Feminist Winter Term: Day 1

Yesterday, Soapbox, Speakers Who Speak Out, Inc. initiated a week of our Feminist Winter Term program.  You can learn more about the program here.

After a fabulous orientation with twenty students from across the country, we embarked on a meeting about trafficking and prostitution with the Barnaba Institute.  Later, the students met with Soapbox speaker and activist Shelby Knox. 

Follow along with our students throughout the week here at the Soapbox Blog!

Recap of Ms. Foundation w/ Barnaba Institute:

Our meeting with Frank Barnaba proved to be thought-provoking and compelling, with feedback, questions, and emotional stories filling the conference room at the Ms. Foundation. The session began with the screening of "Very Young Girls," which highlights the story of GEMS and the work that they do in New York with victims of human trafficking. The film revealed that the justice system often fails to accommodate for younger prostitutes because they are criminalized, and contrasted that with footage of a male police officer telling a room of convicted Johns that if they complete the seminar they are attending, their records will be clean. "It's that easy,' he says, to chuckles. 

Barnaba, who has spent a lifetime rescuing victims of trafficking through an individual approach and has even worked formerly through housing programming for various regions to provide them with safe, healing spaces, said that the challenge with human trafficking is often the justice system:

- Victims are often brainwashed by their pimps, who may recruit or kidnap them and then keep them within the trafficking work through emotional or physical manipulation or abuse, and are therefore hesitant to contact law enforcement

- Law enforcement personnel have been known to rape or take advantage of victims who come forward

- Victims may be internationally trafficked and therefore lack citizenship in the US

His approach, which is to find individual victims and convince them to try to leave behind trafficking, has been successful but somber. Barnaba has seen successes, but he has also witnessed victims with severe physical or emotional trauma and has seen firsthand the violent way in which they live and are treated. He believes the abolitionist approach is best, and he wants the entire industry of human trafficking to be outlawed and eradicated through relief programs like housing for victims.

Recap of Shelby Knox Visit

Shelby Knox came to eat dinner, and never before had so many people left Chinese Food to get cold! She was compelling and personal, and had the FWT cohort gathered in a small circle around her even as the clock ticked away, past the scheduled time of the meeting. 

Knox focused on a few main concepts related to her life's work in feminism and philanthropy during her visit:

- The Generational Divide, and how feminism can become a united front again, as well as how to decipher what may or may not separate us as "young" and "old"

- Her own coming-of-feminist and how she became more involved in speaking: "I loved it. I never went to class," she said, remarking that once she began speaking on campuses at the age of 18, she was hooked on activism and connecting with other passionate feminists through similar engagements

- The Reproductive Justice movement and how it has made room for younger and older feminists, people of color and racial justice, and people of different passions through the union of pro-choice activism, women's health advocacy, and comprehensive sexual education initiatives

(Thanks to Carmen Rios for providing the Feminist Winter Term recaps)