Links:The Black Star Project's website:
Black Star Journal:
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Beaten,
branded & abused:
(Black
U.S. Teen Girls
Forced
Into Prostitution)
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Lisa's pimp branded her with a
tattoo on the inside of her lip. Photo provided by Sharee Sanders Gordon/Los
Angeles Deputy City Attorney and Neighborhood School Safety
Attorney
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June 17, 2014
Editor's note:
This is part one of a three-part series on sexual slavery and Black America. Sex
trafficking plagues young Black girls and a growing legion of advocates is
working to help rescue children who've been pimped out and to prevent others
from being snatched off buses and streets.
LOS ANGELES
(FinalCall.com) - Pimping, or sex trafficking, is a multi-billion dollar
industry: Some say $64 billion worldwide and approximately $10 billion inside
America. But at this moment, somewhere in your community, perhaps near your
home, a predator is likely working to make $150,000 to $300,000 a year by
selling the bodies of Black teenage girls.
The average pimp has four to six
girls, according to statistics from the U.S. Justice Department and National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
While many 13- to 14-year-old
girls are being groomed for academic decathlons, recruited for middle and high
school sports or drama clubs, others that age are being groomed for sex
work.
Girls are raped, beaten, branded,
indoctrinated, and sold day in and day out in a lucrative sex
trade.
Lt.
Andre Dawson, officer-in-charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's Human
Trafficking Division, which is responsible for getting pimps off the
streets said society needs a major shift:
Children involved aren't criminals, they're victims. The buyers aren't Johns, or
sex purchasers, they're rapists.
Mary Howard, an officer and
president of the Nu Alpha Delta Multicultural Sorority, a non-profit
organization, agreed. The problem is real, Ms.
Howard said. "We in the community need to embrace this (fight) and not wait
until one of our youth or loved ones is a statistic," she said.
Johns and Pimps 101
Sharee Sanders Gordon, deputy
city attorney and Neighborhood School safety attorney in Los Angeles, said
talking with parents and teachers is the best way to deal with how girls are
stalked by would-be pimps.
"I never thought about how
students going to school would have to divert themselves so they could go to a
safer route, or being propositioned by young ladies on the street who were just
confused, or seeing used condoms as they went to school," Atty. Sanders Gordon
said.
Five people in Moreno Valley, Calif., were arrested on
suspicions of abducting a teenager from Compton allegedly for prostitution, she
noted. The 18-year-old victim was able to escape, but not before allegedly being
raped by two of the suspects. The four men and a female suspect were from the
San Francisco Bay Area, according to Atty. Sanders Gordon.
"Now you ask why did they come
down here? Because Los Angeles is now being known for the place to come when you
want to get an underage prostitute from the bus stop. Grab her. And they look
for young ladies who no one's watching," she said. "They look for girls who are
at bus stops late at night or who are alone and they're taking them by
gunpoint," she said.
Root causes and symptoms of
active sex trafficking
Tattoos or branding?
Many frown at the sight of big,
bright or deep, dark tattoos on youth, especially on young females. While some
of the tattoos are by choice, others are by force.
According to Atty. Sanders
Gordon, a pimp in San Diego County brands, or tattoos, his girls inside their
mouths, as if they were property. Such pimps call themselves "entrepreneurs"
poised to make $300,000 per girl, per year tax free, she said.
Pimps love to memorialize their
conquests, observed Lt. Dawson. But in tattoo branding their victims, they're
now providing material that can be used as court evidence, he added.
Lt. Dawson gave a slide presentation that
shocked attendees into silence and prompted verbal outbursts. One photo depicted
girls with the acronym C.R.EA.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) tattooed
across their cheeks, breasts, thighs and rear of their legs, extending from
their buttocks.
Another slide showed a seated pimp, posing for the
camera. Behind him was a young, nude girl face down on a counter in a planking
position. Her hands were shackled behind her back. Her head was covered with a
white plastic garbage bag.
"You do the math. They're making money. The
girls are reusable every day. They're just a product to these guys and it's
easier to sell a young lady than it is with drugs, because with drugs, once it's
gone, you have to go out and buy new drugs. But when you have a young lady out
there, you can use her over and over and over again," said Atty. Sanders
Gordon.
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Chicago Housing Authority Protest
for Jobs, Contracts and
Respect
BREAKING NEWS - CHA residents, community groups and others will stage
protest Tuesday June 24, 2014 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 pm (press conference at
11:00 AM) in front of CHA Headquarters located
at 60 East Van Buren to protest Walsh
Construction Company being considered or awarded
the General contract to redevelop the Altgeld development.
We are
protesting Walsh's history of neglecting Black community contractors and workers
and we are calling on CHA to meet with the community for
more transparency and to enforce the compliance process on Section 3 enforcement
for hundreds of millions of dollars in community contracts and jobs.
We are STILL not reaching goal of the Section 3 federal mandate for community
contractors, CHA residents, CHA resident owned businesses, etc.
For more
details contact 312-371-2995. Join us in publicly standing up
to Walsh and for empowerment of the local community in TAKING BACK the hundreds
of millions of dollars in contracts and jobs taken from our Section 3 qualified
businesses and residents and community jobs!
We
will help stop the violence in our urban communities when we stop the economic
violence that causes far too many of our urban residents to be caught up in
gang, drug, and other illegal economies when they should be working
legal jobs that should come through local development contracts like through
CHA. They and our elected officials for far too long have been allowed to
exclude local contractors and
workers.
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Join
The Black Star Project
to help commemorate
the 30th Anniversary of
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.'s
running for President
of
the United States of America in 1984
Saturday,
June 28, 2014
At Rainbow PUSH
9:45 am
950 East 50th Street
Chicago, Illinois
Please call
773.285.9600 to RSVP or for more
information.
