Hamida Yusufzai on Sex Trafficking &Justice (Banteay Srei)
Feature Interview with Blue Heart partner organization, Banteay Srei.
How did you become involved with Banteay Srei?
I have been with Banteay Srei for just over a year. I have have worked in the sexual assault sector over 16 years: I have worked on rape crisis, peer to peer support programs, self-defense workshops for girls and on anti-rape strategies with the Metropolitan police in London. I have always worked in this sector and being a woman of color it has felt very natural, (because) and I understand intersectionality. Banteay Srei it is a non-profit based in Oakland and its dedicated to empowering SE Asian girls who are being or at risk of becoming sexually exploited. We work with all women and girls but the focus and the model is culturally specific to work with SE Asian women and girls, since they are a marginalized ethnicity and therefore incredibly vulnerable.
You mentioned that working in Oakland is particularly special to you. What is your connection to Oakland and why is it such an important place for doing this work?
I grew up in Liverpool, a working class city. In my political education, I became aware of how important Oakland was politically — first and foremost because of the Black Panthers but then also as a large working class city which had many similarities to Liverpool. Coming here as an activist coming in many ways was a pilgrimage and an inevitability. It feels very safe to be here because there is a community of activists and groups of people who are very diverse and accepting. My relationship to Oakland has been very spiritual for many years. I put my energy here and I get a lot back.
If folks don’t know anything about sex trafficking, there is an epidemic here. California is within the top 13 countries in the world for sex trafficked youth, women, children. Historically, it has always been here — it just didn’t have a name. When you intersect poverty with racism and police brutality, you have criminal activity as a career option. But when you have law enforcement complicity, sex traffickers, and a lack of awareness, then you have the ground for sexual exploitation to occur. The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) landscape is changing and moving forward quite fast. We are part of the CSEC task force which comes from the District Attorney’s office in City Hall. They acknowledge that there is a huge CSEC epidemic and trying to respond to that.
How is Banteay Srei’s perspective on sex trafficking in Oakland different from the other organizations working on it?
I would say BS has a very unique perspective on sex trafficking. We came out of the clinics of Asian Health Services so we have a health lens on the issue. There are so many lenses: family lens, criminal justice lens, etc. But they are not holistic. They compartmentalize survivors and victim experiences. Being able to look at someone’s experience holistically means that you can really address their needs. That includes looking at cultural background, age, economic situation, and physical health. It is long term work -definitely not something you are going to fix in 3 months. If we cannot address someone’s dental needs, then they are not well; if we are not going to address their reproductive needs how are they going to understand their own bodies? If we don’t address their vision or their learning disabilities, then how can they move forward and get involved in academia. So the health lens is holistic. It’s been pretty wonderful in the last 12 months to be able to sit at different meetings and conferences and hear people quoting research work that we’ve done on health and exploitation. It’s nice to get the credit for that.
What are the specific programs you offer?
There are gaps in the CSEC services in Oakland — we try to fill those gaps. The focus is on Southeast Asian women and girls. We try to provide the cultural components that our young women need to be able to be aware of themselves to grow to be strong women and be proud of their culture. For example if women are experiencing intergenerational trauma or issues around the family structure we will address this within our programs.
SREI is an acronym Self Reliance Empowered Individual. This is a program that is run once a week. We will look at empowerment, health education, healthy/abusive relationships, power, and talk about all of the things that they would never be able to talk about at home. We also use that opportunity to work with other agencies or exchange trainings, addressing many needs — spiritual, physical, cultural and mental. We also offer a stipend to our youth leaders. They are involved in mentorship, they get to lead workshops with other young women. We hold them up and we appreciate and understand them for who they are as young people. They learn accountability through being needed and called upon. They learn how to take their place in the world.
Another program we run is SAUCE — Southeast Asian Unity through Cultural Exploration. It’s a space where the older and younger Southeast Asian generations are able to connect and foster healthy relationships with one another through cooking and eating traditional foods along with sharing stories of the refugee and resettlement experience. The older women will cook with the young people, not only cook eat and break bread together, but really share what life has been like as a refugee.
