Triqui Women Demand Justice and Freedom from Paramilitary Violence in Oaxaca

To link back to the source blog, My Word Is My Weapon, please click on the title.

Triqui Women on the Frontline in San Juan Copala Conflict

A New Ambush Aimed at the Women-Led Caravan Leaves Three Dead; Caravan Postponed
by Kristin Bricker

Photo: José Carlo González, La Jornada

The paramilitaries who invaded San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, this past July 30 have since abandoned the autonomous municipality's town hall.  They didn't go far, however, and near-daily shootings from the paramilitary sharpshooters stationed around the town keep San Juan Copala under a state of siege.

San Juan Copala declared itself autonomous following the 2006 uprising that nearly drove Oaxaca's governor out of office.  The Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT), a paramilitary organization founded by the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI, which has ruled Oaxaca for eighty years), has kept San Juan Copala under siege since January.  UBISORT has blocked the road into town with boulders and logs, forcing Copala residents to use trails through the woods to bring in desperately needed supplies on their backs.  UBISORT snipers are positioned in the hills surrounding the town, making it extremely dangerous for residents to leave their homes at all.

"No one can go outside in Copala," says Mariana Flores, a representative of the autonomous municipality.  "If they [paramilitaries] see you on the street, they will shoot at you."

Residents believe that the paramilitaries are more likely to kill men than women.  According to Flores, "If men try to go outside, they don't take more than two steps before [the paramilitaries] try to hurt or kill them."

As a result, Triqui women are playing increasingly vital roles in San Juan Copala.  "In San Juan Copala, it is mainly women who risk their lives to go out and look for food," says Flores. When paramilitaries raided San Juan Copala with the help of Oaxacan state police this past July 30, it was women who attempted to repel the invasion.  "Women have decided to demand their rights, and now it is women who are struggling for the community," reports Flores.

Women's increasingly protagonistic role in the conflict means that they now bear the brunt of the paramilitaries' violence.   Over the past four months:

• UBISORT murdered Bety Cariño, a non-Triqui Oaxacan community organizer, along with Finnish observer Jyri Jaakkola, during an aid caravan to San Juan Copala on April 27.  It is believed that Cariño was targeted.
• On May 15, UBISORT leaders beat and attempted to kidnap two Copala women.  Later that day, UBISORT members kidnapped 12 women and children who had snuck out of San Juan Copala to purchase food.
• On May 20, unidentified assassins murdered Cleriberta Castro Aguilar and her husband Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, one of the founders of the autonomous municipality.
• On June 24, sharpshooters shot and wounded 8-year-old Miriam Martínez in San Juan Copala.
• On June 26, sharpshooters shot and wounded Marcelina de Jesús López and Celestina Cruz Ramírez as they left a meeting in San Juan Copala.
• On July 26, Maria Rosa Francisco disappeared near her home in San Juan Copala when sharpshooters opened fire.  She had left her house to look for firewood and is feared dead.
• On July 30, when women attempted to repel the paramilitary/police raid on San Juan Copala, two girls aged 17 and 14 were shot.  The 14-year-old was paralyzed when a bullet fired by the UBISORT lodged in her spine.

During the same time period, in addition to the murders of Jaakkola and Ramírez, only one man was injured;  sharpshooters shot him in the leg when he left his home to use the bathroom.

On August 11, Triqui women took their fight to the state capital and are now occupying Oaxaca City's main plaza. They expect their protest encampment to grow as more and more Triquis who have been displaced by the violence converge on the state capital.  The women say they will stay in Oaxaca's main plaza until the government brings the people responsible for dozens of murders in the Triqui region to justice.  "We haven't received any response from the government," reports Flores.  She says that governor-elect Gabino Cué has not responded to their demands either. 

The women had planned to travel to Mexico City on Monday, August 23, to meet with social organizations in an attempt to gain more support.  However, the caravan was postponed following an ambush on August 21 that killed three men associated with the autonomous municipality and injured another two.  Amongst the dead is Antonio Ramírez López, the leader of Santa Cruz Tilapa, a community that belongs to the autonomous municipality.   Ramírez López was one of the founders of the autonomous municipality. The five men were helping organize the women's caravan, and the Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Human Rights Center says that the men were ambushed as they travelled in a pick-up truck to pick up Triqui women who were supposed to participate in the women's caravan.  Forensic investigators report that AK-47s and AR-15s were used in the ambush.  Both weapons are classified as exclusively for military use, and it is illegal for civilians to own them.

The autonomous municipality claims that paramilitaries from both UBISORT and the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) participated in the ambush, although at this point survivors have not identified their attackers. 

Organizers in the women's protest encampment in Oaxaca City say that they will remain in the capital's main plaza until their demands are met.  They are currently in the process of reenforcing the protest encampment with more supporters.  The reenforcement is a security precaution because Rufino Juarez, the leader of UBISORT, was seen on Saturday and Sunday near the women's protest encampment.  Juarez has personally participated in assaults against Triqui women, including the May 15 kidnapping of twelve women and children.

For the Tule People of NW Colombia, WHM Supremacist Imperialism and Colonialism, along with Militarism and Drug Wars, Ecocide through Pesticide Poisoning and Forced Relocation = Genocide

the Tule are a displaced group of Indigenous Peoples forced out of ancestral land in NW Colombia into Panama

The problem is genocidal violence against the Tule people, their land, their culture, and genocidal violence against many other Indigenous peoples from Northwestern Colombia, who have been engaged in resistance by European colonists and their descendants who are forcing them out of their homeland in Colombia. The murderous policies are entirely a product of Western white male supremacist civilisation and are completely bound to the past and present policies and practices of the U.S. government and covert operations overseen by it.

