LETTER TO SAVANNAH SLY OF SWOP

http://traffickingandprostitutionservices.blogspot.com/2016/04/timing-is-everything.html

The problem Savannah when you cut off talking to someone who has been in the same field as you for more than 37 years now as I have, is that sometimes, just sometimes, we know a little bit more about the game, and the players, than you.  I came to you as an ally, and as an ex-sex worker which one day you will probably be yourself.  Very few people die in this field.  You listened to rumors about me, prejudged and hung me, without so much as one personal meeting or phone call with me to see for yourself who and what I am.  Considering that’s exactly the kind of treatment sex workers are trying to get the non-sex workers to stop doing to them – then you’re treating me like you’re not wanting others to treat us.  I have success in leading a movement from non-existence totally in this country to now one of the biggest movements this country has seen in our lifetime other than the civil rights movement.

The problem is that you failed to understand that the trafficking we’ve been fighting, and speaking about, since day one was not about pimps.  There were laws on the books in the 1980’s against pimps.  One phone call and he’s carted off on charges.  What we were fighting was men within our own government, law enforcement, and the media forcing us into the sex industry, or even outright sold, that some of us have died to try and prove exist and to have this country address it.  Jeane Palfrey was one of those women who died trying to prove it was our government, not some street pimp, who forced her into not only operating as a madam, but murdered two of her sister sex workers, Brandy Britton and the Baton Rouge Madam.  Both of who were connected to David Vitter as she was also. 

She could have kept her mouth shut and continued to do what they told her and she would not have been arrested.  But she didn’t want sex workers to continue to be treated that way, so she balked.  For that, she was arrested.  Then they tried to silence her over and over again.  For the first time, her phone records were proving it was OUR GOVERNMENT that was trafficking us.   Before she could reveal the rest of the names in her book, and also testify at Congress about how madams from her on down to my time, were being coerced and forced into the sex industry by our government using us no different than plantation owners used slaves she was murdered.  I fought to have a full murder investigation done into her death – and wound up being chased by cops for almost a year.  A warrant was issued for me impersonating myself? 

This is happening right now to sex workers, and the case tied into the Seattle arrests.  Now either you’re completely ignorant of what’s going on in connection with that specific ring I’ve been fighting since 2007 that uses cops, Homeland Security, ICE, private investigators, sheriff’s, prosecutors, attorney’s, etc., who traffick these women or you’re a part of the women who may be losing their one chance at freedom by Mary circling their names on a list of sex workers’ ads that is none of her business to speak for them in the press and to the cops, as well as Maxine who tried to have sex workers in San Francisco denied help in 2008. 

Nuremberg was about those who were just as guilty as those who murdered Jews, because they refused to listen to what was going on right under their noises.  Some knew and ignored it anyway.  Either way – they were just as much of a part of those people’s death and pain whether it was by accident or directly. 

Because all you had to do was pick up a phone and talk to me.  You not doing that again means you’re part of the problem, or not interested in being a part of the solution.  Either way – you’re on their side now and I will treat you as I treat them.

Jody Williams