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Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I am one of many girls who have been exploited and sold for sex online. And I was sold for sex on a website called Backpage.com, which makes $22 million a year from ads for prostitution. You should know that my name is not Alissa. I’m afraid that if I use my real name, the pimps who used to sell me for sex will hunt me down and kill me. I am also afraid that Village Voice Media (which owns Backpage) will ruin my life and come after me as they have others who have stood up for girls who have been sold on Backpage. But I’m even more afraid that if I don’t tell my story, no one will rise up to stop the people who buy and sell girls like me. I was 16 when I met my first pimp — he told me I was pretty, that he wanted me to be his girlfriend. I was just a kid, and I believed him. But soon he was selling me for sex every day: I was raped 365 days a year. I was sold to other pimps, back and forth between them like an animal. One pimp gouged my cheek with a potato peeler as a warning not to run away, but after two years I worked up the courage and ran anyway. He tracked me down and beat me and stomped on me, breaking my ribs and jaw. That’s when I went to the police. It’s still hard for me to believe that this web page exists, that it’s so easy for pimps to sell terrified, unwilling girls like me. Can you go buy a child at Wal-Mart? Of course not, but you can buy me on Backpage. There is some hope, though: Craigslist used to host ads for girls like me, but after people started speaking out, Craigslist shut down their adult section. A new study says that prostitution ads as a whole have gone down by 50% since Craigslist got out of the business. 50%! If men can’t use sites like Backpage.com to buy and sell girls, maybe fewer girls will be bought and sold. Now, I’m in college, and work at a nonprofit, FAIR Girls, where I help other girls like me — I even got to tell my story to Nick Kristof at The New York Times. I got out, which makes me one of the lucky ones. But Backpage is still making millions a year off the ones who aren’t so lucky. I see these teenage girls, some as young as 15, every day now in my work, and it breaks my heart. Click here to tell Village Voice Media to shut down all prostitution ads on Backpage.com. Thanks, Alissa |
Tag Archives: Village Voice Media
Tell Enterprise Rent-a-Car to stop fighting against a law that would ban renting recalled cars …Jess Kutch, Change.org
| Tell Enterprise Rent-a-Car to stop fighting against a law that would ban renting recalled cars. |
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Cally Houck’s two daughters, Raechel and Jacquie, rented a PT Cruiser from Enterprise Rent-a-Car in 2004. What they didn’t know about their car was it had been recalled for serious safety problems a month earlier, and that Enterprise didn’t fix the car.
Raechel and Jacquie’s rental car caught on fire because of the very issue that prompted the recall. The young women crashed their fiery car into a tractor-trailer, killing them both.
In just a matter of days, Congress is set to consider a new law that would force rental car companies to fix recalled cars, but Enterprise Rent-a-Car is lobbying against it — and hard. Enterprise’s opposition could block the bill, allowing Enterprise to continue to ignore car recalls like the one that killed Cally Houck’s daughters.
Cally Houck has dedicated herself to making sure that rental car companies fix recalled vehicles so no other parent loses her daughters to rental cars that are known to be unsafe. She says it’s critical to stop Enterprise’s opposition now, before they kill the law. Cally started a petition on Change.org asking Enterprise Rent-a-Car CEO Andrew Taylor to stop opposing the law to force rental car companies to repair recalled vehicles.
Click here to add your name to Cally’s petition.
These two young women weren’t the first to die from rental cars under recall, and they weren’t the last, according to a USA Today report this weekend. Despite knowing the risks, companies like Enterprise choose to keep unsafe cars on the road.
When a vehicle is recalled because of safety or performance issues, the government says all vehicles should be fixed immediately. That why car dealerships aren’t allowed to sell new or used cars under recall that haven’t yet been fixed.
For Cally, it’s hard to imagine why rental car companies would be okay with renting cars that they knew to be unsafe. Before her daughters rented the car that killed them, three other customers had rented it from Enterprise after the safety recall.
There is hope — Hertz, a major rental car company, bucked its competitors and is actually supporting this new law. Cally hopes that by calling attention to Hertz’s willingness to protect its customers — and by showing that Enterprise is willing to let customers drive what she calls “ticking time bombs” like the one that killed her daughters — Enterprise will stop opposing this law.
Thanks for being a change-maker,
– Jess and the Change.org team
P.S. Can you please take a minute to sign these other urgent campaigns started on Change.org?
- Faith leaders want Village Voice Media to stop giving a platform to pimps and child sex traffickers. Sign their petition to shut down Village Voice’s adult ads website, Backpage.com.
- Aaron Calafato and his wife say they’re paying about $1,200 per month in student loans, almost half of which goes to Key Bank. But they say they can’t get Key Bank to discuss lowering their monthly payments. Sign Aaron’s petition to Key Bank asking to renegotiate his student loans.
- Rachel Voorhies and her coworkers at Dosha Salon Spa in Oregon want to work with the salon’s owners to stop a hostile work environment, where workers are fired for speaking out and where surveillance cameras were installed. Rachel is calling on Dosha’s owners to respect workers and negotiate a fair contract with her and her coworkers.
- Mauricio Orjuela was abandoned by his family as a child in the United States, and now his U.S. Citizen wife Elizabeth is fighting to keep Mauricio, who works hard and has no criminal record, in the country. Click here to add your name to her petition.
Be a Seed for Change 