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Another Bonehead US House of Representative from San Mateo County
What do you get when you cross a feminist researcher, who provided false information about prostitution with Evangelical Christians. Add in some bonehead US house of representative from San Mateo County
California who has the wrong idea about what the word progressive means and you have the sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act for 2007/11 that would mandate the FBI to investigate and charge under the Mann Act that all prostitution is in affect interstate commerce, which is potentially all prostitution or at least all prostitution as conducted on the internet.
California who has the wrong idea about what the word progressive means and you have the sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act for 2007/11 that would mandate the FBI to investigate and charge under the Mann Act that all prostitution is in affect interstate commerce, which is potentially all prostitution or at least all prostitution as conducted on the internet.
11/30/07
What do you get when you cross a feminist researcher, who provided false information about prostitution with Evangelical Christians. Sprinkle liberally with bunch of cry baby x-hookers looking to profit of the criminalization of prostitution and wha la, you’ve got the Trafficking Victims Protection Ax, oops, I mean, Act.
Add in some bonehead US house of representative from San Mateo County
California who has the wrong idea about what the word progressive means and you have the sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act for 2007/11 that would mandate the FBI to investigate and charge under the Mann Act that all prostitution is in affect interstate commerce, which is potentially all prostitution or at least all prostitution as conducted on the internet. Previous versions of the TVPRA defined all commercial sex i.e. prostitutes, porn stars, webcam performers, exotic dancers and Asian massage parlor workers, as ‘victims of trafficking’, a form of forced labor at the federal level. And Mapping our industry, on behalf of the US govermemnt has been the passion of University of San Francisco Students and one of their professors who use hidden cameras to spy on workers regularly under the guise of rescuing them.
And not that the FBI would want to pass up a chance to fondle for free those who labor erotically like the all the local law enforcement agents has been getting away with since the criminalization of prostitution at the state level for the last 100 years. But the feds learned their lesson in 2001 while wiring taping the phones of Jeanette Maier, the New Orleans Madam. They missed the plot for the destruction of the world trade centers as it was being hatched on the other line, the one they weren’t listening to. Jeannette was called before congress to explain why the FBI thought that listening to her business was a matter of national security.
The TVPA was the first brain child of Bush administration. It was no a brainier, everyone hates forced sex labor especially involving children. This version has even more jail time for laws already on the books, laws that are already selectively enforced: the child labor laws and child sexual abuse laws. I wonder what effect this new version will have on the legal Nevada brothel workers who travel to work by Greyhound Buses driven by black men?
The Mann Act, like the TVPRA was based on faulty logic from the beginning, the hallmark of this administration. Instead of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ this time the state department’s estimates have been downgraded from 50,000 slaves arriving in this country every year in 1999 to 14,500 to 17,500 in 2004. Since its inception, the TVPRA has funded 42 Justice Department task forces to spend more than $150 million federal dollars to find 1,400 people that have been certified as human trafficking victims in this country. That’s $10,714.29 per victim unit of service delivered by non profits who profit off of the criminalization of migration and prostitution. Victims are eligible for temporary visas, work cards, shelter, Medicare, English as second language classes and drivers licenses. One wonders why 59 Korean women chose deportation over victim status after raids were conducted on the Asian massage parlors they were working in the summer of 2005 in California. Dignity, I guess. That exercise involved 400 law enforcement officers. The SAGE project in San Francisco got $428,629 in 2005 from Homeland Security. And the SFPD gets a few hundred thousand every year. Despite popular belief, some of us do pay taxes, but not when we get busted.
Maybe you don’t like hookers because you are afraid that your husband is having sex with one or maybe you don’t like hookers because we charged what we are worth. Either way, the continued enforcement of the anti prostitution and migration for work laws has cost America our money and our dignity. The San Francisco taxpayers pay the police department over time to run sting operations on customers of prostitutes to make sure there are enough men who can in turn pay up to $1000 to attend the shame based sex negative First Offender Prostitution Program where the proceeds are split between the police department, the district attorney’s office and the poverty pimping non profit known as the SAGE project Inc. This hustle is to extort money from the customers, so you can say you are using the money to provide services to recently arrested and forced out of work women and call it progressive. Cha Ching. One recent graduate from the SAGE program said that she spent 9 months being told everyday that she was a victim but never received assistance in finding other employment. And what does the public get? More affordable housing? Better public schools? More foot patrols in your neighborhood? Clean streets? More parking? Less corruption in law enforcement?