Indigenous people the world over are militantly well-organised and organising against the many assaults against them from many sources: the Western Civilisation, the Global North, militarism, white het male supremacy, capitalism, drug wars, pesticide pollution, and other ecocidal practices. Indigenous people are being actively murdered. Extinction = Genocide.

Below are two articles describing some of the conditions the Tule refugees are facing. The Tule comprise many Indigenous ethnic groups working to survive the practices of the dominator nation of Colombia which has many ties to the unfathomably terroristic and genocidal dominator nation called the U.S.A.

We may note that the first article gives historical context and identifies many conditions that have been long-standing genocidal practices since the 1600s; this links the current atrocities to a rapist, pillaging lineage of white male supremacist invasion and terrorism. The NYT piece the ignores the history of imperialist, rapist colonisation and genocide that directly implicates the U.S. government as a key ruling body of a well-functioning terrorist nation which practices genocide against Indigenous people globally, through corporate control, military force, and white het male supremacist worldviews and values. The video which is part of the first article explains more of what is going on. The NYT simply shows one photograph, noting that men and women are separated, which isn't relevant here, although Western WHM terrorism functions especially brutally when Western male invaders gain access to the women and girls of a colonised population.

The first article is from Intercontinental Cry, an Indigenist activist website. You can link back by clicking on the title.

Colombia: Indigenous Peoples Under Threat

August 7, 2010

In Colombia, over two decades of conflict between the government and paramilitary groups has uprooted more than 3 million people. Today the conflict poses an even greater threat of extinction to 34 distinct Indigenous Peoples in Colombia. Among them, in the Uraba region of northwest Colombia, the Tule.




Living close to the border with Panama, the Tule have long considered abandoning their ancestral lands and heading into Panama to escape the constant threats and intimidation by Colombia's paramilitary groups.

There are about 70,000 other Tule, who are also known as Kuna, living in northern Panama--and nearly half of them are living under their own constitution in the Comarca de Kuna Yala or district of the Kuna.

But how do you walk away from the land of your ancestors, the land you know and love, the land that you believe you are here to protect? Beliefs and obligations can run deeper than any real or perceived danger, no matter how great it is.

Then there's the Tule's long history. It runs contrary to some popular academic beliefs, but the Tule say they were born in the jungles of Colombia. And a series of devastating wars in the 1600s forced the vast majority to seek refuge in Panama.

Less than 600 Tule remain in the land of their ancestors.

Context, courtesy of UNCHR:

* Colombia’s internal armed conflict that started in 1964 has pitted Colombia’s armed forces against two main guerrilla groups – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Clashes also routinely involve organized crime gangs and narcotics traffickers that have links to guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

* Colombia has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the world. There are about three million registered IDPs in Colombia, of which an estimated 41,000 are indigenous. However, indigenous displacement often goes unregistered – due to the remoteness of indigenous territory, lack of access to state services and cultural barriers.

* Out of Colombia’s total national population of 43 million there are an estimated one million indigenous people comprising about 90 indigenous groups.

* At least 27 indigenous groups are at risk of disappearing as a result of armed conflict, according to Colombia’s Constitutional Court. The National Indigenous Association, ONIC, says 18 groups are at acute risk of extinction.

* Indigenous people have suffered an increase in violence linked to armed conflict during the past 10 years. ONIC has reported the murders of about 1,980 indigenous people during the period 1998-2008.

* Colombia in April 2009 signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a landmark declaration that outlines the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlaws discrimination against them. The declaration upholds the rights of indigenous people to stay on their lands and duties of the State to protect them.

* Under Colombian and international law, members of indigenous groups are entitled to special protections from forced displacement.

Also see:
Documents (in Spanish and English) on Indigenous Peoples in Colombia (pdf) courtesy of Rights & Democracy

Video: An important 60-minute discussion on the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia by Federico Guzman, a Specialist in Colombian constitutional law and legal advisor to Indigenous organizations: http://streaming.dd-rd.ca/Saskatoon/Part3_Guzman.wmv (more videos available here)

Websites: Information site on Colombia’s ethnic groups www.etniasdecolombia.org (in Spanish); The National Indigenous Association of Colombia, http://www.onic.org.co/ (in Spanish)

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What follows next is cross-posted from *here* at The New York Times.

When a Drug Battle Spells Extinction

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

 

B. Heger/United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. A traditional gathering of the Tule people of Colombia. Men and women sit on different sides.

The drug trade and other domestic strife are wreaking havoc on Colombia’s dwindling population of indigenous peoples while also threatening the integrity of the country’s biologically diverse forests, the United Nations High Council on Refugees reported this week.

More than 40 percent of the country’s 84 distinct indigenous groups are now at risk of extinction, the United Nations said, because of the pressures of the country’s long-running internal armed conflict, which is fueled partly by the cocaine trade.

With only 1,200 remaining members, the Tule tribe of northwestern Colombia is considered uniquely threatened. In recent months, armed groups have overrun traditional Tule lands, killing and terrorizing villagers and forcibly recruiting young people into their ranks.

Tule leaders fear that if they are driven off their lands, the forest that they have inhabited for generations will be ruined by development. “The Tule are an ancient people and their value is that they protect the environment,” one community’s chief and spiritual leader told United Nations representatives during a recent visit.

