A bold new billboard recently appeared along Highway 33 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Located directly across from local “sex store” Sensations, this billboard proclaims: “Sex Trafficking: Porn Creates Demand.”
The billboard is part of NCOSE’s City Blitz campaign, which raises awareness in cities across the country about the harms of pornography, including links to other forms of sexual exploitation and the disintegration of the family.
Similar billboards have been displayed in other cities, including Birmingham, Alabama, and Bellevue, Nebraska, as part of the campaign. In College Park, Maryland, a mobile billboard sponsored by Maryland Coalition Against Pornography (MCAP) drove around the University of Maryland campus for three weeks.
The Wisconsin billboard was sponsored by 5-Stones, a Wisconsin non-profit organization that combats sex trafficking through their “five stones” of awareness, education, prevention, networking, and collaboration.
The organization posted their first billboard, which displayed a similar message, in the same location last summer.
“We decided that the message linking pornography and sex trafficking needed to be exposed more,” said Tracy Scheffler, the founder of the Beaver Dam chapter of 5-Stones.
Though they have not yet received any community feedback on the new billboard, the billboard posted last summer
caused a stir from the store and its patrons, who took offense to the message and complained about the “church people” who were doing the billboards (5-Stones is actually a community organization and is not affiliated with any specific religious organizations).
Despite the negative feedback, Scheffler recommends that others follow their example to raise awareness in their own communities.
“I would absolutely encourage others to join the campaign as we will not end trafficking until and unless we end demand,” said Scheffler. “Therefore, a message needs to be seen about the connections between our sexualized societies and the prevalence of trafficking.”
She continued, “We are planting seeds, creating conversation, and hopefully getting folks to do some self-analyzing regarding behaviors in their homes and private lives as well.”
Scheffler also said that they are working on raising a second billboard in Beaver Dam.
To learn more about how to run a city-wide blitz in your area, visit: https://endsexualexploitation.org/cityblitz/
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