As January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, the Oklahoma Christian Modern Abolitionists (OCMA) organization continues to raise awareness on the Oklahoma Christian University campus about the horrors of sex trafficking.
Last week, OCMA hosted Dragonfly Support Home workers to share their first-hand experience of helping victims of human trafficking. According to OCMA Chaplain Isabella Preciado, Oklahoma is a central location for sex trafficking because it contains so many truck stops where victims can be easily transferred.
“These are people we surround ourselves with every day, but do not know it,” Preciado said. “It can happen to anyone, from females to males, to children, to adults. The reason behind that is, most of the time, it is a family member that does that to you.”
Preciado said although human trafficking can happen to anyone, trafficking is especially common with underage girls.
“A lot of it has to do with social media,” Preciado said. “They’ve been raised in an environment where they’re looking for love and they supposedly find it online, but then that person they meet pressures them to have sex with strangers so they can make money off them.”
Off-campus OCMA Representative and Oklahoma Christian alumnus Johnnie Frye said the organization honored Human Trafficking Awareness month by planning a candlelight vigil, a documentary screening and hosting expert speakers at various events.
“I would say that the main purpose of OCMA is to raise awareness on human trafficking, to raise awareness around campus and the surrounding communities, but also just to find ways to get involved with that fight,” Frye said. “Not just hearing about it and being aware of it, but actually doing something about it. Dealing with college students, it’s hard to do something that involves a lot of financial effort, but whatever we can do to help with the situation is good.”
John Harrison, the faculty sponsor for OCMA, said that an easy way for the average person to make a statement against human trafficking is to buy from companies who do not support slavery.
“We need to get people to consider buying [fair-trade] products when they have to buy chocolate, coffee or clothing,” Harrison said. “Just making them aware of, ‘Hey, that cheap shirt that you’re buying, you’re glad that you saved money on it, but somebody else is probably at a disadvantage because of that.’
“The only reason companies keep doing this is because there continues to be a demand for cheap stuff, and if you will sometimes consider buying from one of these other companies, they are making efforts at not employing and not being involved in that. Certainly, it sometimes costs more money, but you can buy with a greater deal of knowledge that what you’re buying is not off of the backs of someone who was basically brought into it through slavery.”
Harrison said he hopes OCMA can help students be more conscious about their purchases and make Oklahoma Christian more aware of its products.
“We need to ask our bookstore to carry fair-trade items, to ask the Brew to brew coffees that are fair-trade,” Harrison said. “Asking these questions makes shops realize, ‘Oh, we don’t have that.’ Then, they’ll wonder if there is a demand for it. So it’s not only getting them to carry fair-trade items but to get people to think about these things, to create habits.”
Students interested in buying from companies which do not support human trafficking can look for products with a “fair-trade” label on them. Students or faculty who are the victims of human trafficking or know someone who is can call the human trafficking hotline at (888) 373-7888 for help.
“This is a Christian college campus, and ultimately, we believe Christians should be concerned with God’s justice,” Harrison said. “This is a justice issue. Sometimes we can be so wrapped up in what we want that we are not thinking about how there’s a cost to our consumerism. And there’s an unjust behavior that sometimes supports what we demand in our consumerism.”
OMCA meets Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in WBC 120.
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Excellent article in an important issue. Thank you.