For your daily dose of fucked up, I give you Operation Cross Country. SWOP-LV on Bound, not Gagged posted about this. When I wrote about this on my personal blog, I didn’t realize it had happened in Chicago. Basically, you have FBI agents arresting sex workers solicited on Craigslist. Ostensibly, they’re targeting child prostitution and trafficking.
The numbers say otherwise. Forty-seven children have been rescued, whereas five hundred eighteen adult sex workers have been rested. That’s over ten times the number of adults arrested as children rescued. These adult sex workers, as SWOP-LV points out, are lured into stings from Craigslist and other such sting tactics. These are presumably not people related to the crimes of trafficking, given this information. Seventy-three pimps have been arrested, presumably the people responsible for the trafficking.
So what you have is the FBI arresting sex workers on felony charges for what actually is a state-level misdemeanor. In the story SWOP-LV links in Boston, seventeen FBI agents arrested two sex workers. That’s right, two. Five total for the night. In Chicago, five people who run services were arrested, five were customers, and thirty-four were sex workers. Adult sex workers. No children were found.
Excuse me just one moment. You have got to be fucking kidding me!
To target child prostitution and trafficking is one thing. To scapegoat sex workers and crackdown on prostitution in the name of preventing trafficking is a horse of a different color. It’s a waste of money and it’s a waste of tax-payer resources. And if you really care about “rescuing” sex workers, why the fuck are you giving them felony records?
Operation Cross Country is not about ending the exploitation of children and those who are trafficked against their will. It’s using this exploitation as a smokescreen for persecuting sex workers on the altar of sex panic.
If you are a sex worker, escort, prostitute, or other person arrested in this sting, I encourage you to contact SWOP-Chicago by phone or on our hotline. We have a number of legal resources and moreover would be glad just to talk to you.
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[...] 44 arrested in FBI sting « Sex Workers Outreach Project – SWOP-CHICAGO [...]
So these women are getting felony charges???
[...] As SWOP-Chicago says on their blog: To target child prostitution and trafficking is one thing. To scapegoat sex workers and crackdown on prostitution in the name of preventing trafficking is a horse of a different color. It’s a waste of money and it’s a waste of tax-payer resources. And if you really care about “rescuing” sex workers, why the fuck are you giving them felony records? [...]
SWOPLV, I’m pretty sure I read in one of the articles they face state and federal charges, so I assume felony charges. I can’t imagine they’d send 17 FBI agents to write out a state-level misdemeanor.
I wonder how we can find out for sure. This is pretty big.
[...] that case, SWOP-Chicago put it well: To target child prostitution and trafficking is one thing. To scapegoat sex workers [...]