DIRECTIONS from Los Angeles: From the 5, take the 2 north. Take the Verdugo Road exit. Left onto Eagle Rock Boulevard. Right onto York Boulevard (major cross street is Armadale Boulevard).

Organized by Jessica Lawless and Sarah Ross, more than 40 socially engaged local and international artists address the depressed state of politics, anti-war activism, and the economy accrued by eight years of the current Bush administration. Taking to heart the idea that random acts of kindness are central to social change, each artist has made a work of art in multiple editions visitors to the exhibition can take away. The Audacity of Desperation creates a free exchange of ideas that challenges the culture at large as well as the international art market of which Los Angles has become a central location.

Artists in the exhibit:
AK-Ami, Caitlin Berrigan, William Brown, David Sanchez Burr, CaFF, Chris Christion, Ryan Claypool/Austin Smythe, Heidi Cunningham, Anna Campbell, solidad decosta, Alexis Disselkoen, Von Edwards, Nicky Enright, Feel Tank Chicago, Dara Greenwald/Josh MacPhee/Steve Lambert with the Anti-Advertising Agency, Russell Howze, Jill Jeannides, Anné M. Klint, Caroline Kelley, Sarah Kanouse/Tianna Kennedy/Lee Azzerello, Norene Leddy/Ed Bringas, Let’s Re-Make, Steven Lam, the League of Imaginary Scientists, DJ Lightbolt, Diran Lyons, Elana Mann, Glendalys Medina, Tomas A. Moreno, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Doug Minkler, Houng, Ngo, Mahyar Nili, elin o’Hara slavick, Taisha Paggett and Ashley Hunt, Robert T. Pannell, Sheila Pinkel, Nancy Popp, Lizabeth Eva Rossof, Anthony Rayson, Nino Rodriguez, Lián Amaris Sifuentes, Rick Salafia, simon strikeback, Dorothy Schultz, Heath Schultz/Brad Thomson, Lisa Tucker, Tammy Jo Wilson, Gordon Winiemko, Xtine, Carrie Yury

—
the
1.audacity – fearless daring; the trait of being willing to undertake things that involve risk or danger; “I couldn’t believe her boldness”
2.audacity – aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery; “he had the audacity to question my decision”
of
1.desperation – a state in which all hope is lost or absent; “courage born of desperation”
2.desperation – desperate recklessness; “it was a policy of desperation”

Stop by to get one of our DIY audible alarm kits and other great pieces for free while they last.

For more info:
http://desperationexhibition.blogspot.com/2008/06/nyc-stop-audacity-of-desperation.html

Full press release and performance schedule is included below.

* * * * * * * * *
“The Audacity of Desperation”
Presented by PS 122 Gallery at DEMO Space 122
150 1st Avenue, enter on 1st Avenue, take stairs to second floor
June 19 – June 22, 2008

DEMO Space 122 is pleased to present the NYC stop of “The Audacity of Desperation,” a 3-day nomadic exhibition of take-away projects (initiated and curated by Jessica Lawless and Sarah Ross and organized by Steven Lam) in conjunction with a series of performances and workshops responding to the spin of the upcoming election.

TAKE-AWAYS:
Artworks by activists, artists, enthusiasts and very concerned people are made in unlimited editions to be freely distributed. These artworks function as counter-propaganda. Like a virus, they are activated outside the exhibition context, in domestic and public spaces, on bodies, clothes, bags… This collection of take-away posters, manifestos, DIY kits, postcards, stickers, buttons and multi-media projects will travel throughout the country, creating a space to build relationships and foster dialogue around the desperate state of affairs resulting from a calamitous administration, complacent congressional leaders and a disempowered citizenry.

MODES OF ENCOUNTER:
In parallel to the take-away work on display, the exhibition will be structured as a succession of modes of encounter orchestrated by interested volunteers. Utilizing the exhibition parameters as a site of social experimentation, this open-ended program of conversations, workshops and performances will solicit the active and reciprocal participations of visitor and artist alike, thereby inviting reflection on how communities become connected, alliances selected, coalitions established. Those interested in participating for one of the remaining empty slots are encouraged to email DEMOspacedirector@verizon.net for more information.

PARTICIPANTS:
Avi Alpert, Katja Aglert, Alas (Randy Wallace & Rae Culbert), Eric Anglès, Shinsuke Aso, Steve Ausbury, Mark Bechtel, Daniel Bejar, Lindsay Benedict, David Bench, Caitlin Berrigan, Mary Billyou, Jody Buchman, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Coco Rico, Heidi Cunningham, Solidad Decosta, DJ Lightbolt, Andrea Domesle, Feel Tank Chicago, Von Edwards, Sarah Ferguson, Elaine Gan, Anthony Graves & Emily Votruba, Dara Greenwald & Steve Lambert & Josh MacPhee & the Anti Advertising Agency, Benj Gerdes, Patrick Grenier, Tamar Guimaraes, Carla Herrera-Prats, Sarah Kanouse & Tianna Kennedy & Lee Azzerello, Caroline Kelley, Scott Kiernan, Rosamond S. King, Anné M. Klint, The League of Imaginary Scientists, Norene Leddy with Ed Bringas, Erin Ming Lee, Let’s Re-Make, Runo Lagomarsino, Ilya Lipkin, Douglas Minkler, Carlos Motta, Huong Ngo, elin o’Hara slavick, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Sheila Pinkel, Jenny Polak, Jill Posener, Nancy Popp, Jeremy Eilers & Davis Rhodes & Nic Xedro, Anthony Rayson, John Richey, Lizabeth Eva Rossoff, Stephanie Rothenberg, Edward Schexnayder, Dorothy Schultz, Heath Schultz & Brad Thomson, Robert Samel Snyderman, Gordon Winiemko, Audra Wolowiec, Carrie Yury, Xtine, among others

