The STOPLight

Citywide goal: "flush the Johns"

A brisk December breeze rustled through our ranks as we gathered in front of our local "health spa" that evening. It was the kickoff to our "Flush The Johns" campaign—a year-long, citywide effort to attack the prostitution trade in Minneapolis by depriving its customers—the johns— of the anonymity and impunity that they have typically enjoyed while stalking our streets. The strategies to be employed include videotaping and increased media exposure, accelerated law enforcement efforts, a stepped-up mailing campaign (wherein "Dear John" letters are sent to vehicle owners once their license plates are traced) and direct street interventions like picketing saunas and other businesses used as fronts for prostitution.

My neighbor was accompanied to the protest by her daughter and step-daughter, both fourteen. As the temperature dropped, the girls got cold and decided to walk a block to their home to get warmer clothes. As they walked, they were shadowed by a man in a car, who proposed an act of prostitution to them. Their angry refusal did nothing to discourage him, and he followed as they ran into the house and locked the doors. The man attempted to break into the house as the girls frantically called the police. Although officers arrived quickly, it was not in time to apprehend him.

Nothing could have illustrated more clearly what we have understood since the beginning of our struggle: that the residents of communities plagued by prostitution have much in common with the women and kids being ground up in the prostitution mill. The pimps and johns who so callously dole out abuse and contempt to those in prostitution are just as willing to serve up the same dish to us. We can see that women being used as prostitutes are our fellow victims, and not our enemies.

The Southside Prostitution Task Force got its start about two years ago when the prostitution trade exploded in our south Minneapolis neighborhood. The explosion was caused by two things:

The opening of new "saunas" on a main road nearby and a combined effort by police and residents of an adjoining neighborhood to drive prostitution out of their area. As we started to organize and grope for a solution to the problem, we came to several conclusions.

The first conclusion was that attacking the already vulnerable and suffering women in prostitution was not only cruel and unfair but also completely ineffective. It amounts to a game of chess in which you attack only your opponent’s pawns. The pimps have an endless supply of pawns that they are happy to sacrifice, and these pawns are made of flesh and blood and soul. We made up our minds that we would interfere with the actions of pimps and johns while offering whatever help and friendship we could to prostitutes themselves. We also decided to continually seek the guidance of Minneapolis prostitute-advocacy groups PRIDE and WHISPER.

The other conclusion was that the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) approach would be fruitless and shortsighted. We could see that we would get no long-term relief by pushing prostitution from neighborhood to neighborhood. We committed ourselves to sharing our efforts and experience with other neighborhoods afflicted by prostitution..

Back at the protest, my neighbor’s girls are shaken but uncowed by their experience. They find themselves engaged in an angry debate with a well-known, convicted Twin Cities "madam" who has come to stage a counter-protest. She tells the girls that they are "not very bright" to have attempted the one-block walk home and that they really ought to be living in a better neighborhood. Blaming the victim is a reflex action in this trade, whether the victim is in or out of prostitution.

My neighbor can’t help but think of the other girls we’ve met on this spot in the past: the pair of naive thirteen or-fourteen-year-olds that she spoke with through the sauna door one night, or the hardened and bitter fourteen-year-old that her husband and the police found working in the sauna—alone in the building, scantily-clad and vulnerable. This happened at a time when some people in the police vice squad were assuring us that "there is no teen prostitution" in the city.

We did run into resistance from some quarters of city government early on: the city councilman who told us he had "better things to do than chase our little whorehouse around;" the city attorney who called us "busybodies" with "too much time on their hands;" the police officer who ordered me off the public sidewalk in front of the sauna, saying "get your ass out of here or I’ll come back and put you in jail." Since then, we’ve found many public officials willing to work hard to help us. Police watch over our protests to ensure our safety. Our police/community liaison teams have been tireless in their efforts. And a roster of new city council members have been dynamic in their support.

One councilwoman took on the task of personally watching over the prosecution of the saunas by the city attorney’s office to make certain that their efforts didn’t flag during the long and arduous process. Along with a fellow councilman, she drafted and passed a new ordinance she hopes will cut through ‘the masses of red tape that hinder the prosecution of a brothel.

Where a year ago three "saunas" stood, we now have none. What we are left with is massive street prostitution and its fallout: the intense drug activity and crime that result from the flesh trade, and the cruelty and degradation that is heaped onto prostituted women—which overflows onto us.

So what’s next? This year we’ll work to eliminate street prostitution in our area through the "Flush The Johns" campaign. We’ll work with any neighborhoods beset by prostitution, helping to guide them past the many stumbling blocks that we’ve encountered along the way. We’ll work to educate the public about the vicious realities of the prostitution trade.

Education of youth is especially important. We’re co-sponsoring a program to enlist high school students in designing billboards to warn johns that they won’t be tolerated in our neighborhoods.

And in the long run? I think we may be able to play a part in what I see as an emerging trend, which is for citizen’s groups like ours to turn away from the persecution of those trapped in prostitution and instead bring pimps and johns to account for the damage they do.

by Burr John Baldwin, neighbor