How You Can Fight Sex Traffickers – Right Now.

December 4, 2012March 4, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 5 Comments

Did you know the average cost of a human slave in 1809 (adjusted for current inflation) was $40,000? Today, it’s $90.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world now, more than at any other time in human history, and every sixty seconds a child is sold for sex worldwide. I know this is freaking you out. But if you’re like me, you’re stymied by how to respond effectively.

Good News! I have a way.

Today I partnered with The Exodus Road, a Christian non-profit doing counter trafficking work in SE Asia. Last week they put out a call to bloggers to not only help them raise money in a tech-savvy way, but to keep this boiling injustice front and center, where it belongs.

Here’s why I like Exodus Road:

They believe there are three main tasks at hand. Prevention. Prosecution and Restoration. Fewer people were tackling prosecution of human traffickers, so they dug in there. They partner with teams of investigators and local law enforcement to conduct under-cover surveillance and raids on brothels, bars and theaters where children, sometimes as young as seven, are sold for sex.

“By decreasing the profitability of the trafficking industry for the criminal, we will eventually slow the mechanisms that make the exploitation of women and children so lucrative.” -Exodus Road.

Here’s The Plan:

Equipping their investigators for one raid, with cameras, GPS etc. costs Exodus Road $1400. I’m thinking three raids or more!

So, until Christmas, (22 days from now) I am going to fundraise for them and write about it. This is my way of putting my money where my mouth is on this blog. I talk about sexual slavery and justice and the love of Christ all the time, but it requires action. Will you join me? The donate box will take you to their secure, non-profit funding site (here’s their guidestar report ) where you can use a credit card. It also tracks our progress as a team. But wait….It gets better.

Exodus Road plans take two of their bloggers to SE Asia in January to see their operation firsthand. They’ll take one blogger who raises the most money and one who engages the most donors. Don’t you think that should be me? I do.

Not only that, each raid we fund will be our own. I will be able to talk to the people involved about our case (within reason) and its outcomes and report it back to you. That way you don’t feel like your donation goes into some mysterious charity maw. This is boots on the ground work, using the amazing tools available to us on the internet.

My God we live in incredible times. Will you help me? Donate. Reblog this. Post it to Facebook and Twitter. Let’s go ruin some dirtbags together!

Open your mouth for the dumb, for the cause of all who are left desolate. Proverbs 31:9

Fight Sex Trafficking With Exodus Road.

December 3, 2012March 4, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Dear Exodus Road,

I’ve been following you since Laura wrote on A Deeper Story about sending her husband Matt into a Southeast Asian brothel.

Paradise?

At first, I didn’t know he was the founder and undercover investigator for a non-profit organization fighting human trafficking, or that Exodus Road has 348 prosecutions to date.

Can I help you?

I traveled through SE Asia and the Indian Subcontinent for two months in 1994 and six months in 2000 – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India and Nepal.

One night in a red-light district, I was dying to approach a middle-aged European man, wearing a 12-year-old girl on his arm, and punch him squarely in the face. I was not following Jesus at the time, but wrong is wrong is wrong.

My fists are ineffective, my blog is not.

I’m older and wiser now, a dedicated follower of Jesus, a writer, a blogger and a women to whom much has been given. I have blogged about Chris Caine’s A21 Campaign and worked with the LA Dream Center – two other leaders in the battle against the second largest organized crime syndicate in the world.

The Dream Center taught me, it is unlikely I will solve the problem myself, but I mustn’t do nothing.

It would be an honor to serve you.

Sincerely,

Erin Kirk

Let Your Freak Flag Fly.

September 19, 2012September 27, 2015 / Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

Yesterday, I received a rejection letter from a company to which I have applied for five different jobs.

It was a Christian company.

The first time they didn’t hire me, I wondered if they found me online and didn’t like my “brand” of Christianity, because they never even called me back. In the weeks that followed, I found myself pulling punches, editing myself into something they might like better, just in case they looked again. Reading those drafts, which thank God I didn’t post, is painful. My voice is fractured, boring and meanders all over the place.

I made myself into someone I’m not, so someone I don’t know would like me. Guess what? They still don’t.

Maybe it’s just the economy, but the point remains: I am useless to the world if I am lying about myself. I have learned from reading The Bible that I shouldn’t be domineering or offensive or aggressive, but do have to actually like who I am and not apologize for it – a topic I mulled over in yesterday’s post.

So I’m a Democrat and a yoga-teacher, and a thinker and a skeptic, who’s in love with organic farming, food politics and Jesus; and I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Watering any of that down to be palatable to everybody, just makes me bland, and that, I think, is an insult to God.

Photo: TPSDave

That’s the problem I had with Christianity forever. I believed I had to be a pious, churchy version of myself, and hose down the fiery parts that actually fuel the things I care about, like girls from poor families
sold by the busload into sexual slavery. Lots of religious folk trade in such phoniness, but Jesus does not.

In the gospels, Jesus prizes poor, marginalized women and will happily put my energy into their service, if I allow him to direct it; and surely the mind behind the aurora borealis can be trusted to handle that.

I believe there’s a juicy sweet spot in America populated by tons of people who would delight in the gospel if they actually could hear it, but if what they hear first is hell, the Law and a six-day creation, they’ll keep rejecting all of it and never know what good news the gospel really is.

So today, I’m changing the tagline on this blog to: Going to the Sea: A Sassy Democrat’s Guide to Faith.

This is who I am. Who are you?