We write as a collective of sex worker rights organizations who organize in coalition as human rights advocates in our own standing, as member organizations of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) and as members of the Sex Worker Rights Working Group.
Members of our Coalition have worked in partnership with the USHRN since 2010 during the first United Nations Universal Periodic Review of the United States. We have joined with the network on actions and the network has joined us.
Sex worker rights organizations defend criminalized communities of many kinds. Part of our work includes providing our communities with valuable information about issues of concern. We do this work when others hesitate because we have to. Our safety and integrity depends on speaking up.
In this spirit we report the following news: Eric Tars attended an organizing meeting of USHRN members on October 31, 2021. During this meeting Eric Tars said that he would call law enforcement on human rights advocates and organizers. Eric Tars stated that he spoke on behalf of the board of directors of the USHRN in regards to the need to call law enforcement.
The USHRN is a people centered movement that is led by people of color. Our sex worker rights working group is co-chaired by a Black trans woman and an immigrant woman, and includes highly active Black led and BIPOC groups.
Under no circumstances can we tolerate the presence of Eric Tars or like-minded members in any space of our organizing, including at the USHRN, because he will use the strategy of calling law enforcement on people of color when he deems it to be necessary. This is an anathema to sex worker rights leaders and in violation of everything that the US Human Rights Network stands for.
Eric Tars term on the US Human Rights Network Board of directors expired more than one year ago. Yet he has been allowed to stay because we have remained silent. Our silence ends today. We do not recognize Eric Tars as a board member and we demand that he be removed from organizing spaces for the safety of all members of the USHRN impacted by policing. We demand that any other person who has associated themselves with the USHRN Board of Directors and who has called for the use of law enforcement on human rights advocates also be removed, if they have not already been removed. We do not recognize them as board members.
We offer the gift of peace and healing to any member of the USHRN who has been affected by talk of calling law enforcement. We are with you as the healing begins. But in order to heal, we must be safe.
The BSWC
BPPP
Desiree Alliance
The Outlaw Project
NJRUA