MODES OF ENCOUNTER SCHEDULE
Thursday, June 19
1 – 2 pm Eric Anglès “Conversation”
2 – 3 pm (open)
3 – 4 pm (open)
4 – 5 pm (open)
6 – 7 pm Ilya Lipkin “Opening Party”
8 – 9 pm Ilya Lipkin “Opening Party”

Friday, June 20
1 – 2 pm Eric Anglès + Marc Bechtel “Conversation”
2 – 3 pm Eric Anglès + Marc Bechtel “Conversation”
3 – 4 pm (open)
4 – 5 pm Andrea Domesle, Jody Buchman, Robert Samel Snyderman “Poems on Benches”
5 – 6 pm Andrea Domesle, Jody Buchman, Robert Samel Snyderman “Poems on Benches”
6 – 7 pm Andrea Domesle, Jody Buchman, Robert Samel Snyderman “Poems on Benches”
7 – 8 pm David Bench “Meet Barack”
8 – 9 pm Davis Rhodes, Nic Xedro, Jeremy Eilers
9 – 10 pm Davis Rhodes, Nic Xedro, Jeremy Eilers

Saturday, June 21
1 – 2 pm Eric Anglès + Marc Bechtel “Conversation”
2 – 3 pm Eric Anglès + Marc Bechtel “Conversation”
3 – 4 pm Patrick Grenier “Democratic Decrees”
4 – 5 pm Steve Ausbury “This is what I know”
5 – 6 pm Steve Ausbury “This is what I know”
6 – 7 pm Avi Alpert + Rit Premnath “A Game of Carrom”
7 – 8 pm Avi Alpert + Rit Premnath “A Game of Carrom”/ Scott Kiernan “Tomorrow”
8 – 9 pm Scott Kiernan “Tomorrow”
9 – 10 pm (open)
10 – 11 pm (open)
11 pm – on: Tamar Guimaraes, Erin Ming Lee, Runo Lagomarsino, Steven Lam, Soyoung Yoon, among others “An Exquisite Evening”

Sunday, June 22
1 – 2 pm Stephanie Rothenberg “An Introduction to Basic Divination”
2 – 3 pm Stephanie Rothenberg “An Introduction to Basic Divination”
3 – 4 pm Dara Greenwald, Josh McPhee, Emily Foreman, & Mary Billyou “Barcelona Squats”
4 – 5 pm Dara Greenwald, Josh McPhee, Emily Foreman, & Mary Billyou “Barcelona Squats”
5 – 6 pm Ilya Lipkin “Closing Party”

DEMO Space 122 will officially open in 2009. A parallel exhibition space to the PS122 Art Gallery, DEMO Space 122 (located on the 2nd floor) is a not-for-profit organization that catalyzes new futures for contemporary artistic production with programs that utilize the intimate and participatory setting of a former classroom as a site for inquiry and process. Envisioned to be a laboratory for community participation, DEMO Space 122 seeks to further the mission of PS 122 Art Gallery by providing cross cultural dialog and a venue for art exhibitions and social activism.

We’ll be at 01SJ doing a shoe hacking workshop at the Tech Museum of Innovation this weekend… please come by!

DIY Shoe Hacks and Audible Alarm Workshop with Norene Leddy, Andrew Milmoe and Melissa Gira

Where: On Chavez Plaza

Start time: 4pm

Length of workshop: 2 hours

Number of participants: 10 (if participants work in pairs, we can accommodate 20)

Recommended that participants under the age of 12 years, work with an adult

In a two-hour workshop, Norene Leddy and The Aphrodite Project Team will present a brief history of shoes, along with a description of Project Walkway (GYV micro-grant project with Eyebeam in NYC) and demos of shoe-hacks. We will show 2-3 versions of hacked sandals, and explain in detail how they were created. This will include ways to make casings for electronics, secret compartments, etc. A shoe hacking article, written by the team and published in Make magazine, with detailed instructions for doing more elaborate shoe hacks will also be handed out. Participants will then build their own personal audible alarm systems to use when physically threatened. The same alarm is embedded in the demo shoes, and can also be used in handbags, jackets and other clothing. This DIY alarm system uses inexpensive components and is easy to assemble (no soldering or special skills required).

Images of the audible alarm kits:
http://www.theaphroditeproject.tv/DIY/

Who’s Trafficked?

