Beat Down Human Trafficking

The Album
Beat Down Human Trafficking is a hip-hop album about modern day slavery. It is free to download and free to order (except for the price of shipping & handling). All donations raised by this project will go towards the creation of educational scholarships for trafficking survivors in partnership with the Visayan Forum Foundation, a leading anti-trafficking non-governmental organization (NGO) in the Philippines, as well as maintaining the Human Trafficking Project.

Why?
Beat Down is the result of seeing and touching the issue of modern day slavery first-hand and acting to make a difference.

During a 10-month Fulbright grant in the Philippines in 2007 to study the NGO response to human trafficking, Justin Hakuta decided he wanted to do more than produce research. Hakuta was spending his days interviewing survivors of forced prostitution, domestic slavery and forced labor and learning about the complex economic, cultural and political factors that allow trafficking to flourish. One of the most glaring challenges consistently mentioned by the advocates and social workers he interviewed was the lack of awareness about trafficking across all levels of society including law enforcement, the criminal justice system, government, business and the general public. Wanting to find an innovative way to inserting trafficking into the mainstream consciousness, Hakuta started recording Beat Down in the spring of 2007.

The Music
Songs on Beat Down address topics such as sex trafficking, forced labor and child soldiering. The content and subject matter draw on Hakuta’s personal interviews with trafficking survivors, pimps, sex tourists and politicians in the Philippines. Whether examining trafficking through the eyes of a victim or a sex tourist, whether describing the cultural context or the economic model of a brothel, Beat Down Human Trafficking provides an honest, uncensored look into the world of modern day slavery.

Click here to listen to the single Human Trafficking.

Details

• Artist: J Nice
• Running time: 12 songs, 48 minutes
• Format: CD & downloadable
• Price: Free (suggested donation of $10)
• Available late summer on the HTP website, traffickingproject.org