Originally published in Verbicide issue #12

I was first introduced to Protect — a child protective organization — through the author, Andrew Vachss. Mr. Vachss is, among a long list of other impressive things, a pro-bono child lawyer and a member of the brain trust for Protect. What drew me in to Protect was that it meant business. The rhetoric is simple: declare war on people who prey on children. Protect doesn’t accept any political excuses (left or right). They inform their directives with actual psychological and sociological data. There’s no vague “family values” mumbo-jumbo involved; just stark attention to the hard-hitting area of where state policy is misguided and needs to be changed. Did you know that, in 2004, many state laws still virtually sanction incest by giving lesser penalties to adults who sexually abuse children they’re related to? A couple years back, I didn’t and when I found out, it truly angered me.

I also found it really weird that there were political membership organizations for the ethical treatment of animals (PETA), for gun lovers (the NRA), and for pedophiles (NAMBLA) that help steer national politics at the highest levels, but there were none for children that were being taken seriously. I’m not one to go out and hug a child, but it’s as simple as this: if children are our future, it sure would be nice if they weren’t fucked up. Adults not having sex with children would be a gargantuan step in the right direction, don’t you think?

This interview is with one of the main organizers and workers at Protect, Grier Weeks, an affable man who knows a thing or two about policy making, who also understands the nuances of being taken seriously by those who can actually change policies and laws.

First off, what is Protect? What is the organization?
Protect is the first-ever political lobby for abused and neglected kids. The idea behind Protect was that there needed to be an NRA for protecting kids and there never has been. Traditionally, everybody in the world, from pipe-fitters to teamsters to corporate executives, understood the basics of politics, which was that if you wanted to be effective, if you were serious about your issue, then you did certain things. You raised money, you delivered votes, you played the political game, and child advocates have never really done that. They’ve always been there with their hands out. They were never feared or respected, and for some reason, in their minds, they were somehow exempt from the laws of politics.

So is Protect really the first child protective organization in the United States that has had a positive effect for children?
No, not by any means. I would never claim that. There are basically three kinds of children’s organizations. The first kind is groups of people that provide direct service to kids, and they’re doing the lord’s work. They’re helping kids directly. Then there are advocacy groups, like the Children’s Defense Fund or the Child Welfare League of America. Then there’s Protect, which is a political approach. They’ve all done lots of stuff for kids; it’s just totally unrealistic to expect that you’re really going to get results in the political arena with a charitable, non-profit approach.

So Protect is the first agency that has had a positive effect on incest laws as one of the first directives in the agency, is that correct?
Yes, I think we’re the only ones that ever even picked that up.

Who started Protect?
A number of people were involved with starting Protect. It was the dream of many and it was born when a group of people came together. Probably the most eloquent person in calling for an organization like Protect was Andrew Vachss, who coined the phrase “NRA for Children.” He brought with him many highly respected experts, who had been waiting a lot of years for something like this. My involvement was to bring the political background to it and to bring in people who had experience in campaigns and elections. So, it was kind of a marriage of people who just cared about kids but weren’t necessarily experts and people who were experts but didn’t necessarily know how to put together an effective political organization.

How did you get involved with Protect? How were you approached specifically?
For the last 20 years, a large part of my life has been political campaigns — as a campaign manager, fundraiser, or consultant — and, over the years, I just got increasingly frustrated and amazed at how ineffective child advocates were in the political world. I was looking at an article one day—it was an interview with Andrew and it’s probably one of my favorite inspirational articles. Basically, he said two things. One is that people who cared about children being abused and exploited needed to focus their interests, and he had a great quote in there, saying that, “Your love is like a pat of butter on a 30-foot piece of bread. You just can’t taste it.” And he also said that we need an NRA for children. I jumped out of my chair. He and I started up a conversation about this, and I said, “I certainly know how to do the political side of it, but I would have no intention of doing that without really seasoned experts advising us,” so he put together the core of a team that was just amazing.