Melissa Ditmore on May 19, 2008 – 8:00am

In my first contribution to RH Reality Check, I tried to disentangle the subjects of trafficking and sex work. Understanding this distinction is crucial, because Congress is poised to re-authorize the federal law against human trafficking with new provisions that will both increase penalties for sex workers and effectively decrease our ability to aid genuine victims of trafficking.

The Department of Justice, which is responsible for enforcing the bill’s provisions, is opposing these misguided changes — and so should anyone else who is concerned about human trafficking in its many forms.

It is already sadly evident that the U.S. government’s anti-trafficking program has devolved into a global campaign against sex work and is not working to halt trafficking. In a 2006 report critical of the program, the Government Accountability Office found that “the U.S. government has not developed a coordinated strategy to combat trafficking in persons abroad…or evaluated its programs to determine whether projects are achieving the desired outcomes.”

Now comes a plan to further ratify this failure. The Trafficking Victims’ Protection Reauthorization Act addresses the crime of trafficking in persons, which is recognized in U.S law as cases that involve force, fraud or coercion, which includes threats, intimidation, and psychological abuse. The law offers protection to workers who are most vulnerable to abuse — immigrants, people in forced labor, and minors who exchange sex for cash or goods. The bill currently before Congress, however, would expand the definition of “sex trafficking” to include cases in which no elements of force, fraud or coercion were involved.

Specifically, the House version of the TVPRA would expand U.S. laws against prostitution by re-defining most prostitution-related activities, regardless of consent, as trafficking. Human trafficking is a complex issue, but there is widespread agreement about its key distinguishing features, namely the use of force, fraud or coercion. HR 3887 throws out these cornerstones and threatens to re-define all prostitution, arguably even all sex work, as trafficking. And it would require the involvement of federal law enforcement through a broad new provision that covers actions “affecting” interstate commerce (rather than actual activities that involve the crossing of state lines, the standard trigger for bringing in the feds). Therefore, most prostitution-related activities defined as sex trafficking would fall under federal law even if no interstate commerce was involved.

The immediate consequences of this definitional sleight-of-hand are bad enough: the use of federal resources to prosecute state-level offenses involving consenting adults who may not see themselves as victims of a crime. But turning the DOJ into the prostitution police is not the worst of it. By shifting the focus of the law from genuine cases of trafficking to prostitution as a whole, the bill threatens to divert resources from those most in need: the real victims of trafficking.

The Department of Justice has written to members of Congress to express its opposition to the proposed reauthorization bills, saying that the changes would remove their focus from genuinely abusive situations that involve force, fraud or coercion and place it instead on the over 100,000 prostitution-related arrests annually.

The DOJ’s resistance to the changes stem also from the fact that addressing each prostitution case as a potential trafficking case would significantly increase their caseload while reducing the likelihood of convictions. Trafficking cases require an identifiable victim. Contrary to popular mythology, most sex workers are not in coercive situations. If they do not choose to self-identify as victims or otherwise participate in the prosecution of their associates, the case may collapse.

The dangers of laws that are both overly general and backed by heavy penalties should be familiar to any student of U.S. history. The 1910 White Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act, criminalized interstate travel for “immoral acts,” which at that time referred fairly generally to (female) promiscuity and interracial sexual activity. In practice, the application of the law was often distinguished by racism or political bias. High-profile victims of racist prosecutions under the Mann Act included Chuck Berry and Jack Johnson, while Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright, suspected of Communist sympathies, were subject to politically motivated Mann Act prosecutions.

Above all else, however, application of the Mann Act was sexist. The law purported to protect women, yet the overwhelming majority of those charged under the Act were women. Women were tried and jailed for crossing state lines to visit men, often men that they would later marry. It seems inconceivable to us today that simply visiting a romantic partner in another state could be grounds for conspiracy charges, yet this is exactly what happened.

In 1986, the scope of the Mann Act was amended to cover only acts that were crimes in the location where they were committed. When the Act was conceived in 1909, prostitution was not a crime in any state of the Union. But within twenty years, every state had passed laws criminalizing prostitution. Today, almost a hundred years from its conception, the Mann Act remains on the books as a law enforcement tool targeting prostitution. This little-known law got its moment in the spotlight recently when four people involved with the Emperors Club VIP, whose best-known client was New York governor Eliot Spitzer, were charged with Mann Act offenses.

Just as the Mann Act, ostensibly created to protect women, was used largely to prosecute them, the targets of the re-authorized TVPA will not be international traffickers. They are more likely to be prostitutes (including, once again, many women), charged with trafficking offenses that exist only on paper.

If no “victims” or “traffickers” can be found, some will have to be created. The threat of additional charges or the promise of immunity can be used to persuade some of those charged to testify against their colleagues. During the initial period of the TVPA, despite lavish spending on raids and on services for victims of trafficking, there was an embarrassing lack of migrants coming forward to take advantage of the protection offered by the law and to cooperate in the prosecution of their traffickers. The expanded definition of trafficking provided by HR 3887 should make up the shortfall in trafficking victims, but only by spuriously applying trafficking charges to cases that do not involve force, fraud or coercion.

