Last semester (Spring 2013) I was fortunate enough to enroll
in Professor Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez’s class, Sexual Violence Across Mexican
Cultures. The class's content was comprised of various hispanic men and women's
chronicles and accounts of sexual violence, both within the Mexican borders as
well as within our own, the "ever-so-great" U.S. of A. For a brief
moment in class we discussed the issue of dishonorable deportation.
It was brought to my attention that it is not uncommon for a young lady or
teenager to be smuggled into the United States, forced to sell her body for
sex, then discovered by law enforcement, and sent back to their home country,
the place where they were forced into this industry to begin with.
These happenings are absolutely enraging and
sickening. The way I see it is if the United States offers asylum and refuge to
foreigners suffering from political persecution, why on earth cant the United
States government offer the same protection to these enslaved people? It was a
few months later when I was exploring internship options that I came across the
answer: our organizations dedicated to advocating for this cause are facing
ginormous financial struggles, and our government does not have the spare time
nor money to facilitate the efforts... Since coming to all these realizations,
I have grappled with exactly what to do and how to do it. Little did I know
that enrolling in Diane Rhodes's class would provide me with my answer: Dan
Pallota's TedTalk. Dan, somehow, effectively conveys to the public what I have been
unable to verbalize for sometime now. Dan articulates the need for non-profits,
the problem with the operation and management of non-profits, how our society
can improve them, and why it is so important to secure
their existence. Dan's TedTalk has the potential
to guarantee and protect the revitalization of non-profit
organizations. We need to ensure the survival of the non-profits dedicated to
awarding asylum and refuge to victims of the international sex trade. We
need legal advocates, legal advocates need income, and non-profits need to
thrive to bring in income, so lets get Dan's TedTalk out there and spread the
word.