If the US government was sincere about ending forced labor they’d set an example by cleaning up their own continent. They’d repeal the North America Free Trade Agreement. They’d amend that worthless piece of legislation called the National labor Relations Act so that legally working Americans can get some economic justice on their jobs. Or maybe practice some economy and start charging American employers under the TVPRA for “holding someone in a workplace through force, fraud or coercion” by paying us low wages, no healthcare, no pensions and other benefits congress already mandates. Now under the proposed TVPRA 2007/11, “force, fraud or coercion” will no longer be required elements to bring charges. So, if I drive myself to visit a customer, I can be charged with a federal felony. Congress needs to get busy enfranchising the 12 million undocumented workers already working and paying taxes in this country and issue green cards to those who want to work in the sex industry. But with the US dollar devalued, that line won’t be long.
What next? One won’t need to have performed an act of prostitution in order to be charged with prostitution.
The standard has to be that all workers must be self determined in having our own agency when negotiating our labor and work conditions irregardless of our occupation, our country of origin, our documentation status and legal work status or lack thereof. The TVPRA 2007/11 offers none of that.
Join us in stopping the madness on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 11:30 am at US House of Representative Tom Lantos’s District Office: 400 South El Camino Real, Suite 410 San Mateo, CA 94402-1704 Voice: 650-342-0300 FAX: 650-375-8270
He’s on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Hurry.
In Sexual Solidarity Somewhere,
Maxine Doogan
Erotic Service Providing for 19 years.
http://video.nbc11.com/player/?id=184134
NBC News aired a 15-minute feature on an
operation to investigate and map the commercial people trade in San
Francisco by USF professor and students.
For more information:
http://www.espu-ca.org
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There are people who make money off of other people performing sex acts for money. Those people are pimps, whether male or female. Pimping is not liberal or progressive or sex-positive. Pimping is exploitation of other people. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act tries to protect people from pimps. Pimps can be hostile, violent people who threaten to kill your family if you don't perform 10 blow jobs a day.
Why is it that we never see Maxine Doogan argue that sex workers should be allowed to do their thing without pimps? Is it possibly because Maxine Doogan was convicted of running an escort agency (pimping) in Oregon?
If you really care about prostituting women, take on the number one problem in their world -- the pimps who encourage them to keep prostituting even though they know it's not healthy and the prostitute will probably end up destitute and addicted to drugs. After all, when one prostitute is worn out, you can just get another one.
Do you have so little compassion for human beings that you would WANT them to be trafficked like a piece of meat?
(shudder)
Why is it that we never see Maxine Doogan argue that sex workers should be allowed to do their thing without pimps? Is it possibly because Maxine Doogan was convicted of running an escort agency (pimping) in Oregon?
If you really care about prostituting women, take on the number one problem in their world -- the pimps who encourage them to keep prostituting even though they know it's not healthy and the prostitute will probably end up destitute and addicted to drugs. After all, when one prostitute is worn out, you can just get another one.
Do you have so little compassion for human beings that you would WANT them to be trafficked like a piece of meat?
(shudder)
You obvoiusly know absolutely nothing about the sex industry or how the sex industry operates. You are probably a college student, so I am going to give you a break because I am going to assume that some college professor, who also knows nothing about the sex industry has filled your head with nonsense. First, The TVPRA 2007/11 is anti-worker and anti-immigrant legislation. How is it anti-worker legislation? It is anti-worker legislation because it conflates all sex work with sex trafficking and thus brings the Department of Justice to our list of law enforcement bosses. The TVPRA 2007/11 intention is to put all sex workers in prison by not making the distinction between forced and unforced sex work. How is it anti-immigrant? Let me give you an example of what happened to the women busted in Operation Gilded Cage. After being forced out of work in Korea, following the tens of thousands of sex workers arrested by the Korean Governments' crack down on prostitution to comply with the previous TVPRA and to avoid U.S. economic sanctions, Korean sex workers came here to San Francisco. After the raids of Operation Gilded Cage, all those women were arrested and detained for very long periods of time. Most and that is most of them were deported. The conditions that they could qualify for a "T" visa were that they must cooperate with law enforcement and continue to prove nessesary to the investigation and the prosecution or risk deportation at any time.
