Sex trafficking in the USA

Sex trafficking: An American problem too

By Bridgette Carr, Special to CNN //

//(‘November 25, 2009 )-

“Editor’s note: Professor Bridgette Carr directs the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. The Human Trafficking Clinic provides direct representation to victims of human trafficking and works to identify solutions to combat human trafficking.

Ann Arbor, Michigan (CNN) — “We did not have a right to choose where we lived … freedom of speech, or freedom of actions. The traffickers had keys to our apartment. They controlled all of our movement and travel. They watched us and listened when we called our parents. They didn’t let us make friends or tell anyone anything about ourselves. We couldn’t keep any of the money we earned. We couldn’t ask anyone for help.” — Lena

Lena was an athletic student from Eastern Europe yearning to visit the United States through a study-abroad program at her college. She had visions of learning English and returning home to share her experiences with her family.

But the human traffickers who ensnared her had a different vision for Lena, shipping her to America and exploiting her in the sex industry for profit. They met her at the airport with news that her study abroad placement had been changed. She was given new bus tickets and sent off to Detroit, Michigan. Once there they took her passport and her freedom.

After almost a year of enslavement, Lena risked her life to make a daring escape. She is smart, resilient and funny, and I have been honored to be her attorney through the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School.

Unfortunately there are thousands of adults and children like Lena who have not been able to escape their traffickers. These victims, especially the children, are in the same position Lena was: They’re being exploited and can’t ask anyone for help.

The data on human trafficking is sparse, but what is known is terrifying. It’s already the second largest criminal industry in the world — behind only the trade in illegal drugs — and it’s growing fast. The global commercial sex trade exploits one million children annually. At least 100,000 and perhaps as many as 300,000 children in America are victims of sex trafficking each year.

The grim reality of child sex trafficking in the United States is this: Human traffickers are selling sex with children in big cities and small towns throughout America.

Child sex trafficking has been illegal in the United States since 2000 with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Under this law it is illegal to recruit, harbor, transport, provide or obtain a person under the age of 18 years for the purpose of a commercial sex act. Since the passage of the TVPA many states have passed their own human trafficking laws.

Children who are selling sex in the United States are then, by definition, victims of human trafficking. Despite this, child victims of sex trafficking are frequently viewed as criminals rather than as victims. According to the Department of Justice in 2006, six years after the passage of the TVPA, 1,600 children were arrested for prostitution and commercialized vice.

The children victimized by sex trafficking are often very young. On average, girls are first exploited for commercial sex between the ages of 12 and 14. For boys the average age is even younger — between 11 and 13.

But being a victim of sex trafficking does not have to be a life sentence. Victims can become survivors and build new lives. And while Lena is no longer the young college student she once was and it is too dangerous for her to return home, her speech and actions are now her own. She can choose where she wants to live. She is free.

Through my work with Lena and other clients in the Human Trafficking Clinic we have identified a number of ways to fight sex trafficking.”

Sex trafficking: An American problem too

Thanksgiving:A New Perspective

Commentary
Thankstaking Day, USA
By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Nov 23, 2009, 00:23

“As most Americans are sitting down to eat that once noble native bird, the turkey, a growing number are observing a No Thanksgiving/Day of Sorrow to reflect on the genocide committed against the American Indians.

Eating the once noble turkey, nominated by that one intellectual giant amongst the founders of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, to be the national bird, has come to symbolize much of what is wrong about celebrating this bogus holiday.

The original turkey was a wily, respected bird, the successful stalking of which marked one as a skilled hunter. The fowl that most Americans will be stuffing themselves with this Thursday is raised in cages, being fed increasing amounts of genetically engineered grain, laced with antibiotics. It is so hyper-inbred, the male’s breast is so large females must be artificially inseminated. It would seem being too fat to have sex has now become another addition to the American tradition.

While the historical myth of American Indians peaceably sharing their turkey dinner with the white settlers on Thanksgiving is still taught as fact to our children, a review of the historical record shows no reference to this event ever happening.

