I don’t know why but I’m starting to see a bizarre trend where some people are saying/sharing something along the lines of “quit worrying about COVID, focus on child trafficking”.

Can we talk about this for a second?

First of all, it’s disingenuous to pretend that we can’t care about both, simultaneously. If that’s your stance, then I think your actual motive is that you want people to quit paying attention to the issue that your preferred pres. candidate botched the response on *cough*

But beyond even that, the child trafficking straw man is a bad faith argument. I think these people operate under the assumption that the political elite are snatching your daughters into vans as they walk home from Sunday School. That’s not what’s going on.

Per @Love146 ‘s stats, the vast majority of trafficked children are at-risk youths that our social programs have already failed. 87% of trafficked children had a child welfare encounter PRIOR to any trafficking taking place. I repeat: EIGHTY SEVEN PERCENT

Secondly, children of color are FOUR TIMES more likely to find themselves in a trafficking situation than a white child. It’s not just that there’s a racial divide on this issue, there’s a racial canyon. But why do I say all this?

Some people want to ignore the 150K deaths from COVID because their political party failed to act. They are now transparently using child trafficking as a strawman issue. These same people support the party that refuses to protect the at-risk youth from trafficking.

Don’t engage them in this bad faith argument. Don’t let them claim to be the party for the children when they continue to support gutting social programs, dismantling urban outreach, and perpetuating income inequality. They own this JUST as much as they own the COVID deaths.