Congressman Lantos claimed that the language regarding mandatory cooperation with law enforcement as a condition for qualifing for a "T" visa had been removed from the TVPRA 2007/11. That was a false statement.
Now how our industry operates is like this. It is safer for us to work for and with other women. Criminalizing support service workers as you refer to as "pimps" leaves us isolated as workers. Criminalizing the clients leaves me unable to pay my rent. Getting more law enforcement agencies involved under the current laws of criminalization and those proposed in the TVPRA 2007/11 drives the industry further underground. Any sex worker will tell you that when they are victims of crime they do not report because who are they going to report to? The law enforcement agency that enforces the laws against them? For immigrant workers the consequences are not only jail but also deportation. You want to stop exploitation and forced labor? Then decriminalize sex work so that sex workers can have recourse and can come forward and most importantly organize themselves for better wages and working conditions as all workers, including Erotic laborers and immigrant workers have the right to do. Spend your organizational energies on decriminalizing immigration not further criminalizing the sex industry. And for that matter, stop stalking the Asian Massage Parlors and video taping workers without their permission. That is an act of violence and making little ornaments and trinkets to sell on the internet is no compensation for being put out of work and deported.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic Service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
Full text of the TVPRA 2007/11 HB3887 Page 69 begins the pages regarding "Sex Tourism."
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h3887rh.txt.pdf
Congressman Lantos claimed that the language regarding mandatory cooperation with law enforcement as a condition for qualifing for a "T" visa had been removed from the TVPRA 2007/11. That was a false statement.
Now how our industry operates is like this. It is safer for us to work for and with other women. Criminalizing support service workers as you refer to as "pimps" leaves us isolated as workers. Criminalizing the clients leaves me unable to pay my rent. Getting more law enforcement agencies involved under the current laws of criminalization and those proposed in the TVPRA 2007/11 drives the industry further underground. Any sex worker will tell you that when they are victims of crime they do not report because who are they going to report to? The law enforcement agency that enforces the laws against them? For immigrant workers the consequences are not only jail but also deportation. You want to stop exploitation and forced labor? Then decriminalize sex work so that sex workers can have recourse and can come forward and most importantly organize themselves for better wages and working conditions as all workers, including Erotic laborers and immigrant workers have the right to do. Spend your organizational energies on decriminalizing immigration not further criminalizing the sex industry. And for that matter, stop stalking the Asian Massage Parlors and video taping workers without their permission. That is an act of violence and making little ornaments and trinkets to sell on the internet is no compensation for being put out of work and deported.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic Service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
Full text of the TVPRA 2007/11 HB3887 Page 69 begins the pages regarding "Sex Tourism."
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h3887rh.txt.pdf
I'm neither a college student nor a college professor. I'm just someone who listens to the true stories of women who used to be prostitutes and are now trying to put their lives and their self-esteem back together.
I see that M. Doogan has you firmly under her wing. To state the obvious, a woman pimp is not better than a man pimp. The job of a pimp is to convince you that you have no options. There is only "the life" - once you are in it you can't leave - no one outside the life can understand it - if you leave the fold there will be no one to love you and protect you. Of course it is all bull. As soon as you are no longer useful to the pimp, you will be dumped like yesterday's garbage and replaced with someone younger and hotter and more profitable.
As an example of the crazy thinking used by pimps, just take a look at the concept of decriminalizing trafficking. Traffickers convince a woman she is going to work in a real job. She gets to the US, her papers and money are stolen, and she is told she will be a prostitute until some random amount of money is paid off (which never happens.) Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen. Traffickers maintain contacts in the homeland to be sure that families are threatened and sometimes even killed if the trafficked woman does not behave properly.
And you want to decriminalize this? The ONLY people who want to decriminalize trafficking are the people who think they can make money as traffickers or working with traffickers.
What traffickers do is evil - they enslave people for profit. If you honestly believe that all trafficked women are just budding sex workers who would be happier as legal prostitutes, then you know absolutely nothing about the lives of trafficked women.