Benjamin Franklin and the Founding Fathers of America didn’t celebrate this holiday. In fact, the Thanksgiving holiday was a public relations gimmick dreamed up by that corporate lawyer turned politician, Abraham Lincoln, during the darkest days of the Civil War in an attempt to win support for an increasingly unpopular war.

No, during Benjamin Franklin’s time, the white settlers were busy actually dealing with a militant, armed, united, well led and organized League of the Iroquois to be bothered pretending they were friends. One needs to look no further than the so called “King Phillips War” in the middle of the 17th century to find some of the most horrendous massacres, nay, genocide, committed against the “savage” Indian by the “god fearing Christians,” hardly the environment for celebrating holidays about friendly get-togethers.

Yet the nation empire founded by the legendary Hiawatha, the League of the Iroquois, occupied a considerable portion of Benjamin Franklin’s scholarly attention in his earlier years. As a printer, Franklin was in charge of the correspondence between the League of the Iroquois and the colonialists. He became such an authority on the American Indian that he was appointed to his first diplomatic post as commissioner of Indian Affairs and acted as ambassador to the League of the Iroquois for the colony of Pennsylvania.

Addressing the Albany Congress in 1754, Franklin called on the delegates from the English colonies to unite along the lines of the League of the Iroquois, something they were not to do until 30 years later.

Benjamin Franklin was also the author of the original, draft constitution of what would become the first “democracy” in the Western world, the USA. When looking for models for Franklin’s new “democracy” in European society, you find little in over 2,000 years of European history, having to go all the way back to the Roman and earlier Greek city states.

Yet if you look at Franklin’s neighbors, the League of the Iroquois, and their constitution, you find remarkable similarities with what Franklin envisioned in his constitution. What is this I am saying, that these “savage redskins” ran their society “democratically”? That these supposed “barbarians,” who oversaw an empire that stretched from New England to the Mississippi River, may have been the model for the first “democracy” in the Western world? This is something I doubt most Americans have even considered.

The League of the Iroquois was composed of nation “states” which had jurisdiction over affairs in that “state” only. Each “state” had its own elected legislature, which, as in Franklin’s constitution, chose a number of “electors” to the “federal” League of the Iroquois. These “electors” were accorded to each “state” based on the individual “state’s” population. The “electors” met regularly in a sacred hall for their deliberations.

This “grand council” (the name Franklin used in the original draft of the constitution (for what came to be the Congress of the USA) was unicameral, as was Franklin’s original white settler “council,” later Congress, of the former English colonies.

This Grand Council of the League of the Iroquois declared war and negotiated peace treaties, sent and received ambassadors, decided on new members joining the League and, in general, acted as a “federal” government whose decisions superseded those of the “states” in affairs of the “nation.”

As in Franklin’s constitution, in the League of the Iroquois, the electors could not be serving in the military while holding office. In both cases, an electorate chose the electors and could recall their choice at anytime. One of the main differences between the two “democracies” was that in the League of the Iroquois, the electors were reserved for men BUT ELECTED BY THE WOMEN. That’s right, in the League of the Iroquois, the women elected the leadership, something much more “democratic” than the actual minority of men who got to vote in the USA.

Franklin’s friend, Thomas Jefferson, was also a student of the American Indian. Jefferson was the first person to propose a systematic ethnological study of the American Indian, so as to “collect their traditions, laws, customs, languages and other circumstances.”

Yet the Founding Fathers of the USA displayed a savagery in destroying the League of the Iroquois as well as that other American Indian “democracy,” the Creek Confederation, that shocked even some of their peers.

That genocide, both good and ill intentioned, was carried out by Europeans against the American Indians is an undeniable fact. The question we must ask is “why did this happen?”

