Today, January 30th, my group and I went back to Sanctuary for Families to help sort donations. Recently (two weeks ago) our group went to Sanctuary for Families to meet with Emily LoBue and sort through donations, but at the end they invited us to come back whenever we could because they always need help, so we did. Before we started organizing, Leah, the woman we work with whose the head of donations, sat us down to explain what we’d be doing.
Leah told us that unfortunately the Super Bowl (which is this weekend) isn’t just about football. Super Bowl Sunday one of the biggest days of the year regarding sex trafficking, and rape. There are thousands of people around the stadium and a lot of them are men who have been drinking, as well as a lot of women who have been drinking. Often times around the stadium, some men will rape the women and later say in defense “I was drunk, I had no control” and then they blame their rape on the woman for being drunk, saying that it was their fault.
Concerning sex trafficking, some pimps drive near the stadium, hoping to recruit new prostitutes. The pimps also find drunk, out of place, young women and then traffic them. Not only are many young women trafficked on Super Bowl Sunday, but already trafficked girls are put to work to “satisfy” men who have traveled to watch the football game. Because Super Bowl Sunday is this weekend, Sanctuary for Families is expecting a lot of victims to be found and brought to them and they need supplies and clothing for the girls when they are brought to them. Our jobs today were to make “survival kits” for each of the victims. Not only is Sanctuary for Families expecting a lot of victims to come in this weekend because of Super Bowl Sunday, but there is a raid happening soon. A raid is where the NYPD and a couple people from Sanctuary for Families go into a brothel, and free the girls. Leah told us that a lot of the girls that they were going to free in the raid this week were our age and younger. After hearing this upsetting news, we were silent.
After we talked, Leah took us to the back offices where Sanctuary for Families keeps their donations. From there, we packed pajamas to bring down to the office we were working in. We lugged giant bags of new, donated pajamas down to the office to put one pair in each survival kit. We spent the whole time at Sanctuary for Families making survival kits which each had toiletries, pajamas, and some underwear.
Our group sorting through donations, packing the survival kits