Right now we are also doing a martial art training program 2 hours a week with our young people. The first hour is martial arts the second is consciousness raising. We are trying to join the dots on how martial arts came from the east. And how many martial arts are for women. The program is about understanding cultural appropriation, and reconnecting with culture. And it is about how to defend themselves.
What is your vision for Banteay Srei over the next few years?
Currently at BS there are just two of us. I am steering operations and organization, and the Community Health Specialist coordinates and facilitates the programs. First and foremost we would like to grow. We would like to bring on some volunteers we would like to bring on some of the young women who have come through the program. We would like to create a pipeline where if you come in through the door as a survivor or victim you can not only get services and heal but there might be an opportunity to make a bit of money through an internship or consultancy position.
We are always thinking about growth. We would like to do train-the-trainer workshops so our young people could go and be advocates themselves. We would love to be in a position where we are not always having to look for funding. We would like to be able to think about our service model and not just survive but thrive. We would like to take a trip to Cambodia and go to Banteay Srei, which is the place that our organization is named after. It is an ancient temple where female deities are revered.
We want to work with the most marginalized. It is very hard to find and reach and offer a hand to the most marginalized and vulnerable. In Oakland young Black women are being exploited on the street — on International Blvd — so it is incredibly visible, whereas 70% of the young SE Asian women trafficking victims are being exploited online. They are harder toreach and see.
One of my main goals is to reframe and expel the message the media has created about CSEC. This is not about an isolated incident; this is about structural oppression. This is about racism, sexism about homophobia. All these pieces intersect to make all our young people, women and girls susceptible to molestation, assaults and sexual trafficking. There is so much rape culture, and victim blaming it is really hard for us to navigate through society. There needs to be a cultural paradigm shift around how people see survivors and victims.
Why is it difficult for you to get funding to sustain your work?
There has always been an big issue with donors even acknowledging that women from the SE Asian community are actually struggling — that the Asian community has poverty, sexual exploitation, and all sort of issues just like any other community.
Under the current administration it just seems like everything is going to become a little bit harder. The increase of number of sexually exploited SE Asian women is a massive concern to us, but if we are fighting deportation, these other issues almost become secondary. There is a concern that more and more women are going underground, which affects the work because it makes it harder to find and work with the people who need our services the most
For myself and many people like me, we are not aware of the Southeast Asian sex trafficking crisis. Where do you direct people to learn about what is happening?
We have some good resources on our website which would help anyone who has not heard of CSEC who and never heard of sex trafficking and be able to understand quite quickly how pervasive it is and understand where else to look for information. HEAT WATCH is also online and is an incredible resource for understanding CSEC. Another is MISSSEY, which is a CSEC organization in Oakland which is very established and current. Finally, the the National Anti-trafficking Hotline website also has a number of resources.
What would you like to see in the broader movement you are part of?
Rather than falling into the trap of fighting and then dividing already scarce resources, we need to come up with creative and compassionate loving ways to share what we have. We don’t have a lot of money but whatever we have we are willing to share. Know your rights, show up for each other, share trainings and best practices with each other so that we are getting professional development. There are some of us from different CSEC organizations who meet up regularly to walk around Lake Merritt and be there for each other. The self-care component has come up again, again and again. Even just being able to speak to a colleague about coping mechanisms for vicarious trauma, and just take some time and listen… These things go a long way.
Where do you find hope to sustain yourself and your work?
I think it is always in the people that you serve. So for us it is the young people. It is the families. To see them come together, feel proud about what the young person has achieved — a scholarship or good grades. Seeing our people choosing to come here on a regular basis, when I know that there are other places they could chose to be, is incredibly healing. I have hope that we are doing something right because we are still here. So the hope is the everyday occurrences that happen the conversations with young people, being able to help someone out over the phone. Being able to let someone in to use the bathroom, let someone have a nap because they are tired so it is really everyday things. It’s the small ways that I see us making a difference in people’s lives everyday.
Learn more about becoming a Blue Heart members to hear more stories from movement-builders like Hamida at www.blueheartaction.org