There is something deeply wrong with our government when the answer to the desperate problem of human trafficking is to change the definition of the crime so we can claim we’re doing something about it. It’s a tactic that is misguided at best and at worst, downright cynical.

Equating prostitution and trafficking simultaneously denies the agency of sex workers and trivializes the experiences of people in genuinely abusive situations. Enshrining this wrongheaded equation in law delivers a double whammy. On the one hand, it undercuts the ability of government agencies to provide services to those who desperately need them. On the other it opens the door to the same kind of abuses seen with the Mann Act, creating “victims” where none exist and bringing the full force of anti-trafficking law to bear on a group that is already stigmatized and marginalized by society. By any standards, this would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

© 2008 RH Reality Check All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/05/16/whos-trafficked.

Even those who mean well sometimes confuse the human rights abuse of trafficking in persons with the human occupation of prostitution, or sex work. It’s understandable because of the history of the two fields, but it creates rather than solves problems. Let me try to sort it out here.

The tendency to treat trafficking and prostitution as if they were the same thing has a long and problematic history. Legislation and social discussion have often blurred or denied any difference, but that has always made things worse rather than better for those involved.

The trafficking of women and children into sexual slavery is undeniably a gross abuse of human rights. Like all trafficking, it involves coercion or trickery or both. Sex trafficking is an odious forms of
trafficking, but it is far from the only one. Men, women and children are also — and more commonly — trafficked routinely for purposes of household and farm labor as well as sweatshop manufacturing. Their lives may be less media-genic than those of sex trafficking victims, but they are no less brutal,
dangerous and degraded.

A narrow focus on the single aspect of sex trafficking is often fueled by sensationalist and sometimes salacious accounts of sexual abuse. It leads us to ignore these other forms of trafficking, and so denies help and protection to all the men, women and children forced into and trapped in abusive working situations in other industries.

By the same token, treating sex work as if it is the same as sex trafficking both ignores the realities of sex work and endangers those engaged in it. Sex workers include men and women and transgender persons who offer sexual services in exchange for money. The services may include prostitution (sexual intercourse) and other services such as phone sex. Sex workers engage in this for many reasons, but the key distinction here is that they do it voluntarily. They are not coerced or tricked into staying in the business but have chosen this from among the options available to them.

A key goal of sex worker activists is to improve sex-working conditions, but self-organization is
impossible when sex work is regarded as merely another form of slavery. Then authorities and laws trying to stop true slavery — trafficking — get misapplied to sex workers, clients and others involved in the sex industry. Law enforcement raids in the U.S. and abroad, for example, have led to little success identifying trafficked persons but instead have driven sex work underground. This exposes sex workers to an increased risk of violence and denies them any protection of laws against assault or access to medical, legal and educational services. It denies them their human rights.

A national anti-trafficking law enacted in 2000 recognizes “severe forms of trafficking” as a modern
form of slavery that involves a broad spectrum of workers and industries. In this interpretation,
trafficking is clearly distinguished from voluntary sex work and thus avoids the absurdity of equating the fear and suffering of a trafficked person with the typical working conditions of voluntary sex workers. These conditions are often far from ideal, but nevertheless they are far removed from debt bondage or enslavement.

It is regrettable that despite the obvious reality of this perspective, the popular imagination of sex work tends to return to images of young girls forced into sexual slavery. Perhaps people would rather read such stories than hear about more prosaic struggles for workers’ rights — to organize, to be free from harassment, to get decent health care. But their preferences should not be allowed to dictate policy about either human trafficking or sex work.

Traditional standards of morality have been a major influence on legislation aimed at trafficking, and on the ways that trafficking legislation changes the legal treatment of prostitution. But the ‘moral’
position opposing sex work is actually a specific political and ideological position, and its net effect
is typically to limit women’s autonomy.

Sex law is often a front for ideology that constrains rather than liberates women. What most appalls me about the recent conflation of trafficking and sex work in law and policy is that some feminists support the confusion. These women would normally never dream of telling other women how to behave, because they have fought against imposed constraints in their own lives. Yet they seem to think it is acceptable to tell sex workers what is best for them, and they are prepared to use dubious political alliances to advance their moral agenda.

Women’s studies professor Donna Hughes even told the National Review that George W. Bush is the president who has done the most for women on the strength of his policies aimed against sex work. The fact that these policies do nothing to halt human trafficking and in fact may be counter-productive seems to be irrelevant. So does the worse fact that President Bush has presided over a deliberate reduction in access to reproductive health care for women in the United States and around the world.

Women are not the only victims when trafficking is conflated with sex work. The confusion squanders
opportunities to address real victimization and to assist people in real situations of abuse. Resources,
time and energy that might actually help trafficking victims are wasted in sensational “rescues” that are also ineffective and often counterproductive.

There is a clear need to formulate public policy that is less emotionally driven and better able to
recognize the real causes, nature and effects of trafficking in persons. People concerned about the
health and rights of migrants should choose to talk in terms of migration and mobility and workers’ rights — including sex workers’ rights — rather than confusing matters by using the term “trafficking” with all its attendant baggage. That should help clear the debating field for useful and separate discussions of both.

