Each year on January 11, Human Trafficking Awareness Day is recognized across the U.S. This year, we should examine what we are actually building awareness of. As a child trafficking survivor who has also worked for anti-trafficking nonprofits and shelters, I have watched disinformation about human trafficking spread across social…

A story of tragicomic omens, stolen identity, and finding where you belong The bank teller glanced up from her computer screen and laughed nervously, “You don’t look like a man.” I felt the blood drain from my face, my heart pulsing in my ears. “Does it say,” I drew in a breath and whispered my father’s name. Her smile dropped. In my…

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde — The morning Jeff Bezos launched into space, a homeless woman with a walker was assaulted by a group of men on the border of the Seattle Amazon headquarters. Within the pristine confines of the company’s territory, you will find no homeless people in spite of Seattle’s teeming housing crisis. A…

“Are you from around here?” — Like a scene straight out of an Octavia Butler horror story, in a panel discussion about Charter Amendment 29, former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran urged Seattlietes to consider: “If you expand housing of various kinds […] it may well produce a migratory effect.” (49:00) Sidran went on to describe…

Britney Spears is a former child entertainer who has been rendered the legal equivalent of a child under her father’s control. Although Spears is an adult, exploitation of child entertainers by their parents is commonplace. I should know. Before I was a homeless teenager, I…

Danny Westneat recently discussed debates about homelessness in Port Angeles, Washington and Seattle. In the column, he says that he has asked people living under bridges where they are from. But as someone who was homeless as a teenager in Port Angeles, and later in Seattle where I hoped to…

“Does that van belong to you?” Mare of Easttown asks in the fifth episode of a series seeking to solve the murder of a young mother. A windowless blue work van sits parked in the foreground as the camera pans over a quiet residential street. I shrieked when I saw…

Our legal system treats children like we’re living in a Monty Python sketch about the Middle Ages — At its core, Allen v. Farrow is about how children only have as many legal rights as the adults around them are willing to bestow. As Dylan Farrow says at the beginning of the HBO documentary’s third episode, “What I remember is that after the attic, things started changing really…

I joined AmeriCorps out of desperation when I graduated during the 2008 recession. I hope Gen Z doesn’t make the same mistake I did during the COVID pandemic’s dismal job market. — It’s AmeriCorps Week! Every year in March, a cheerful email celebrating AmeriCorps Week drops into my inbox, and I am reminded of how I became homeless 6 months into my term of service. Earning about $3 per hour from my AmeriCorps living stipend, I think about the hypocrisy of a…