Bay Area

Black, Vulnerable and Trafficked – Who’s Buying Black Girls?

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment explores who is ‘buying’ people for sex exploitation.

Published

3 years ago

April 2, 2023

Oakland Post

With the passing of SB 357, cars line up as buyers become emboldened now that the threat of prosecution has all but disappeared. A police officer can no longer intervene in what appears to be a transaction, he must now hear the transaction before taking action.

By Tanya Dennis and Vanessa Russell

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment explores who is ‘buying’ people for sex exploitation.

The overlying unintended effect of SB 357 is that it gives priority to the needs of the person ‘buying’ sex over the predicament of those forced into the sex trade through human trafficking.

In Part 1, the Post shared that 40% of the victims of human trafficking in our nation are Black women and girls.

This statistic is alarming especially when we look at who is ‘buying’ them. A 2006 online research project by Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) revealed the following ‘buyer’ demographics: 99% of the buyers are men; 86% are 26 and older; 42% earned more than $50,000 a year; 29% graduated from college; 69% are employed and 49% are married.

The public wonders if ‘buyers’ are consciously purchasing Black girls and women or if they are merely purchasing whoever is available. Top search results on sites like Pornhub, reveal that demand for Black bodies is intentional. Black girls are in the top three search results for Pornhub and other exploitative sites.

In 2020, Pornhub was investigated for showing 118 videos of confirmed cases of child abuse and human trafficking and hosting videos titled “Black Slave” and “Black Slave Pleasures White Master.” In one case, a set of videos with this theme was watched 527,000 times and received 70% ‘thumbs up’ from the viewers. These racist themes confirm that the purchase of Black girls for the purpose enslavement is part of the ‘buyer’s’ fantasy.

Several different approaches have been attempted to deter sex buying. In the mid-1970s, the Oakland Police Department engaged in reverse stings, placing an undercover female officer on a street corner to catch buyers in the act.

Convicts had their vehicles seized and paid fees of up to 20% of the cost of the vehicle as well as towing and storage fees. “Between 1997 and 1999 the Oakland City Attorney seized and impounded over 350 vehicles.”

A federal court later ruled that seizure ordinances violated state laws. One interesting point from this program that holds true today is that 60% of those who were caught buying sex were not from Oakland.

Other Oakland approaches to deterring sex buying included getting buyers fired from their jobs and placing buyers on neighborhood ‘stay-away’ lists. The EPIK Project, which is devoted to disrupting the demand for sex trafficking and increase the capacity of law enforcement, attempted to solve sex buying by creating a decoy trafficking site which was accessed up to 40,000 times a month and using it to engage with buyers and have men speak with them about their behaviors.

In 2014, Oakland attempted to address demand by launching a Buyer Shaming website. Then in 2016, the Alameda County CEASE (Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation) Network and the City of Oakland launched a coalition and a tool titled ReportJohn.org, which was based on the “Dear John” initiative by Oakland non-profit East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) that sent a letters to the registered owner of every car that neighbors reported as trolling for sex.

Melissa Farley, a Bay Area trafficking expert and researcher, studied a group of sex buyers in Boston. She found that individuals who purchased sex feared female rejection and endorsed rape myths, such as the belief that “prostitution reduces the likelihood of rape.”

These men revealed their violent tendencies toward women, sharing that they would “force a woman to have sex or rape them if they could get away with it, and engaged in sexually aggressive behavior with very little empathy for the exploited, believing that “prostituted women are intrinsically different from other women.”

One buyer comment perfectly and horrifically summarizes buyer sentiment toward the women and girls he purchased. He said the transaction is like disposing of a coffee cup after you’ve finished drinking it, “When you’re done, you throw it out.”

Buyer diversion programs — like those provided to domestic violence perpetrators bring survivors in to tell their story in hopes of creating a more human narrative in the minds of buyers — have been successfully rolled out in Fresno and Orange County resulting in very low recidivism rates.

When the group of buyers from the Boston study were asked what would change their behavior, a few said a fee and a few days in jail would be enough of a deterrent. One hundred percent said that a 30-day jail stay would deter their buying behavior completely.

