Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced today that his office has sued Craigslist and has asked a federal judge to ban the Internet company from posting its “erotic services” section, which the sheriff said is a clearing house for prostitution.
Dart also asked the judge to force the online classifieds company to reimburse the sheriff’s department for the approximately $100,000 it has spent pursuing its Craigslist investigation over the past year.
Early response from SWOP Chicago:
SWOP-Chicago does not condone the actions of the Cook County sheriff towards Craigslist. These actions are meant to persecute adults engaging in consensual sexual acts for money and goods of value. Creating criminal records for sex workers bars them from other forms of employment outside of sex work and may limit their ability to seek housing and other services.
This law suit is also a tremendous waste of tax payer resources during a time of severe economic turmoil in the state of Illinois and the country as a whole. The state of Illinois is currently facing a $9 billion dollar (and growing) deficit. Based on an analysis by Julie Pearl in 1987 and adjusted for inflation, in 2007 alone, the state spent over $14.6 million dollars on prostitution arrests. These figures do not take into account the cost of supporting jailed sex workers and the cost to human services agencies who serve these populations and the children of these individuals.
The resources involved in this law suit and in prostitution stings are much better used elsewhere. In 2007, Chicago reported 443 known murders, yet there were only 372 arrests state-wide. The money and resources would be better spent providing health and human services to sex workers and other citizens of the state of Illinois who should receive services, rather than be prosecuted for lack of other viable options.
Suing Craigslist to end the marketing of erotic services will not address the issues. If recent FBI stings are any indication, very few, if any, children and minors involved in forcible, coerced, or trafficked prostitution are found by Craigslist targeting and crack downs. Ending Craigslist’s erotic services section will do nothing to stop the exploitation or forced, coerced, or trafficked people, and will divert valuable time and money away from the effort.
The Cook County sheriff is doing no one a service, not the tax payers, not the sex workers targeted. We at SWOP-Chicago strongly urge residents of Illinois to protest this egregious waste of their taxes and public resources and to consider what is truly best for the health and welfare of individuals who advertise erotic services on Craigslist.
SWOP Chicago is encouraging supporters to contact the Sheriff’s office:
Cook County Sheriff’s Office
50 W. Washington
Chicago, Illinois 60602
(312) 603-6444
sheriff@cookcountysheriff.org
Resources:
Original Article- Sheriff Tom Dart Sues Craigslist
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he’s busted enough prostitutes who were pimped out on Craigslist to know the popular on-line classified site is the country’s largest whorehouse.
Filed under: Craigslist | Tagged: Cook County |
Bound, Not Gagged 
Grammatical Error:
End Craigslist’s erotic services section will do nothing to stop the exploitation or forced, coerced, or trafficked people, and will divert valuable time and money away from the effort.
“End” should be “Ending”.
Dude wants to put himself out of a job? I thought all these jackasses cared about was meeting their arrest quotas.
Hey everyone,
What about this idea: How about SWOP or ESCU and other sex worker groups get together and approach Craig Newmark about this problem with arrests and lawsuits. Because we sex workers and allies are sick of the arrests, and Newmark is probably getting sick of the crap about his business.
A SWOP-Chicago rep will be on NPR (91.5-WBEZ, Chicago) this morning on 848- 9AM CST to talk about the lawsuit. If the show is archived, i will post up a link.
Oh, that guy. Over on the Pro-Porn Activism blog last month, I posted about his meeting of the minds with Robert Jensen. Dart is the worst sort of crusading busybody prick.
Manual trackback:
Blog of Pro-Porn Activism: More Hot Air from the Windy City
This is the very same Sheriff who made headlines several months ago by bravely and boldly declaring that Cook County Sheriff’s Department would no longer evict foreclosed tenants.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1849454,00.html
Sheriff Dart has a contradiction on his hands here. Apparently, during the economic crisis it is not okay to put poor people out of their homes but it is okay, as more and more women turn to sex work to escape poverty, to put these women in jail.
I suggest Sheriiff Dart, to relieve himself of this contradiction, post a Craigslist add himself, stating money once used for arrests, incarceration and probation will now be used for job training, education, housing and childcare.
