My life is not all about eating, sleeping, working and shopping. It's also about JUSTICE.

(via ijm.org)

Help deliver a letter with 72,000 signatures to President Obama so our message is loud and clear: We want the President to help end slavery once and for all.

SIGN HERE!!!

The more signatures on the letter to the President, the louder the message. After you’ve signed the letter, ask your friends to stand for freedom on Twitter, Facebook and email. We cannot reach our goal without you.

Dear President Obama:

Next year, our country will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although slavery is illegal almost everywhere in the world today, it endures at home and abroad. We respectfully call upon you to make the United States a leader in the fight to end slavery - again.

Americans want to end slavery once and for all. The U.S. government can play a powerful role in fighting this crime by supporting robust law enforcement and victim relief at home and abroad.

This year, we urge you to make our country a leader in the fight to end modern-day slavery by:

1. Taking a stand: In your 2012 Address to the U.N. General Assembly, charge the nations gathered to abolish modern-day slavery.

2. Getting slavery out of U.S. supply chains: When you authorize trade preference programs and free trade agreements, require that our partners take steps to ensure their supply chains are slavery-free, and insist that all U.S. government contracts include supply chain transparency requirements, so that we can ensure our tax dollars are never spent on slave-made goods.

3. Providing diplomatic support: Call on U.S. diplomats to work with foreign governments on high-level strategies to rescue victims of slavery and trafficking, apprehend perpetrators and eradicate the crime.

4. Funding the fight: Develop a Presidential Fund to Eradicate Slavery through the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons that will provide resources to help 15 "Focus Countries" end trafficking, and develop a Global Fund to Eradicate Slavery with other donor countries and private sources this year to announce at the 2013 meeting of the G-8.

It is time to take a stand so we can bring an end to slavery in our lifetime.'

WHY?

• Human Trafficking, often referred to as Modern Day Slavery, is the recruitment, harboring, transporting or procurement of any person for labor or services including slavery or commercial sex acts.

• It is estimated that human trafficking generates $32 billion annually.

• In the United States, there are as many is 15 to 18 thousand international victims per year who are smuggled or transported within the U.S. to be enslaved in either forced labor or sex-work.

• The single largest demographic for newly targeted victims by traffickers here in the United States is American-born girls aged 12-to-14 years old.

• The number of victims has increased exponentially in the United States, with approximately 20% of all Human Trafficking cases coming out of Texas.

• An estimated 200,000 American children are at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry every year.

• Of those trafficked internationally, 80% are female and 50% are children.

"If you were to ask 100 rescued victims of child sex-trafficking where they see themselves in 10 years, just about all of them would say they won't be alive then. Sadly, the average victim of child sex-trafficking is an American girl aged 12 to 14 with an average lifespan, after enslavement, of 7 years."

http://www.freedomyouthproject.org/p/human-trafficking-facts.html