Dear ALIGHT Supporter,
2023’s World Day Against Trafficking theme is “reach every survivor.” Together we can take it one step further. Let’s bring survivors back into our communities. Let’s make sure that we stop the cycle of exploitation for them, for their children and for their families once and for all.
Cora and her two boys looked like your neighbors or a family you passed at the grocery store. Cora was not walking around with visible scars, ropes around her hands or bruises on her face. But like so many other women who ALIGHT has helped over the years, she moved silently among us, separated from us by an invisible wall. She couldn’t fully belong and participate because she was still tied to her past abuse and exploitation.
Her traffickers were people she trusted as a child. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend told her she had to do things for the family, like beg on the corner, sell drugs and be filmed for strangers on the internet. Cora didn’t know that she was growing up in an environment of abuse. This life was all she had known. And then she had children of her own and wanted something better for them.
As Cora passes us on the street, we don’t know that her criminal records prevent her from accompanying her kids on school trips and helping in their classrooms. We don’t know that she still wakes up at night afraid that her colleagues may Google her and find old videos of her still up on websites. We don’t know that she experiences an invisible wall between her and us every single day.
We can get rid of that invisible wall and bring Cora and other survivors back in. We need them to share their talents and light and hard-won lessons in resilience. Our community will be stronger as a result.
ALIGHT does that by breaking the very real legal ties that continue to chain survivors to their past.
ALIGHT’s work fighting for the rights of survivors like Cora takes many forms. From wage theft, to child custody, to criminal records, ALIGHT has helped survivors on over 500 legal cases in 25+ legal areas with our network of specialized attorneys. Every $1 donated brings $3 in legal value directly to survivors.
We could not offer these important services to support survivors without your help! Please join us this season to help survivors be freer – and our community be stronger as a result – with your annual contribution.