OPEN LETTER TO AFRIKAN BLACK COALITION

Dear Members of ABC:

Please allow me to introduce myself.  Now let me ask you a couple of questions before going further.

1.  Have you heard of sex trafficking happening today in America?

2.  Are there legal brothels in California?

3.  Have you heard or seen of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada?

Here's why I ask.  In the late 70's and early 80's - America devoutly did not believe sex trafficking was real.  So much so that the "Happy Hooker" was on the NY Times Best Seller list, the XXX film "Deep Throat" was being played in mainstream theaters that if you were "hip" you saw it, Playboy had it's "Gold Key Club" across the country that wealthy businessmen had their business functions at, and Dolly Parton was singing "nothing dirty going on" in her musical about a brothel in Texas with Sylvester Stallone as her romantic lead where she was the madam and he was the local sheriff (based on a true story).  The "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" was a huge musical romantic comedy by the way where the song Whitney Houston later remade of "I will always love you" was the hit song of the musical.

When Linda Lovelace herself got up and told America she had been forced to film "Deep Throat" with her pimp pointing  gun on her off camera, and the film had been financed by the mob, with no one on the set stepping up to stop him or free her - audiences in America would literally "boo" her or shout out "liar" to her when she was on talk shows.  

Prostitutes were viewed as either "worthless criminals" where the police would go out weekly in buses and arrest them in "sweeps" while churches organized "projects" where they would go out and chase the prostitutes out of that area like they were cockroaches - and their murders were being completely ignored.  The "Grim Reaper" had murdered so many African American women in Los Angeles, leaving their bodies in dumpsters, that even when their mothers protested how LAPD was not investigating these cases - nothing was done until 25 YEARS later when a white reporter here in the states picked up on the story.  They were also viewed so much as a "health risk" that in 1986 a Bill was proposed to try and put prostitutes on an island to "quarantine" them from harming "society".  

I want you to have an idea what I was up against and why the first "safe house" for adults in this country was called a "brothel" in the news.  You can see the clip at www.hightechmadam.com where it shows I had a warehouse next to the police station with iron bars and surveillance cameras which shot footage sent to a camera off site where I would put those we had to hide from traffickers.  Why not just put them in a shelter or drug treatment program?  Because if you were a prostitute in Los Angeles - one prostitute who had been stabbed 51 times was refused to be admitted by a hospital, the drug treatment centers and the shelters would REFUSE them admittance because back then you were a "criminal posing a health risk".  

I knew the media wouldn't believe that warehouse wasn't a brothel for the very reasons I set it up - no one believed any of this stuff was real any longer.  In the 1968 "Thoroughly Modern Millie" starring Julie Andrews - it was a musical comedy about Asian sex trafficking where the owner of a hotel for young actresses was drugging them and then selling them into an opium den brothel.  The "finale" was her organizing a rescue and burning the place down.  It was very clear they were spoofing these ideas as "jokes" and not "real" if you watch the film today.  

So from 1984 until 1987 - I got mentored.  I went out and put together a board of people who had not only been a part of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous but who had also "changed the world".  I mean people used to think that alcoholics were winos in alleys.  Not until Betty Ford stepped up to confess she was one - did they really believe this disease could affect anyone.  Which meant 12 step fellowships also brought about change.  

Yet while AA was accepted - in the early days of NA addicts who would attend would be arrested.  For that reason, the early meetings of NA had to be organized like drug deals!  Laws had to be passed just so they could meet in peace and addicts on probation wouldn't be violated for "associating with felons" by going to their NA meetings to stay clean.  Imagine that world - where to stay clean and attend an NA meeting you had to hide it for your probation officer because he might violate and arrest you for such an act!  

I had also got a lot of help for my own PTSD with a holocaust survivors group I joined.  The members there taught me a lot about how Hitler came into power, as well as the way propaganda was used to justify the way they were being treated.  I mean something had to be spun to stop people from marching up the street to shut down the gas chambers who were burning so many people the cafeteria owners would have to come in early just to sweep up the ashes from the bodies that would float down over their cafes overnight.  

They introduced me to some people who were organizing some events at the East West Center.  They introduced me to people who had walked with Gandhi, and knew Malcolm X personally.  So by the time I walked onto that first talk show stage in 1987 to say that (1) sex trafficking was real, (2) our country needed to change in order to help us stop this from happening and provide the victims with proper care afterwards, (3) not all prostitutes were junkies with pimps, and (3) promote our hotline and program which was the first national program for ALL adults (male, female and transgender) who were straight and LGBT, as well as any, or no, religion - I had a lot of people behind me who had armed me with knowledge of the American civil rights movement, Gandhi, Nazi Germany, prohibition, womens' movement - and essentially any movement which required changing the world view in order for change to be accomplished.