Melissa Ditmore, Ph.D., was the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Board of the Sex Workers Project and is a research consultant on issues of sex work, mobility and migration, HIV and sexual health. She edited the Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work (Greenwood Press, 2006) and edits Research for Sex Work, the journal of the Network of Sex Work Projects.

© 2008 RH Reality Check All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/84987/

The Audacity of Desperation is an art exhibition, political action, and on-going dialogue. This show confronts, expresses and unravels states of desperation. Artworks by activists, artists, enthusiasts, and very concerned people, are made in editions of 100 with the intention of free distribution to audiences. In this way, these artworks will be activated outside of the exhibition space and in domestic spaces, on bodies, clothes, bags, and in public spaces.

First stop: The Urbana- Champaign Independent Media Center
May 7th – June 15
202 S. Broadway Suite 100
Urbana, IL 61801

Urbana Opening Party: May 7, at 7pm with a screening of video shorts

Urbana Closing Party: June 4, at 7pm, with the kick off of Continental Drift an itinerant discussion on Neoliberal policies and cracks in global power. Continental Drift will be traveling though the Radical Midwest Cultural Corridor, starting at the IMC with conversations about the Audacity of Desperation and presentations by Kevin Hamilton and Brain Holmes. For more information see:
http://radicalmidwest.blogspot.com/

Next stop: Sea and Space, Los Angeles, CA,
October 23- November 16
(more details this summer – watch election results with us there)

Participating Artists: AK-Ami, William Brown, David Sanchez Burr, CaFF, Chris Christion, Ryan Claypool/Austin Smythe, Heidi Cunningham, Anna Campbell, solidad decosta, Alexis Disselkoen, Von Edwards, Nicky Enright, Feel Tank Chicago, Dara Greenwald/Josh MacPhee/Steve Lambert with the Anti-Advertising Agency, Russell Howze, Jill Jeannides, Anné M. Klint, Caroline Kelley, Sarah Kanouse/Tianna Kennedy/Lee Azzerello, Norene Leddy/Ed Bringas, Let’s Re-Make, Steven Lam, the League of Imaginary Scientists, DJ Lightbolt, Diran Lyons, Glendalys Medina, Tomas A. Moreno, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Doug Minkler, Robert T. Pannell, Sheila Pinkel, Nancy Popp, Lizabeth Eva Rossof, Anthony Rayson, Nino Rodriguez, Lián Amaris Sifuentes, Rick Salafia, simon strikeback, Dorothy Schultz, Heath Schultz/Brad Thomson, Lisa Tucker, Tammy Jo Wilson, Gordon Winiemko, Xtine, Carrie Yury

An Agent, a Green Card, and a Demand for Sex

By NINA BERNSTEIN
No problems so far, the immigration agent told the
American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at
her green card interview in December. After he stapled
one of their wedding photos to her application for
legal permanent residency, he had just one more
question: What was her cellphone number?

The calls from the agent started three days later. He
hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and
deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with
the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a
private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked
car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not
realizing that she was recording everything on the
cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two
times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t
have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when
she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex
“now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her
protests, she said, he got his way.

The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to
The New York Times and then to the Queens district
attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level
immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation
on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The
aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration
agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger
of making a complaint, even in the rare case when
abuse of power may have been caught on tape.

No one knows how widespread sexual blackmail is, but
the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion
that have surfaced in recent years, including agents
criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana,
Calif. And it raises broader questions about the
system’s vulnerability to corruption at a time when
millions of noncitizens live in a kind of legal
no-man’s land, increasingly fearful of seeking the
law’s protection.

The agent arrested last week, Isaac R. Baichu, 46,
himself an immigrant from Guyana, handled some 8,000
green card applications during his three years as an
adjudicator in the Garden City, N.Y., office of United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of
the federal Department of Homeland Security. He
pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges
of coercing the young woman to perform oral sex, and
of promising to help her secure immigration papers in
exchange for further sexual favors. If convicted, he
will face up to seven years in prison.

His agency has suspended him with pay, and the
inspector general of Homeland Security is reviewing
his other cases, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Prosecutors, who say they recorded a meeting between
Mr. Baichu and the woman on March 11 at which he made
similar demands for sex, urge any other victims to
come forward.

Money, not sex, is the more common currency of
corruption in immigration, but according to
Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell,
former director of the agency’s internal
investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints
of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for
lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal
allegations.

The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff
since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints
pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and
phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan
Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it
lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly
irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she
advised, should report wrongdoing to any law
enforcement agency they trust.

The young woman in Queens, whose name is being
withheld because the authorities consider her the
victim of a sex crime, did not even tell her husband
what had happened. Two weeks after the meeting in the
car, finding no way to make a confidential complaint
to the immigration agency and afraid to go to the
police, she and two older female relatives took the
recording to The Times.

