“Advocates of these policies fail to realize that the issues they want to address, like drug use, are hardly a matter of police and community relationships. Rather, the root of these issues lies in the systematic disenfranchisement of targeted communities.” –To this I say YES YES YES! All of these programs try to fix things that wouldn’t be an issue in the first place if we just had a better social safety net in this country (better schools, extension of foster care past age 18, more graduated social welfare programs, some or any focus on housing for the poor other than emergency shelters, etc…). Too bad no one wants to fund this type of programming and US taxpayers see anything like this as handouts (even if middle-class and upper class folks get tax breaks from the gov., social welfare programs go through the political wringer for getting the same or less gov. money).

“LEAD programming does not right these wrongs. In fact, it often simply further burdens “consumers” with open criminal records and time-consuming mandatory classes.” –While this is definitely the case with traditional diversion programs, this is less so the case with LEAD because individuals do not have open charges, nor do they interact with the judicial system at all. They must meet with a case worker to do an intake after their arrest or they end up with an arrest on their record. There are not mandatory classes or requirements past this one interview. BUT if they are in LEAD they can still get arrested and processed through the judicial system for subsequent/other charges.

“There are fantastic models of sex worker-led programs globally that address criminality, public health, and police violence, like Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) in West Bengal and SWEAT in South Africa—who are sustained by the same funders as LEAD. Indeed, we must ask ourselves what it is about U.S.-based sex workers—or U.S.-based law enforcement—which renders programming that looks so very different.” –I ask myself this all the time–why is sex worker funding/programming in the US either absent or completely enmeshed in the CJS? How do we begin to foster empowerment and activist based programming here? Where is this conversation and why is it absent?! How do we untangle this conversation from the human trafficking movement? I could keep going. How the US handles sex work in both policy and programming never fails to fascinate (and frustrate) me.

These two delusional views are flip sides of the same coin – “If everyone complies, the problem will go away, but since not everyone is complying, we need to work harder to make them comply.”, vs., “If we just try to help people, and really really believe that we are helping, the problem will solve itself, without us needing to bother to make sure the solution we came up with actual works.” The attitudes play against each other quite well, sadly. The left gets to hate out off the rails the solution gets, as the right mucks with it, while the right gets to point out how often the solutions fails, and need more law, legislation, and enforcement, to “fix” the failures. That the real problem is that the solution is wrong, and fixing it by either doubling down on enforcement, and/or changing the programs to they are heavily in favor of laws, instead of directing them more to helping, won’t work. But, none of the people “backing” the solutions, from either side, seem to want to see this (especially if a more effective solution is foreign, and thus not “American”, else.. we, as in the government and other groups involved, would be embracing some of the solutions from around the world, instead of sneering at them.)

Someone, at some point, gave both sides of the political powers in the US half of the wrong map, and its sending them both wandering off, when they try to do anything, in entirely dysfunctional directions, when ever a problem needs to be solved.

The following 2 video’s are enlightening. The committee hears testimony that the cops are forcing minors to have sex under threat of arrest, and the committee ignores these concerns and assures everyone that they will use “good cops” and then they start handing out money. There is 32 million on the table in CA for LEAD programs.

LEAD A DIVERSION from real solution: DECRIM. Cops sexually abusing under FAILED POLICY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK0TD0h9zPk&feature=em-subs_digest

SB1110 CA LEAD law enforcement assisted diversion testimony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRqq74i0nzY&feature=em-subs_digest

In 2016 when we had the conference call with LEAD, they admitted that the majority of their funding goes to pay the saleries of case workers, and yet LEAD case mangers have no real services to offer.. They are using the same services that anyone can access by dialing 211, the list of public shelters and food bank and medical referrals etc. None of these LEAD services are going to pay your rent or feed your kids, or pay for day care, or pay your car insurance or put gas in your car, or create jobs that pay a living wage, or provide access to a free higher education. The women who are caught up in LEAD are dumped into public shelters or drug rehabs and then abandoned to live in extreme poverty.

Yet they are now calling the 211 referral system a nationwide infrastructure. I hope any one that is caught up in the LEAD arrest to peddle fake services scam, will rate their rescue at http://ratethatrescue.org/

WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS!!

This is another awesome read. When services allow organizing, trafficked workers win

https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/tiffany-williams/when-services-allow-organising-trafficked-workers-win

So with that in mind Coyote RI is currently applying for funding to open a halfway house for “people involved in the sex trade who are fleeing violence” This safe house will organized and run by sex workers and not the rescue pimps.