The jiu-jitsu community is known for doing what it can to make the world a better place. Together, jiu-jitu practitioners from all over our humble, little blue dot have taken an active part in fighting cancer, the stigma of mental illness, and suicide.
Now, one jiujiteiro is taking on a new opponent: human trafficking.
Human trafficking is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) as:
Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
Also according to the UNODC, “thousands of men, women, and children fall into the hands of traffickers,” and almost every country has been affected.
Few people in the BJJ community know this better than purple belt Chad Massaker. Chad owns an IT company, and he learned during a presentation that human trafficking was the second most transacted crime on the “dark web” — i.e., the part of the web that is only accessible by special software.
“I wasn’t pleased that information technology was being abused in this way,” Massaker told the Jiu-Jitsu Times via Facebook PM. “Then I happened to learn about Tap Cancer Out, also a charity BJJ tournament. It was from them that I drew inspiration. Basically, I just took their idea and changed the focus and added a Judo component to the tournament.”
The event he created is called Tap Out Human Trafficking (TOHT), and its very first tournament will be going down on November 4 from the Riverside EpiCenter in Atlanta.
According to the site, proceeds from the event will go to “charitable organizations that have taken up the cause [of fighting human trafficking] and need funding to carry out their respective missions.”
Massaker is hoping to get celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Ed O’Neill to show up for the event. Kutcher is, of course, not only a BJJ purple belt under Rigan Machado, but also an activist fighting human trafficking.
But it isn’t only celebrities who can join in to fight this epidemic. Anyone can take an active part in helping Chad Massaker combat human trafficking. Just contact him either through his Facebook page or at Tap Out Human Trafficking and ask what you can do to help.
You can also check out TOHT’s Facebook page here.
