Help shut down America’s on-line sex cafe

It’s bad enough to hear about men who force
young girls to prostitute themselves in foreign countries. But sex traffickers operating right
here in the United States under our nose on Craigslist?!

Facebook,
Twitter, and the blogosphere are abuzz with the revelation
that 1/3
of Craigslist revenue comes from sex ads.

Many of these ads
offer young
girls for sex. It strikes me that this is exactly like the
sex cafe I
visited in Moldova.

While I’m shopping for a used couch
on Craigslist, thousands of girls are being trafficked in the cyberspace
around me. 

So far, the Craigslist leadership appears unwilling
to take down the
trafficking ads, or to offer a real aggressive enforcement
strategy.

Many
have taken to boycotting
craigslist until they get serious about not allowing the site to
serve as a medium for trafficking underage girls. If you’re
one of these people, leave a comment and tell me why and what you think
the boycott can accomplish. 

Having just been in Moldova
and Russia, sitting with girls who themselves had experienced the
horrors of trafficking, I cannot believe this is happening on a
site like Craigslist.

This is happening in the
open–on a public site. Many of the ads are plainly pornographic–and
they are right there in the open. It’s just like the sex cafe in
Moldova!

As the organized protest continues, there are a variety
of ways that you can respond and act. Many of you asked what you can do
to prevent sex trafficking. I never thought I’d be telling you to
boycott Craigslist for facilitating the prostitution and rape of girls
in the United States. Here goes…

• Read this open
  letter to Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist, and then sign
  the online petition

• Add
  a tag to your e-mail signature or a badge to your blog that says “Craigslist
  allows trafficking of underage girls on their site, will you?”

• Spread the word to your social networks on Facebook and Twitter.
  Link to any of the articles on this page, this blog post, or any other
  resource you find. Most people just are not aware…change that!

• Boycott companies who use Craigslist to advertise jobs. A
  big portion of Craigslist’s revenue comes from job postings. Go to Craigslist.org and browse through the
  job listings by companies in your city–write the poster and let them
  know about Craigslist’s reputation for allowing trafficking of minors on
  their site. Send e-mails, write letters, and make phone calls to
  companies. Remember, they probably have no idea. Work
  to educate. Ask them to take the ad down and join the
  fight to clean sex trafficking from Craigslist. Last night, I
  found a local church in our community with several job ads. Contact
  the job poster directly, and show them to the open
  letter and other articles.
  

• Call your local media. Send a pitch letter to all
  of the local radio stations and television stations in your town. This
  is a national story that is easy for local affiliates to pick up. Pitch
  them on a local angle to this story–such as how many women are
  currently advertised as prostitutes in your town.

As you spend time researching this developing story and the ensuing
protest, you’ll run into other ideas and solutions. Leave a comment here
to let us know what you’re doing to shut down America’s online
sex cafe.

This is an absolute outrage and is
happening right under our nose. If someone doesn’t stand up for what is
right, who will? Will you stand in the gap and defend a young girl who
is being trafficked right here in the US on Craigslist?