When you find yourself saying things that don't make sense, even when you repeat them over and over, that is probably because they are false. Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is aggressive and says things forcefully, that doesn't mean she is right.
One last thing - sex work is not safe work. It can never be so. The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship. One person is buying another person for sexual gratification. There is no way to protect someone in that situation unless the act is performed in public and that is not going to happen.
p.s. We don't know what the TVPRA says yet because it hasn't gone through the Senate yet and is bound to change substantially. The details will be hammered out behind closed doors in conference committee which is pretty scary.
I see that M. Doogan has you firmly under her wing. To state the obvious, a woman pimp is not better than a man pimp. The job of a pimp is to convince you that you have no options. There is only "the life" - once you are in it you can't leave - no one outside the life can understand it - if you leave the fold there will be no one to love you and protect you. Of course it is all bull. As soon as you are no longer useful to the pimp, you will be dumped like yesterday's garbage and replaced with someone younger and hotter and more profitable.
As an example of the crazy thinking used by pimps, just take a look at the concept of decriminalizing trafficking. Traffickers convince a woman she is going to work in a real job. She gets to the US, her papers and money are stolen, and she is told she will be a prostitute until some random amount of money is paid off (which never happens.) Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen. Traffickers maintain contacts in the homeland to be sure that families are threatened and sometimes even killed if the trafficked woman does not behave properly.
And you want to decriminalize this? The ONLY people who want to decriminalize trafficking are the people who think they can make money as traffickers or working with traffickers.
What traffickers do is evil - they enslave people for profit. If you honestly believe that all trafficked women are just budding sex workers who would be happier as legal prostitutes, then you know absolutely nothing about the lives of trafficked women.
When you find yourself saying things that don't make sense, even when you repeat them over and over, that is probably because they are false. Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is aggressive and says things forcefully, that doesn't mean she is right.
One last thing - sex work is not safe work. It can never be so. The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship. One person is buying another person for sexual gratification. There is no way to protect someone in that situation unless the act is performed in public and that is not going to happen.
p.s. We don't know what the TVPRA says yet because it hasn't gone through the Senate yet and is bound to change substantially. The details will be hammered out behind closed doors in conference committee which is pretty scary.
JamieLynn, not only do you "feel" you can speak for all sex workers but you also "feel" to no big surprise that because I was in the sex industry that I could not possibly make proper judgements on my associations or even my ideas. "I see that Ms. Doogan has you firmly under her wing." "The job of the pimp is to convince you that you have no options." And finally, my personal favorite, "If you leave the fold there will be no one to love and protect you." I retired from the industry almost three years ago. No different than workers from other industries, JamieLynn, who also make the choice to retire after they have worked in their occupation for over twenty years. I have a loving partner and three adult daughters who I am very close to, many friends still working in the sex industry and also many workers from other industries who support the right of all workers to organize and form unions to improve their wages and working conditions.
Just to use your own words against you JamieLynn, "Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen." Actually, the laws criminalizing her immigration status and her occupation will not let her report violence and exploitation. Why would the woman go to the "authorities" if the outcome for her will be her detention and inevitable deportation? That holds true for any worker who is criminalized for their immigration status regardless of their occupation. More often than not they will not report unsafe working conditions, if they are hurt or injured on the job or if they don't get paid for their labor. Who could a sex worker go to report when she is a victim of violence? The same law enforcement agency that enforces the laws used against her.
"Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is agressive and says things forcefully that does not mean she is right." I have no idea who or what you are talking about.
Your final comment that sex work is not safe and that it could never be so is accepting the premise that sex as an act is not safe for women. "The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship." That could not be more untrue and of course I would know that could not be more untrue because I was a prostitute for 23 years. I would challenge any man to last two minutes with me in an "unequal" relationship. And I am not being bought, I am being paid for my services.