Reasons to Worry

A slim, shy woman who looks like a teenager, she said
she had spent recent months baby-sitting for relatives
in Queens, crying over the deaths of her two brothers
back in Cali, Colombia, and longing for the right
stamp in her passport — one that would let her return
to the United States if she visited her family.

She came to the United States on a tourist visa in
2004 and overstayed. When she married an American
citizen a year ago, the law allowed her to apply to
“adjust” her illegal status. But unless her green card
application was approved, she could not visit her
parents or her brothers’ graves and then legally
re-enter the United States. And if her application was
denied, she would face deportation.

She had another reason to be fearful, and not only for
herself. About 15 months ago, she said, an
acquaintance hired her and two female relatives in New
York to carry $12,000 in cash to the bank. The three
women, all living in the country illegally, were
arrested on the street by customs officers apparently
acting on a tip in a money-laundering investigation.
After determining that the women had no useful
information, the officers released them.

But the closed investigation file had showed up in the
computer when she applied for a green card, Mr. Baichu
told her in December; until he obtained the file and
dealt with it, her application would not be approved.
If she defied him, she feared, he could summon
immigration enforcement agents to take her relatives
to detention.

So instead of calling the police, she turned on the
video recorder in her cellphone, put the phone in her
purse and walked to meet the agent. Two family members
said they watched anxiously from their parked car as
she disappeared behind the tinted windows of his red
Lexus.

“We were worried that the guy would take off, take her
away and do something to her,” the woman’s widowed
sister-in-law said in Spanish.

As the recorder captured the agent’s words and a
lilting Guyanese accent, he laid out his terms in an
easy, almost paternal style. He would not ask too
much, he said: sex “once or twice,” visits to his home
in the Bronx, perhaps a link to other Colombians who
needed his help with their immigration problems.

In shaky English, the woman expressed reluctance, and
questioned how she could be sure he would keep his
word.

“If I do it, it’s like very hard for me, because I
have my husband, and I really fall in love with him,”
she said.

The agent insisted that she had to trust him. “I
wouldn’t ask you to do something for me if I can’t do
something for you, right?” he said, and reasoned,
“Nobody going to help you for nothing,” noting that
she had no money.

He described himself as the single father of a
10-year-old daughter, telling her, “I need love, too,”
and predicting, “You will get to like me because I’m a
nice guy.”

Repeatedly, she responded “O.K.,” without conviction.
At one point he thanked her for showing up, saying, “I
know you feel very scared.”

Finally, she tried to leave. “Let me go because I tell
my husband I come home,” she said.

His reply, the recording shows, was a blunt demand for
oral sex.

“Right now? No!” she protested. “No, no, right now I
can’t.”

He insisted, cajoled, even empathized. “I came from a
different country, too,” he said. “I got my green card
just like you.”

Then, she said, he grabbed her. During the speechless
minute that follows on the recording, she said she
yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use
his authority against her.

How Much Corruption?

The charges against Mr. Baichu, who became a United
States citizen in 1991 and earns roughly $50,000 a
year, appear to be part of a larger pattern, according
to government records and interviews.

Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency’s former chief
investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal
corruption was “rampant,” and that employees faced
constant temptations to commit crime.

“It is only a small step from granting a discretionary
waiver of an eligibility rule to asking for a favor or
taking a bribe in exchange for granting that waiver,”
he contended. “Once an employee learns he can get away
with low-level corruption and still advance up the
ranks, he or she becomes more brazen.”

Mr. Maxwell’s own deputy, Lloyd W. Miner, 49, of
Hyattsville, Md., turned out to be an example. He was
sentenced March 7 to a year in prison for inducing a
21-year-old Mongolian woman to stay in the country
illegally, and harboring her in his house.

Other cases include that of a 60-year-old immigration
adjudicator in Santa Ana, Calif., who was charged with
demanding sexual favors from a 29-year-old Vietnamese
woman in exchange for approving her citizenship
application. The agent, Eddie Romualdo Miranda, was
acquitted of a felony sexual battery charge last
August, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and
was sentenced to probation.

In Atlanta, another adjudicator, Kelvin R. Owens, was
convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting a 45-year-old
woman during her citizenship interview in the federal
building, and sentenced to weekends in jail for six
months. And a Miami agent of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement responsible for transporting a Haitian
woman to detention is awaiting trial on charges that
he took her to his home and raped her.

“Despite our best efforts there are always people
ready to use their position for personal gain or
personal pleasure,” said Chris Bentley, a spokesman
for Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Our
responsibility is to ferret them out.”

When the Queens woman came to The Times with her
recording on Jan. 3, she was afraid of retaliation
from the agent, and uncertain about making a criminal
complaint, though she had an appointment the next day
at the Queens district attorney’s office.

She followed through, however, and Carmencita
Gutierrez, an assistant district attorney, began
monitoring phone calls between the agent and the young
woman, a spokesman said. When Mr. Baichu arranged to
meet the woman on March 11 at the Flagship Restaurant
on Queens Boulevard, investigators were ready.

