Family · Phoenix, AZ Metro · September 19, 2026
Arizona Groups Launch Grooming-Prevention Tools for Parents, Kids
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 12
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
This story is the counter-rule working in the open rather than a tactic run against anyone: the Arizona Human Trafficking Survivor Coalition and ASU-STIR did not simply denounce grooming, they built and gave away the replacement — a master class for adults and nine illustrated shorts drawn from real Arizona cases, free to schools, police and social workers. Roe-Sepowitz's stated purpose, framed as starting a conversation rather than frightening children, is the constructive alternative made concrete.
Counter-Rule 12 · Universal Construction
The book agrees with this one rather than inverting it: if you would tear something down, you are obliged to build the thing that replaces it.
Match it in your own house this month: if you or your church would criticize a school's trafficking-prevention lesson, first download the ninth-twelfth grade and seventh-eighth grade shorts yourself and be ready to name what you would put in their place. Ask your children's ministry to schedule one training date and put it on the calendar, not in a discussion. Building the substitute costs an evening; complaining without one costs credibility.
Rule 9
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
Grooming works precisely because the threat stays unnamed — the coalition's material describes traffickers building trust, meeting emotional needs and isolating a child, none of which looks like danger until someone has said out loud what it looks like. Sheri Lopez was groomed at 15 and trafficked for seven years; the remedy offered is not alarm but plain description, in a form a seventh-grader can read.
Counter-Rule 9 · Courageous Realism
Name the worst case out loud and cost it honestly. Fear of the unnamed is doing most of the work.
Do the naming at your own kitchen table: sit down once with the age-appropriate shorts and say out loud what a 'sugar baby' offer or a too-good job offer actually is, then put the Arizona hotline in every family phone. Agree in advance on the one adult a child calls if an approach feels wrong, and say that no child will be in trouble for reporting. Fear of the unnamed is doing most of the predator's work; a ten-minute conversation removes it.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
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