Click on the link below to continue reading

Thankstaking Day, USA

SBL Southwestern Regional Conference

I will be presenting a paper at the SBL Southwestern Region conference which will be held in  March 12-14, 2010 in  North Dallas, Texas. If you live or  are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area drop me an email so we can have coffee.  My paper proposal is noted below:

Theologizing The Black Atlantic, Black Liberation Theology In  A Cosmpolitan

Context : From Dutty Boukman to James Cone

By Celucien L. Joseph (University of Texas at Dallas)

In this paper I point out the confluences and connections in four texts written by four individuals of African descent. These include my analysis of three poems, one text, and one religions prayer which articulate and represent a common black religious consciousness. I consider particularly the common themes of liberty, freedom, resistance, and vindication embedded in those passages, in the tradition of Black Liberation Theology.  I begin with Dutty Boukman’s prayer of liberty. In the night of August 22, 1791, which initiated the Haitian Revolution, Dutty Bookman, an ex-slave and a religious leader,  gattered former slaves and uttered the most important prayer in the Slave religious tradition: “Coute la liberte li pale nan coeur nous tous…” (“Listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us…”). Libète pwoklame (liberty proclaimed),  libète chante (liberty sung) have then become a myth of the African Diasporic religious experiences. The phrase informs us about the historical tyranny of oppression and suffering, and the collective cry of people of African descent  in the pursuit of freedom, universal emancipation,  and human dignity.

Consequently, I situate the prayer of Boukman in the tradition of Black Religious practice and Africana constructive theological heritage. I then read the four following pieces: Countee Cullen’s “Heritage,” Langston Hughes’ “Goodbye Christ,” and James Cone’s “God of the Oppressed” in the light of Boukamn’s historical prayer. My objective is to demonstrate the parallels between Boukman and Cullen, Hughes and James Cone, and [inter-] connections, respectively. I argue that Boukman’s prayer is probably the earliest attempt to articulate a Black Liberation Theology of freedom and therefore is perhaps the seedbed of Africana Liberation Theology. I insist that the prayer of Boukman envisioned a new theological conversation in forms of vindication and collective solidarity across the Black Atlantic.

The Schedule

Sunday, 8:30a – 10:30a

Theme: Applied Theology

Presider: Celucien L. Joseph, University of Texas at Dallas

Sunday, 11:00 – 12:30p

Theme: Freedom, Resistance, and Vindication

Presider: Ashley Squires, University of Texas at Austin

11:00 – 11:30 Richard Brumback, Baylor University

Everything is Permissible: Ivan Karamazov and Genocide

11:30 – 12:00 Celucien L. Joseph, University of Texas at Dallas

Theologizing the Black Atlantic, Black Liberation Theology in a Cosmopolitan Context: From Dutty Boukman to James Cone

12:00 – 12:30 Jenny Caplan, Syracuse University

Images of Native Americans in Comic Books

You can find further details about the conference below.

Southwestern Region

The Southwestern region includes Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri.

2010 Southwestern Regional Meeting:
March 12-14, 2010
Marriott Hotel DFW North, Dallas, Texas

The SBL Southwestern Region meets in partnership with the Southwest Commision on Religious Studies.

 

Who Created God? or If God created everybody who created god?

Answer:

1. “That question is illogica If someone created God, then clearly God could not have created everybody or anyone.”
2. “God doesn’t exist in the universe.
   He existed before creation.
   Therefore he is not part of that which is created.”
3. “Well, if God has existed for an infinite amount of time, then he would have always existed, which means that he/she/it would never have been created in the first place.”

Source: Yahoo answers

Review of Jerry Seright’s The Gospel of Christ in Romans: Righteousness and Life From Grace

A Review of The Gospel of Christ in Romans: Righteousness and Life From Grace. Thanks to Abigail Davidson  of WinePress Group for the review copy.

The author of this book, Jerry Seright, was a missionary in Northeast Brazil. Seright currently serves as  the preaching pastor of South MacArthur Church of Christ located in Irving Texas. The book was originally published in Portuguese for a Brazilian audience and was later translated into English. Righteousness and Life from Grace, as the author states, is the result of  a newspaper study  and the author’s personal encounter with the Text.

