Human Trafficking
Dear Editor: January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and SAFV uses this as an opportunity to tell you a bit about this serious crime. There are many myths and misconceptions about it. Trafficking means that perpetrators use force, fraud, or coercion to get another person to provide labor or commercial sex.
We might have read that human trafficking involves illegal border crossings by foreign citizens, but this is actually not always true. Human trafficking does not require any movement and happens in Alaska, and also in Sitka. Survivors can even be trafficked in their own homes.
We might think that human trafficking only involves kidnapping or physical violence, and victims are locked up and controlled at all times. However, survivors report there are many other reasons why they stay in this abusive environment. Some lack money to get away or don’t have transportation or a safe place to go to. Others are afraid for their safety or might have been so manipulated that they do not identify as a victim of trafficking. In addition to that, traffickers often introduce their victims to drugs as a tool to create dependency and maintain control over them. Also, a trafficker might have groomed the victim to believe they are their boyfriend or girlfriend and are only doing them a favor. Traffickers can be spouses or family members, including parents.
There are more myths and truths about human trafficking, and you can learn about them at the website of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, traffickinghotline.org. Of course, you can also talk to a SAFV advocate by calling 907-747-3370 or our toll-free line 800-478-6511. It takes a whole community to recognize the signs of trafficking and reach out to and support victims.
Sitkans Against Family Violence
Semi-Automatic Rifles
Dear Editor: The Revolutionary War is over. We whupped the British. We whupped them again in 1812. Yes, those ancestors of today’s English tried to prevent our ancestors from bearing arms. This is the root of the Second Amendment. Our ancestors needed their arms to put meat on the table. They also wanted arms for continuing to take the continent by force. Repeating rifles killed lots of Americans in the Civil War. Later wars by our forcefully unified country inspired assault rifles. After the Vietnam war, we all wanted a semi-automatic rifle so we could swagger with it at the shooting range.
Folks, all of those wars, necessary or not, are over. Against great odds, our Constitution has held up so far. The nonlethal thoughts honored in our Constitution and our society go back directly to Roman and Greek intellectual borrowings from the Persian Empire, where lasting elements of Christian thought also originated. These ideas are what protect us and guide us. We don’t need assault weapons. Mass killings do not reflect well on our thousands of years thinking hard together about how to get along together. Let’s use our thousands of years of experience and our hundreds of years as a national experiment, to fix the Second Amendment.
We whupped the British. The continent has been dominated. We like hunting guns. We like revolvers for home defense. Oh, and I like my eight round automatic pistol because a now-deceased friend gave it to me. But semi auto rifles with big clips? Let’s get real. Let’s be true to our heritage as humane thinkers. Let’s get rid of these rapid fire obscenities outside of the military.
John Welsh, Sitka