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Improving Conditions --
Unless You're Black
By
Michael Holzman
Guest Columnist for Eric
Cooper
June 19,
2012
Guest
Blogger
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Michael Holzman
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The U.S. Department of
Education's National Center for Education Statistics has published its annual
report, the " The Condition of Education." While
much of the news is encouraging, other results portend devastating outcomes for
black families and in particular, black men.
For society in general, things
aren't all that bad. The percentage of young adults (age 25 to 29) completing
high school or higher degrees of study is at a record 89.9 percent. More than
one-third of that group (33.5 percent) have a bachelor's degree or higher degree
-- also a record. And 7.4 percent -- another record -- have a Master's or other
advanced degree.
Interestingly, those trends will not be shared by all
because young women are driving these educational achievements. Women leave men
in the dust when it comes to more advanced degrees. The overall progress of women is a good thing and bodes
well for the future. Better-educated women are more likely to join the workforce
and are more adept at handling their family's health care issues, among other
things (Business Week, March 7, 2013.)
While this is all to the good,
the statistics -- and the reality -- are quite different for the descendants of
enslaved Africans, especially young black men. When it comes to getting a high
school diploma, they lag behind their white male peers by nearly 6 percentage
points.
More than double the number of
young white men receive bachelor's degrees (37.1 percent) than young black men
(17.4 percent,) and only 1.5 percent of black men receive a Master's or
higher-level degree -- an alarming number that is only one-quarter that of white
men. Awards of higher-level degrees also have been dropping for black men since
2007.
This ought to be a grave concern
for this country, given the relationship between lack of education and higher
incarceration rates. Incarceration has become a central factor for too many
black families. As it is, 1 in 9 African-American children (11.4 percent) have a
parent in prison, compared with 1 in 28 Hispanic children and 1 in 57 whites
(Pew Charitable Trust, 2010.)
When we fail to educate young black men, we too often
consign them to a life of prison and low-paying jobs, and too frequently set
their families on a course of poverty and unrealized potential. When we fail to
educate our children, we all lose.
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An Open
Letter of Apology to Black Men in Hopes of Reconciliation
By Nojma Muhammad
November 23, 2011
 Dear Black
Man,
I have become a woman that you no
longer recognize. I have allowed our enemy to impregnate me with his ideas and
thoughts.
I have allowed an illusion of
independence to keep us separated. I have fooled myself into believing that my
degrees places me degrees above you.
I humbly come to you asking
forgiveness. I come to you asking you to forgive me for not supporting you. I
come to you asking you to forgive me for not truly loving you. I was taught to
hate myself, then hate you. My desire to reproduce you was killed by our
enemy.
I apologize for teaching my
daughters that you will fail them, and continuing the cycle of an illusion of
independence with them. I apologize for not encouraging you, for not being more
patient with you, for not understanding your plight, your trials and your
tribulations.
I apologize for thinking in order
to gain strength I had to weaken you. I apologize for disturbing your peace, in
order to have peace within myself, or what I thought was peace. My life has been
in peril without you.
I tried to convince myself that I
don't need you, but you are a necessity. I can't even continue the cycle of life
without you. I apologize for my harsh tone, for using my tongue as a sword, for
telling you that you are nothing, when in fact you are everything.
I apologize for mistreating you,
disrespecting you, neglecting you and belittling you. I know that I have aided
in breaking you, and I am beneficial in rebuilding you. I am acknowledging the
wrongs that I have committed against you,and I am confessing my faults. By
acknowledging my wrongs, doesn't mean I am absolving you of your duty, but
rather I am re-committing myself to my duty to you.
I have relinquished my womb from
our enemy and I am returning it to it's rightful owner; you.
I tried to walk this journey of
life without you, but I realized that I should be walking this journey with you,
and beside you.I pray that you accept my sincere apology, and that we can start
the process of reconciliation, so we can love each other and have productive and
successful relationships that will set the standard for our children.
Black Man..........I love
you.....
Signed,
A Black
Woman
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Bring Back Our Girls
300 Nigerian Girls Kidnapped!
Join the international effort to save
them?
to Help "Bring Back Our
Girls"!!!
Dear
Phillip,
As Secretary
Kerry said, we will continue to provide counterterrorism assistance to help
Nigerian authorities, during this terrible tragedy, to develop a comprehensive
approach to combating Boko Haram. We continue to stand firmly with the people
of Nigeria in their efforts to bring the terrorist violence perpetrated by Boko
Haram to an end while ensuring civilian protection and respect for human
rights.
Thank you for
contacting the U.S. Department of State.
Bureau of
Public Affairs
Office of
Public Liaison
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Girls
Need Mentoring Too!!!
The Black Star Project
Begins Mentoring Girls
Bring
Your Girls 9 to 14 Years Old
Thursdays, 6:30 pm, FREE!
The Black Star Project
3509 South King Drive
Chicago, Illinois
***************************************************************************************
Parents should call 773.285.9600 to enroll their
daughters, granddaughters or nieces into this
program.
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Saturday University Is Hiring
Tutoring
on Saturday Mornings in Chicago (15 sites)
The
Black Star Project is looking for 30 tutors for our Summer session of
The Saturday University. Saturday University focuses on reading,
writing and math for students in kindergarten to the 8th grade. Ideal candidates
will be able to work every Saturdays for 6 straight weeks and will have at least
two years of college. Preference will be given to tutors with previous
experience. Tutors will work for at least two hours per Saturday, usually
between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. Please email resumes to:
blackstar1000@ameritech.net. Compensation is $30.00 per hour, part-time, non-profit organization.
Call 773.285.9600 for more
information.
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