Righteousness and Life from Grace is a succinct exposition of the Epistle of Romans. It includes no more than eighty pages of authorial interaction and  experience (s) with the text. Five brief chapters are given to the treatment of the first six chapters of Romans.  The title of the chapters below reveal authorial understanding of the letter and its structure:

The Life Within Our Reach (1:17)

From Where We Came: The World of Sin (1:18-3:20)

Righteousness and Life From Grace (5:1-21)

That Grace Might Continue (6:1-23)

Seright treats the book of Romans rather the first six chapters as a dramatic scene and experience, yet with a theological content. Hence he gives a performative function to the characters (i.e. God, man, Jesus Christ, Jews, Gentiles) and elements (i.e. sin, man’s condition, grace of God, righteousness of God, the law, salvation, etc) of the book, which of course, collaboratively direct and determine the course of the Epistle.

Seright connects God’s righteousness with the preaching of the Gospel (8), an insight  of paramount importance. He writes, “God’s righteousness! The very possibility of it was sufficient to dominate [Paul’s] his thinking (8).  Further, the author argues that the goal of the “whole epistle to the Romans is a declaration of how, through Christ, God funneled His grace to man” (3). If this is correct, as I concur, Romans does not present us with a “system, but with a man,” Jesus Christ himself (ibid).

The author is convinced that in the letter of Romans one will find “the proclamation of the Gospel and enough of the story of justification of Christ to have the beginning and end” (XIV). Nonetheless, Seright deals only in passing with “the meaning of the Gospel” and the doctrine of “justification by faith” which for many dominate the letter. The righteousness of God, the Gospel of Grace, faith, grace, law, or “the law” received little treatment.  Romans 3:21-26, a central section of the book and equally chapters four and five were poorly treated.  Nonetheless, what I found very helpful in  Righteousness and Life from Grace is the author’s friendly language, the insertion of chapter’s glossary which explains important and theologically-loaded terms and concepts in Romans.

Righteousness and Life from Grace lacks serious and rigorous theological interaction with the text; but will be practically helpful to serve as a [Bible] study guide to the Epistle of Romans.  I hope the author will complete the study to chapter 16.

Sailhamer’s Magnum Opus and New books

The good people of IVP (Adriana Wright) surprised me with a review copy of The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition and Interpretation by John H. Sailhamer.  This book might be one of the most important works on the Pentateuchal scholarship. Sailhamer’s previous contribution to  the study of the Pentateuch includes his excellent book,  The Pentateuch as Narrative.

About the Book

The Pentateuch is the foundation for understanding the Old Testament and the Bible as a whole. Yet through the centuries it has been probed and dissected, weighed and examined, its text peeled back for its underlying history, its discourse analyzed and its words weighed. Could there be any stone in Sinai yet unturned?

Surprisingly, there is. From a career of study, John Sailhamer sums up his perspective on the Pentateuch by first settling the hermeneutical question of where we should set our attention. Rather than focus on the history behind the text, Sailhamer is convinced that it is the text itself that should be our primary focus. Along the way he demonstrates that this was in fact the focus of many interpreters in the precritical era.

Persuaded of the singular vision of the Pentateuch, Sailhamer searches out clues left by the author and the later editor of the Pentateuch that will disclose the meaning of this great work. By paying particular attention to the poetic seams in the text, he rediscovers a message that surprisingly brings us to the threshold of the New Testament gospel.