Is there any alternative to Protect? Are there any other organizations touting the same goals or directives that you know of?
There is a really interesting comparison, and just one, as far as I know. And when I say we’re the first political organization for abused and neglected kids, you do need to know about this other group. It’s called Every Child Matters, and the difference between them and us is that they don’t focus on abused and neglected kids. They focus on children’s issues in general. They started up a year or two before us, and I think it’s very interesting to compare their group and our group, because there are some major differences and some major similarities. Here are the similarities: they were started by a guy named Michael Petit, who had been the head of the main department of children and family services, and he had worked with the Child Welfare League of America. They had a similar idea. It seems like common sense but nobody had been saying it: kids’ issues get no respect because we don’t play the game in a serious way.

So, therefore, Every Child Matters set their organization up exactly the same way that we have, which is to form a 501-c4 Membership Association, a 501-c3 arm, which is the traditional charity, and then a PAC. Immediately when I saw that, I said, “Well, he’s figured it out.” This is the fundamental premise of Protect, but from there, we diverge in a lot of ways. We focus strictly on child abuse and neglect, first of all. We start off truly nonpartisan, because that’s an issue that’s focused enough to where neither party has a monopoly on it. Everybody in the world loves to say they’re non-partisan, but they usually don’t mean it. We do, because on half of our issues, the Democrats are good and on half of our issues, the Republicans are good. Every Child Matters focuses on all the traditional child advocacy issues, including early childhood education, health care, and things like that.

When you go down that road, my personal opinion is that you inevitably end up being a Democratic organization or liberal organization. For example, they use the Congressional scorecard produced by the Children’s Defense Fund. The Children’s Defense Fund is one of the two largest and most-respected child advocacy groups, and they produce an annual scorecard of Congress. It’s basically almost a party index. For example, Nancy Pelosi, who is basically the head of the Democrats in Congress, got a 100, and Dennis Hastert, who is the head of the Republicans in Congress, got a zero. That is sort of the worldview of traditional child advocacy. Where that’s taken Every Child Matters — and they’re doing a great job and I don’t have any bone to pick with them at all as far as how they operate given their agenda and their values — is towards presidential campaign and federal-type stuff.

We’ve gone a different course. We’re more focused on the arena in the states and we’re working with both parties. The other big difference between us and them is that we’re very focused on the membership part of it and they’re more focused on the 501-c3. We haven’t, at this point, even gotten our 501-c3 up and going yet because we believe that the charity arm should be the tail and not the dog. I felt very strongly that that needed to be part of our corporate culture from the very beginning.

How many members does Protect have currently?
We’re still under a thousand. I’m not sure of the exact number. In 48 states and six countries. I don’t know why we can’t get any members from the Dakotas.

What is your ideal membership goal? At what point do you think you’ll have the clout and the muscle?
Our first major goal is 50,000 members, a thousand per state. It would be enough members to support our core functions, to keep a small but adequate staff going indefinitely. That’s our first major goal, and just to give you some sort of comparison, the NRA has four million members, and their PAC has always been one of the most powerful in Washington. There’s a group called Emily’s List, which raises money for and supports Democratic, pro-choice women candidates. Emily’s List now has about 64,000 members, just a little bit more than our initial goal. With 64,000 members, their PAC is now giving more money than the NRA PAC. So you don’t have to have everybody in the world to be extremely powerful.

Our ultimate goal, my personal goal before I die, is I want to see us with more members than the NRA. I think that if four million people care so strongly about their gun rights that they’ll join and carry a card and be serious about protecting what they’re interested in, then I know we’ll have more than that.

Why does there have to be such a battle waged to protect children in a legislative way? Why are incest loopholes still open? Why is incest still sanctioned in some states, which say, “If you abuse and rape your own child and you have a blood link to them, oh, that’s okay. You’ll get probation, if that.” Why does this exist in contemporary American culture?
I’ll tell you why I think it exists and it’s taken me a while to figure it out. It’s not about incest as most people think about it. This is not about incest in the stereotypical view. This is about child sexual abuse, and the vast majority of child sexual abuse is within the child’s circle of trust: parents, stepparents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and clergy. It’s just a sad fact and that is what child sexual abuse looks like in the vast majority of cases. Over 80 percent of children who are sexually abused say that they knew their abuser. In my opinion, when we say, “Why do people have such tolerance for incest?” what we’re really saying is, “Why do people have such tolerance for exploiting and abusing children?”