I am not sure whether you noticed but we live in a Capitalist system, where are ALL workers are exploitated. The best chance that we have as workers against our exploiters, regardless of our occupation and immigration status, is to organize ourselves as all workers must do. Of course the real exploiters be they Walmart or those who traffick any worker for the purpose of forced labor, will go to any measure to prevent that from happening. Your efforts to keep us all crimianlized just plays in the hands of those who you wish to protect us from.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
Just to use your own words against you JamieLynn, "Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen." Actually, the laws criminalizing her immigration status and her occupation will not let her report violence and exploitation. Why would the woman go to the "authorities" if the outcome for her will be her detention and inevitable deportation? That holds true for any worker who is criminalized for their immigration status regardless of their occupation. More often than not they will not report unsafe working conditions, if they are hurt or injured on the job or if they don't get paid for their labor. Who could a sex worker go to report when she is a victim of violence? The same law enforcement agency that enforces the laws used against her.
"Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is agressive and says things forcefully that does not mean she is right." I have no idea who or what you are talking about.
Your final comment that sex work is not safe and that it could never be so is accepting the premise that sex as an act is not safe for women. "The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship." That could not be more untrue and of course I would know that could not be more untrue because I was a prostitute for 23 years. I would challenge any man to last two minutes with me in an "unequal" relationship. And I am not being bought, I am being paid for my services.
I am not sure whether you noticed but we live in a Capitalist system, where are ALL workers are exploitated. The best chance that we have as workers against our exploiters, regardless of our occupation and immigration status, is to organize ourselves as all workers must do. Of course the real exploiters be they Walmart or those who traffick any worker for the purpose of forced labor, will go to any measure to prevent that from happening. Your efforts to keep us all crimianlized just plays in the hands of those who you wish to protect us from.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
JamieLynn, not only do you "feel" you can speak for all sex workers but you also "feel" to no big surprise that because I was in the sex industry that I could not possibly make proper judgements on my associations or even my ideas. "I see that Ms. Doogan has you firmly under her wing." "The job of the pimp is to convince you that you have no options." And finally, my personal favorite, "If you leave the fold there will be no one to love and protect you." I retired from the industry almost three years ago. No different than workers from other industries, JamieLynn, who also make the choice to retire after they have worked in their occupation for over twenty years. I have a loving partner and three adult daughters who I am very close to, many friends still working in the sex industry and also many workers from other industries who support the right of all workers to organize and form unions to improve their wages and working conditions.
Just to use your own words against you JamieLynn, "Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen." Actually, the laws criminalizing her immigration status and her occupation will not let her report violence and exploitation. Why would the woman go to the "authorities" if the outcome for her will be her detention and inevitable deportation? That holds true for any worker who is criminalized for their immigration status regardless of their occupation. More often than not they will not report unsafe working conditions, if they are hurt or injured on the job or if they don't get paid for their labor. Who could a sex worker go to report when she is a victim of violence? The same law enforcement agency that enforces the laws used against her.
"Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is agressive and says things forcefully that does not mean she is right." I have no idea who or what you are talking about.
Your final comment that sex work is not safe and that it could never be so is accepting the premise that sex as an act is not safe for women. "The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship." That could not be more untrue and of course I would know that could not be more untrue because I was a prostitute for 23 years. I would challenge any man to last two minutes with me in an "unequal" relationship. And I am not being bought, I am being paid for my services.
I am not sure whether you noticed but we live in a Capitalist system, where are ALL workers are exploitated. The best chance that we have as workers against our exploiters, regardless of our occupation and immigration status, is to organize ourselves as all workers must do. Of course the real exploiters be they Walmart or those who traffick any worker for the purpose of forced labor, will go to any measure to prevent that from happening. Your efforts to keep us all crimianlized just plays in the hands of those who you wish to protect us from.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
Just to use your own words against you JamieLynn, "Obviously she could run away, even tell the authorities. But no trafficker will let that happen." Actually, the laws criminalizing her immigration status and her occupation will not let her report violence and exploitation. Why would the woman go to the "authorities" if the outcome for her will be her detention and inevitable deportation? That holds true for any worker who is criminalized for their immigration status regardless of their occupation. More often than not they will not report unsafe working conditions, if they are hurt or injured on the job or if they don't get paid for their labor. Who could a sex worker go to report when she is a victim of violence? The same law enforcement agency that enforces the laws used against her.
"Just because someone is older and protective and has a lot of testosterone and is agressive and says things forcefully that does not mean she is right." I have no idea who or what you are talking about.
