Seth Meyers and Alexi Ashe Meyers Were Honored at the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Benefit

On Monday evening, friends gathered at Indochine, the perennial downtown Manhattan favorite, for a fundraising event highlighting the work and mission of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. This year, the annual benefit looked a little different—taking the form of an intimate and galvanizing dinner. The international organization also honored Alexi Ashe Meyers and Seth Meyers at the event with the Josephine Butler Abolitionist Award in recognition of their longtime support and advocacy.

Upon entering through the French-Vietnamese eatery’s famed red carpeted stairs, guests shuffled inside the bistro and past the bar’s banana leaf printed walls. There, they were welcomed by Ashe Meyers, CATW’s anti-trafficking policy director and board member. Pleasantly overwhelmed with the turnout, the human rights lawyer gracefully made her rounds, highlighting the cause to first-time attendees and thanking everyone in attendance.

Melanie Thompson, chief outreach and advocacy officer at CATW, was on duty as the evening’s host. A survivor of child sex trafficking, Thompson has spent the last 16 years advocating for human rights before landing at the nonprofit ten years ago. “I’ve made it my life’s work to unsettle people,” she told the room as she began the program. “I try to get people to see the systems that are in place that fundamentally keep our society unequal, and challenge people to consider that just because something is normalized doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable.”

As she reiterated how the fight to end sexual exploitation against women is both a pervasive issue and a timely one—given the recent news cycle—Thompson continued: “We are in an interesting moment in time in our culture. On one hand, you have Epstein, Diddy, Nick Fuentes; the ‘your body, my choice’ guy, Dan Schneider; the Nickelodeon guy, Andrew Tate, the Gilgo Beach killer... These are some of the names that have plagued our culture in the last two years alone. When our culture endorses a system based on a hierarchy of vulnerability, it fundamentally changes how we view one another, who we deem valuable, and who deserves certain opportunities. One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that we cannot fulfill our mission without addressing our culture.”