In the conversation recorded there, according to the
criminal complaint, Mr. Baichu told her he expected
her to do “just like the last time,” and offered to
take her to a garage or the bathroom of a friend’s
real estate business so she would be “more comfortable
doing it” there.

Mr. Baichu was arrested as he emerged from the diner
and headed to his car, wearing much gold and diamond
jewelry, prosecutors said. Later released on $15,000
bail, Mr. Baichu referred calls for comment to his
lawyer, Sally Attia, who said he did not have
authority to grant or deny green card petitions
without his supervisor’s approval.

The young woman’s ordeal is not over. Her husband
overheard her speaking about it to a cousin about a
month ago, and she had to tell him the whole story,
she said.

“He was so mad at me, he left my house,” she said,
near tears. “I don’t know if he’s going to come back.”

The green card has not come through. “I’m still
hoping,” she said.

Angelica Medaglia contributed reporting.

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls. The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

Bush’s invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women’s Will Association.

“70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”

According to the Times, “inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.”

Driving women and girls into prostitution violates numerous human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. George Bush himself denounced sex trafficking at the United Nations in 2003.

Bush’s invasion of a country that posed no threat to the U.S. was illegal under both U.S. and international law, according to legal experts. Bush has been convicted of war crimes by citizen tribunals around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Just las week, the towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro Vermont voted to indict and arrest Bush and Cheney.

In 2002 and 2003, Bush led a propaganda campaign to defraud Congress, the American people, and key allies into believing Iraq was a threat. Bush claimed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to use against the U.S., and was sharing them with Al Qaeda.

Speaking near Rochester NY, Bush later admitted, “See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity, top Bush Administration officials told at least 935 lies about Iraq on 532 separate occasions. These included 259 lies by Bush, 254 lies by Secretary of State Colin Powell, 109 lies by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 109 lies by Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, 56 lies by National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and 48 lies by Vice President Cheney.

The lies about Iraqi WMD’s were manufactured by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which included the most senior White House staff: White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Jim Wilkinson, Nick Calio, Michael Gerson, and Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby.

After the invasion, 1,400 experts in the Iraq Survey Group scoured Iraq for WMD’s but found none. Charles Duelfer wrote the ISG’s final report in September 2004 and concluded Iraq ended its WMD program in 1991.

This publicly confirmed what the CIA had privately known since 1995, when Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan and told the CIA he had personally overseen the complete destruction of Iraq’s WMD after 1991 Gulf War.

In May 2005, the Times of London published the “Downing Street Memo ” which revealed Bush’s pre-war intelligence was a deliberate fraud, according to Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, who met with George Tenet in July 2002. “The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq, Dearlove told a secret meeting of Tony Blair’s war cabinet on July 23, 2002, eight months before Bush invaded Iraq.

This publication of the “Downing Street Memo” led to widespread calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. John Conyers and other Democrats held preliminary impeachment hearings in the basement of the Capitol on June 16, 2005. In 2006, Conyers published his explosive findings in “George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying.”

In 2007, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced three Articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney for his role in the Iraq War lies. Kucinich’s bill, H.Res. 333, has 26 co-sponsors.

The bill was debated on the House floor last November the House voted 251-162 to refer it to the Judiciary Committee for further action, rather than kill the bill. (The bill was renamed to H.Res. 799.)

Last December, Rep. Robert Wexler and two other members of the House Judiciary Committee urged Conyers to begin hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Wexler posted an online petition and collected over 230,000 signatures.

Rep. Kucinich ran for President in 2007 and his calls for impeachment were enthusiastically received by voters. Last week, Kucinich fended off a primary challenge in his Congressional district and is expected to introduce the first Articles of Impeachment against George Bush.

The latest polls by Newsweek and AP-Ipsos put Bush’s approval rating at 30%, a record low. His disapproval rating is over 60%, a record high, and suggests more Americans now favor Bush’s impeachment than in earlier polls which showed strong support for impeachment.

Bob Fertik is the president of Democrats.com
© 2008 Democrats.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/79770/

Please send to your Senator and distribute widely!

Below is the cover letter :

Dear Sex Worker Supporters,

Sex Workers Outreach Project-Northern California and the US PROStitutes Collective have joined together to oppose changes in the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007 (TVPRA H.R.3877). On December 4, 2007 the Bill was passed in the United States House of Representatives with 405 ayes and 2 nays and it is now before the US Senate.

As you may know, concern about trafficking is being exploited to promote a moralistic and dangerous crusade against prostitution – a crusade we are determined to stop.

H.R. 3887 has two very problematic aspects: 1) It would allow the Department of Justice to prosecute traffickers without having to prove “fraud, force or coercion”, or a victim’s status as a minor. 2) It adds an amendment to the discredited 1910 Mann Act which prohibits interstate transportation of women for ‘immoral purposes’ so that if a person ‘induces or entices’ any individual to engage in prostitution or attempts to do so, they can be charged with the new offence of ‘sex trafficking’ and imprisoned for up to 10 years.