Tanya Dennis, is CEO Adamika Village and serves on the Board of Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH). Vanessa Russell, the author of “Love Never Fails Us,” is the COO of the Violence Prevention Coalition and a member of OFH

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Activism

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses. The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, was one of the speakers at the event. Photo by Shellee Fisher Photography and Design.

By Calvin Naito, Special to The Post

On June 4, a national nonprofit named the Equity in Infrastructure Project (EIP) – which aims to increase public construction contracting opportunities for small and historically underutilized businesses – held a day-long event in downtown San Francisco to rally supporters and build momentum to its cause.

It was attended by more than 100 individuals from public agencies, private firms, and other organizations committed to increasing contracting opportunities with governmental agencies, thereby creating more competition and lowering public costs.

The EIP event was held the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in conjunction with BuildIT, which aims to increase contracting opportunities for LGBT-owned businesses.

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses.

The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Following the workshop, BuildIT hosted a VIP evening reception honoring EIP, whose principals – Phil Washington, John Procari, and Rick Jacobs – accepted the award.

The event also set in motion the coalition’s efforts to implement recommendations from EIP’s “Procurement for Prosperity: A Playbook.”

The Playbook is a practical guide for public agency leaders and procurement and contracting practitioners to grow the capacity of small and first-time contractors, strengthen competition, and deliver better value for taxpayers.

Toks Omishakin, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), a long-time EIP supporter, also told attendees, “This is about commitment. This has been a life’s work. This is a tailwind moment.”

The event’s presenting sponsor was Hub International, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the nation, which was joined by partners Travelers Insurance and the State Compensation Insurance Fund.

After the pledge-signing ceremony, attendees participated in a workshop in which they examined the policies, practices, and programs needed to meet EIP goals, learned from practitioners, and identified next steps toward utilizing the Playbook.

Ingrid Meriwether, formerly of Merriwether & Williams Insurance Services (MWIS) and current president of Hub International’s Aligned Risk Management, MWIS, described the hard-fought lessons she and her MWIS team have learned over the last three decades administering contractor development programs (CDPs) for the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, City of Los Angeles, LA Metro, and other municipalities.

The CDPs help small and local construction firms win public infrastructure contracts with these government agencies. The program provides bonding assistance, contract financing, technical support, training, and other services to underrepresented businesses funded by public agencies who seek greater contracting participation with these firms.

Merriwether said programs like these “break down systemic barriers, create greater fairness, and save taxpayers money by enabling more competition. The contractor development programs have, cumulatively, over two decades, helped contractors access over $1 billion in bonding, supporting over $380 million in awarded contracts, and maintaining a loss ratio 250 times lower than the industry average – while saving participating municipalities more than $27 million in contracting costs as a result of enabling more competition.”

Rick Jacobs, EIP co-founder and co-chair urged attendees make plans to meet again in the near future “to continue building on this work, share progress on organizational commitments, and discuss how we can collectively advance the goals of the EIP pledge.”

For more information on the EIP and to access a copy of the Playbook, go online to https://equityininfrastructure.org/

Calvin Naito is communications manager for Equity in Infrastructure Project.

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Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

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Alameda County

Ferry Fares to Increase July 1 as Ridership Hits Record Highs

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Courtesy photo.

By Mike Aldax, The Richmond Standard

Starting July 1, the standard adult fare for the San Francisco Bay Ferry route between Richmond and San Francisco will increase to $5.20, up from the current $4.90.

Discounted fares for eligible passengers, including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and Clipper START users, will rise to $2.60 from the current $2.40. Children under 5 will continue to ride for free.

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

The adjustments are part of a systemwide fare update approved by the agency’s Board of Directors, which is moving away from a flat 3% annual increase to route-specific pricing for the 2027 and 2028 fiscal years.

This fare update arrives as San Francisco Bay Ferry celebrates a historic May, transporting 301,270 passengers. The record-breaking figure represents an 8% increase over May 2025 and marks the third consecutive month of record-setting ridership.

Furthermore, it is the sixth month in a row that passenger numbers have exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Weekend travel has been a primary driver of this growth, with average weekend ridership seeing a 56% increase compared to pre-pandemic trends.

The agency states that the fare adjustments are necessary to ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of public ferry services. By shifting to route-specific adjustments, the agency aims to offset rising operating costs while maintaining the high levels of service frequency and reliability.