Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Sex Trafficking in America & Helping to Break the Cycle

Helping women escape 'the life'

By Kathleen Toner, CNN
updated 1:37 PM EDT, Fri March 14, 2014

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Vednita Carter founded Breaking Free to support women who wish to escape prostitution
  • She believes the women her nonprofit helps are victims of sex trafficking and not criminals
  • Breaking Free provides food, clothing, housing, counseling, job skills training and more
  • Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2014 CNN Heroes

St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN) -- As darkness falls, Joy Friedman hits the streets -- the same ones she used to troll for customers while working as a prostitute.

"My last trick was turned behind that storefront," she said, gesturing to a nearby building.

Now the survivor of sex trafficking cruises these neighborhoods with a different purpose. She's looking for women and girls who are caught up in this lifestyle so she can offer them free condoms and hygiene products.
She is also delivering a message: There is help for them if they want it.

Friedman works for Breaking Free, a nonprofit that helps women escape prostitution. It's where she got help 13 years ago.

"(Prostitution) has been happening forever. And forever, women have just been the victims of it," said Vednita Carter, the organization's founder. "They deserve better."

CNN Report: 95% of the women Vednita Carter helps struggle
with addiction,  abuse, trauma, financial instability and shame.

Since 1996, Carter says she has helped more than 6,000 women get the support they need. In the process, she's built an army of survivors who have joined her crusade to end sex trafficking.

Lured into 'the life'

Carter personally knows about this world. At 18, she was hoping to make money for college when she responded to an advertisement for "dancers." At first, she danced fully clothed, but her bosses and then-boyfriend soon pressured her into stripping and, eventually, prostitution.

It was more than a year before Carter called a friend who helped her get back on her feet. Later, she realized how lucky she had been.

"The majority of women don't have anyone to call. There is nowhere for them to turn," said Carter, now 60. "That's why I do this work."

CNN Heroes: A tour of the sex underworld

For many of the women Carter helps, "the life" is all they've known. Studies show that the average age of entry into child prostitution is 12 to 14, and many of the girls have been sexually abused or were runaways.
Carter works to educate the public and law enforcement to see these women as victims of sex trafficking rather than as criminals.

"Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing. It's about buying and selling a human being," she said.

Leaving 'the life' behind

Carter says 95% of the women she helps struggle with addiction as well as physical abuse, mental trauma, financial instability and shame.

"It's a process. If (they've) been in it forever, it's all they know," she said. "They think it's their destiny."

Carter's drop-in center provides food, clothing and emotional support to any woman coming off the street, no strings attached.

For many women, the first significant step is to participate in a 14-week class called Sisters of Survival. Graduates are honored in a ceremony, marking the start of their new lives.

Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing.
It's about buying and selling a human being. - Vednita Carter


"They learn that they do have other choices that (they) can make," Carter said.

The group also provides permanent and temporary housing, addiction counseling, job skills training and legal assistance.

Most of the staffers who work at Breaking Free are survivors of prostitution, making it one of just a few organizations like it in the United States.

"I have a purpose now," Friedman said. "I'm a fighter, and I'm going to fight 'til I die for each and every person involved in sexual exploitation."

Fighting the demand

Carter believes that sex trafficking won't end until men stop purchasing sexual favors. She established one of the country's first "John Schools" that educates men arrested for solicitation about the impact of their actions.
"I'm not here to make you feel like a piece of sh*t, but you've got to feel something," Doris Johnson, a survivor, told a group back in 2012. "That's somebody's daughter."

According to Carter's group, only 2% of the men who complete the course reoffend.

Carter is considered by many to be a pioneer in the anti-sex trafficking movement, and she is determined to keep fighting as long as she can.

"We are really raising an army here. And this is a battle," she said. "It's not OK to buy and sell us. We are not for sale."

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Want to get involved? Check out the Breaking Free website at www.breakingfree.net and see how to help.



* * * * * * * * * *



Inside the underground sex economy
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney March 12, 2014: 10:27 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Until now there hasn't been a lot of data to help law enforcement and policymakers better understand the economics of the illegal sex trade and trafficking.

But a study released Wednesday by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center analyzes the size and structure of the underground commercial sex economies in eight major cities: San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta and Kansas City, Missouri.

The three-year effort, which began in 2010, was funded by a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, which supports research that can aid in the prevention, detection and prosecution of human trafficking.

Researchers interviewed pimps, traffickers, sex workers and child pornography offenders, as well as local and federal law enforcement officers.

Of the eight cities studied, Atlanta had the largest cash-based underground sex economy at $290 million a year and Denver the smallest at $40 million, based on 2007 data. (There was insufficient data available for Kansas City, so it was dropped from the estimation analysis.)

The way in: Often pimps and prostitutes get into the business because they had a relative who worked in it or a friend who encouraged them. Neighborhood influence, poor job prospects and childhood trauma also played a role.

Coercion: It's often assumed that sex workers are physically coerced to work for and stay with a pimp. But researchers found that psychological manipulation played a major role, too -- whether it was the promise of attention from the pimp or more tangible incentives.

Likewise coercion through psychological or emotional abuse was used as a form of punishment to keep employees in line.

The report recommends that states should include coercion -- not just physical but also the more subtle, non-physical forms -- in their definition of sex trafficking.

Gang involvement: Gangs are increasingly involved in prostitution and sex trafficking, especially in San Diego.

Often rival gangs will temporarily put aside their differences to work cooperatively to maximize their profits -- for instance, by sharing the same hotel out of which their prostitutes work.

Pimp circuits: Some pimps form networks across cities and regions, operating more as a brotherhood than as rivals. When transporting their sex workers to another city, their networks keep them apprised of law enforcement activities and offer advice on finding clients.

Pimps 'friend' victims on Facebook

Pimps interviewed also indicated that they thought pimping was a less risky crime than others, such as drug trafficking.

And many felt that "no one actually gets locked up for pimping," according to the report.

Role of the Internet: The cash-based sex trade has traditionally been street-based. But now the street is just one part of the trade, which has been greatly expanded by the online sex market. Participants told researchers they perceived the Internet to be less risky in terms of detection by law enforcement and it let them vet potential clients more easily.

Family, friends and legal businesses as facilitators: The underground sex economy is aided by above-board businesses. For example, a hotel's employees may look the other way when a pimp does business out of that hotel, and may even accept payment for doing so.

Meanwhile a pimp's friends or family may serve as drivers or security detail for his prostitutes.

No profit in child porn: Researchers found that there's an increasing amount of child pornography being produced in the United States, and it's increasingly graphic and violent.

But it's often available for free and offenders interviewed said they were part of online child pornography communities.

"Why pay?" one respondent told researchers. "I guess I just assumed that anyone asking for money was a sting."

Those incarcerated for non-contact child porn offenses -- such as possession and distribution -- said they consider it a victimless crime since they weren't producing the pornography.

Offenders did, however, indicate that they want treatment but said there are few options for it in prison.

Among the report's recommendations: Laws should hold criminally responsible anyone who facilitates or hosts online child pornography content and communities.

First Published: March 12, 2014: 12:19 AM ET



Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking
Part 1





Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking
Part 2