The reason why I asked about if you'd seen brothels in California is just the next year, 1988, Joe Conforte, the previous owner of the Mustang Ranch brothel, had decided he wanted to expand the legal brothels into the state as a "solution to the HIV crisis".  He bought himself a college to research his brothel and declare that "no brothel prostitutes have HIV" which the street walkers of Los Angeles had shown an 80 percent infection rate.  Joe also put up a $1,000,000 into a PR firm to help him win on that project.  

So by 1988 - not only we were founding the modern day sex trafficking movement which achieved federal recognition with the passing of the Trafficking Act of 2000, but we also defeated the push to expand the brothels into California.  By the way - no one stood up with me on that fight.  They were all too scared of Joe because of how he murdered that boxer in cold blood and didn't do one day in jail!

The Mob Museum in Las Vegas didn't just appear overnight.  For quite a while, the mayor, Oscar Goodman, and brothel owners like Dennis Hof and Lance Gilman, along with many celebrities who included Gene Simmons for one, and many business owners like the Cashman family who owns the Cashman Center and the car dealership - wanted to put a legal brothel where that museum now stands.  Also on that clip site I sent you is him being quoted as talking about how they could build "magnificent brothels" in Las Vegas.  Something Oscar would promote to investors about how profitable it would be with it being an "international stop for businessmen from all over the world".  

I was also the only person I saw around me fighting that fight also.  In fact, when we walked into the legislature in February of 2013 to testify against the project to expand the brothels into Las Vegas - we were literally the ONLY opponents to speak up against the brothel lobbyist at that hearing.  We watched 45 so called "abolitionists" get up and walk out of the legislature right before that hearing started in fact.  Not one of them would even join us for moral support.  The important thing is the legislature did the right thing and voted against that idea.  

So when I approach you I do so as the "founder of the modern day sex trafficking movement" with documentation attached to prove this statement.  I also am the reason why we don't have legal brothels in California or where the Mob Museum now stands in Las Vegas.  I'm telling you this because I want you to first of all understand I don't come to you with a bunch of "theories" or "opinions" but with actual real world experience at literally "changing the world" and "starting a movement".  

Tell me if Vegas isn't going to be a different place entirely now with not only that museum there instead of a brothel - but also because of the arts district that went in around that area also, which led to a farmers market, and now talks of a grocery store moving into that part of town where many poor and disabled live because of the cheap rents.  All things I accomplished without any money, looking like Barbie, or having rich famous powerful "friends" in high places.  I mean let's get real - by the early 1980's I was considered one of those "junkie prostitutes".  

We have a lot more in common than maybe you realize at first glance.  First of all, I appear "white" but in reality I'm the descendant of a union between a slave owner and a freed slave who ran off to have a family together.  I also am part of a Native American and white couple - so slavery and 'forbidden love" are part of my ancestry.  It also means I'm African American by blood.  Something I wasn't even aware of until I did my genealogy.

One of the reasons why I wanted to change things was because I was in the middle of what's now been called Iran Contra.  For those of you who don't know anything about this - I'd suggest "Charlie's War" for one, as well as "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", "Cocaine Cowboys" and also "Crack in the System".  Essentially, our government wanted to buy guns for the Contra's but couldn't get the budget officially to do so.  So to raise cash "off the books" they didn't have to answer to anyone about - they were the ones who arranged to flood this country with cocaine. 

All while blaming the African American gangs for the epidemic.  Ice T also talked about this being part of the frustration that became the LA Riots in his documentary.  Remember, we didn't have the internet back then.  The major media was blaring it's propaganda with the only voices they had in south central being rap music which was being sold out of the trunks of cars - and the Molotov cocktail.  John Singleton took to writing to carry his message in films like "Boz in the Hood" and Mario Van Peeples in "New Jack City".  

But realize that the music and film industry of the 1980's that was revealing the whole true story to us - wasn't controlled by the very people who were part of the problem back then unlike today.  After the Telecommunications Act of 1995 - things changed dramatically.  For one - the law REQUIRED that every time Joe went onto TV in 1988 - he had to have a "counter opinion" air with him.  Something not required today by the way.  

