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If people are going to blame Kamala Harris for being involved in taking down Backpage—AND SHE DESERVES IT—you also have to blame the entire Senate Judiciary and the National Association of Attorneys General. They were all part of it. A thread I will regret...
Back in 2010, when I had already been covering attempts to shutdown sex work ad sites for a few years—and during some of those years, as a sex worker who relied on those sites, then-CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal made Backpage his target. https://www.courant.com/business/hc-xpm-2010-09-21-hc-online-brothel-20100921-story.html
Blumenthal got the incredibly, perfectly named NAAG (National Association of Attorneys General) on board, and in 2011, they put out this group letter calling Backpage out for having sex work ads. Harris signed it, but so did 44 other state AG's. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorneys-general-backpagecom-prove-you-re-fighting-human-trafficking
In 2012, Backpage sued WA AG Rob McKenna (also the head of NAAG), after WA state passed a law trying to bypass Section 230 to go after ad sites—a preview of SESTA, in retrospect. Backpage even won a preliminary injunction against the WA law. https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/06/backpage_gets_t.htm
This went on and on for years—and the state AG's fight against Backpage was nearing ten years old before SESTA arrived on the scene.
Harris enters the picture as CA AG, but by then, the War on Backpage had a zillion fronts: fights over state and federal laws, almost a Supreme Court case. Here's a snapshot from 2017: https://www.courthousenews.com/backpage-sex-ad-fight-thrown-out-of-court/
Harris filed charges against Backpage right before she left the AG seat for the senate, but that case began to fall apart pretty quickly. https://www.courthousenews.com/pimping-charges-against-backpage-com-execs-dismissed/
Harris' prosecution of Backpage didn't go very far before she was sworn in as a senator. TX AG Ken Paxton partnered on the prosecution (at the time he was under indictment himself, but...) https://psmag.com/news/whats-behind-the-backpage-prosecution
Sidebar: before state AG's got in on fighting online sex ads, the leader was (and he's still involved) Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. He was targeting Craigslist back in 2008. He has been sheriff this whole damn time and lately reinvented himself as a reformer lol.
I am not even halfway done, but but my point is: Harris was one of many, many players. And most didn't get as much media attention as she did. Partially, that's because sex workers helped make her synonymous with fighting Backpage. But I think that's giving her too much credit.
Back to 2017: CA AG Harris is now Senator Harris. That January, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hauled Backpage in for questioning. The day before, Backpage added a "CENSORED" graphic in place of the Adult ads section.
Harris was there for the hearing. I wrote it up at the time: https://psmag.com/news/the-backpage-saga-a-symbol-goes-on-trial-a-woman-goes-to-jail Long story short: even they knew it was theatre.
That's the backdrop for SESTA. Ten years of fighting, pushed by now-Senator Blumenthal. He was involved far longer than Harris was. (In 2008, she was still SF DA, and opposing sex work decriminalization.)
SESTA is introduced in August 2017. The first stories about Harris' involvement was questioning why she HAD NOT signed on as a co-sponsor. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article177982616.html
One reason why Harris was initially quiet on SESTA: her ties to Big Tech, who at first opposed the bill. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article177982616.html
My first story on SESTA was on January 26, 2018, maybe one of the first national stories, and certainly the first to include sex workers: https://theappeal.org/proposed-federal-trafficking-legislation-has-surprising-opponents-advocates-who-work-with-bf418c73d5b4/
Harris was not an original co-sponsor of SESTA. She signed on several months later, presumably after these negotiations with big tech companies. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1693/cosponsors?searchResultViewType=expanded
With SESTA, unlike pretty much everything that preceded it for the past decade I had been covering these fights, sex workers got the upper hand on the narrative. Some media outlets, for the first time, covered an anti-trafficking bill as potentially harmful to sex workers.
The whole story of SESTA is for another time. But if there's one thing you take away from this capsule version, it's that SESTA DID NOT TAKE DOWN BACKPAGE.
Weird, right? You may even remember Backpage going down around the same time SESTA passed in Congress. But Backpage was seized by the DOJ ~BEFORE~ Trump signed SESTA into law. https://theappeal.org/anti-backpage-law-not-yet-enacted-but-the-crackdown-on-sex-workers-has-already-begun-e5f11d409adf/
The other reason that timing is significant is because for ten years, the story was, Section 230 kept law enforcement from going after Backpage. That's what eventually led to SESTA. And then -- boom, Backpage goes down before it's in effect, charged under another law entirely.
My sense is: SESTA blew up in Congress' face. Not that they apologized. Not that they have take meaningful action to pass a new bill, advanced by sex workers' rights groups, authorizing a study of SESTA's harmful effects. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3165
SESTA became synonymous w "attacks on sex workers." SESTA + the organizing around it drew the biggest single day of protest by sex workers in US history. https://theappeal.org/whores-will-rise/ At the same time, sex work decrim was mainstreaming (AOC, about to win her primary, supported it)
That, I think, is what gets us to the 2020 presidential election. Remember that weird moment in 2019 when it felt like every Dem candidate was being asked their decrim stance? That had never happened before!! And I wrote on Harris': https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/02/kamala-harris-brought-sex-work-into-spotlight-heres-what-she-should-do-next/
(That headline is not something I wrote! Nor do I believe it. *Sex workers* brought sex work into the 2020 spotlight.)
I don't believe for a second that VP-elect Kamala Harris supports decriminalizing sex work. But now she's helping to lead a party whose motivated, effective progressive wing does.
I still maintain that as VP, Harris probably has power over sex workers' lives than she did as senator, and certainly less than she did as AG. I don't think she poses a unique threat. I also think it's very unlikely she will ever say, I was wrong. (And: she was a cop.)
Sex workers are not wrong to look at this moment with a mix of anger and the usual trepidation. VP Harris helped build her public profile by harming them/us (I was doing sex work in SF when she was DA, remember.)
BUT. But. In terms of what will improve the lives of sex workers? It is a waste of energy and outrage to focus on Harris right now. I say this—again—as no fan. Remember, she could have put me in jail, were I not a white and indoor-working SW at the time.
Harris doesn't deserve an iota more of sex workers' times w/r/t sex work policy. SESTA is not going anywhere, either, barring big changes in the Senate. And none of them are going to do a mea culpa—not even Bernie, who voted for it!!—anytime soon.
The people who have the most power to harm sex workers? The police where they live. Prosecutors. Landlords. Fucking zoning and licensing boards. (I know, sounds boring, but that's how they are going after massage workers: https://theappeal.org/a-national-campaign-to-crack-down-on-massage-businesses-may-harm-the-women-it-wants-to-help/)
And if you are mad, still, be mad! And maybe be mad at us in San Francisco in the 00s, when she was DA, for not running someone against her and beating her, before she got here.
Please read the whole thread before yelling at me. And non-sex workers, don't yell at me at all unless you are also posting your receipt for a donation to a sex workers' mutual aid fund >>>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FKve5gAEQo4hJECRiTOYUzDqiBZTESvoKHCOlbr7smY/edit
Ugh, I should have said this at the top (linked here)—if you don't know me, I'm a journalist who has covered this exact fight for my entire career, the author of PLAYING THE WHORE: THE WORK OF SEX WORK, and a former sex worker as a Harris constituent. https://twitter.com/melissagira/status/1325540980410494982
