In today’s Chronicle: “A rescue on ‘the Blade’: Can Oakland take back a neighborhood from sex traffickers?”, by staff writer Kate Talerico.
I live on the Blade, near its southern end — International between 22nd and 23rd. Talerico writes that trafficking has gotten worse here in recent months. My own eleven years on this block tell a quieter story: there are far fewer women working the sidewalk in front of my house today than when I moved in. Keep walking north, though, and the corners are still busy — dozens of girls at a time. Has it really gotten worse? I don’t think so. I think it’s always been bad, and I doubt that’s likely to change.
A policy built on the wrong premise
Our puritanical American attitude toward prostitution is counterproductive. Sex work should be safe and decriminalized. On the Blade it is neither. The “oldest profession” is exactly that — it isn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard we push it underground, and pushing it underground is precisely what makes it dangerous. Vice units and prosecutions of pimps, prostitutes, and johns are a poor use of police time and court time that are both already stretched thin. And yet, as things stand, that enforcement machinery is the only tool the law gives us.
Whom, exactly, are we prosecuting? The women are often — rightly — described as victims. Many of them would also tell you, just as rightly, that sex work is the profession they chose, and that what they want is “rights, not rescue.” Pimps are businessmen, in a business frequently built on coercion. And the johns become criminals simply for buying a service. None of this has to be so. New Zealand decriminalized sex work outright in 2003 — no licensing regime, no criminal record for anyone involved — and by most accounts it has worked well. The Netherlands and Switzerland took a different road, legalization: licensed brothels, registration, state oversight. Different model, same underlying premise — that prohibition, not the work itself, is what makes this dangerous. Here, or anywhere, no matter how far underground we force this business, it will not disappear.
“Rights, not rescue.” A slogan long used by sex worker advocacy movements
A path that already exists, if we’d take it
Could the United States, or even California alone, rewrite its laws to match this reality? Almost certainly not. It would be political suicide for anyone with real power to propose it. That hasn’t stopped people from trying. Margo St. James founded COYOTE — “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics” — in San Francisco in 1973, and the movement she started has outlived her by decades. Gail Pheterson, a close friend of St. James’s, carried that work into research across Europe and beyond. Here is her interview with Terry Gross.
Organizations carrying that work forward
- Desiree Alliance — national sex worker–led harm reduction network
- Sex Workers Project — legal services and advocacy, Urban Justice Center
- Gail Pheterson — researcher/activist and longtime friend of mine
- A good overview video — background on the decriminalization argument
This is the right approach. As a nation, though, I don’t think we’re capable of doing what’s right here.
The “cleaning up” in Talerico’s piece has a name: a six-month pilot championed by District 2 Councilmember Charlene Wang, barricading Ninth, 10th, and 11th Avenues where they meet International so buyers can no longer duck onto the side streets. Oakland tried nearly the same maneuver on 16th Avenue a few years back. It didn’t reduce anything — the corners just relocated a few blocks over. Michelle Badue, who was trafficked on International for fifteen years and now works with survivors at MISSSEY, put it plainly: traffickers, she says, don’t disappear — they adapt.
the bottom line
“Cleaning up” International Blvd. — if it succeeds — will only push this a few blocks away. My bet is that it won’t accomplish even that much.