While Obama rejects prostitution and trafficking as human rights violations, San Francisco voters are being urged to legalize prostitution in their city.
My friend Melissa Farley at Prostitution Research & Education in San Francisco (www.prostitutionresearch.com) wants us to know why progressives should oppose Prop K. Check it out.
Many of us were heartened that Barack Obama’s progressive analysis of social issues extends to prostitution and trafficking. In August 2008, Southern California Pastor Rick Warren interviewed McCain and Obama in a Candidates’ Summit. Here’s an exchange between Obama and Warren during that Summit where Senator Obama clarifies the intimate connection between prostitution and trafficking:
WARREN: OK. Another issue, the third largest and the fastest growing criminal industry in the world is human trafficking. $32 billion a year. A lot of people don't know that there are about 27 million people living in slavery right now. More of them in sex trafficking than any others. How do we speak out and how do you plan to do something about that?
OBAMA: This has to be a top priority and this is an area where we've already seen bipartisan agreement on this issue. What we have to do is to create better, more effective tools for prosecuting those who are engaging in human trafficking and we have to do that within our country. Sadly, there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement, here in our country. Oftentimes young women who are caught up in prostitution. So we've got to give prosecutors the tools to crack down on these human trafficking networks. Internationally, we've got to speak out and we've got to forge alliances with other countries to share intelligence, to roll up the financing networks that are involved in them. It is a debasement of our common humanity, whenever we see something like that taking place.
Hopefully, Obama voters will apply this analysis in San Francisco where they are facing down a tsunami of disinformation from the sex industry. Prop K would decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco, where right now women and children are being sold by traffickers.
Masquerading as a progressive initiative that would protect sex workers, Prop K directs San Francisco Police Department and the District Attorney to refuse to enforce the State of California’s prostitution laws. These sections include laws against traffickers and laws against those involved in exploiting children. Non-enforcement of these laws would put the entire community at risk, and send a legal welcome out to pimps, traffickers, and johns. Pimps would be San Francisco’s new businessmen or, as advocates of Prop K have renamed pimps, "support staff."
Although decriminalizing those who are prostituted is a good idea, this fringe proposal would effectively decriminalize pimps and traffickers as well. District Attorney Kamala Harris explained that Prop K would grant virtual immunity to traffickers by prohibiting prostitution investigations that often reveal evidence of sex trafficking. Prop K’s proponents hide that fact.
In 2004, 64% of the voters in Berkeley rejected a similar proposal for decriminalization of prostitution, an overwhelming mandate from a progressive community. Asked to assess the impact of decriminalization on the city of Berkeley – the City Manager wrote in July 2004 to the Berkeley Mayor and City Council that decriminalized prostitution would result in that city’s becoming the Bay Area prostitution destination point, attracting johns and pimps and the women they sell. He stated that decriminalization would significantly increase the cost of law enforcement and would also result in an increase in the numbers of crimes of sexual assault, battery, and robbery. He stated that the exploitation of women and children, especially teenage prostitutes, would likely increase in Berkeley as a result of decriminalization. The City Manager stated that medical providers would see an increase in STDs, especially in vulnerable groups of people with HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases. He predicted an increase in prostitution of children as a result of decriminalization.
Ten years ago, the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women issued a Report titled "Violence Against Women in Prostitution in San Francisco." 78% of those who identified as prostitutes/sex workers had been traumatized by violence, the Commission found, "ranging from childhood sexual abuse, kidnapping, beatings, rape, torture, domestic violence, to sexual coercion and harassment – with many reporting multiple incidents and repeated re-victimization."
Women from Korea, China, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam testified about the San Francisco sex industry. Some had been sold by traffickers in San Francisco, where they existed in conditions of actual slavery. Prostitution itself is a racist, sexist activity that increases human trafficking. The first prostituted women in California were trafficked Chinese women. Today we see the same trafficking of Chinese, Korean, Filipina, Thai, and Vietnamese women who are sold to johns in downtown massage parlors and brothels located in residential neighborhoods.
Decriminalization can’t stop the violence, abuse, and stigma that are built-in to prostitution. Prostitution has increased dramatically in Australia and New Zealand since decriminalization, with a 200-400% increase in street prostitution in Auckland and a 300% increase in brothels in Victoria. Prostitution of children and youth has increased in both locations, with humanitarian agencies declaring that Maori and Aboriginal children are at highest risk for prostitution. Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands are now known as destinations for sex tourists. Attracted by the flow of cash, organized crime has increased. Mayor Job Cohen has begun closing down Amsterdam’s prostitution zones because legal prostitution did not reduce crime as proponents had promised and women were no safer than when prostitution was illegal.
When prostitution is decriminalized, neighborhoods mount legal battles over whose back yard the next brothel will be zoned into. Earlier this month, frightened parents discovered that a New Zealand brothel was in the same building as a child care center. Under decriminalized prostitution, "We don’t believe we have any legal avenues to stop them," said the director of the child care center.
Researchers, homeless shelters, and battered women’s shelters all tell us that more than 90% of those in prostitution want to escape it. Most women and children in San Francisco prostitution need housing, addiction treatment, and job counseling. Often, the only "choice" they have is prostitution or homelessness.
While most people intuitively understand the harms of prostitution, they are confused about what to do about it. But Prop K is no solution. It’s a Trojan horse that would turn San Francisco into a sanctuary city for traffickers and pimps. I hope San Franciscans can defeat Prop K, then I hope we can work together on developing a sane prostitution policy for San Francisco that would address the roots of the problem. Seewww.NoonK.net for more info.
UPDATE: Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco is Against Prop K!
He is also a frequent contributor to DailyKos. See what he has to say about defeating Prop K.
http://www.youtube.com/...
UPDATE 2:
MEASURE K
571 out of 580 precincts (98.45 %)
Votes Percent
Yes 88,448 42.46 %
No 119,868 57.54 %
VICTORY!
Those in prostitution should be decriminalized, but pimps, johns, and traffickers should be strongly penalized. Sweden has such a law and it's working. This type of abolitionist law is remarkably successful in stopping trafficking.