Cosmopolitans with Lauren will restart on January 30 at 8 pm. I am thrilled to introduce my first guest from my comeback after a few years off with a Traumatic Brain Injury and script writing. 
For those unaware, it is Human Trafficking Awareness month. We are lucky to have Ms. Patricia McCay as our guest. She is Chairman of the North Alabama Task Force against Human Trafficking. We met when I was writing a screenplay about human trafficking several years ago at the Senate House. She was recognized as one of the elite members whose achievements in terrorism, crime, drugs, gang violence prevention, and education have had a clear and large impact on the community. Because of her dedication, she was awarded the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award, which she was presented in Washington, D.C. 
Her task force fights against the never-ending abuse of victims and recognizes and aids those needing a way out through prevention, education, safety plans, and trauma recovery. Victims can also seek help through their hotline, which will aid them in finding rescue or starting the process of leaving. They even have linguists speaking foreign languages such as Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin. Ms. McCay believes that parents should become and stay intricately involved in their children’s lives, including knowing what their children are looking at on the computer and phones, who they are communicating with on game sites, chat rooms, and websites. Phone Apps have become a huge problem and are difficult to recognize as a danger. It takes a village to raise a child, so if you see something that you think is not right, which could be right under your nose or in your own neighborhood or school, make that call, because it could save the life of a victim and turn them into a survivor. Human trafficking typically involves the use of force, fraud, or luring people into some type of labor or commerce for sex and labor. This is what Ms. McCay has been fighting for so many years and taking on as her life’s work. We want to thank her for being a trailblazer in this line of work and creating one of the first organizations to recognize what has become so rampant in every state in the United States in the last few years. Cosmopolitans with Lauren, will be one of the most important shows I’ve done in my 8 years and I believe will have the most profound effect on my audience.
You can view the show live on Facebook, Instagram, Daily Motion, Twitch, Twitter, and TikTok or catch it the next day as an edited version. Please join us to educate and understand the horror of these victims, both women, boys, and girls, some as young as 4 years old. Let’s all make a difference and know what to look out for and what to do if you believe someone is being trafficked. - Lauren Damrich