Meanwhile, the Colombian government’s coca eradication measures continue to draw criticism from some quarters for collateral damage to the environment and indigenous and rural people.

In August, the Guardian newspaper in London published an open letter by nearly 50 academics, many of them from Colombian universities, to the newly elected president, Juan Manuel Santos, protesting the fumigation of coca crops. In the letter, the professors claim “confirmed knowledge” that Colombia’s antinarcotics police established a base earlier this year in the Cauca region along the Pacific coastline that they are using to lead fumigation operations.

“The impact of the widespread spraying on the local communities has been devastating,” the letter states. “The planes have targeted not just illegal coca plants, but all vegetation, including staple crops that local populations depend upon.”

The Cuaca region is one of several areas identified as a hot spot of biological diversity by a World Bank-financed study in the 1990s, the Proyecto Biopacifico.

“It is in utter disregard of the recommendations drawn up by this acclaimed study that the Colombian government has undertaken a massive, indiscriminate fumigation campaign in the region, hoping to eradicate illegal coca cultivation,” the professors wrote.

The Poisonous Politics of Food Production and Consumption and What We Can Do

The article below flows from the brilliant work of people like Vandana Shiva. Here is one of her speeches on this subject:


The source website for what follows may be linked back to here: 

EcoSalon / By Vanessa Barrington

5 Terrible Problems With the Way We Eat (And What You Can Do About Them)

Most of the problems in our food system stem from the concentration of power, land, wealth, and political influence in the hands of a few large players.

September 24, 2010  | 

If you ask food experts like Michael Pollan, Marian Nestle, Gary Nabhan, Vandana Shiva, and numerous other writers and scholars what the biggest problems in our global, industrialized food system are, you’ll end up with a lot to chew on.

It’s difficult to separate the problems into discrete categories because everything is connected. Big problems lead to seemingly smaller problems, that, when allowed to fester, become open wounds – much like the foul waste lagoons on industrial pig farms that dot our landscape, or the actual wounds on human flesh caused by antibiotic resistant staph infections, which are a direct result of the overuse of antibiotics in livestock operations.

Most of the problems in the system stem from one giant problem: Concentration of power, land, wealth, and political influence in the hands of a few large players who have gamed the system for their benefit. Here are the biggest issues, as we see them, followed by suggestions for what you can do about them.

1. Food Safety

Big players in the meat, dairy, eggs, and bagged greens industries are unsafe at any speed. Nobody paying attention to the news over the past few years could have missed the biggest food recall stories, nor the very real harm and deaths that have resulted from many of them. E-coli in beef has sickened many, killed some, and ruined lives. Recently, salmonella tainted pasteurized milk was pulled from shelves. Nobody could have missed the recent recall of about a half a billion eggs, and there have been numerous recalls of bagged greens – the most recent in June. These stories are becoming nearly every day occurrences, leaving us to wonder if our food system is DESIGNED to kill us. The problem is a direct result of lax food safety enforcement laws and lack of inspectors. This is at least partially because industry lobbies make sure that inconvenient regulations are not passed. Concentration in the industry also leads to over-crowded, sadistic farm operations requiring the use of massive doses of non-therapeutic antibiotics and grown hormones, and resulting in air and water pollution that contribute to a host of environmental and public health nightmares, and misery for the animals trapped in the system.

What can you do about it?
Know your farmers, ask about their practices and support what they are doing. You’ll eat better, you’ll worry less and you’ll support a better food system. When bagged spinach was first recalled a few years ago, I knew that the spinach in my CSA box was fine. Likewise, during the recent egg recall, I worried not a whit about the pastured eggs I buy at the farmers’ market.

2. Declining Wild Fish Stocks

As Taras Grescoe pointed out in Bottomfeeder and Paul Greenberg most recently outlined in Four Fish, we eat too many of a very few species of wild fish – mostly the ones that are higher on the food chain. Continuing in this vein will cause the eventual decimation of our oceans.

What can you do about it?
Branch out and try something new. Eat bait, or smaller fish, like anchovies, sardines, and small Spanish mackerel. These fish are more sustainable, more plentiful, more resilient, and healthier for you than the larger predators.

3. Poor Aquaculture Practices

Aquaculture may be an important food source in the future (see above) but much of it is practiced in ways that are unhealthy for eaters, native species and the environment. If GMO salmon is approved, (still pending at press time) it will only add to the list of everything that is wrong with farming carnivorous fish in the open ocean. Don’t replace that salmon on your plate with shrimp. Ever wonder why the shrimp is so cheap at restaurants like Red Lobster?

What can you do about it?
Educate yourself on sustainable aquaculture. In general, only eat farmed fish that are natural vegetarians and only buy from suppliers that are transparent about the origins of their fish.

4. Genetically Modified Crops

Besides being untested for their effects on human health, genetically modified seeds don’t necessarily produce greater yields, and can lead to over-application of pesticides that in turn can cause super weeds which have the potential to threaten overall biodiversity, and to contaminate non-gmo crops with their genetic material. The most recent case involving GMOS ended badly when the USDA issued permits allowing GMO sugar beets to be planted in defiance of a federal judge. The judge had issued a decision to stop the planting of GMO sugar beets on the grounds that they may cross-pollinate table beets and Swiss chard. Despite the fact that most other countries have laws outlawing or requiring the labeling of GMO foods, our government continues to bow down to industry.