Or perhaps Sheriff Dart can sue corporations who pay poverty wages to workers and sue those corporations for living wage back pay. Maybe he can start with Walmart.
I already spoke to craig. He’s passed the buck and craigslist has already stated they are cooperating with the police in several states.
So this is what they get for cooperating. Let this be a lesson. When you lay down with dogs..you get up with federal lawsuits.
The sheriff has an ax to grind and as long as prostitution is illegal, we’re always an easy escape goat for politicians to use us as political footballs and that’s what he’s doing. He’s an elected official with his eyes on higher office.
The show was archived at 45 minutes in is where this all starts: http://tinyurl.com/yv72pa
“Or perhaps Sheriff Dart can sue corporations who pay poverty wages to workers and sue those corporations for living wage back pay. Maybe he can start with Walmart.”
A-fucking-men.
He’s wasting this money on this bullshit lawsuit when he could be using it to oh I don’t know help people get housing and jobs that pay okay so they don’t have to rely on selling sex. Or, you know, leave the sex workers alone and actually go after traffickers.
Can somebody from Chicago sex worker community contact me please?
info@espu-ca.org
Thanks
mx
>>>I already spoke to craig. He’s passed the buck and craigslist has already stated they are cooperating with the police in several states.
So this is what they get for cooperating. Let this be a lesson. When you lay down with dogs..you get up with federal lawsuits.>>>
Craig Newmark agreed to cooperate with the police, but that was before this new lawsuit. As you said, this is what he gets in return for his cooperation. You may want to speak with him again, Maxine, because maybe now he is willing to change the terms of his original agreement.
Jill Brenneman on March 7, 2009 6:02 PM
Answers to trafficking in human beings don’t come via methods like Sheriff Dart is using and CATW and my bloggers here are advocating. It is very disturbing to see that Norma Ramos and CATW are supportive of this kind of action.
Norma congratulates Sheriff Dart, she opines about prostitution being the oldest exploitation and talks of injustices and creating social change that ends oppression and human trafficking. It’s a great stand alone speech but it is entirely a contradiction of itself when viewed in context.
Sheriff Dart’s target and highest percentage of arrests are of the prostitutes themselves. Arresting the prostitutes, a majority of which are female, is contradictory to advancing their human rights. If one is a prostitute or even a trafficking victim in prostitution, they are never going to view the police as allies in ending their oppression as long as they are the prime target for arrest. To say that we should arrest prostitutes in hopes of finding trafficking victims is a disingenuous statement of concern for the victim’s human rights. They talk of being all supportive of the prostitutes than congratulate themselves for arresting the very victims they support. Even at the most basic level such as finding work outside of prostitution, the arrest is only going to make that process harder. Now they have an arrest and often a criminal conviction to list on a job application. While there are great statements on every job app which state arrest is not necessarily a detriment. We all know that is totally incorrect in the real world. It is a detriment. It is the equivalent of writing do not hire on the top of the application. Solutions do not come with arresting the very victims purportedly being rescued. Norma Ramos of CATW, of all people should know this. I have little doubt Norma Ramos does know this but chooses for political expediency to support efforts such as Tom Dart’s.
If one truly wants to fight for the human rights of an oppressed and victimized group of people they are not going to support arresting the very oppressed and victimized populace. Norma Ramos and the organization she is with, CATW, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, is doing the same as Tom Dart. Stating all of this is about rescuing victims when in fact the victims are the most likely to be arrested and Tom Dart and CATW are benefiting politically and financially from the scenario that causes the arrest.
I find Tom Dart and CATW’s actions and words to be self serving duplicitous bovine excrement
Jill Brenneman on March 7, 2009 6:26 PM
On Sex Slaves in America. I was in fact one of them at one time. Google a book called Enslaved True Stories of Modern Day Slavery or To Plead our own Cause by Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd and you will find my background in the sex industry as a sex slave.
Actions such as Sheriff Dart is taking are abysmal and counter productive to the fight against sexual slavery. I can speak from first person in telling him those that are making money via sexual slavery and coerced prostitution are far smarter than Tom Dart is giving them credit for. If Sheriff Dart truly believes that he will put as much as a dent in sexual slavery via shutting down Craiglist’s adult advertising, he is sadly mistaken.