Getting tough on the stranger cases, kidnapping and things like that, is actually the exception, but because it’s so extreme and so many good people are terrified by it, it’s not the way we respond to child abuse. The way we respond to child abuse is reflected in our laws, incest laws, and all these loopholes for intra-familial sexual abuse. I think that, beyond that, what I tell people often is if you want to know why people are in denial, why they don’t want to deal with it or talk about it, it would take a team of shrinks to explain it. But if you want to know why, politically, this is the situation, I can tell you, and it’s because one, there has never been any serious reward for politicians to do the right thing by these kids, and two, there have never been any serious consequences if they don’t.

Why is it that punk rockers in particular should care about Protect? A lot of punk rockers I know are very politicized but the politicization process, in a weird way, dilutes them, because they have so many things to think about and so many things to go off on. Some of them are really good but some of them go half-cocked on 15 different directions at once. What do you think that punk rockers can bring to the plate that other constituents may not have?
You know, I think the first and most obvious link between punk rockers and Protect is that we are not offering anybody the same old, feel-good, empty rhetoric. Punk rockers are a group that I think is a little bit more cynical and sophisticated, and they don’t want to hear a “Save the Children” speech. That’s the same reason that I think Protect appeals to a lot of bikers, a lot of punk rockers, and a lot of people who have been abused themselves as kids. They can immediately tell that this is not the normal group, and that we have an edge to us. We’re drop-dead serious about what we’re doing, and we’re just not interested in the “raising consciousness, let’s all hold hands” stuff.

I think that’s one thing that attracted me to it, too. It’s like if you look through all the bullshit that you’re given, here’s an organization that has a very direct focus, and even though I don’t really want to hold the hand of the kid downstairs who’s crying, I understand the importance that he has in society as a whole. I really appreciate that type of message.
A lawyer at the Department of Justice one time said something really interesting to me. She said that there are two kinds of child advocates. There are the empathizers and the avengers. Hopefully we’re both, but let’s face it: we’re the avengers. We’re the people who are pissed off, and our members get it. Most people don’t like bullies. They don’t like people that prey on other people, and preying on children is a declaration of war against the rest of us, the people that care. As far as this issue of focus, everybody is obviously susceptible to not focusing and then they dilute their effectiveness, but here’s something where I think punk rockers can be really different from, say, yuppie baby boomers.

America has kind of a political disease of self-absorbed people who choose their political causes like they’re buying things in a boutique. It’s all based on lifestyle choices and ideas about political correctness. In the political world, you’ve got to be really clear or you’re not to be taken seriously as a player. So, what I would say to anybody who’s reading this is that you’ve got to focus on what’s important to you and your power will be magnified exponentially. If you don’t focus, don’t be surprised if nobody takes you seriously, because you’re just going to be bouncing around.

Bands are starting to get organized through Protect also. How is that going? Are you setting up local chapters?
Well, I’ll tell you what. Punks are leading the way. We sort of put the call out with this Music for Protect program and we invited people, whether you’ve got a major rock and roll band or a chamber music quartet, to put on an event. It doesn’t have to raise a lot of money. It’s slow taking off because we don’t have the staff to drive it. And that’s interesting that a bunch of anarchists would be the first to step up, because I guess they don’t need to be micro-managed.

If you could ask a reader to do one thing, what would it be?
I have the right to say this because I made $7,000 last year, and here’s my answer: Join Protect. The second thing is, obviously, participate and help us fight, but the main message that we’ve got to say is, “Look, 750,000 people belong to PETA,” and until people join, we’re just pissing in the wind.

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Check out Protect’s website at www.protect.org. If you like what you see, please, become a member.