What can you do about it?
Educate yourself about which crops are commonly genetically modified and only buy organic versions. Better yet, support the companies involved in the non-GMO project. These are the companies willing to go out on a limb and actually test their organic ingredients to make sure they are not contaminated. Also, raise your voice and let the USDA and our legislators know that you don’t want GMOS!

5. Exploitation of Workers

From actual documented slavery in Florida’s tomato fields, to daily pesticide exposure in farming communities, to the fact that America’s lowest paying jobs are in fast food restaurants – our food system crushes workers, ruins their health, and keeps them in poverty so that they need the cheap, processed, industrialized food to survive.

What can you do about it?
This is a tough one, because buying from local, organic farms isn’t necessarily the answer. Even the nicest local, organic farms don’t pay their workers much and require long hours of backbreaking work. The farmers often work just as hard and can’t even afford health insurance for themselves or their families, so even if they want to do better by their workers, they can’t. This is where raising your voice for a more fair government policy that benefits small farmers equally can help. The new USDA is doing a better job clamping down on the big guys and supporting small-scale farmers than ever before, but we’ve got a ways to go.

Is James Franco.... you know.... (Straight?)

image of both Jameses--Franco and Dean, is from here

I know, I know: whether a man is straight is really no one's business. (Well, except dominant media's and Wikipedia's.) I mean that's "private" right? Coming into awareness that you might be "heterosexual" ought to be your own protected process. And often enough, thank GAWD, it does only prove to be "a stage" in one's development. Some might even say it's healthy to explore one's own heterosexual feelings! Only that person should decide if and when to reveal that very personal information to others, in places and times when they know their unsuspecting friends and obtuse family members won't freak out at the news and reject them or toss them out onto the street, being told "No child of mine will be STRAIGHT and live under MY roof!"

There have been many times that I've revealed to a friend or family member that someone (other than myself) is lesbian or gay. Usually, which is also to say "too often", whether they are conservative or liberal I'll get that the litany of "caring" or "concerned' comments as if I've told them a secret that (they believe) must be attached to some stigmatically and socially attached shame. You'd think I'd whispered, "So-and-so has GONORRHEA!" Nope. Just that they're lesbian or gay--not even if they're homoSEXUALLY ACTIVE. Just the 'being' lesbian or gay part. As if that's something to feel shame about. (It isn't.) Yes, it's made to be shameful by an anti-lesbian and anti-gay (not just "homophobic") society that incorrectly thinks being straight is natural and so not being straight... well, you can extrapolate from there.  -- Julian Real, gay male who has never been heterosexual, although there was a phase of "experimentation"

I'm not sure if it's been before or since he portrayed James Dean, but James Franco has been an actor I've kept an eye on--and to me he's not hard on the eyes. I watched Freaks and Geeks, but don't recall him from that time as "a name".... yet.

He's clearly gifted in a variety of arts arenas, from acting to filmmaking to painting to performance art. What can I say? I like the guy. A lot. He's intelligent, creatively open, and he's got a sense of humor. I don't ask for much from men; only those few qualities and that they don't hate women: so, as far as I know, he gets a passing grade. Speaking of grades, he's reportedly taken some unfathomably high number of course credits in college one semester. Crazy. And he's not done. He's working on his PhD.

As has been discussed here in the past, I don't find men attractive based on looks alone, or, even, primarily. I mean I can find men attractive, physically, instantly. But for me to find a man REALLY attractive, he has to be engaged in some interesting stuff--he's got to be engaged with the world in creative ways that are counter-hegemonic.

Without having seen it, I believe that the his film Feast of Stephen is about gay desire, longing, and the dangers of being young and gay in a tyrannically heteropatriarchal society where gross homophobic violence can become eroticised. As noted, I've not seen it and given the story, I'm not sure what I'd make of it. Eroticised violence against women and gay men just isn't "what I'm into" (being erotically and otherwise counter-hegemonic and all) so I expect I'll find the movie enraging more than engaging. But I'll try and see it and report back to you.

There's also new film in which he stars, Howl, he portrays Allen Ginsberg, a gay man I rather despise, as his proclivity for boys was anything but counter-hegemonic. Fortunately Andrea Dworkin took Ginsberg to task for his acted-upon desire for boys. She called his misopedic ass out good. I wish more people were like her. (For more on Howl, see this from NPR.)

People speaking honestly to one another is a rare thing indeed. With that as one of the most pathetic segues in the history of segues, I'll shift gears to an MTV interview with Mr. Franco, about the whole Twilight book and film series phenomena.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

You can tell he's actually given the matter some thought, and I am always struck with how little mass media interviewers want to know about anything below the surface, not about James exactly, but about the issues he raises. You can kind of tell they went to the "soundbite school of journalism", if that. Franco has studied at a variety of academic institutions from NYU's renowned film school to Yale. He's no slacker. And he's clearly interested in a lot about dominant society and dominant media, utilising some very non-dominant media to express himself.

As you may also know, James played one of Harvey Milk's lovers in the movie, Milk. Harvey is yet another gay man who was known for having sex with underage males. This will be the focus of some future blog posts. This post is primarily about Franco and film.

Gay cinema is rare enough. Not as rare as lesbian cinema, of course, because men remain dominant in every social sphere, including in the world of queer film, and so does whiteness.

