February 6, 2019

Following news that Alderman Daniel Solis was gifted with sex acts and wore a wire for an anti-corruption investigation, members of City Council expressed dismay—over his cooperation with the feds! One alderman said “where I come from, if you wear a wire someone’s going to kick your ass.” Such responses belie deeply rooted political corruption, but the real outrage is that Solis furthered the sexual exploitation of racially marginalized and low-income women in Chicago.

Alderman Solis does not dispute that he was a customer of sex acts financed by Roberto Caldero, who represented a local group with significant city business. As captured by a 2015 federal wiretap, Solis inquired of Caldero “I want to get a good massage, with a nice ending. Do you know any good places?” and, after Caldero promised he’d make the arrangements for Solis at a local massage parlor, Solis asked “What kind of women do they got there?” “Asian,” said Caldero. To which Solis replied “Oh good. Good, good, good. I like Asian.”

Solis’ casual racism and gendered objectification is disgusting, but racism and sexism are routinely tolerated elements of prostitution. Contrary to the myth that prostitution is a “victimless crime” are the facts: most prostituted people are survivors of child sexual abuse facing extreme poverty; disproportionately girls and women of color, most don’t want to provide oral, vaginal, or anal sex to random men, but are enduring circumstances you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy; prostitution is rarely a path out of poverty, and often leads to drug addiction, because self-medication is a normal human response to being repeatedly sexually invaded by men you neither choose nor desire.

Solis and his erstwhile pimp Coldero epitomize what all prostituted people have in common (beyond profound courage and resilience). They are the lifeblood of the sex trade, the “demand” side of the industry: men with disposable income and social privilege; men who mostly have girlfriends or wives; men who willfully ignore evidence that prostitution is rarely a choice; men who manifest utter disregard for the people from whom they get their “happy endings.”

Numerous local organizations and survivor leaders have spent years educating City Council about the realities and intersecting challenges of prostitution and sex trafficking in Chicago. Aldermen should understand that prostitution occurring in “massage parlors” often involves victims of sex trafficking, who are frequently Asian immigrants constrained by language, violence, threats, financial debt, immigration document confiscation or threats of deportation. City Council has, in fact, recognized both the toxic role that buyers play in prostitution and the connection between prostitution in the massage industry and sex trafficking. In 2018, the City Council approved an ordinance that increased fines and penalties for sex-buyers while decreasing those for people who sell sex, while a 2017 ordinance increased penalties for operators of illegal massage businesses.

Political corruption in Chicago is certainly a newsworthy crisis, but we desperately need more conversation about the ways that men like Solis hurt racially marginalized and financially desperate women and girls caught up in the sex trade. Buyers of sex impose staggering levels of violence on people in prostitution, but even non-violent customers are culpable because the very act of buying sex fuels an industry that uses force, fraud, and coercion to populate its ranks.

Most men never purchase sex, and no Alderman ever should. But for now, every member of City Council ought to reckon with the fact that Alderman Solis’s primary victims are not the colleagues who unknowingly had their conversations tape-recorded, but the vulnerable girls and women currently enduring prostitution (and often sex trafficking) in our city.