As a sex slave in the years before internet, before Craigslist, I was forced to have sex with men for money, money which went to a pimp. Every day was filled with clients. However the pimp in my life advertised he had no problem finding customers for me. Given this was before the internet, trying to shut down trafficking and slavery via eliminating an advertising venue is absurd. There will always be venues for advertising this kind of situation. Pimps that traffick sex slaves aren’t stupid. They will simply adapt and focus advertising in different venues other than Craigslist.
Answers to fighting human trafficking and sexual slavery have to come largely via pro-active work in trying to eliminate the conditions of oppression that make some women easy prey for those who wish to exploit them.
Something else that Sheriff Dart and CATW need to address is that pimps including mine know criminalization and fear of arrest keep the victims away from law enforcement. Law enforcement isn’t an ally when law enforcement is the organization that is going to arrest the victim. Pimps know this. It is a very quickly introduced component in creating barriers to escape and freedom. You can’t go to the police when you are victimized because you by virtue of being a prostitute are a criminal to the police, not a victim. You don’t arrest 100 prostitutes to catch 1 trafficker and call that a benefit to the prostitutes.
Hunger, poverty, homelessness, chemical dependency, oppression of various groups of people which leaves them vulnerable to exploitation are many of the components that create the dynamic making a person ripe for exploitation via trafficking.
Had someone wanted to rescue me from trafficking they would have had to find a way to remove the components that put me in that scenario in the first place. I was hungry, homeless, unable to find work in mainstream jobs and was a very soft target. The answers to that have to come in addressing the causes as the primary response, and reactionary measures such as trying to target the traffickers as secondary. Arresting the victims isn’t primary, secondary, tertiary or any abstract as a best practice for constructive social change for the people victimized.
As a sex slave, I didn’t need the horrific reality that the police were just another oppressor. I didn’t need self serving sheriffs or organizations that are stating themselves to be anti exploitation pontificating on how I would have been saved by going from captivity with a pimp to captivity with the police and county and state penal systems.
Put this in any other construct than sexual slavery in prostitution and the absurdity seems to be very obvious. Yet it isn’t when it comes to those victimized in sexual slavery. An example would be a hypothetical historian that looked at slavery in the US in 1861 and said the answer was to arrest all African Americans including those that were slaves as a best practice to stop slavery.
Sheriff Dart, CATW, do better than advocating for the arrest of the victims you state caring so much about and wanting to save. Or move on to another venue where you are doing something constructive rather than destructive for the victims you state representing. Anyone that advocates arresting me as a best practice is very unlikely ever going to be viewed as an ally. I have little doubt my sentiments are shared by most other trafficking/slavery victims
I also read the comments by Norma Ramos of CATW and I wasn’t surprised. Despite its name, CATW seems more focused on promoting oppressive laws against sex workers than stopping human trafficking. I feel that this organization exploits the issue of human trafficking to promote anti-prostitution laws that harm sex workers, and shift the main focus away from stopping human trafficking and toward incarcerating sex workers. Unfortunately, CATW is not alone in exploiting the issue of human trafficking to promote oppressive laws against sex workers. If fighting trafficking were CATW’s main interest, then this organization would focus more on actually stopping trafficking, helping people who are trafficking, and looking for effective solutions to fighting trafficking; and focus less on promoting the myths that criminalizing prostitution promotes human trafficking and laws which are resulting in sex workers being trafficking into jail cages are effective ways to fight trafficking.
It is hard to fathom the logic other than being a political thing on CATW’s part. Either they fail to see the contradiction in their activism or just don’t care. Tom Dart is an old school thug. Nothing more.
Speaking of “sheriffs” I found this video on Cath Elliot’s site
http://toomuchtosayformyself.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/big-man/#comments
I find it quite ironic that a radical feminist like Elliot would have this on her site yet still advocate for arresting prostitutes.
I find it ironic that Cath Elliot would post something like this. Aren’t the police supposed to be allies in arresting prostitutes?