If he were any other heterosexual, there could be problems, for me, with him making a film about the humiliations and degradations that can accompany gay sexual longing. But, I know he's been interested in how U.S. society exercises masculinity and as a not-out and/or non-gay actor, he has shown an admirable dedication to human portraits of gay and bi men. The fact that he's a genuine artist (as opposed to the corporate types, I suppose) exploring this terrain does cause me to cut him a bit of slack. I believe art should be neither politically (patriarchally) correct nor politically (patriarchally)  incorrect, only honest and if possible, truthful. The discussion ought to follow the viewing.

So, bravo, James, for putting this work out there, whether or not you are gay. I'll appreciate your work and accept you even if you are a heterosexual man. ;)

Here's one site that has a clip of Feast of Stephen, for now. And, quite possibly, here's that same clip:

Afghan Women Vote Against Patriarchal Fascism East and West

Most of what follows is from Shiraz Socialist. Please click on the title just below to link back.

Afghan elections: three million-plus defy the fascists

September 19, 2010 at 2:37 am 

Above: anti-fascist Afghan women: they know how to deal with the Taliban

“Although the “west” has all but given up on Afghan democracy – the agreed-upon euphemism for this betrayal appears to be “working to lower expectations” – it would seem that a few million Afghans have voted in today’s elections anyway, braving Taliban threats of dismemberment and death…”
Read  the rest of what Terry Glavin has to say, here.

Julian's note:
Afghan women need to be armed to deal with U.S. and NATO forces too, who are no less threatening and terroristic to women and girls in Afghanistan, despite what Western media proclaims as Truth.

Terry Glavin's blog post on  this contains anti-Semitic references allegedly used by Taliban forces to keep women from voting. Never mind the Jews, folks. The U.S. Christian White Right are funding the slaughter of Asian women in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Portland is "Pornland" and Strip Club-City and that requires Pimps Sexually Buying, Renting, and Trafficking Girls: A True Story of Prostitution and Pimping from Nightline

image above, from here, is part of another ABC news program, Primetime

Please keep in mind what you are about to see is a story that doesn't include the most poor and most marginalised girls and women globally or even in North America who are lured or captured by pimps and slavers. The story you're about to watch is "the nicer end" of the spectrum of how pimps and slavers operate. It's the end that pro-pimp, pro-procurement activists and advocates claim is liberating for women and ought to be legally considered "free speech" or a "civil liberty". Just one question: Speech and liberty for which groups of oppressed people?

The following true story of the purchase and pimping of girls for men is brought to you tonight, in part, by Craigslist whose business motto ought to be: Promoting and Profiting from the Sex Trafficking of Girls for Men Was a Third of Our Business Revenues--until we were "censored". (Note: They were never censored. Anti-sex/pro-sexxxism pornographers, procurers, and slavers love to throw that term around as if they've ever been made to shut up and as if they aren't in the business of silencing women and girls by any means necessary.)

All that follows is from *here*. A video follows just after the title and date below. Click on the center of the image to start it.

In Search of Love: Teens Lured Into Sex Trade

Police Say Portland, Ore., is a Hub for Child Sex Trafficking

By SHARYN ALFONSI and URSULA FAHY

Sept. 22, 2010

The first time "Katie" danced at a strip club, she was 13, and in the seventh grade.

Not long before, the Oregon girl had gone on an ordinary outing to a mall in downtown Portland. She met some boys there and they invited her to a party in the suburbs. At the party, Katie met an older boy she would begin to date.

"He bought me a lot of things, like shoes, outfits and purses and stuff like that," said Katie, of J, who she began to think of as her boyfriend.

Before long, J told her he was having financial trouble, and he asked her if she would she dance, "just once," at a strip club, she said. Katie, who had only ever worn high heels to church and on special occasions, soon was forced into working as a stripper and a street prostitute six days a week, she said.

Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And Portland, routinely voted one of the most livable cities in the country, hides a dark secret: It is a national hub for child sex trafficking, police and victims' advocates say. 

Children, young teens from all over the country, but mostly from the small towns of the Northwest, walk Portland's streets.

Katie's inauguration into the life was like that of countless other girls.

That first day at the strip club, she remembers looking out from the stage.

"It was gross," she told ABC News. "They're like older than my dad and grandpap and I just wanted to go home. "

She was told, "You can't go home, you have to finish your shift," she recalled. "And I was like, 'I don't work here,' and they were like, 'You do now.'"

"I realized I pretty much walked into a trap," she said.

Katie's is a classic case, said Sgt. Mike Geiger, who heads Portland's sexual assault detail. Cute young girls are being targeted by pimps.

"They look for them in the malls, the parks, on MySpace, Facebook," Geiger said. "(A)nd they look for them in the schools and walking downtown. They strike up a friendship with them."

Preying on Vulnerable Teens

Pimps fish for girls whose home lives are lacking in some way.

Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

(Getty Images)

If a girl indicates she's not getting enough attention or is having some other problems at home, "They will use the information and become their rescuer,'' said Geiger of the pimps' strategy. "'I can fix all that,' the pimps will say. 'I can give you a place to stay. You're way too mature to be treated like that.'"

The pimp will then give the girl clothes and other things, as well as affection, said Geiger. "And then the trap has sprung."

Ruth Roberts says that's what happened to her daughter.

"I was a single mom working really late ... making six figures,'' she said. "My daughter was getting A's and B's. Playing basketball. ... She had a good life, a good family, she didn't need anything."

But Roberts' daughter, then 16, met a guy on Portland's subway system. They "dated" and he convinced to her run away and live with him, Roberts said.

