Shane Gardner

Intro to Humanities
Caleb Prusso
11/20/2016
Civic Engagement
I chose to attend a lecture session with Utah Attorney General, Sean
Reyes. The session took place at the SLCC Redwood campus on
Nov 15th. The headline subject of the presentation was human
trafficking but I was pleased to find that Sean Reyes decided to talk a
little bit about his experiences running for Utah Attorney General as a
minority. Sean Reyes father is an immigrant from the Philippines.
His father is of Spanish and Filipino decent. His mother is from
Hawaii and of Japanese decent. During his first run for Utah Attorney
General in 2012 Sean told a story about how he used to meet at the
Saratoga Springs Walmart to go shooting with his friends. They
would meet at the Walmart to carpool together from there in a pickup
because the road to the gun club was not paved. After one of their
shooting trips the group returned to the Walmart to go their separate
ways. Sean removed his rifle from the pickup, loaded it in his car and
began talking on the phone to his campaign manager. After a short
time the police showed up and started calling for him to get out of his
vehicle. At first he had no idea that they were taking to him and so he
just kept talking to his campaign manager. Finally the police said
you on the phone get out of your vehicle and Sean realized the
police were talking to him.
He exited his vehicle and talked with the police. He found out
that someone had called the police to report a menacing brown man
brandishing a weapon in the Walmart parking lot. Sean laughed
about this story and even called the Saratogas mayor at the time,
Mia Love, to let her know that she had the safest Walmart parking
lots in Utah.
Sean also related a story while he was campaigning about how
he was mistaken for Dan the Laptop man on several different
occasions. I really liked that Sean shared these stories with the
group. It helped get just a small glimpse of what it is like for someone
in Utah that is not white.
Sean then started talking about human trafficking. He admitted
that he did not know much about the subject until he started serving

as Utah Attorney General. He defined human trafficking as

transporting people by improper means for an improper purpose.
This definition includes, slavery, sexual exploitation, black market
organ harvest and even illegal adoption.
Sean tried to give a little perspective on how bad of a problem
this is worldwide. He said that it is thought that during the height of
the Trans Atlantic Slave trade of the 1700s there were approximately
12-13million slaves. He then said that the International Labor
Commission estimates approximately 20 million slaves. This is not to
say that the problem with human trafficking is worse that the slave
trade of 300 years ago but that it is a huge problem that is not getting
enough attention.
In Mexico there are women and young girls that are forced to
act as prostitutes. The men who take advantage of these women and
girls are given 15 min appointments one right after another for seven
days a week. These girls are given drugs and taken at such a young
age that they dont know any other life. For many of these women
the only escape is death. No women or girls would choose this life.
I was shocked to hear about some of the cases that he worked
on as Utah Attorney General. He talked about a notorious MS-13
gang member, Victor Drax, living in West Valley City that was abusing
young boys 10-13 years old. He would first rape these boys and then
force them to act as drug mules. Many of these boys were raped in
their own homes while both parents were working or afraid to come
forward. Many of these boys were threatened that if they said
anything their families would be killed. The police had a hard time
getting witnesses to testify because they were so afraid of this guy.
After several years some of the victims came forward while in there
20s and the police were finally able to make an arrest. Victor Drax
killed himself while awaiting trial.
Human trafficking is the fasted growing criminal enterprise in
the world. It is thought that it is more prevalent that drug dealing
because it is more profitable and easier to move merchandise. A
drug dealer can make money once when he sells drugs but he can
exploit a young girl over and over again.
The two learning outcomes that I feel relate to my project are
communication and community engagement. As I have learned more
about this subject I have motivated to do something to help. All
during the presentation I was wondering what can I do? I learned
that the best thing I can do is to start spreading the word about this

problem and what we can do as citizens to prevent this. We can

speak up about what is going on in our community and the world and
create awareness. And we can encourage others to report any
suspicious behavior that we see at hotels, truck stops, or anywhere in
the community that does not seem to add up. Sean Reyes described
this as our spidey sense. If you see a young girl in a hotel with a
much older man and she does not look happy we can call the police
and report what we saw.
I think that the work that most relates to my project is Slavery
and Prostitution by Jimmy Carter. Many of the ideas and statistics
that were given by Sean Reyes were talked about in this article. The
idea that drugs could be sold only once and the sexual services of
women could be sold over and over are almost identical. The idea
that I most relate my project with this article is that the call to action.
We as a society of human beings need to do more to prevent human
trafficking. The article lists laws and standards that exist to help
improve the problem and we need to put forth more effort to purse
these criminals.
I think that this project has definitely helped me get more
responsible member of the community. Just since Last Tuesday I
have talked to several family members, friends and coworkers about
human trafficking. I have had several discussions about pornography
and have even learned of a movement called Fight the New Drug
that helps raise awareness about the dangers of pornography.
Even though this is a tough topic to tackle I did enjoy the
experience of learning about human trafficking and getting to know a
little about Sean Reyes. It was nice to see an elected official do
something positive to help improve the world.
My experience was similar in some way to my pre-flection and
there were some things I did not expect. I did not know much about
human trafficking but I suspected that there was probably some of
this going on in Utah. I was shocked to learn just often this was
happening in Utah especially what happened in my town of WVC.
The part that I did not expect was just how angry this would make
me. I knew that this was happening to some extent in the world but
just did not give it much thought. Now that I know a little more I find
myself wanting to act in some way small way to help this big problem.