PRESS RELEASE - Press and the Music Industry
Date: July 10, 2015
Re: Call Out to Press & Music Industry to Give More Attention to
Positive Spending
We are routinely seeing a great deal of
press being given to rappers and musicians who go into strip clubs
“making it rain” with bricks of money upon strippers. This sort
of thing gets a great deal of press while we're trying to do outreach
to our communities about the potential dangers not just in the sex
industry – but even strip clubs for customers.
Drake has reported to have dropped
$50,000 in a strip club – and even supposedly $8,000 in the parking
lot of one. Fabulous has reportedly dropped $28,000 while Ludacris
has dropped $10,000 at one pop. Chris Brown - $15,000. Akon -
$50,000. While photos of Bieber and a stripper went viral.
The message the media is sending young
women is clear – be a stripper and you make lots of cash and meet
rich and famous men. The message to young men is also clear – you
want to be cool? Throw your money around a strip club like it's
dirt.
What does not seem to get at least
equal press however is when Kevin Hart donates $25,000 to four
students, Pharrell Williams donates $50,000, and Usher donated
$100,000 at the UNCF Evening of the Stars to support positive goals
held a few months ago. It was like a “blip” in comparison. KUDOS to them by the way!!!
What also doesn't seem to get equal
attention is when bad things happen at strip clubs also – like when
the news leaked out that a strip club in New Jersey was actually
owned by DEA agents. The dancers were illegal aliens – probably so
they wouldn't report on the activities they were seeing go down in
this club (no pun intended here). At the Crazy Horse II in Las Vegas
– a man was paralyzed for life over an $80 bar tab dispute.
Reports were that customers were being given GHB, the date rape drug,
then their credit cards maxed out. When they would complain –
they'd be bodily thrown out of the club.
When we told reporter Bob Herbert, who
used to have an opt-ed for the NY Times, that you could “throw a
rock and hit a trafficking victim” in a Las Vegas strip club he
tested our claim for himself. He reported he found one at the first
club he entered within 15 minutes. In response to the validation –
then mayor Oscar Goodman didn't swear to address the problem.
Instead he threatened Bob with a “baseball bat to the head if he
ever sets foot back in Las Vegas again”.
Our hotline has been receiving a record
number of calls about trafficking in strip clubs and massage parlors
now that internet sites for escorts are being cracked down on. We're
also receiving a record spike in the number of calls we're getting
from customers who are being ripped off inside the clubs.
So we're calling upon you, the media,
to please try and give positive contributions as much, if not more,
attention to the way money is being spent positively by the rap
community and music industry. It will make our job of warning these
young women about the dangers inside these clubs a little easier.
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