MEET Pattie: modern day abolitionist

There are some really wonderful things happening in Atlanta.  And then there are things that are terrible.  Things that make your skin crawl.  Things like human trafficking.  There are many great people and organizations working to purge this issue from our streets and the FEED sat down with one of them.  MEET Pattie, a woman on a mission to eradicate the modern day human slave trade that is disturbingly prevalent in Atlanta and across the globe.

Tell us about your project:

The Not For Sale Campaign is only about 4 and a half years old.  It was a grassroots movement that started on a college campus with a professor who came in contact with human trafficking first hand through a restaurant he often visited.  When he found out about it, it was devastating.  A few of the victims actually passed away.  It was a big story out in San Francisco.  He eventually went on a journey to travel the world, as people who experience trafficking actually do, and began to write stories as he came in contact with people who had been trafficked.  One of the people he met on his journey was an artist named Kru Nam.  She wanted to share her love of art with the kids on the street in Thailand.  She took some supplies to the kids and helped them draw.  She thought they would be creating rainbows and dogs and things that kids usually draw, but what she saw was really disturbing.  When she asked them about the images they explained that they were not from that area, they were from countries like Laos.  The kids said they were lucky to live on the streets because that meant they no longer had to be in the Karaoke bars working in sex tourism.  But they explained that their friends had not escaped.  Kru Nam asked the kids to take her to the bars and she found five year old girls sitting with 40 year old men.  She walked in and said “you are coming with me, you don’t have to be here any more”.  Today she has about 120 kids in a plantation on the border with Laos.  It is an incredible picture of where the movement took off.

The Not for Sale Campaign has really grown and stretched to become something more than what it started as.  It is still very grassroots but now we have multiple state campaigns and international efforts.  It is all volunteer based.  We started as a nonprofit that empowers anyone to become a modern day abolitionist.  If you are a student, an athlete, a musician, a church leader, you can learn how to stop trafficking. Today, we have all of those avenues but we are also try to work more upstream.  Many groups work with those who are already trafficked, working on rescue and rehab.  We are trying to work upstream with prevention and even in for-profit models to provide women with work that can keep them out of trafficking.  So many women, young girls and even men that come out of trafficking end up right back in the system since they do not have other skills.  NFSC wants to help vulnerable communities to not be so vulnerable.

It has grown fast.

 

How did you get started with NFSC?

Dave, who is the founder of NFSC decided to write a book to fund her work.  It became much more popular than he had dreamed of.  Human trafficking is huge, it has been called the epidemic of our generation.  That is where I came into play. I read the book about 4 years ago not realizing that it had just come out.  It really changed my life and I wanted to do something.   At the end of the book they share a lot of the hero stories of those making a difference.  It was encouraging that as hard as this thing is, there are people making a difference.  I knew that I needed to walk forward even if it was a dark path.  And that is where I began 4 years ago.

 

What challenges do you face with Not for Sale?

NFSC is moving very fast.  Trying to implement everything they do on a national basis locally in Georgia is sometimes difficult.  I became the State Director about 2 years ago and now Becca Posey is my Co-Director.  We didn’t have any volunteers 2 years ago and now we have over 600.  We still have a core team of about 4 or 5 people that meet weekly and do most of the planning, but we are growing.

 

What inspires you to do this work?

A lot of people think when they come to volunteer with us that we actually have direct contact with victims, that we are doing the rescuing.  And that isn’t the case.  We try to do a lot more of the upstream work that the NFSC national office wants to implement- prevention, education, advocacy.  We do try to stay connected.  Here in Atlanta we work with Tapestry, a local anti-trafficking organization.  This year we helped 15 of their clients celebrate Christmas.  It helps to stay connected to the victims, to the people actually suffering from trafficking.  When you are working on this issue for a long time you can become detached from the emotion.  You are always talking about it.  When you stay connected with those being directly effected it helps to fuel your fire and makes you realize we are not where we need to be.  There are still 200 to 500 girls trafficked on our streets everyday.  We have a long way to go.  Looking at the big picture helps to motivate me.

 

What impacts are you having in the community?

We have done a lot of awareness.  Things that are kept in the dark stay in the dark.  Awareness is key for bringing things into the light where they can’t be hidden any more.  When a person riding MARTA realizes that the person next to them who is dressed in a not very nice way, who seems shy or scared, might be a victim, that is empowering.  You can help prevent trafficking by knowing what to look for.

