Lessons - Fight Against Human Trafficking | Marisol Nichols - Anti-Trafficking Activist & Actress

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look at you know you know your story and when you started to get involved and it wasn't really as much of an awareness push as there is right now I know I was reading about Tim Ballard story and he was I guess former CA Homeland Security and he started oh you are because he felt limited by the government's resources as well which is a scary thought because as the average person you're hoping that the government is doing a good job of dealing with this because I mean who else really who else has the capacity to deal with 50 million globally traffic to victims um but that's that's not the case I mean you're you know the government is not doing as much as it could or maybe even like inform us about what the government's doing what they're not doing maybe are they limited by some mandates and procedures in the US are they limited abroad when you deal with foreign governments like I want to understand a whole dislike that surrounds us yeah I mean it's a giant system first of all you've got different facets of government you've got it's a bipartisan issue like 100% I'm a Democrat Tim's a Republican and both parties work together to do this but then you you've so you've got Congress then you've got Congressmen you've got senators you've got the State Department you've got the United Nations you've got Homeland Security you've got the agencies CIA FBI it's a it's a multi-faceted issue and so it's it's a multi-faceted approach you can you can't and it's not one that will work we can't it doesn't matter we can't we can't legislate our way out of this we can up the laws we can make further punishments but everyone's catching up to this if that makes and I always hear these criticisms of like welcome the police or how come the blah blah blah look the same guys that we want to go answer every single robbery and investigate homicides and X Y and Z are the same guys who are doing trafficking I mean after I only one time a year does this operation cross-country in the United States where they do undercover strings all across the country all across America but that's once a year like and it's a great thing and don't get me wrong but we know it like you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more agents and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more policemen and law enforcement and all of this so that we can even begin to tackle this problem just on a national level let alone on a global scale it's it's it's and these guys are these criminals are smart and they know that we're just catching up to the issue and so they find loopholes and they they go across borders and they find out okay is this the role well good that's how I'll break it and that's how I'll do this and it's just it takes it takes a massive effort and it starts with education in my opinion it's why I do the podcast it starts with education and making people aware that this is happening and it's happening to our children and it's happening not only globally and internationally but nationally and it's happening to happening to foreign subjects and domestic and that's what people don't know and and that's what was so incredible about son of freedom I was like I had no idea how many people still didn't know about this and even at the you know at the event that you saw me speak at I was shocked and how many people came up to me were like I had no idea yeah I was like wow really still but you really don't because it's not out there enough because it's just a poster on a bathroom in an airport that's it exactly it's not real people don't know they don't know what to look for they don't know what it looks like and what aren't those prostitutes what do you mean she's being held against her well and what do you mean I what do you mean it's American citizens this is happening to I thought it was like foreign not that that makes it okay but it just makes people careless it's just a weird tell me tell me that story that you said when you were doing this presentation about the ad you put up on Craigslist and the amount of people that responded because that was a big WTF moment I know so this was back in 2014 15 we put an ad in Craigslist that in this time you know northern California city not even a big city not like Sacramento but like a small smaller city and we put this ad in Craigslist and it was coded meaning so that their algorithms couldn't take it down just yet they took it down but just yet and this ad said husband and wife in town three days only need someone to educate in quotes our nine year old 12 year old if it was 12 or 13 year old girls while we watch and within 15 minutes we had 35 appointments and the the vice squad was like their jaws were like they're like what they had no idea this was happening in their jurisdiction they had no idea and that's I see that time and time again they had no idea this is happening in their town and it was I mean it was shocking they had no idea it was heartbreaking 35 and 15 minutes in a small in a small town small town yeah you be city if you want to look it up so a huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode let me explain why I love federated computer why they are friends of success story they are changing the way businesses buy software because we all need software to run our businesses I don't care what kind of business you're building but the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month so federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now let me explain the average typical federated computer customer save 75% or more on their software built and gets great software top notch customer service and support and a software solution that is uniquely installed for your business without any sort of surveillance or breaches of privacy for example if you use Google