Street Art Brings Awareness to Child Trafficking Crisis

Every year, millions of children are victims of child trafficking. Street Art for Mankind  wants you to know their stories.

Transcript

00:00There are situations in trafficking where we're chained to walls and basements and locked in dungeons

00:06and that's very true and very prevalent.

00:08But trafficking doesn't always have to look like handcuffs and ropes and chains and whips, you know.

00:13It also looks like people in sneakers and you and me.

00:30I was trafficked here in New York when I was 12 years old.

00:40I was on my way home from a movie theater with my two friends from 6th grade

00:45and we ran into these two boys that we knew from my middle school

00:49that basically brought me back to their place and got me really drunk.

00:53They brought down an older man who told me that I wasn't going to go anywhere

00:58and that I now belonged to him and from there he locked me in a closet in an abandoned house

01:03and put me into prostitution from that point forward.

01:06I could read to you stats and facts all day and you might get bored

01:29but one thing that murals and paintings and performances can do is really capture your attention.

01:34Somebody can bring their artistic sense or their guilty pleasure of art

01:39and do that while at the same time educating themselves about trafficking

01:43and spreading awareness about it.

01:52Trafficking is not a victimless crime and what I want to see in hopefully 5 or 10 years

01:55is there be no victims and there be no crimes.

01:58Prostitution and trafficking is built on gender based violence

02:01and so many different intersectionalities of oppression.

02:04It's the intersectionality of misogyny and capitalism and homelessness and racism

02:09and I want all of those isms to be eradicated in the ideal world.