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Activists Mount Valentine Protest

A Purple Rose protester holds up a sign to speak out against the exploitation of women. Photo by Neela Banerjee.

By Neela Banerjee

For most people, Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate love, with chocalates and sentimental cards. For the Gabriella Network (GABnet), however, it is a day to protest the commodification of women and the commercialization of a holiday, while underscoring the irony when so many Filipina women and children suffer in abusive relationships because of the sex industry.

Compelled by the 20 million people worldwide who are in the global sex trade, on Feb. 14 over 100 protestors marched through San Francisco from the corners of Powell and Market Streets to the Crazy Horse Adult Theater on Market Street chanting “Filipinas not for sale!”

Valerie Alipio-Jacson, Bay Area coordinator of the Gabriella Network, rallies protesters on Valentine's Day. Photo by Neela Banerjee.

“We wanted to march to the Crazy Horse because it is a symbol of female exploitation,” said march coordinator and GABnet’s Bay Area chapter coordinator, Valerie Alipio-Jacson.

The international multi-racial, multi-ethnic women’s solidarity organization has held this yearly event, dubbed “Purple Valentine,” since 1999, as part of Garbriella Network’s Purple Rose campaign.

“It’s really a campaign to raise awareness and create serious opposition to the worldwide assault on the bodies of women and children,” GABnet member Gerry Fabella said. “Since we launched the campaign, it has become a lot more prevalent in the media and in academic circles.”

An artificially dyed purple rose is held up as a symbol of the victims of sexual trafficking. The Purple Rose campaign literature reads: “These women and children are reduced to becoming mere objects of pleasure, a source of profits. Forced by poverty, commodified and enslaved by globalization, women and children have become purple roses.”

Purple Rose protesters gather outside the Crazy Horse strip club on Market Street in San Francisco. Photo by Neela Banerjee.

This year’s Purple Valentine march focused specifically on the sex trade in the Philippines, which trafficks in more women than any other nation. According to GABnet, the Philippines sends more than 250,000 women abroad each year for labor purposes. In the Philippines, more than half a million women and children are in the sex trade.

Alipio-Jacson spoke out about the numerous sex tour operators that work out of the United States, sending 10 to 15 men each month to the Philippines.

“These tours, called Philippine Adventure Tours, cost $1,645 including round-trip airfare, hotel and guided tours to the bars, where women are purchased for as little as $24,” Alipio-Jacson said.

Leaders of several Bay Area women’s groups, such as Radical Women and Bay Area Women Against Rape, spoke to show their support of the Purple Rose campaign and their condemnation of the sex trade. Protestors also carried signs that called for the prosecution of Lakireddy Bali Reddy, the Berkeley landlord accused of trafficking in Indian girls.

“The international sex industry happens because of capitalism and is intrinsically tied to the government,” Nancy Reiko Kato of Radical Women said. “Just like the people have ousted Estrada, let the WTO, the World Bank and the United States know what is coming.”

Protestors marched to the Philippine Consulate where Alipio-Jacson called for the Philippine government to stop the sex trade. According to GABnet, neither the Philippines government nor the Consulate has any program in place that would address this issue.

“The Philippine government does little or nothing about these facts, because they receive $8 million dollars back from these women’s labor every year,” Alipio-Jacson said.

Said one protestor, San Francisco State University student Michelle Malaca, “It is not something I would typically do on Valentine’s Day. But it is a really important issue for all women.”