We have a “Freedom Incubator” coming up, bringing the great minds of Atlanta together to come up with a for-profit solution for part of the problem here.  The idea is based on the NFSC’s Montara Circle model.  In Atlanta we really want to come up with 2 to 3 areas where trafficking and demand is really prevalent.  One of the worst is Gwinnett.  It is a heavily Hispanic area and there is a lot of poverty.  A lot of trafficking comes from there.  We want to come up with a for-profit way to combat trafficking in that community.  That is where the NFS national campaign has gone and they have been very successful in helping vulnerable people groups.  We have those groups here.  And we hope this can be a huge step in making an impact.

We also have the Backyard Academy on April 21st.  It is an intensive way to get involved in the issue.  It is a chance to think outside the box for creative solutions to the problem.  You get to pick from four different tracts and get some intensive conversation on specific areas of trafficking.  At the end of it we will finish up our Freedom Incubator.  At the first Incubator event we will look at 65% of the problem but in April we will look at the other 35%. The investors and the implementation.

Until I see numbers and a drop in trafficking victims, I won’t be satisfied.  Until then we will really work on prevention.

 

Who are you collaborating with?

That is what is so exciting about Atlanta, we  have a great working relationship with so many organizations.  The group that we collaborate with the most is  a new organization created by a guy named Jeff Shaw.  He has stared Out of Darkness which is a 24 hour call center for victims of trafficking.  They will be doing a lot of education about their program and distributing their number in inventive ways.  Someone can call the number at 2 AM and it will go to about 20 or 30 cell phones.  Whoever picks up can quickly retrieve the person in need.  They are doing a lot of training for the phone operators.  There has been a huge problem with girls trying to call at 2 AM and not getting a response or if the police do pick up the victim, they don’t know what to do with her.  That program will be huge.

We collaborate with Tapestry, a lot of the foreign organizations in town, ICE, Homeland Security, Street Grace and Wellspring Living.  There are so many great organizations in town and we really help each other to reach the same goal.  I don’t think that happens in all cities.

 

What kind of help or assistance do you need?

For me, as a Director, one of the biggest things I want to see happen is for my core team to grow.  We have had about 68 events and have reach 4,000 people in the last 9 months. For a small team of 5 or 6 people that is a lot of work.  I don’t want to burn them out.  I would love to have 20 or 30 people coming to our core meetings.  It has been growling slowly.

 

What are some key issues facing Atlanta?

Atlanta is a huge entertainment industry, especially with hip hop. It is continuing to grow, and sometimes in a negative way.  Especially the portrayal of pimps as something to look up to.  There are also a huge number of kids growing up without fathers in our city.  It is a huge problem.  They don’t have a male figure to look up to, to teach them right from wrong, to teach them how to treat women.  So who is teaching them?  Entertainment figures.

Often in the entertainment world sex is something glorified instead of something precious.  The sexualization of our culture across America, but especially in Atlanta which is a warm place where people can dress a little more provocative year-round, is a big problem.  All of this creates a ripe environment for trafficking.  Somewhere along the way the portrayal of money and the way women are treated in entertainment really impacts children.  There is a vulnerable population of young people out there.  They are not learning to respect their bodies or to protect themselves and traffickers are out there looking to prey on those types of children.  It is a sad process I see in our culture and especially in Atlanta.

 

What are some of your favorite organizations around town?

My husband works with the Atlanta Mission and they do some incredible work with the homeless groups, so I am a big fan of the Mission.  He has been able to introduce me to what is happening around social enterprise and social justice in Atlanta.  There is a huge creative boom happening here.  I really am loving things like Plywood People and organizations that are creating new areas for social justice, art and media.  Their Plywood Mornings are great.  Matchstick is an incredible organization when it comes to marketing and design.  And of course there are all the organizations I listed about human trafficking.

 

Where can interested readers find you?

We are on Facebook.  We went total social media so we no longer have a local website.  The national office is in California so they work directly with Facebook and Twitter and anything social media.  The notforsalecampaign.org is the best place to read and get current news on our national and international projects and upcoming global events.  Our Backyard Academy event in April.  It is $99 for a three day intensive event.  We see this event as something that can really stir Atlanta so if people want to learn about us, they should attend.

 

What FEED’s your soul?

I FEED my soul with the light of Christ.  This is a really dark industry I work in so I have to keep light in my heart.