for email sales force for CRM slack for team chat list monkey for customer acquisitions and air table for data management with a team of 10 you saved nine 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living in this world yeah look I mean since I've been learning about this what 2009 2010 you didn't see one news article you didn't see one news piece you didn't there was no operation cross country there was no like the only thing you ever heard about was maybe you know once every two seasons an episode of SVU you know I get and then you and then it was like you know in a foreign national it wasn't an American and it's seen it you just didn't hear about it or people went all those poor you know I've heard about that in Cambodia or Thailand or the Philippines know it's everywhere it's every country it's everywhere it's every city and so now you see it you hear about it like you could just google trafficking google any town Georgia Alabama Chicago um Naperville um which is my hometown um any city and just google that and human trafficking and you'll see it and you'll see the news articles and you'll see the cases and you'll see the arrests you know it's out there now and it wasn't out there before and sound afraid I'm sure change that man wow yeah like it sure changed that you know I was pitching not many people know this but I was pitching a television show on um the work that I do and on trafficking and we pitched you know almost everybody in town and everyone in town these are phenomenal pitch meetings you know when I would tell these stories and every single solitary one said we love it we love it it's too dark it's too dark no one wants to hear about this no one wants to hear about this and that sure proved them wrong when sound of freedom came out man wow like I'm shocked at the the amount of people that have gone to see it and they want to be able to tell me that they've seen it like I know people are like oh it's not true or that was because angel studios did whatever I don't know I have nothing to do with the film people think I said people congratulations I have nothing to do with the film like absolutely nothing um and I don't know what the angel studios campaign was I heard I just read about it like everyone else did I'm not even know I just saw that there was saying yeah also know how many people have told me that they've seen the film well it changed your life that's yeah I thought it was strange because some people were like oh it's you know I hate the biggest issue the biggest issue that I have especially in the US is it everything becomes a partisan issue when it shouldn't become a partisan issue it's so stupid it's like between COVID and vaccines and everything is like oh if you know you're right you're left you have to have this issue you have to this is like things that affect everybody this is not a partisan issue and then it turned into a partisan issue and people yeah I'm actually literally thinking I'm gonna find I was like maybe I should have some of my democratic congresspeople that I've worked with like on the podcast just to show yeah but this is not a republican issue this is a bipartisan issue but it was Barack Obama or corresponding modern day slavery any coined modern day slavery at the Clinton Global Initiative event like anyway it's just silly it is very silly that it devolves into this but yeah so the point is you know sound of freedom was an amazing piece obviously that brings a lot of awareness to it you're doing work bringing awareness to it I want to even just unpack some of the things that that happened and that I saw and sound of freedom in some of your work that I thought were actually sort of very sad but real realities of this world I mean people know what human trafficking is people know that involves children but another thing has been brought up repeatedly and you spoken about are the are the women operatives in trafficking and how I think that probably that probably screwed with you when you realized oh you mean the female trafficker see you mean with the president not the opera sorry you know what the opera is sorry no wrong way that the trafficker the women traffickers that are doing this to children yes yeah it um it makes me sick it makes me want to like I was horrified the first time I learned that women did this I was shocked I was like how how can you do this to your like I just didn't understand I still something a child in out of you bet like you know what it must feel like as a woman to lock in better word but be forcibly penetrated like you you you must have some semblance of this as a female how can you possibly do this to your own group and I didn't and it's still incomprehensible period you I never you never gonna comprehend something that is incomprehensible you can't you you can't any horrified me and it still breaks my heart every time I see it I just well I'm assuming the women I'm assuming the women that do this are people that have gone through this system themselves they have probably been trafficked up so it's no well you know in the movie miscarter hey that was miscarter hangba this is real life so in real life in Columbia and you can google it miscarter hangya she was putting miscarter in your beauty queens literally went door to door to door to door to families and we're like oh your children are so beautiful I have a modeling school would you please give me your children and come to the modeling school then she would turn them over to the traffickers that's real that's not fictionalized that was real why money like we try to we try to go oh there must be some traumatic now not all the time sometimes it's just money sometimes we're just really bad people and there's no getting around that and there's no understanding it because it's impossible you can't understand something that's insane and it just is what it is and you just have to be like that's I guess that's it heartbreaking