment it right away. He looked at me as though he was very angry at me. Mother paid the bill and we left the lunch counter and the store without completing the shopping we had planned on doing following our meal. She held my hand as we briskly walk out of the store and down the sidewalk in silence. My mother was probably worried if there might be a burning cross in our front yard that night. I wasn’t sorry that I asked the question, but I was sorry that my mother looked so worried.

No one really ever has to tell a six year old when he has crossed a line that adults fear to cross

He knows.

I knew.

As we walked to our car I didn’t ask mother any more questions about the sign or the man behind the lunch counter or the reasons why black people could not eat seated alongside white people and I never asked mother to eat at the lunch counter ever again.

Not because I had embarrassed my mother with my questions and;

Not because I feared the lunch counter man and;

Not because the food wasn’t good.

I never again asked to eat at the lunch counter because I never wanted the privilege of being “Whites Only” ever again. From that moment forward until today I became a watcher of signs.

Not too long after this incident… Dr. King was murdered and due to that criminal act and my inability, even as a child, to accept  institutional segregation my life of activism began. Today my fight continues against human trafficking… join us. Give to the Mercy Movement.

Charles J. Powell

Founder – Mercy Movement

***

Greetings!

We are gearing up for our Nov 17th National (Call-In) Day of Action to help pass HR 5575, the “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010,” to support young sex trafficking survivors and combat and address the sex trafficking of children across America.  You can read a summary here:http://www.ecpatusa.org/EcpatUSA_PDF/HR5575Summary.pdf In the United States, there are less than 100 beds in shelters prepared to provide assistance to child victims of sex trafficking. Yet an estimated 100,000 children are exploited in prostitution each year in this country.  If passed, HR 5575 would provide much needed funds for therapeutic services.  It would also increase resources for law enforcement to arrest and prosecute the traffickers and predators that victimize our children.   Taking action and being a part of our National (Call-In) Day of Action on 11.17 is as easy as 1,2,3

1. Find your member of Congress by going to http://www.house.gov/ and entering your complete zip code in the top left “Find Your Representative” section.

2. Call the House operator at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your representative’s office. Once connected to your rep’s office, urge them to support and pass H.R 5575.  A sample call script is below: ”Hi, my name is________ , and I am a constituent living in [town/city]. I’m calling to urge Congress(woman/man)______ to co-sponsor and support H.R.5575, a bi-partisan bill that seeks to combat and address the sex trafficking of children in America.  I am very concerned about this issue because despite the tens of thousands of victims who need help, only a handful of shelters and services exist to address their intensive needs. It’s time for Congress to act. Will the Congress(woman/man) co-sponsor and support this important legislation?”
3. Be Counted!  Sign our tracking petition here (http://tiny.cc/toirj) so we can track our impact!

Taking action on Nov 17 will take less than 5 minutes but our collective action can give thousands of young sex trafficking victims across the U.S. the care and support they need and deserve. The National Day of Action is being sponsored by the National Coalition to End Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (partial list): A Future. Not A Past., ECPAT-USA, Polaris Project, Rebecca Project, Shared Hope International and Women’s Funding Network

• Completed the manuscript for our new book on trafficking in America called “Not in My Town” (May 2011 release)
• Spoken to a growing number of audiences regarding American trafficking
• Continued work on our documentary in Atlanta, including an interview with Georgia State Congresswoman Renee Unterman
• Consulted with a Pennsylvania community in their goal of staring an aftercare center for trafficking victims
• Connected with a new emergency care center in development in Birmingham, AL for trafficking victims
• Supported the efforts of an international partner as they prepare for their next rescue operation in South Asia

To those of your supporting our effort, THANK YOU for making this possible!

We encourage you to pray for our research, rescue, and aftercare efforts and give as you are able to support mercy to today’s slaves.

The video should be reposted here soon.

Read the original press release here.