You see, this is what happens to women when they are alone with the police, and this is what she is subjecting sex workers to by helping to keep prostitution criminalized.
Elliot’s vile hatred of sex workers could not be more plain.
Chicago sex industry workers would do well to run a recall election on Dart. It would be good exercise. It would be an opportunity to highlight that fact that prostitution arrests don’t address actual victims of force fraud and coercion. It would be an opportunity to find out who you allies are and aren’t.
That’s something for us to think about.
I give Dart 6 months before he is caught in a sex scandal.
Place your bets, ladies.
I”ll take 5 months.
@kitten, @Jill:
I wouldn’t be surprised. Kitten, since you used to live in Chicago, you probably know about the sort of “straight and narrow”, moral beacon rep Dart has. Rather like Elliot Spitzer before his *ahem* troubles, hehe. But I found this interview Dart gave to Windy City Times, which is an LGBT paper, from 2006 when he was running for Cook County Sheriff. I wanted to quote this one part which just highlights more of his hypocrisy:
“We just need the tools to run the jail adequately. Big-city jails are incredibly difficult to run; there are 10,000 people and 9,000 beds. [ Also, ] we move 1,500 people and have over 1,000 visitors each day.”
They must’ve gotten easier to run since he’s looking to fill them up again! And Jill, re: traffickers and their cunning, I said that exact thing to a reporter that SWOP-Chicago has some contact with. I told her that the traffickers Dart, etc. are looking for aren’t so stupid as to publicly advertise their “services”.
Did anybody see Sheriff Dart on Dr. Phil? The show focused on bashing the Erotic Services section of Craig’s List and promoting this “arrest sex workers’for their own good” philosophy. Of course they neglected to mention how arresting sex workers is often a very traumatic and humiliating experience that can ruin their lives and how the criminalization of prostitution further endangers sex workers. I really need to stay away from the mainstream media.
Nope, although Amanda Brooks just posted on her blog about having been approached by the producers of the show for that episode. She decided against it luckily. I avoid Dr. Phil like the plague.
I read Amanda’s blog and totally get why she decided against going on the show. It would have been a very hostile environment against her and she wouldn’t of had a support system around of sex worker advocates. Of course, we could have (time and money permitting) gone out there and sat in the audience in support of her, but we wouldn’t have been able to speak. Dr. Phil was clearly biased toward the prohibitionists and he probably would have tried to pathologize her like he did to the other sex worker on the show who was trying to pay off student loans by working in prostitution. This woman just accepted everything Dr. Phil said, and I wonder how he would have reacted if she disagreed with him. Probably, in a very condescending and self-righteous manner.
Having done one talk show, Talk or Walk back in 2001, I will never ever do one again. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you say because they’ll edit it into what they want anyway. Not to mention one of the surprises is the liquidated damages contract, which if you back out of the show they sue you for 10,000 dollars and ultimately you end up playing a role that the producers and the host decided for you.
@Jill: I’ve heard about that. I think it was in an article Dolores French wrote. And since most of these shows do sex topics during Sweeps, advertisers pay big money to have their ads run during a controversial episode that’ll bring in more viewers. So I suppose, from a business standpoint, I can understand the threat to sue. But from the more ethical, moral standpoint, I totally disagree with that type of manipulation.
@Advocate: Yup. I mean, can’t talk to a woman like that as though she’s a complex human being or some such. I’ve yet to see a talk show about a controversial topic that didn’t aim to dehumanize the participants as much as possible.
If I had been able to go on the show protected (without giving them my real name and SSN), then I would’ve done it because I realize sex workers needed a voice. But they didn’t pull that requirement out until a week before the show was supposed to air. Had they told me this upfront, I would have declined then and they could’ve found someone else to point out the obvious. (No other show I’ve done has required these things.)
It wasn’t support I needed (welcome as that would’ve been), it was protection. Since I can’t afford the level of protection I currently want, I did not do the show.
XX
[…] UPDATE: A little more discussion here. […]
The show demanding your social security number and real name definately raises red flags. If they just simply wanted you to be a guest on the show, then why would they need this info.? It seems as if they may have been working with the police or perhaps were interested in “digging up the dirt” on your background. I wouldn’t of gone on the show under such circumstances either.