Book Excerpts

Click here to view.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part One: Approaching the Text as Revelation
1 Understanding the Nature and Goal of Old Testament Theology
2 Finding the Author’s Verbal Meaning
3 What Is the “Historical Meaning” of Biblical Texts?
4 Finding the Big Idea in the Final Composition of the Text

Part Two: Rediscovering the Composition of the Pentateuch Within the Tanak
5 Textual Strategies Within the Tanak
6 The Composition of the Pentateuch
7 Exploring the Composition of Legal Material in the Pentateuch

Part Three: Interpreting the Theology of the Pentateuch
8 The Nature of Covenant and Blessing in the Pentateuch
9 Is There a “Biblical Jesus” of the Pentateuch?
10 The Purpose of Mosaic Law in the Pentateuch
11 The Theme of Salvation in the Pentateuch

Conclusion
Author Index
Subject Index
Scripture Index

I also received a review copy of The Historical Jesus: Five Views by James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (eds).

Table of Contents

The Historical Jesus: An Introduction
Paul Rhodes Eddy and James K. Beilby

1. Jesus at the Vanishing Point
Robert M. Price
Responses:
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

2. Jesus and the Challenge of Collaborative Eschatology
John Dominic Crossan
Responses:
Robert M. Price
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

3. Learning the Human Jesus: Historical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Luke Timothy Johnson
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
James D. G. Dunn
Darrell L. Bock

4. Remembering Jesus: How the Quest of the Historical Jesus Lost Its Way
James D. G. Dunn
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
Darrell L. Bock

5. The Historical Jesus: An Evangelical View
Darrell L. Bock
Responses:
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James D. G. Dunn

About the Book

The scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has a distinguished pedigree in modern Western religious and historical scholarship, with names such as Strauss, Schweitzer and Bultmann highlighting the story. Since the early 1990s, when the Jesus quest was reawakened for a third run, numerous significant books have emerged. And the public’s attention has been regularly arrested by media coverage, with the Jesus Seminar or the James ossuary headlining the marquee.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views provides a venue for readers to sit in on a virtual seminar on the historical Jesus. Beginning with a scene-setting historical introduction by the editors, prominent figures in the Jesus quest set forth their views and respond to their fellow scholars.

On the one end Robert M. Price lucidly maintains that the probability of Jesus’ existence has reached the “vanishing point,” and on the other Darrell Bock ably argues that while critical method yields only a “gist” of Jesus, it takes us in the direction of the Gospel portraits. In between there are numerous avenues to explore, questions to be asked and “assured results” to be weighed. And John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson and James D. G. Dunn probe these issues with formidable knowledge and honed insight, filling out a further range of options.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views offers a unique entry into the Jesus quest. For both the classroom and personal study, this is a book that fascinates, probes and engages.

The gospel in THREE words

“Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.” —J.I. Packer

Source: Of Firt Importance

The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source: Time

The Best Inventions

1. The Best Invention of the Year: NASA’s Ares Rockets
2. The Tank-Bred Tuna
3. The $10 Million Lightbulb
4. The Smart Thermostat
5. Controller-Free Gaming
6. Teleportation
7. The Telescope for Invisible Stars
8. The AIDS Vaccine
9. Tweeting by Thinking
10. The Electric Eye
11. The Mercury Probe
12. The Personal Carbon Footprint
13. The Solar Shingle
14. The Handheld Ultrasound
15. The YikeBike
16. Vertical Farming
17. The Planetary Skin
18. The $20 Knee
19. A Watchdog for Financial Products
20. The Electric Microbe
21. The Bladeless Fan
22. The Custom Puppy
23. The Cyborg Beetle
24. The Biotech Stradivarius
25. The Nissan Leaf
26. The Robo-Penguin
27. The Universal Unicycle
28. YouTube Funk
29. Dandelion Rubber
30. Wooden Bones
31. The Living Wall
32. The School of One
33. The No-Punt Offense
34. The Human-Powered Vending Machine
35. The Handyman’s X-Ray Vision
36. Meat Farms
37. Packing, Improved
38. The Foldable Speaker
39. The Levitating Mouse
40. The Edible Race Car
41. The High-Speed Helicopter
42. The Supersuit
43. The Eyeborg
44. Spiderweb Silk
45. The Sky King
46. The Smart Bullet
47. The Fashion Robot
48. The 3-D Camera
49. The Newest Cloud
50. The World’s Fastest (Steam-Powered) Car

