IDB-DC Solidarity Program — Llama Y Vive!

As you may know, the Inter-American Development Bank, through its IDB-DC Solidarity Program, in partnership with the Ricky Martin Foundation, Ayuda and the DC Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs, recently launched “Llama Y Vive” (Call and Live) a campaign against human trafficking in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. Why this efforts in DC? Because the District of Columbia is one of the top 10 destinations for victims of human trafficking.

WE NEED YOU!

The main objective of this campaign is to create awareness among the Latino and Caribbean communities in the DC Metropolitan Area about this issue. Therefore, we would like to partner with your organization in this effort. Our community needs to be aware of this unscrupulous act.

HOW?

The IDB-DC Solidarity Program will host a two and a half hour informational session/training for the leading nonprofit organizations serving the Latino and Caribbean communities in the DC Metropolitan Area to learn more about human trafficking and the “Llama Y Vive” campaign. The training will be conducted by Ayuda, the DC area’s leading source of multi-lingual legal and social service assistance for low-income Latinos and foreign-born persons in immigration, human trafficking, domestic violence, and family law. Ayuda provides direct legal and social services to survivors of human trafficking and has provided services to over 100 trafficked persons in the D.C. Metropolitan Area. Ayuda is the implementing agency for the Llama Y Vive campaign in DC.

I would like to invite you to learn more about this new campaign and how your organization can help us in the fight to combat modern day slavery. Please see attached agenda.

Date: Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Time: 9-11:30am

Address:

Enrique V. Iglesias Conference Center, Room CR200

1330 New York Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20577

Metro accessible: Orange/Blue line (McPherson Square – 14th St. exit)

Red line (Metro Center – 13th St. exit)

Please RSVP by Wednesday, August 20, 2008. Photo ID is required to enter the building.

Marta Estarellas
Youth and Community Development Specialist
IDB-DC Solidarity Program – IDB YOUTH Program
Development Communications Unit, Office of External Relations
Inter-American Development Bank
1300 New York Ave., NW Stop B0570
Washington, DC 20577
Tel: (202) 623-1559 Fax: (202) 623-1402
IDB-DC Solidarity Program
IDB Youth Program

Mr. President, stop your raids on our communities

By Luis Gutierrez and Joe Baca

August 6, 2008

As members of Congress, we have traveled to remote corners of the world and had our eyes opened to some of the worst human suffering imaginable-abject poverty, meager wages, poor working conditions, paltry access to legal counsel and a jarring lack of fairness in the courts.

We never imagined that we would witness the same injustices in a small American town just a five-hour drive from Chicago.

During a visit to Postville, Iowa, last weekend, site of the May 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, we saw firsthand how a broken Immigration system devastates a small town.

Mothers bound to electronic bracelets were allowed neither to work nor to return to their home countries, leaving them without recourse to pay rent or feed their children. Wives and children-many of them U.S. citizens-were left to wonder where their husbands and fathers had been taken, or where they would go next. To this day, more than half of the wives do not know where their husbands are.

Meanwhile, a 16-year-old boy spoke of working 17-hour shifts, six days a week, without overtime on the kill floor of a meatpacking plant. Women from the slaughterhouse spoke of male supervisors demanding sex in return for decent hours, decent pay and decent treatment on the job. These workers were victimized, only to be herded like animals when ICE swept the plant and left their employers without punishment.

There is no mistaking that these men and women are suffering at the hands of the U.S. government and our president. Our broken Immigration system has paved a way to the objectification of human beings at the expense of our labor laws, U.S. workers’ safety and basic family values.