Soon, said Roberts, "She was walking the streets."

Forced to stroll Portland's notorious prostitution area around 82nd Avenue, referred to as "the track," even in the bitter cold.

Often, though, according to Roberts, her daughter was "rented" out on Craigslist.com.

Roberts said she spent her life savings trying to find her daughter and rescue her from the streets and from her pimp.

But her daughter, Roberts said, was afraid to leave. Her pimp once handcuffed her to a steering wheel of a car while he disappeared into a house, Roberts said her daughter told her. The pimp returned covered in blood, changed his shirt, and they went out to eat.

"She thinks he killed someone," Roberts said.

It is this fear that routinely keeps girls on the stroll.

Katie obediently worked the strip clubs by day and the track by night. At just 13 years old, she often would get picked up by johns within minutes of walking "the track."

She said she lived with J and lived by his rules. Other girls would come and go, she said. She remembers one in particular who was about the same age as she was.

"He bought her," she told ABC News.

Pimp Tells Teen, 'There is No God Where You Live'

That girl would find a way to escape, and Katie said she dreamed of doing the same.

"I just prayed," she said. "I was, like, crying and then he came out and he was like, 'What are you doing?' and I said, 'Praying.' And he said, 'Didn't I tell you there is no God where you live?'"

Michelle Alston knows that desperation first hand. She said her mother was prostitute, and at age 13, she decided to follow in her footsteps.

"When you go out there you risk getting robbed, raped, beat,'' she said. "You're getting in a car with someone you don't know. You risk that. ... Do I think it's worth it? No, but at the time it's all I knew."

Even though she was only 13 when she started, Alston said that sometimes she would have to lie about her age, when the john wanted someone younger.

"That's what they liked,'' she said.

When she was 14, Alston was introduced to the Internet and decided to go into business for herself.

"I would post online, Craigslist, City Vibe, Arrows Guide,'' she said. More than a dozen girls worked for her, she said, and she would post pictures of other girls, along with information about them, their fee and a phone number.

At 17, she was arrested and charged with "compelling and promoting prostitution."

She was a teenaged female pimp.

"I don't like that term,'' she told ABC, saying that she preferred to think of herself as a "financial advisor."
"I'd advise them to put their finances in my hands," she said.

Alston served three years in prison. She was pregnant when she began her sentence and gave birth in prison to a baby girl.

Helping women and girls to escape prostitution is fraught with challenges, experts say. For one, they are often treated as criminals, though they are just children and many have been forced into sex work.

"They might say to you, 'I've lived through more than most 40 year olds,' but then they say 'Oh, and I really love Justin Bieber,'" said Esther Nelson, a victims' advocate in Portland.

Nelson said she now sees girls forced into prostitution who are coming from and going to all parts of the country -- Atlanta, Hawaii, Chicago, New Orleans.

The city of Portland is home to more than 100 strip clubs and massage parlors, making it, per capita, the largest legal commercial sex industry in the nation.

"We have a very vibrant sex industry that is considered legitimate," she said. "And when you have that, you find the exploitation of children, because the sex industry is built on the exploitation of innocent people."

Police say Nelson is witnessing the results of sophisticated human trafficking now run by gangs who've realized it's often easier and more profitable to move girls than it is to move drugs.

Girls Branded With their Pimps' Logos

Authorities have many troubling stories to tell of the ways in which the girls are abused and victimized.
"People have been gang raped, tied up in Saran Wrap," Nelson said. "We're talking about 13-year-old girls left for dead in their hotel rooms without water or food for days. Pimps put logos on their bodies and they're treated like animals."

Geiger said Portland is badly in need of more shelters to help give the teen prostitutes a safe gateway off the streets.

"Often they end up in a juvenile detention center with less resources than they deserve," he said.

More often than not, Nelson said, the girls return to the street.

Escaping the Life
Katie was able to escape her pimp after waiting weeks for a bed in a shelter.

Roberts' daughter is no longer working as a prostitute, she said. But the young woman remains fearful that her pimp will find her.

Alston, who now works at a restaurant, said she hopes the family profession stops with her. She plans to shelter her curly-haired daughter, who she said has her hazel eyes, as much as possible.

"I want her to be successful and happy,'' she said. "I just want her to have everything I didn't."

Who's Hating Who? The logical phallusy of men's claims of endemic "misandry"

image of preposterous t-shirt saying is from here

In case you can't easily read it, the writing on the white t-shirt above says this:

 MISANDRY IS THE #1 HATE CRIME IN AMERICA

Now exactly how stupid does someone have to be to believe THAT? Exactly how out of touch with reality? Exactly how delusional? How egocentric? How self-absorbed? How clueless?

The reason that mostly WHITE non-poor [North] American (and UK and Australian and European) men can actually think what's on that t-shirt is accurate is because of something called "logical phallusy". Below I'll identify how that works.

Anyone who refuses to figuratively, metaphorically, or otherwise suck the dicks of men are often considered to be man-haters, or, in the newest parlance, "misandrists". (We must ignore, for the moment, that men who get their dicks sucked in any way often enjoy this act because it degrades the person doing the sucking, or, at least, makes the man feel in control, or like he's the master and the other person is the slave, in their sexual if not also emotional relationship.) So too are people regarded as "misandrist" if they refuse to defer to men on all matters "intellectual". So too are people considered to be "man-haters" if they value the perspectives, analyses, and political projects of feminists over those of anti-feminists. So too are people assessed and labeled as "practitioners of misandry" if they value the perspectives, analysis, and political projects of women in the Global South over men in the Global North.