A Poetics of Lament and Justice

Lamentations do not belong only to biblical prophets and writers. Modern poets, too, lament. Many poets of African descent could be just called ”mourning poets.” They lament over social injustice, poverty, racism, discrimination, lyching, suffering, in particular mourn over a pre-colonial African culture and heritage which they never knew and experienced, before the tragic imposition of the systems of  colonialism and the historical violence of slavery and the slave trade. For example, in Ps. 137 we read:

By the rivers of Babylon,

There we sat down and wept,

When we remembered Zion

Upon the willows in the midst

of it

We hung our harps.

For there our captors demanded

of us songs,

and our tormentors mirth,

sayings,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion”

(Ps. 137)

Exile is marked by a profound sense of despair, displacement and alienation and subsequently turns into an incessant quest for return and (self and collective) emancipation. The parallels between the ancient Israelites and modern African Diaspora are striking.  Just as the Jews were subjected to slavery and colonial rule, Black African Diaspora were enslaved and suffered under colonialism. Just as the ancient Israelites were captured and expelled from their homeland, the Black African Diaspora were forcibly removed from continental Africa.  As the Jews in Babylon anticipated a return to Zion, the Black Atlantic community continued to long for their promise land.   And finally in the exilic state the ancient Israelites were wondering: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land”?  Black Africans in the Diaspora, however, did not sing or seek to chant a divine musical, rather they wept and mourned. Their song was/is a poetic of absence and homelessness, lament and alienation, forgetfulness and remembrance, nativistic and diasporic. “Their heritage was translated into feelings and hymns of sorrow caused not only by the severance from one’s land and clan but also from the human race and consequently from the center” (Delgado-Tall, The New Negro Movement 307).  For example the Haitian renowned poet and activist, Jacques Roumain remembers Africa in a nostalgic, existential, wistful, and melancholic tone,

Africa, I have preserved your memory, Africa

You are in me

Like the splinter in a wound

Like a totem in the heart of a village

(Jacques Roumain, Bois d’ebene 5)

In a poem rightly entitled “Enslaved,” Claude McKay sings the lament song of the Black Atlantic:

Oh, when I think of my long suffering race,

For weary centuries despised, oppressed

Enslaved are lynched, denied a human place

in the general life of the Christian West

and in the Black Land disinherited

Robbed in the ancient country of its birth

My heart grows sick with hate, becomes leads,

For this my race has no home on earth…

Langston Hughes, the Poet Laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, furthermore chants the inevitable American melody:

I am the American heartbreak–

Rock on which Freedom

Stumps its toe–

The great mistake

that Jamestown

Made long ago

In closing, many poets of African descent function as the conscience of the Black Diaspora of the Atlantic Triangular communities and play a similar role to biblical prophets. They warn their people of their condition, write about their lives, comfort them, exhort them, provide spiritual guidance, invoke collective consciousness, and stand in solidarity with them. In other words, just like biblical prophets black poets of the Africana intellectual tradition wear many hats. They  exhort, condemn, contest, revolt,  encourage, unify, and guide. Aime Cesaire of Martinique had a unique way of articulating black solidarity and ethnic transcendence:

“… I would come to this country of mine and say to it:” Embrace me without fear…And if all I know how to do is speak,

it is for you that I shall speak.” And I would say more:

“My lips shall speak for miseries that no mouth, my voice shall be the liberty of those who languish in the dungeon of

despair….”

(Aime Cesaire, “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal,” in The Negritude Poets: An Anthology of Translations from the French, 70)

The Slave Trip: A Human History Lecture

Renown historian Marcus Rediker gave an informative lecture at Cornell University on the subject of  the Slave Trip: A Human History. Click on the link below to listen:

The Slave Trip: A Human History Lecture

Rediker is the author of the influential work, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, and  The Slave Ship: A Human History.

“The sea is history” (Derek Walcott)