Your final comment that sex work is not safe and that it could never be so is accepting the premise that sex as an act is not safe for women. "The act of prostitution involves an unequal relationship." That could not be more untrue and of course I would know that could not be more untrue because I was a prostitute for 23 years. I would challenge any man to last two minutes with me in an "unequal" relationship. And I am not being bought, I am being paid for my services.
I am not sure whether you noticed but we live in a Capitalist system, where are ALL workers are exploitated. The best chance that we have as workers against our exploiters, regardless of our occupation and immigration status, is to organize ourselves as all workers must do. Of course the real exploiters be they Walmart or those who traffick any worker for the purpose of forced labor, will go to any measure to prevent that from happening. Your efforts to keep us all crimianlized just plays in the hands of those who you wish to protect us from.
Lisa Roellig
Erotic service Providers Union
http://www.espu-ca.org
‘‘§ 2423A. Sex tourism
9 ‘‘(a) TRAVEL WITH INTENT TO ENGAGE IN ILLICIT
10 SEXUAL CONDUCT.—A person who travels in interstate
11 commerce or travels into the United States, or a United
12 States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence
13 in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for
14 the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with
15 another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
16 not more than 10 years, or both.
17 ‘‘(b) ENGAGING IN ILLICIT SEXUAL CONDUCT IN FOR
18 EIGN PLACES.—Any United States citizen or alien admit
19 ted for permanent residence who travels in foreign com
20 merce, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with an
21 other person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
22 not more than 10 years, or both.
23 ‘‘(c) ARRANGING TRAVEL AND RELATED CONDUCT.—
24 Whoever, for the purpose of commercial advantage or pri
25 vate financial gain, arranges, induces, procures, or facili-
VerDate Aug 31 2005 23:14 Nov 20, 2007 Jkt 059200 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6203 E:\BILLS\H3887.RH H3887 bajohnson on PROD1PC71 with BILLS
70
•HR 3887 RH
1 tates the travel of a person knowing that such a person is
2 traveling in interstate commerce or foreign commerce for
3 the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct shall be
4 fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years,
5 or both
So you can clearly see that the TVPRA 2007/11 conflates all sex work with sex trafficking and further criminalizes workers.
9 ‘‘(a) TRAVEL WITH INTENT TO ENGAGE IN ILLICIT
10 SEXUAL CONDUCT.—A person who travels in interstate
11 commerce or travels into the United States, or a United
12 States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence
13 in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for
14 the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with
15 another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
16 not more than 10 years, or both.
17 ‘‘(b) ENGAGING IN ILLICIT SEXUAL CONDUCT IN FOR
18 EIGN PLACES.—Any United States citizen or alien admit
19 ted for permanent residence who travels in foreign com
20 merce, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with an
21 other person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
22 not more than 10 years, or both.
23 ‘‘(c) ARRANGING TRAVEL AND RELATED CONDUCT.—
24 Whoever, for the purpose of commercial advantage or pri
25 vate financial gain, arranges, induces, procures, or facili-
VerDate Aug 31 2005 23:14 Nov 20, 2007 Jkt 059200 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6203 E:\BILLS\H3887.RH H3887 bajohnson on PROD1PC71 with BILLS
70
•HR 3887 RH
1 tates the travel of a person knowing that such a person is
2 traveling in interstate commerce or foreign commerce for
3 the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct shall be
4 fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years,
5 or both
So you can clearly see that the TVPRA 2007/11 conflates all sex work with sex trafficking and further criminalizes workers.
Collective bargaining, which gives workers power to negoiate for their wages, hours and working conditions and allows workers to file a grievance when victims of unfair labor practices is a right all workers should have regardless of their occupation or their immigration status. The right of all workers to strike against an employer be it a Walmart, a dance club or an operator of a massage parlor for better working conditions and wages is also a right all workers should have regardless of their occupation or immigration status. Workers from the sex industry should not be excluded from these rights because they are sex industry workers. That is discrimination based on occupation. Workers from the sex industry who are singled out and called names based on their occupation is also discrimination based on occupation. Outsiders who continue to label organizers actively working to improve the conditions and status of all workers in their industry "pimps" is not only completely misguided but also again plays into the hands of those the outsiders claim to want to "protect" and "rescue" us from.
Lisa Roellig
http://www.espu-ca.org
Lisa Roellig
http://www.espu-ca.org
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