I wonder if they waited until the last minute to ask for the SSN and legal ID hoping the guest will have already made the arrangements they needed to make in order to travel and they wouldn’t want to change them. Do talk shows still pay for air and hotel for guests?
Well, here’s something rather disturbing from TMZ.com: A couple that appeared on Dr. Phil’s show as “professional shoplifters” were later arrested by their local authorities based on their televised appearance.
http://www.tmz.com/2009/03/31/dr-phil-triggers-seizure/
http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2009/03/30/news/inland/san_marcos/z54340f45c0c009de88257589007b37cd.txt
In light of what Amanda related with her experience with them (esp. the SSN & ID demand) and what sexworkeradvocate reported about the episode in question (and the suspicion of collusion), I wonder if a similar arrest is awaiting the prostitute that did appear on the show. Goddess, that’s shady.
I find it fucking laughable that the Dr. Phil show calls Craigslist a “new threat”. It’s been online for a decade now, and I started using it in 2002. The Erotic section was there at the time.
I cannot believe anyone would watch this mindless drivel. Whatever happened to Phil Donoghue, that talk show host who used to talk about actual issues?
“Do talk shows still pay for air and hotel for guests?”
Amanda said on her blog that the show offered to pay these expenses.
Also, guess what everybody??
This information goes back a few years, but Dr. Phil’s son married a Playboy model. Another ‘do as I say not as I do’ award to the McGraw family.
Dr. Phil’s show is bullshit, and he’s well aware of that fact. But it keeps the family in style.
My experience with Talk or Walk and in facilitating discussions between talk shows and various SWOP East members in the various forms of Project Prosper, over the years, is that they want name and social security number for the performance contract. Once they have that you get a script of what they want you to say and if you balk too much the liquidated damages clause comes up. This has always been a component in my interactions with talk shows. Talk shows are often fodder for the producers and host to bury a guest. Dr Phil’s producers likely had Amanda in mind for the purpose of burying publicly for the sake of whatever the show had in mind.
If you don’t play they simply edit what you do say to fit what they need. The show I taped and the show that aired were very different. Edits, completely moving a response to a question to make it look like that was the answer to another, taking partial responses making them into answers, They are often total shit.
Aspasia,
It is my understanding that the sex worker on their show had already been arrested via a CraigsList sting. At least that’s the format they wanted.
I’m not sure why they waited till the last minute to spring the real name/SSN requirement. Maybe they thought I would feel safe or really really wanted to do the show. Either way, it was WAY too risky.
Susan,
I know! It’s so hypocritical.
And mainstream media has only just discovered CraigsList and therefore thinks online sex work has only existed for the past year or so. [rolling my eyes]
Jill,
If the real name/SSN is standard for a talk show (but not a news show), then very few sex workers are going to do talk shows! I knew they would edit and planned to talk over people so they couldn’t edit. But the whole “surprise” angle was way too worrisome for me. Dangerous.
XX
Amanda,
I’ve talked with producers from Montel, Rikki Lake, Talk or Walk, Judge Hatchett, I forget the other one, all the same shit. By the time that Talk or Walk filmed I was supposed to be the opposition to a couple that was creating porn as their religion and selling adult sex education videos as part of journey to find God. I”m not kidding or being sarcastic.
That wasn’t the deal that I flew to LA for. Had I known that was the end result I would have told them no. It was ridiculous. I couldn’t have cared less what this couple did or if they created a church of porn. I had a hard time arguing with a guy that looked like he was a cross between a priest and Greg Allman in a maternity dress with a wife that seemed far more Northwest Airlines flight attendant type than high priestess for pathway to heaven by virtue of buying self help videos on sex ed from a mid 40 something couple.
I was flown there to speak about issues, got there a got a script where I was supposed to oppose these people. People that I would have found amusing to talk to in the hotel bar but otherwise couldn’t care less. I was supposed to be all opposed to her breast implants. I didn’t know she had breast implants and wasn’t up for trashing her. It’s a farce. I couldn’t get a commitment from any of the other shows that called for anything better.