I will tell you what I see: because I call some men some not-nice names when those men are not nice in the ways they speak about feminists, I am regarded as a man-hater. This determination is made unequivocally by many anti-feminist men who claim they aren't anti-feminist (well, some of them claim that; some own it right up front that they are anti-feminists. What they don't like to say out loud is the degree to which they are also misogynists, as this lessens their "victim status" in their claim to be the oppressed gender).

From YahooAnswers to many other social Q&A sites, to men's misogynistic blah-blah-blogs, to reddit-type websites that host topic-specific discussions, these men claim that feminists are "anti-misandrist". There is likely to be no end to them finding still more places on and offline for shoveling this CRAP out for everything to smell. The CRAP being that there is such a thing as a social-political problem called "woman being misandrists". I accept fully that some men--and please keep in mind here I don't identify as a man--do hate men. I accept that some women hate men, although their numbers have never been substantial, relative to "all women". Their numbers are not even significant when compared to the number of men who hate women. But, some men do hate men. Usually that hate goes this way: White men hate men of color, institutionally if not interpersonally; straight men hate gay men, in policy and law if not also in their own social circles. (But usually they express some forms of that hate in their social circles as well. Even if only in "jokes".)

What "anti-misandrists" keep forgetting, or never bothered to notice in the first place, was that the "hatred" that feminists are concerned about isn't only the form of hate that shows up as men being disrespectful or degrading to women. Or the form that shows up as men raping women. Or the form that shows up as multi-billion dollar a year industries called: sexual slavery, trafficking, pornography, advertising, cosmetics, plastic surgery, medical abuse and neglect, or denial of human rights. Or the form that manifests as men believing themselves superior to women, according to male supremacist assessments of what's valuable and what isn't, what's intelligence and what isn't, and what is "humane" and what isn't. What "anti-misandrists" can't quite comprehend, in any intelligible way, is that what feminists are addressing is all of the that and more: how religious institutions discriminate and dominate women, for example.

There are an overlapping, interlocking, systemic and systematic set of assaults against a whole class of people--women--by another whole class of people--men. Some of those misogynistic assaults are acted out against particular groups of women: by white men (or men of color) against women of color, for example. Or by rich men in the Global North (or Global South) against poor (or wealthy) women in the Global South. Or by het (or gay) men against lesbian (or heterosexual) women.

There's a tangled clustering of phenomena, called "hateful" that men perpetrate and perpetuate against women that is not only interpersonal and is not only institutional. Men cannot identify such a complex of "misandry". What they can do is pretend their is one. And they can do this by offering up as "proof" a dozen or two "quotes" by some white feminist women. Some of the quotes are misquotes. Some are from fiction. Some are written by women that were never considered "feminist activists" and lots of other quotes by those same women that demonstrate both regard for and respect of men are not added into that list, because that wouldn't really make the propagandistic and highly delusional point they wish to make.

"Anti-misandrist" men seem to truly, honestly believe that "misandrist women" exist en masse.  And they do, really, honestly, post four to fourteen quotes by like maybe six women as proof-positive that "misandry" is clearly THE SOCIAL-POLITICAL PROBLEM OF OUR AGE. Forget Global Warming. Forget U.S. wars in Asia. Forget famine and the problem of mass starvation and lack of access to basic health care. Forget genocide. And forget "misogyny" in the form of sexual, social, religious, and economic violence against women by men.

Some of these "anti-misandrists" even go so far as to claim that women "hit" men more than men "hit" women, never being very specific when it comes down to defining what "hit" means. Male students claim female students "shame" them in classrooms. Or they "threaten" and "silence" them by objecting to the stupid shit they say. Or they "bash" men in the media as if the media was ever owned by women. This is to say: if women DO "bash" men (verbally) in the media, why do those men who run the media allow that to happen? Is it because women are secretly the tyrants, the private dominators, and true oppressors of men across the West and elsewhere? Is it because the men who profit most from those industries can't help but let women in those industries spew "misandry"? I've yet to see much evidence of this "misandry" and when I "read all about it" all these guys point to are things like ads and TV shows that appear to not regard men as gods.

I hear this a lot: "Women are just as abusive to men  as men are to women." In what village, town, city, state, nation, hemisphere, world, solar system, universe, or multiverse?

I've seen one female relative APPEAR to be more disrespectful of her husband than her husband was of her. And any "anti-misandrist" man, if observing their dynamics, would have concludes that "she's more abusive to him than he is to her" because all they would have bothered to notice were some verbal and some non-verbal cues that she was "less than pleased" with him and sometimes felt genuine anger at him. The verbal "abuse" wasn't manifest in her calling him bad "misandrist" names, mind you. But he did call her very misogynistic terms, regularly. Her "misandry" showed up full blown in her rolling her eyes at stuff he said that she knew was full of shit. So her "eye rolling" is what would get checked off as signs of virulent man-hating/husband-hating, while his general disregard and lack of respect for her is seen as, well, as nothing to get one's pants in a twist about. See, there's really selective "seeing" going on here in assessing where the abuse is (most) in a relationship. So let's tease this out a little more, using the case of this female relative and her now ex-husband.

