Launch of the U.S. Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking

Hey all, 

I wanted to share the transcript of my speech yesterday at the launch of the U.S. Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking. I'm very proud of it! Click here to learn more about the Caucus: http://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/issues/human-trafficking 

A special thanks to Callan, Brian, and Adam of the Endeavor Group, Miguel and Paress of Overbrook Entertainment, and all those of my chosen family mentioned below! 

Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking

Launch Speech – Wed. November 14, 2012

Russell Senate Office Building, Room 385

Minh Dang

Thank you Senator Blumenthal, Senator Portman, and Mrs. Pinkett-Smith. I am honored to be here.

Friends and allies, members of the Senate, and Mr. President (I hope you’re somewhere listening), I stand before you today as a 28 year old graduate student at UC Berkeley. I stand before you as a friend, a lover, and hopefully as a future wife and future mother. I also stand before you as a former slave.

I was born in Stockton, CA to two Vietnamese refugees. In addition to early neglect and physical abuse, my mother and father began raping me when I was 3 years old. By the time I was 8, my father obtained an Engineering degree and reaped the rewards of the Silicon Valley tech boom and my mother established a nail salon in the San Francisco Bay Area. As my parents combined income reached six figures, they began selling me for sex. My commercial sexual enslavement lasted a decade, from age 10 until 20, when I was able to go to college and break away.

While you may look at me and see a beautiful and free woman, you may not see that my body, mind, and my heart remain enslaved in so many ways.  You may not see that I stand here, shaking, because I remember the days when my parents threatened to kill me if I told anyone about their crimes. I still need over 10 hours of mental health support a week in order to adapt to my life of freedom.

Today, I am joined by members of my chosen family: Lindsay Hegg, Amy Vernetti, John Weigold, Shamere, T, and many others who are not present but here in spirit…. I am not, however, joined my birth family. Each and every day, I grapple with the reality that my parents did not love me. My parents were my former slaver masters. They trafficked me, not some strangers on the street.

As my friend and fellow survivor Lindsay Hegg says, “We implore you to partner with survivors to give us the opportunity to live healthy lives. Without our lawmakers, we cannot create the infrastructure needed to give survivors of slavery the chance to be independent, whole citizens.”

I commend the initiation of this Caucus and wish you well on your abolitionist journey. This caucus gives me hope that we can eradicate slavery once again.

In closing, I have one statistic to share with you, to help us understand the realities of the 27 million people enslaved today. And that is the number 5282. That is the number of days until April 16, 2026. On April 16, 2026, the number of days I will have lived in freedom will finally outweigh the number of days I have lived in slavery. Today, I have lived only 30% of my life in freedom.

I hope that together, we can abolish slavery because every human being deserves to live 100% of their life in freedom.