[Lnc-business] Lawsuit in CO against AG, SoS, and DA / Protests over Backpage arrest(s)

Wed Oct 26 04:44:11 EDT 2016

	Excellent Caryn, go get 'em!   :-)   If you aren't already aware of it, you may be interested in this new Reason blog post about popstar Justin Timberlake allegedly violating a similar anti-ballot-selfie law in Tennessee:

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/25/another-election-another-round-of-absurd

	Speaking of free speech violations, sex work activists who support decriminalizing prostitution held rallies today in cities including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Minneapolis over the Oct. 6 arrest of Backpage.com CEO, Carl Ferrer, who was charged with pimping, attempted pimping of a minor, and conspiracy, merely based on the fact that he runs a classified ad website where advertisers may have been guilty of such things.

	As I wrote on our Meetup page for the event, "This kind of persecution is not only an indirect attack on sex workers and our clients by politicians seeking to conflate consensual sex among adults with coerced sex and juvenile sex for political gain and go after those who allow us to advertise and meet each other – it is also a direct attack on Internet freedom. If a website owner or administrator can simply be arrested and jailed on felony pimping charges simply for arrangements that allegedly took place via his or her website, about which s/he had no direct knowledge and had not authorized, then scarcely any site that allows people to meet and talk with each other online is safe."

	In SF, we got some positive coverage from the San Francisco Chronicle:

> http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Sex-workers-protest-arrest-of-Backpage-CEO-known-10327473.php?cmpid=fb-mobile
> 
> A woman wearing a white rabbit mask screamed, “Stay out of my underwear” at passersby outside the Earl Warren Building near the Civic Center in San Francisco on Tuesday. 
> She was joined by more than a dozen women and men protesting what they described as the criminalization of prostitution and the recent arrest of the CEO of Backpage, an online classifieds site that includes adult services ads.
> 
> Backpage “gives me a safe place to advertise,” said the woman, who said she has been working in the adult industry for 20 years and goes by the pseudonym Happy Bunny. “Being out on the streets, I can meet strangers who want to attack me.”
> 
> Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, 55, was arrested Oct. 6 in Houston on charges of pimping and conspiracy in California.
> 
> Arrest warrants for two Backpage controlling shareholders, Michael Lacey, 68, and James Larkin, 67, were also issued on conspiracy charges.
> 
> Sex workers who use the website to market their services aren’t happy with the arrest of Ferrer and say state Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate, is violating their constitutional rights of free speech by cracking down on Backpage.
> 
> “Do they really want us back on the streets?” said Maxine Doogan, president of the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project, who was at the protest. “When we have these websites, people can discreetly arrange their liaisons. If we don’t have the websites, that means we are going back on the streets.”
> 
> From 2011 to 2015, there was a 98 percent increase in child sex trafficking reports, said Staca Shehan, executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Seventy-three percent of the complaints that the center receives of online child sex trafficking involve Backpage.com, Shehan added.
> 
> “Raking in millions of dollars from the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable victims is outrageous, despicable and illegal,” Harris said in a statement. “Backpage and its executives purposefully and unlawfully designed Backpage to be the world’s top online brothel.”
> 
> But Doogan and others at the protest say Harris is going after Backpage only to further her ambitions to become senator.
> 
> “Why doesn’t Kamala Harris address poverty instead of an easy scapegoat like sex work?” said Rachel West, a spokeswoman from U.S. PROStitutes Collective.
> 
> The adult services page hasn’t been removed from Backpage.com. But sex workers are worried the next step following Ferrer’s arrest is shutting down the adult services section on the site, West added.
> 
> Happy Bunny said her ads have been flagged and removed since the arrest of Ferrer.
> 
> “I have three kids. I’m just trying to take care of my children,” she said. “We are not here to hurt people.” 

	Some of us also met afterward with Backpage shareholder (and former owner of the site's New Media parent company) Michael Lacey, who happened to be in town following a brief stint in jail in Sacramento after turning himself in on the above-mentioned warrant. He had some unprintable things to say about Kamala Harris.  :-)   We're hoping he may help support the appeal of the ESPLER Project's federal lawsuit to overturn California's anti-prostitution law which is currently $7,000 in the hole on legal bills (see http://www.DecriminalizeSexWork.com for more info and how to donate).

Love & Liberty,
                                 ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                                (415) 625-FREE
                                  @StarchildSF

On Oct 25, 2016, at 12:19 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos wrote:

> I have filed suit today in CO regarding the "ballot selfie" law but there is an additional provision of that law which kept getting ignored that prohibited verbal disclosure as well.
> 
> Will forward copies of the suit.
> 
> -- 
> In Liberty,
> Caryn Ann Harlos
> Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos at LP.org
> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
> 
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