Police and the anti-trafficking movement.

This video is from a couple of years ago and was posted to Vimeo by Carol Leigh.  We are sharing the video with the permission of the speaker, Cynthia Chandler.  Ms Chandler has done extensive work around the sterilization of women in prison and the prison system in general.  (see below) Some of us associated with this blog have worked with Cynthia on some issues around the militarization of the police. She was also supportive of our efforts to raise money for the families of the South African miners murdered at the Lonmin mine in Marikana SA two years ago. We assume the author of the text below is Carol Leigh.
 

"Are the same police officers who are being evaluated for brutality and violence going to treat young girls who are basically expendable, who are on the street, part of the street economy? The way that prostitution and other kinds of status offenses are used and exerted is really about social control and about eradicating undesirables, much more so than it's about helping anyone."

"I see the anti-trafficking movement and the fervor around 'white slavery' as being part of a tradition of paternalism around criminal legal issues in general and, quite frankly, as part of a pattern of white supremacy and social control in the fabric of our culture."

Introducing this panel was a movie, "Collateral Damage: Sex Workers and the Anti-Trafficking Campaigns" about the 'White Slavery' campaigns of the 19th and early 20th Century.
Featuring adjunct professor Cynthia Chandler, March 5th, 2013 at Golden Gate University organized by law student, Kristina Dolgin of SWOP Bay Area, Sex Workers Outreach Project

The GGU chapter of the National Lawyers Guild presented this panel on the consequences of mainstream anti-human trafficking campaigns and Prop 35. This panel is a "second opinion" in response to Human Trafficking Issues Facing the Bay Area. The panel hosted is by the ACLU among other organizations.

Cynthia Chandler is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Justice Now, a human rights organization building a movement among women in prison and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons. Before co-founding Justice Now with the support of Echoing Green, Cynthia founded Women's Positive Legal Action Network--the first organization advocating on behalf of HIV+ people in women's prisons. Women’s PLAN merged into Justice Now in 2000.

Cynthia has helped launch several other social justice organizations, including Critical Resistance; TGI Justice Project; and the Eviction Defense Center. She has worked on issues of women's heath, racial justice, and abolition for more than twenty years, and speaks and publishes regularly on these topics. In 2010, she was awarded a Gevelber Distinguished Lectureship on Public Interest Law from Northeastern University School of Law.