We know from speaking to politicians who have been lobbied that the campaign for this legislation is a determined one which is having some success. It is being presented as a progressive change. Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens), co-chair of the Congressional Human Trafficking Caucus and co-author of H.R. 3887 said recently “By eliminating the need to prove force, fraud, or coercion except to obtain enhanced penalties, prosecutors will have a more effective way to crack down on traffickers.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Sex workers and our friends and family will be pursued as easy targets and criminalized under this law whilst the real traffickers will go free.

Please urgently send your own letter, or the enclosed form letter, to your Senator and encourage them to vote against H.R. 3887. If you don’t know who your Senator is or how to contact them please click here and follow the directions:

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

More info:
http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/HR3887.html
http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/1582/49/
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3887&tab=summary
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h3887/show
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:4:./temp/~c110rVUxT3::

Robyn Few, SWOP-USA

Rachel West, US Prostitutes Collective

Carol Leigh, BAYSWAN

Contacts
Madeleine Dash, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), 877-776-2004 x 2
swank@riseup.net

Audacia Ray, 718.554.1714
Sarah Bleviss, Sex Workers Outreach Project NYC (SWOP-NYC),
swop.nyc@gmail.com
Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Desiree Alliance, http://www.BoundNotGagged.com

Sex Workers Blow Spitzer a Farewell Kiss

New York, NY – In the wake of former Governor Spitzer’s resignation, sex
workers and human rights advocates remain concerned about the
representation and future of “Kristen” and other sex workers, who do not
have the legal and social privileges that will be afforded to Mr. Spitzer.
The identity of the sex worker implicated in this case has already been
made public, a situation mirroring many a sex worker’s worst nightmare.
“Kristen’s” exposure may entail not only bring her legal repercussions,
but invasion of privacy, financial hardship and social opprobrium.

Rather than continuing to sensationalize Spitzer’s actions and those
directly involved, we urge the press and the public to shift their focus
to the legal climate under which sex workers operate, while respecting
“Kristen’s” agency to have chosen sex work as a viable source of income.
“Everyone wants to know how high her rates were, all the salacious
details, but the real issue at stake here is that the hypocrisy of
criminalizing sex work has been exposed! It’s a part of our society, of
every society, and we need to take this opportunity to stop with the value
judgments and start coming up with policies that respect the human dignity
of all people, sex workers and all workers. ” says Dylan Wolfe of SWANK
(Sex Workers Action New York).

Former Governor Spitzer took a lead role in developing the NY State
Anti-Trafficking Law as well as other initiatives that stigmatize sex
workers and their clients. It is the stigma of sex work that leads many
individuals like “Kristen” to keep their occupations a secret, creating
further isolation and opportunities for exploitation. This same stigma
compromises the safety and well-being of people like “Kristen” when their
private lives become public knowledge. Sex workers are then forced to
work further underground, rendering them more vulnerable to abuse, while
denying them access to the basic civic participation, health and social
services available to other people. “Hopefully Mr. Spitzer’s unfortunate
public decline will send a message to all like him who pass laws that
endanger the safety of sex workers while indulging in the service
themselves,” Sarah Bleviss of SWOP said, “Sex workers clearly provide them
a very valuable service; it’s time for lawmakers to return the favor.”
Too little attention has been paid to what the repercussions of this case
will be for those most directly concerned, sex workers, and more generally
to the impact of laws and attitudes that marginalize them. It is time for
a change.

Spitzer pushed through penalty enhancements against clients of all sex
workers. Sex worker advocates fought against such provisions because these
policies drive people who need help further underground. Often
prostitution is wrongly conflated with trafficking and vice-versa. People
are trafficked for many kinds of work, be it domestic labor, farm work or
other jobs, and this kind of exploitation undoubtedly needs to be
addressed. The majority of men, women and transgendered people working in
sex work, however, are ‘normal’ members of society who have used their own
intellectual agency to decide to make a living in a sexually-oriented way.
Laws, like the Mann Act (against inter-state transportation for the
purposes of commercial sex), are too often used for punishing sex workers
and their clients rather than those who profit from their exploitation.

Sex workers make a living in an industry with the potential for high risks
and little by way of protection from abuse. The stigma surrounding our
work can be lethal at its most extreme: we are often the targets of
notorious serial killers, like the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway who
targeted prostitutes because he thought he “could kill as many of them as
[he] wanted without getting caught.” If sex work were decriminalized and
legitimized as a form of paid labor like any other, or seen simply as an
intimate exchange between consenting adults, the associated harms would be
greatly diminished. Furthermore, sex workers could access their basic
human rights and social services without fear of legal reprisal or
personal upheaval. “Eliot Spitzer has represented himself to the public as
a law and order man, and ironically, has been in the vanguard of further
criminalizing sex workers and clients. . . However, it’s a shame that so
much time, energy, and tax payer resources are being spent to criminalize
consensual sex between adults. It’s time to decriminalize prostitution.”
says Sarah Blake of Prostitutes of New York (PONY).

Incoming Governor Paterson and other law-makers need to create policies
that actually reflect the realities of their own lives and those of their
constituents, including sex workers, rather than the harmful legislation
of morality, whereby private matters become public scandals.