Who did most of the house cleaning? She did.
Who did most of the cooking? She did.
Who did most, well practically all of the child care? She did.
Who did almost all of the laundry? She did.
Who did almost all--practically every single bit--of the emotional caring of the family members? I mean who showed concern, regard, compassion, empathy, care, attention, and who regularly checked in with family members to find out how they were doing, how they were feeling, and what they might need or want to make their day or lives better? She did. He did almost none of that. Almost NONE. Sometimes he did grill stuff at family gatherings.

Yes, he did do that. So let's give credit where credit is due. But back to how things went most of the time:

Who wanted physical and emotional affection but didn't get it? Her, and each of their children. (I never once saw him hug them or praise them for anything other than athletic accomplishments. And he wouldn't debate this: he knows he was a shitty father in this regard especially.)

Who wanted some forms of "affection" but went outside the marriage to get it? HE did.

He cheated on her, claimed to the women he "rented" or otherwise spent time with that he was in an unhappy marriage as if he couldn't get out of it and as if he couldn't express his issues with their marriage to his wife before deceit and degradation of her and other women began. (The children were grown and out of the house when the cheating really amped up.) He wanted his live-in maid, laundry attendant, cook, nurse, and life manager (that would be my female relative, aka his wife for decades) AND he wanted to (and did) fuck around on her with other women.

But, she did do that eye-roll and also the occasional sigh of disbelief or disgust at things that flowed out of his mouth--as he arrogantly pontificated and obnoxiously postured himself as "the expert" on anything he found himself talking about. Yes, he did that. (There were lots of witnesses.) He was and remains one of those guys who seems to think that if the shit leaves HIS ass it must be pure gold and also perfumed.

So, who here has the problem with being a "hater"? Me, the female relative, or her husband?

The "anti-misandrist" will conclude, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that she and I do, because we don't seem to worship him or even hold him in very high regard. We must remember that even though she "doesn't hold him in very high regard" that she took him to the hospital and all doctor's appointments. She made sure he had food to eat. She prepared foods he enjoyed eating. She made sure he had clean clothes to wear. She made sure their children were attended to emotionally and physically--which meant, of course, that he didn't have to, as if stating, "Well, if SHE'S doing it all just fine, why should I have to do it also??" And yet, let her take the scumbag to court and he'll plead that he ought to get at least 50-50 custody--as if he knows a goddamned thing about how to raise children or how to respect their mother.

He has shown her a lack of regard since soon after they were married and he knew he "had her". Then he felt rather fine about subscribing to Hustler and later to investing a lot of time looking at online pornography. He also later felt just fine about seeking out sex partners online--I'm not saying he didn't have periods of guilt. I'm only saying his guilt didn't override his disregard of his wife.

And, last but not least, after decades of physically and sexually neglecting her, he raped her. Yes, by any definition, he raped her. Because he was angry with her and angry that she wanted more affection from him. So he raped her, anally, and injured her body in the process in ways that could have been lethal had infection set in, somehow believing that by raping her, he'd get HER off HIS back. And guess what? After the rape, she filed for divorce. It was, as they say, "the last straw". She dumped his sorry no-good ass.

Now, who hates who in the above story? Do I hate her now ex-husband? No. Do I have much regard or respect for him? No. But that's not hate. I hate how he treated and mistreated her. I despise the fact that he was so grossly neglectful of her and so grotesquely abusive to her at the end of their marriage.

Does she hate him? No. She's even taken him to doctor's appointments since the divorce, and helped him with some projects--they cleared out and cleaned up their house together, before it got sold.

So this is the part in the "anti-misandry" narrative where the "anti-misandrist" blames HER for hanging around HIM for so long. "Why did she stay with him if he was such a jerk?!!" But they forget to ask, "Why did he stay with a woman who cleans his clothes, cooks his food, raise their children, and also rolls her eyes occasionally?"

If they assess her to be "just as abusive" as he was, then why the hell did he stay with her??!! It couldn't be because he was, in fact, cared for and cared about by her, could it?

And to those who think "she stayed with him for the money", she's also worked a lot outside the home as well as inside it, often being the one to bring in more money than he did as his employment was shaky and hers was steady.

So who hates who in this story? There's one clear answer: he hated her. If we're going to use "hate" to mean systematically abuses disrespects and shows no regard for. And insults. And harms. And oppresses.

If all that equals "hate" then I have not hated him ever, nor has she.

Regardless of what the evidence of sociology, literature, and history has to tell us, the "anti-misandrists" are there to remind us that rape and battery statistics are grossly over-exaggerated. They do this with a straight face while never quite saying that even if that were true, men beating up and raping women would still be a serious political problem. And no matter how low the stats anti-misandrists calculate while determining incidents of such violence against women by men, they are exponentially and socially significantly higher than the rates of women beating up and raping men. This is also to say that there is no social-political epidemic, pandemic, or even "semi-occasional occurrence" of women committing penetrative sexual violence regularly and routinely against men.

According to all historical information thus uncovered, discovered, and recovered (by "unbiased" men at that), women raping men has NOT EVER been a social-political problem. (And there are plenty of objects women could use, so don't blame the lack of incidents on "anatomy": men sure don't when they rape women with objects.) There is also no social-political problem of women intimately terrorising men, or socially terrorising men, or terrorising whole groups of men, such as men of a specific ethnic group, with the exception of Nazi women in Germany in the last century, but their terroristic acts weren't gender-specific, nor was the sex of the torturers gender-specific. Paraphrasing C. A. MacKinnon: Men terrorise women: subject verb object.