Occupiers Protest Anti-Child Sex Trafficking Conference

The Occupy movement’s hatred for authority is well known. Last fall, Occupy Baltimore was condemnedby the heads of three rape crisis centers after they published apamphlet which seemed to discourage victims from reporting rape topolice (preferring instead to handle such accusations as an internalmatter). In a similar move last week, a group calling itself OccupyPatriarchy protested a conference against child sex trafficking andsuggested thatintervention of police.

A group called HEAT Watch held aconference for law enforcement and social workers at the OaklandConvention Center last Wednesday. HEAT stands for Human Exploitation andTrafficking, and as you can see by looking at their website, they are primarily focused on preventing the commercial sexual exploitation of children:

The conference is designed to provide those professionals who intersectwith children put into the commercial sex trade with the opportunity toidentify the complex problems and strategic solutions for responding toCSEC victims, investigations and cases.

This was cause for outrage amongst some Oakland Occupiers, whodecided to protest the conference under the name Occupy Patriarchy.Zombie at PJ Media went to the protest and points out this explanation for the decision to rally against a group dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse:

The H.EAT. conference is a conference of pigs and their nonprofitlackeys to increase the harassment, imprisonment, marginalization andcriminalization of sex workers. Fronting as a conference against “childtrafficking,” this conference brings pigs and nonprofits together todevelop policing strategies that line their pockets while leaving sexworkers exploited and disempowered. Pigs and nonprofits hide behindlies about “safety” and “protection” while they profit off theincarceration and “reformation” of sex workers. These pigs andnonprofits neurotically plug their ears to the fact they themselves areexactly the reason sex work can exist. Sex work, like all forms ofwork, can only exist within a society based on hierarchical economicsystems like capitalism, which are protected by the police andpatronizing reformist organizations that keep exploited people fromrevolting. The pigs are the enemies of sex workers, and of all workers.

Let’s shut this fucker down!!!!!

Occupiers blame capitalism for everything, including creating “hierarchical economic systems”which leave sex workers “exploited and disempowered.” The rest of theargument, to the degree it can be parsed as one, is that it would bebetter in the long run to let exploitation go unchecked so peopleget fed up and revolt. In other words, greater misery for the sexuallyexploited is good for the Marxist agenda.

In a longer defense of the protest, an unnamed author writes that the idea HEATWatch and the police (aka “the pigs”) care about the exploitation ofchildren is a “LIE.” Instead, Occupy Patriarchy says it is all part of aplot to crack down on voluntary sex workers. To back up this contention, the author quotes an anonymous writer and underage sex worker:

As someone who turned tricks as a 17 year old in order to save the money necessary to escape an abusive relationshipwith someone who actually did sexually assault me, I would like toremind everyone that the reasons that people go into the sex industryare diverse and complex. There are differences between ‘children’ and’minors’ — and we need to talk about their participation in the sexindustry in different ways.

This is obviously a tragic story, if true. But one wonders why thisindividual didn’t just call the police. Unless there were some veryunusual circumstances, wouldn’t that have been preferable to hookingone’s way out of trouble? Not according to Occupy Patriarchy. As withthe pamphlet produced in Baltimore last year, the desire to avoidacknowledging authority seems to trump all. It’s a very unhealthyimpulse and one that we certainly do not want to spread among childrenor minors.

The inclusion of the anonymous story and the reference toa voluntary activity. But that’s sidestepping the real issue of childtrafficking, which is definitely not voluntary. The FBI maintains 47 task forces nationwide to combat child sexual exploitation. They have rescued 2,100 children and convicted1,000 pimps and associates since 2003. Does Occupy Patriarchy reallybelieve these people wish the police had stayed out of their lives andleft them and their pimps alone?

But having established their (repulsive) justification foraction, about a dozen or so Occupiers turned out at the ConventionCenter decked out with signs (“End police terror against minor + adultsex workers”). Th, when securitystopped them, resorted to throwing eggs and cursing:

raping people!” Andrew Breitbart yelled at agroup of Occupy protesters at a conservative conferencein Washington DC in February. He was pilloried by the left for doing so.They argued he was being unfair to the movement. But what happened withthe pamphlet last fall in Baltimore and with the protest in Oaklandlast week demonstrates that there are people within this movement whosee everything, even the rape of women and children, as merely obstaclesto their extremeanti-capitalist agenda. There’s no way to reason with people like this.They simply have to be confronted and shamed to whatever degree that ispossible. Say it with me: “Stop raping people!”