A legacy of Brisenia Flores
Published 7:02 pm Tuesday, May 28, 2013
In Snohomish County, human rights abuses are as invisible as its victims. Heart-rending cases of human trafficking, of castaway children transported and pimped via the Internet, are concealed behind motel doors on Highway 99. The Washington Task Force against Trafficking of Persons reports that trafficking has been found in 18 Washington counties, with victims ranging from sex workers, to children, to “mail order” brides.
The Sexual Exploitation and Intervention Network of Snohomish County has worked to integrate services, and a $500,000 Justice Department grant provides a sheriff’s deputy and county prosecutor focused exclusively on trafficking.
Nearly as unseen, Snohomish County’s undocumented immigrants fall prey to wage theft and domestic violence. A fear of deportation and family separation weighs against reporting.
Human rights, the accepted notion that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights, means killing a Chinese alien is as morally repugnant as killing an American citizen. It means that consciously withholding life-or-death medical help — even when the sufferer is incarcerated — does violence to human rights.
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.”
One individual person was 9-year old Brisenia Flores. She was murdered along with her father, Raul, in an Arizona desert town in 2009. Shawna Forde, an Everett extremist and militia leader, and Jason “Gunny” Bush, an anti-immigration militant, were convicted and sentenced to death.
The racially motivated murders revealed a genealogy of intolerance. Before Forde, the militia movement and “Freedom County,” there were the Indian fishing wars, the fascist Silver Shirts, the local KKK and anti-Chinese pogroms. Fear of the other is part of the cultural fabric, but changing demographics and growing Asian and Latino populations tease out a thread that needs mending.
Time to focus the conversation. The Snohomish County Commission on Human Rights is sponsoring a community event in honor of Brisenia at 5:30 p.m, today at the Snohomish County Campus, 3000 Rockefeller Ave, Everett. It includes a presentation on militias by Dave Neiwert, author of “And Hell Followed with Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border.” Human rights begin here. Go.