I used to run public service announcements all over this country with our hotline number on it.  That meant if you turned on the TV at 2:00 a.m. in New York, Seattle, Chicago, etc. you would see Frances Nuyen saying "do you want help to leave - call (818) XXX-XXX".  We also had a weekly public access show we filmed here in Los Angeles.  I would interview a different survivor every week on that show.  Then I'd duplicate it and mail a copy to another TV station in another city who would air it there, and so on and so on until we had these airing across the country on public access channels.  This gave voice to survivors in their words unedited and unsponsored - and not asking for money either.

After the Trafficking Act of 2000 got passed - I made the mistake of thinking "we're done".  The truth is it had just begun.  That's what I'd like to talk to you about.  Because everything I learned about social change and activism was done BEFORE things changed.  If you have watched the movie about "Wikileaks" you'd know that basically the internet created a world where many people in power realized they couldn't hide a lot of things any longer.  What this did was set about a way of "countering" movements using technology and the understanding of people into "smear" campaigns.  

Take a look at what's happening right now to KFC as but one example.  They're suing a marketing company who created a social media campaign against their company who was spreading rumors they were serving "deep fried rats" and other such horrible lies to smear them.  Now I want you to think about how much money KFC generates in sales - and compare it to what you think sex and drug trafficking mean - and you'll realize that if certain people use these types of smear campaigns over chicken - they sure as hell will when it comes to other things also.  Especially when it comes to things like how our country just set aside over TWO BILLION dollars to "fight sex trafficking" in countries where prostitution is legal by the way.

Let me ask you something - if you were a politician and you wanted to go into a country who had no "weapons of mass destruction" what would you do?  Now Bush went into Iran even after being told they "didn't have any" under a thin veneer of saying he "thought they had them".  But what's the one thing some countries do have that don't have weapons of mass destruction that could be something so powerful as to incite this whole country to agree that it's "worth invading them over".  

Welcome to what's happening right now with the modern day Iran Contra.  Only to push this agenda - it's also become the new "war on the African American community".  I came out saying that the traffickers we were fighting were men in power - police, politicians, prosecutors, film makers, etc.  The people who hijacked our movement - follow around behind African American men calling them "traffickers".  

When Jada Pinkett-Smith led the CNN Freedom Project on their crusade against "traffickers" where did she go?  Did they go where we held a press conference in 2007 to say it's an "out of control epidemic"?  Where Bob Herbert from the NY Times wrote that he validated my statement that you could "throw a rock and hit a victim" that had Oscar threatening him with a "baseball bat to the head"?  

No.  She led you into Atlanta, Georgia where every "trafficker" shown was an African American male and every "victim" was a young African American girl.  Check out this no "No Such Thing" campaign funded by the McCain Institute with Malika Saar wearing corn rows and their "poster child" is an African American girl.  Meaning if you watch every major media show right now out about sex trafficking - you will see the brainwashing of America into thinking this is about the African American community.  

While the reality is the traffickers I'm fighting today wear badges and are of every color and country.  So I was hoping maybe I could just connect to some of your group and we could talk.  I wanted to also point out that the methods I learned from the "masters" of social change - lived in a different world.  I say that because I'm seeing many groups report they're getting hurt by not updating their methods.  I have seen Monsanto protesters report their cell phones were cut off during  protest, and hackers went in and canceled their events.  I'm reading people at the Million Man March speak about how major media didn't even cover the event except to smear them.  

I have sat by and watched as major media has outright lied and staged things that are beyond believable when it comes to sex trafficking.  Things the FCC has told me there is "nothing that they can do" and even now Fox has won the legal right to not only spread a false story - but further can threaten to fire a reporter who balks at reporting a lie.  I don't mean "spin" either - but I can show you articles and pieces where they've even set up "fake" meetings of ours to blast out on media to destroy a reputation that took me 30 years to build they destroyed in seconds.  That was even after I sent them a legal notice threatening to sue them - they still aired a segment on NBC where it was entirely staged.  I did threaten to sue them for copyright and trademark infringement for using our group's name without my consent  - but the damage is already done.

I can show you things they've done that would led me to believe that even Sandra Bland's being pulled over for no accident.  Her story is tied to why I had to tell every member of SWA to not "identify" as such.  We had to take down our groups, our facebook profiles, our forums, etc. and we had to tell every member to remove all reference to our name even on their profiles because we were having members report back to us of being stalked, threatened, even fake criminal charges suddenly appearing on their records.  

So I'd like to talk to you about the "modern day tactics" if I might.  I'm working on a book about the whole thing right now I'm going to call "Anatomy of a Movement" but while I'm working on it I was hoping maybe we could talk.  

Thank you for your time.


Jody Williams


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