Friday, May 15, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist - Girls on Our Streets - NYTimes.com

This story is heart-breaking.

Protecting women and girls from sex trafficking and being forced or lured into the sex trade is an issue that is gaining more and more atttention.

And it should.

Way too many poor, disadvantaged, and girls from broken homes are being forced into this horrible situation around the world. But, it is also happening here in the United States, and the author of this article suggests that not enough people care about these types of people and that race and economic factors may play a role:
If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber
alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But
13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time,
and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest.
Read the colum below and let me know your reactions and which constitutional principles are involved.

Op-Ed Columnist - Girls on Our Streets - NYTimes.com

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think he brings up a good point that wealth often times is a factor. But i don't think it should be an excuse, these girls no matter how rich or poor or their race they are still someones child and should still be treated the same as everyone else. Human trafficing violates our constitutional rights because the girls aren't given any choice in the matter and are taken advantage of. It's not fair to anyone to shoot the girls with drugs to get them to sell themselves. Also they don't even give the girls any of the money that they earned.
~A.K. Per 2
Current Event 8 or 9 not sure

Anonymous said...

I don't think this is right, if the cops were to find a girl on the street, then the cop should take them away from the place and not threaten to take her to jail or send her back to the place. At least take her away and to help her. If they return her, it shows that they don't really care and that they're frocing the girls to go into their own death. Also, the man who takes their money away and make them work, it's taking away their right and it's kin of against their rights to be doing something they don't really like to do but is being forced to do it. This shows that it's wrong and that someone should be helping these girls out of this situation.

Anonymous said...

I don't think this is right, if the cops were to find a girl on the street, then the cop should take them away from the place and not threaten to take her to jail or send her back to the place. At least take her away and to help her. If they return her, it shows that they don't really care and that they're frocing the girls to go into their own death. Also, the man who takes their money away and make them work, it's taking away their right and it's kin of against their rights to be doing something they don't really like to do but is being forced to do it. This shows that it's wrong and that someone should be helping these girls out of this situation.
Nga N.
05/22/09
Current Event # 9

Angela Dubnow said...

Current Event #6: This article made me so angry, especially the part about the cop who threatened the girl with his handcuffs, and forced her to have sex with him. I can not believe somebody who is suppose to protect our country and keep it safe would do something like this. Obviously the problem of girls' body parts being sold on the street is growing problem, but I think that another problem rising in our country is unworthy police officers. This is not the first article about a cop who abused his authority. We need to start being more careful about who we hire to protect our country, and we all need to make an effort to help protect ourselves and others around us. If we see something that doesn't seem right, don't just leave it up to the cops to fix. We can take actions ourselves. For example, opening a safe shelter that "throwaway" girls can run too. Little things like this will help make our country a safer place to be.

Lindsay Culver said...

This is absolutely appalling! Did we not go through as a country a segregation period. It is one thing for people to talk about equal rights but it is definitely a different and completely different thing to actually take actions and protect people of all different ethnicity. We cannot control how often young women are abducted, but it is our responsibility to protect out fellow citizens. We need to take things into our own hands. As a young woman I find this truly discomforting.

Anonymous said...

i think that they should be smarter about hiring cops so these like this would never happen. all cops should be very professional. i think the cop should have taken the girl some where else or at least try to help her. its going against the constiutuion because the person who made this girl do what she did is taking her rights away. i feel very bad for this girl. someone needs to find a solution for these girls.
Spencer Truong
Period 5
EXTRA CREDIT