I don’t mind debating anyone and don’t really care if they throw a last minute switch but to play a role of being horrified they were making porn and video sales into a religion. I couldn’t care less. And ultimately that was the topic of the show.
Be careful.
Jill,
What a nasty experience. A script? How ridiculous. And degrading.
Thanks for sharing.
XX
Another thing to add. Just recently the longest running soap-opera, the “Guiding Light”, finally ended. The reason? Daytime television viewer-ship is lower than it’s ever been in history. Even Oprah Winfrey’s program has declined in ratings.
Something for Dr. Phil and those like him to contemplate.
They are contemplating it, why do you think talk shows are so anxious to talk about sex work and trafficking lately? Those shows get ratings.
And doesn’t Tyra have at least one weekly episode with a common theme: “Look out girls! Sex is Bad!” (Unless it gets you onto the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, of course.)
There’s all kinds of hypocrisy in the MSM when it comes to sexual visibility. The solution is to continue making our own media and doing real life networking I don’t think television shows, even those who are trying to be fair to us, can really capture the dynamics of who we are and what this business is about. People have to actually know us.
I agree with Karly’s comments about hypocracy. I don’t watch talk shows much, but when they do topics based on the sex industry, I watch to see how the issues are being covered (even though I sometimes end up being so disgusted by the lack of respect for sex workers and shallow, narrow focus that I wish I didn’t watch).
Speaking of hypocracy, a couple of weeks ago, Tyra did a show about the sex industry and she had a dancer on there who spoke very positively about her work, but Tyra wouldn’t accept this. Even though Tyra has also shown her body for payment, she acted like what this woman did was a whole lot worse because she was an exotic dancer.
Tyra kept asking this dancer how she would feel if any of her sons married a stripper, and when this woman didn’t give the answer Tyra thought was right, Tyra wouldn’t stop. She asked her if she would rather her sons marry actresses or strippers, and then said to this woman something like, “You know you would prefer that your sons marry actresses.”
Tyra’s disrespect for sex workers upset me so much. For one thing, she had no business prying into this woman’s family business and who this woman wants her sons to marry is between her and her sons, not Trya. Secondly, this type of attitude promotes and reinforces stigmas against sex workers. By constantly asking this question and not accepting this woman’s answer because it wasn’t what Tyra thought was the “right” answer, Tyra was indirectly telling this woman that she’s “bad” because of the type of work she does and she shouldn’t want her sons to marry somebody like her. Thus, this question was really more of a statement than a question. Tyra was implying that strippers are “below” actresses. If sex work wasn’t stigmatized in the first place, people wouldn’t be asking us question like “how would you feel if your daughter becomes a stripper? Or, “how would you feel if your son marries a stripper? Not to mention, such questions are sexist because they imply that only women are strippers, which isn’t true.
Well, Karly, sex does sell, and slut-shaming gets the ratings up.
But I’ve been to Dr. Phil’s blog, and more than a few women responded that although they “don’t approve” of prostitution, they also stated that a wealthy man like Dr. Phil is in no position to judge, because he isn’t struggling to make ends meet. These women have contemplated “turning tricks” just to get food on the table for their kids.
Working-class women make up a sizable audience of the daytime talk shows, and if these shows don’t reflect the reality of these women, then they’ll start tuning out. And then the ratings will go down.
But thanks to Dr. Phil, now these working-class women know about Craigslist, and now they know that they can “turn tricks” on the internet instead of on the street. So in a way, Ol’ Doc Phil might have done a huge favor. If Ashley made $200 an hour, how much could they make?
LMAO
Susan,
This is the very REAL problem I have all this media attention directed at CL (and I tell this to every reporter who asks). Women hear all about CL and think they only have to stick up an ad and can make easy money. They don’t understand the business or the real dangers they face if they don’t screen (bad clients and cops). They don’t understand the information-sharing agreement between CL/DA offices and how to circumvent it.
And they get arrested. More and more CL arrest stories feature women who are new to sex work. The more media attention it gets, the more newbie sex workers come to CL. It’s turning into an ugly cycle, in my opinion.
I don’t have any answers, other than decrim and a whole new set of media perspectives (for starters).
XX