Quotes

While Senator Barack Obama rejects prostitution and trafficking as an abuse of human rights,  San Francisco voters are being urged to make our city a sanctuary for pimps and traffickers.
What we have to do is to create better, more effective tools for prosecuting those who are engaging in human trafficking and we have to do that within our country. Sadly, there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement, here in our country - oftentimes young women who are caught up in prostitution. So we've got to give prosecutors the tools to crack down on these human trafficking networks. Internationally, we've got to speak out and we've got to forge alliances with other countries to share intelligence, to roll up the financing networks that are involved in them. It is a debasement of our common humanity, whenever we see something like that taking place.
~ Senator Barack Obama

I exploited my body and gave myself to any man who wanted a piece. It was a vicious lifestyle. What these men don't know -- or maybe what they DO know -- is that prostitutes or streetwalkers or "happy hookers" are women with a deep sense of pain. Most have been abused in unimaginable ways.
~ Brenda Myers-Powell

Proposition K conceals the inhumane nature of prostitution and cripples the efforts of law enforcement, human rights groups and social service agencies to assist those who seek escape from sex-traffickers.
~ Kamala Harris, SF District Attorney

..there is nothing broad-minded about looking the other way when 14-year-old girls and boys sell themselves on the street and massage parlors are staffed by women who are being held against their will. These are not consenting adults.
~ Debra Saunders
Press Releases
Press Advisory - Proposition K Proponents Sue to Block Voter Information about Decriminalizing Prostitution | Print |  E-mail

Press Advisory from No on K, Committee to End Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation
Date and time: Monday Sept 8, 2008 9:00am Press Conference
Place: San Francisco Courthouse 400 McAllister, Room 302
Contact: 415-722-5959
Website: noonk.net

Proposition K Proponents Sue to Block Voter Information about Decriminalizing Prostitution

The Committee Against Proposition K appear in court today to defend their right to explain to San Francisco voters the disastrous effects of non-enforcement of California’s laws on prostitution in the city.

In Superior Court, proponents of Proposition K, which seeks to make anti-prostitution laws unworkable, argued that certain ballot arguments by the measure’s opponents should be stricken from the voter pamphlet. Opponents argued that voters have a right to be fully informed and their expression of their views is protected by freedom of speech. The groups differ on whether the measure’s decriminalizing provisions will offer pimps a welcome mat in San Francisco.

Facts about Proposition K that its proponents want to strike from voter handbooks:
  1. Proposition K will effectively decriminalize pimps and traffickers.
    Weakening laws against prostitution obviously makes life easier for those who prey on and live off of prostituting others.
  2. Proposition K would hobble the San Francisco District Attorney and the Police Department in investigating sex trafficking.
    District Attorney Kamala Harris has said that Proposition K “would expressly bar the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking crimes. Human trafficking is a serious problem in San Francisco. Many people in the commercial sex trade have been trafficked and forced to participate in commercial sex. This measure would attempt to provide safe harbor to their traffickers.”
  3. Proposition K would prevent the San Francisco Police Department from seeking or accepting federal or state funds to investigate organized crime rings that exploit trafficking victims of an identifiable race or nationality.
    Trafficked women are primarily women of color and/or immigrants. San Francisco is a hub for the sex trade in Asians who are often captive in massage parlors. Culturally appropriate outreach to these vulnerable people is absolutely necessary. It is NOT, as Proposition K construes it, “racial profiling.”
”It is our right to inform the public that Prop K will harm those it claims to protect, empower those who profit from the rape of children, embolden sex traffickers and at the same time de-fund the few investigative and exit services currently available. Prop K hangs a neon “Welcome Predators & Pimps” sign on the Golden Gate Bridge and forces San Franciscans to turn our backs on the most vulnerable among us.”
Norma Hotaling, No on K Committee

No on K is a coalition of health and human service providers, doctors; scientists and researchers, artists and activists, civic leaders, and the leaders of S.F. progressive law enforcement including specialists in harm reduction, human trafficking, and units that enforce, investigate and prosecute crimes against prostitutes.