| Search: |
Trapped in the Sanctuary CityBy Sonya Svoboda As anyone who has visited San Francisco knows, it is a city of stunning beauty. With 48 hills in the city, a panoramic view is within a short walk. Buildings, bridges, ocean, and parks are all what make up part of this city’s immense beauty. It is also a city of wealth with the second highest population of the world’s billionaires making their home here. But amidst this there are neon signs blinking “massage” atop gated doors guarded by surveillance cameras. These doors are what keep many of the city’s hundreds of slaves from freedom. Lured here by promises of prosperity, women are forced to work for little or no pay, many of them never watching the mystical sight of the fog rolling in, or eating lunch in one of the city’s many parks. San Francisco is noted for many things, but unfortunately one of those is being a destination city for human trafficking. Although an exact number is not known, there are an estimated 90 massage parlors throughout the city, where women are forced into sexual servitude, for little or no pay. But these are not the only places which force people to work against their will. Although more difficult to track and intervene, escort services and strip clubs are also reputedly fronts for trafficking. Domestic servitude, janitorial services, restaurant and hotel labor are also some of the forms into which people are trafficked for labor. San Francisco prides itself as a sanctuary city, but there still remain many individuals enslaved with very slim chances at freedom. Trafficking victims are not seen, and yet they are everywhere. They do not approach authority, as they have been physically and emotionally battered and believe that talking to the authorities will result in more abuse for themselves and for their families back home. The lies and violence of their perpetrators and owners keep them enslaved. Demand for cheap labor and sex fuels the trafficking of women, men and children into San Francisco. A look at the history of prostitution in San Francisco reveals how human trafficking found its roots here as well as the role of globalization in San Francisco becoming a destination city for trafficking. During the Gold Rush Era, men flocked to the city in search of their own fortune. According to Herbert Asbury, in The Barbary Coast, “the female population probably did not exceed three hundred for at least a year after the beginning of the gold excitement. Of this number, perhaps two-thirds were harlots from Mexico, Peru, and Chile.” Many of the men who brought these women to San Francisco also lived off their earnings. As more women arrived in 1852, Asbury makes the claim that every country in the world was represented by at least one prostitute in San Francisco. Around the same time, Chinese were arriving in the city to seek their chance at fortune. Similar to their counterparts in the rest of the city, the men far outnumbered the women. Eventually, mail brides were ordered from China, and others began bringing in girls to sell as prostitutes and domestic help. In Unbound Feet, Judy Yung recorded that in 1870, girls were bought for $50 in China and sold in San Francisco’s Chinatown for $100, when the female population made up less than a quarter of the Chinese population. Through harsh laws which were designed to halt this trade as well as further immigration of Chinese individuals, the trade of Chinese girls and women diminished, although it never ceased. Today, there are at least six massage parlors in Chinatown. While it is difficult to determine that the prostitutes in other parts of San Francisco during the late 1800s were forced or coerced into prostitution, the prostitution in Chinatown at this time was already labeled the Chinese slave trade. Like the Gold Rush era, San Francisco continues to attract people from around the world with the hopes of fortune. The rise of Silicon Valley and the globalization which took place worldwide played a role in making San Francisco the diverse city it is today. A ride on the local bus can often pass with hearing several languages spoken, none of them being English. In my own neighborhood, I am within walking distance of a Vietnamese sandwich shop, a Thai market, and buying a Hindi movie. But the irony remains, despite the fact that globalization has made the world a smaller place, it has also made the access to buying and selling human lives easier. Although the world has been ‘globalizing’ for a long time, it was defined when knowledge and resources could not always be confined to a geographic location. When companies began to move their operations and offices overseas in search of cheap labor, they proved that resources were not defined and a profit could be made globally. Large companies such as footwear, clothing, etc set up their factories in developing countries, employing locals at a low rate and in turn selling the goods made with a high profit margin. In order to do this, lands were taken away from locals, leaving them with no livelihood and rendering them vulnerable to various forms of exploitation, one of those being trafficked within or outside of their country to work for little or no pay as a slave. Globalization has also opened up the access to information and travel, pushing open the doors wider for traffickers to bring in ‘goods’ from different corners of the world. The California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force (CA ACTS) was established to conduct a thorough review of California’s response to human trafficking. In that report they state, “For some countries, the billions of dollars sent home by their citizens working in foreign countries – whether legally or illegally – create a major disincentive by those countries to change migration trends, including human smuggling and trafficking.” Around the world, the United States is viewed by many as the land where dreams come true. In 2002, The Center for Immigration Studies released a report saying that 1.5 million immigrants arrive on America’s shore every year. Many arrive from struggling economic conditions, hoping to raise their quality of living and provide for their families back home. Add to this the number of individuals who arrive with similar hopes and dreams, but soon realize that they are being held against their will and forced to work. They are isolated in a new country, and even if they are aware of their rights, there is only the smallest of chances that they can access those rights. Although there are no numbers for how many individuals are enslaved within San Francisco and the state of California, the Human Trafficking in California reports that between December 1, 2005 and March 12, 2007, 559 trafficking victims were identified in California. In San Francisco, a majority of those are women and girls trafficked in from South East Asia. On the back pages of two of the city’s free newspapers are advertisements for massage parlors, which are dominated by the faces of South East Asian women, with some specifying women from Thailand and Japan. The website MyRedbook.com, which allows customers to rate and review their masseuses, list at least 800 women (up to 2006, although the list goes back to 1997) from South East Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. San Francisco is a major destination for traffickers to “sell their goods”. Of all the trafficking incidences that occur in the state of California, 43% of them happen in San Francisco and its surrounding areas. But San Francisco is not alone in carrying this blemish. Across the country, people are enslaved in massage parlors, escort services, restaurants, farms and houses. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking estimates that 14,500-17,500 individuals are brought into the country annually and forced to work against their will. Globalization truly is a paradox. It brings in multicultural aspects which bring exposure to new ideas, but it has also made transporting human beings across borders easier for traffickers. Human trafficking is a crime which eats away at the dignity of every person affected by it. It is a crime which robs an identity and saturates an individual with lies until they believe it as the truth. With further strengthening of laws and identification of victims, freedom for each victim will become a closer reality. When a young woman’s eyes light up at the chance to be a hair dresser in San Francisco, then she should be given that chance to work as a hair dresser, relax on the weekends, be free to come and go as she wants. When a man takes up the opportunity to work as a construction worker, with dreams of adequately providing for his family, then his trip to San Francisco should land him in just that, and he won’t live under the fear of violence and deportation, but live with the reality that he is providing for his family and will be reunited with them shortly. San Francisco is a city which prides itself on being a trendsetter, as well as a city of refuge. It is my hope that this city will soon be a trendsetter in the movement to bring an end to human trafficking, and become a city of refuge and safety as the survivors rebuild their lives.
Some Resources
About the Author:Sonya Svoboda is a freelance writer and currently resides in San Francisco, where she has been involved in raising awareness about human trafficking. In September, she will be a Master of Social Work student at the University of Washington (Seattle) where she hopes to gain further skills to bring healing to those affected by human trafficking. Sonya has B.A. in sociology and English writing from Eastern University. She has worked both as a grant writer and a freelance writer for non-profits. |
|
|
