Dear Craigslist:
As you probably have seen, a lot of attention is on Diddy and his trial. A series has come out recently attacking Dennis Hof, the man who used to own the Bunny Ranch.
So there's a lot going on right now in the media about the subject of prostitution. This includes attention on sex trafficking.
Ever since you stopped carrying escort ads, and Backpage got shut down, there is no real "central" publication that most involved in that world read. However, a lot of people in sex work do read Craigslist for all kinds of things - such as looking for movers or hiring a dog walker. The subject of exiting this profession is on their minds right now.
At the same time, with all of this cracking down on illegal aliens, there's a lot of people now afraid to go to work or they can't come up with the papers to show an employer to get, or keep, work. I saw on the news something like 2000 people got kicked out of Uber because they didn't have a birth certificate. Many people lost their homes in the LA fires.
On top of this, Medicaid or state health insurance, isn't going to pay for transgender surgery and/or hormone treatments. Now when health insurance did start covering trans surgery - the number of people I saw engaging in sex work to pay for their transition, and support themselves during that awkward transition period of time when they could be male or female - dropped to practically zero. It was the first time I saw people going through the transition without being in sex work, porn, stripping, etc.
However, with state or low income health insurance no longer paying for their transition and ongoing care - that means we're seeing a FLOOD of people back into sex work lately.
At the same time, how do I reach out to these people to let them know there is help available to them to help them exit that isn't connected with the cops, or a church? Prostitutes Anonymous is literally the only hotline/program I'm aware of that isn't religious in focus, or requires you work with law enforcement in order to get help. Which can get sticky because for the last 20 years now, almost all sex trafficking that's connected to the cartels does involve law enforcement supporting the traffickers. Look to the Diddy case where the plaintiffs named Las Vegas Metro chief as threatening Cassie SHE'D be the one in trouble if she tried to press charges against Diddy. This problem is not unique to Las Vegas either. You can look up Celeste Guap and see everyone on the police force AND on the human trafficking task force was blocking her from calling for help because they had badges in Oakland. The link between law enforcement and a scandal around sex trafficking where they have been backing the traffickers is literally now in every major city in the US - and you can google this to see what I am saying is true.
We have Covid now mutating again. We possibly have bird flu and even ebola popping up. So getting someone OUT of prostitution, porn, etc., or at LEAST getting them some safe sex education that's not offered in the schools really anymore now everyone is focusing on trans issues - is literally now a matter of public safety.
So there's every reason we have right now to want to place ads on your site so people wanting help to exit that world can find the help they need. However, literally whenever I place an ad on your site for either the program itself, or asking for volunteers to help us - your site has me blocked each and every single time within five minutes or less. You don't have a category I could pay to place the ad in where I think sex workers would discover the ads because you don't take escort ads openly anymore. This leaves me with only placing ads in "groups" and "volunteers".
Only no matter how I word the ads - you block me. This isn't a reader flagging the ads as these ads are literally blocked within minutes of posting no matter what time of day I post them in. I have a VPN, so I don't think someone is tracking my IP address to know exactly when I place the ad to know when to block me.
And this whole border crisis right now is putting a LOT of moms out of work who have kids to feed who will be considering prostitution to feed those babies. So they're going to be looking on Craigslist for work, or ideas to help them. I want them to find our ad to get some help.
There's LITERALLY no reason why you can't stop blocking our ads. If anything, your blocking me could be considered as backing the traffickers. If your main buyers of your product were coming to you to buy alcohol and I wanted to place ads for alcoholics to go to AA, and you blocked those ads as you're doing with my ads, you could be considered as supporting the alcohol industry. If you were found to be taking money to support alcoholics finding alcohol ads, but not finding ads for AA - then again you could be seen as harming alcoholics - either intentionally or negligently - but harming them either way.
I've already written you and asked you politely to cooperate with me and stop blocking our ads. You're still blocking them. Leaving me to believe you're blocking sex trafficking victims from finding help to escape. Which other websites have lost over less when it came to the SESTA/FOSTA laws.
So I'm going to ask you one more time politely to stop blocking our ads for www.prostitutesanonymous.net I'm going to wait two weeks to give you time to update your software to stop doing this in case it's being done automatically. I'm going to then try and place our ads again after the 4th of July weekend.
If our ads are flagged again immediately across the board as you've been doing for over 20 years now, then you will leave me no choice but to start writing people like the FCC and the Inspector General's office a complaint about how you are supporting sex trafficking by this exclusion of ads for our hotline and program. A program which if a single mom is arrested on a prostitution charge - without our help she will go to jail. If she's locked up more than 24 hours, her kids get put into foster care. If she has other charges added onto that prostitution charge and she can't get released within one year - her kids get adopted out from under her permanently. Which considering how the cities now can get up to $80,000 per kid they get adopted, with a large chunk of that money coming from the federal government paying them for each child they can adopt out - that's a HUGE incentive to lock these women up in jail for as long as they can.
However, if they know about our program, they can ask to be sent to her instead of being incarcerated. If the court denies their motion, they can then file a complaint the judge violated their 14th Amendment right to choose the medical care and spiritual care of their own choosing - and FORCE the court to give them going to our meetings or going to jail.
So your refusal to get our number in front of these same women - could also be construed as supporting these kids being sold right out from under them to child traffickers - which is all that this has become lately or "kids for cash".
Meaning if you continue to refuse to stop blocking us, I can not only file a SESTA/FOSTA complaint to these agencies alleging you're supporting sex trafficking by blocking us from finding potential victims and getting them help, but I can also file a complaint with the attorney general's office saying you're supporting sex trafficking and sexploitation. Facebook has already lost a few of these cases over basically doing the same thing as you're doing to me. So I think my filing a complaint like this would at a minimum stir up some dust for you - and considering what happened to Backpage I don't know if you want to take on that kind of heat right now with Trump in office acting like a bull in a china shop when it comes to trying to stop sex trafficking by any means possible he feels Biden was actively engaging in while he was president.
I will also file a lawsuit for $1,000,000 for defamation. How is that defamation? When I'm claiming to be a reputable 40 year old program designed to help sex trafficking victims and other sex workers find a way out of sex trafficking, and they see my ads are not on your site, they're going to think I'm either not serious about our work as to why it's not there, or they're going to think it means there's something wrong or fishy about our program. I've had people wonder why if we're so great we aren't on Craigslist when Wikipedia for example has no problem with our site up on the TV. So it casts doubts in people's minds also about our reputation and legitimacy - which is a form of defamation. It has the same end result - it damages us and our reputation when you keep blocking our ads and we have to tell people we're not on your site because you've blocked us routinely.
Yet I do see you placing ads just fine for paid protestors to throw bricks at government employees and to set illegal fires. Yet you block my ad in a heart beat. You know we're legit because I've got 40 years of news clippings up on our site, along with talk shows I've been on such as Donahue, Sally and Jerry Springer.
So you have not valid reason to keep blocking us this way. Now I can write off the past blockings as your software was blocking us for the word "prostitution" or "prostitute". But when I call this to your attention and call you out on it, and you then continue to intentionally block us, then that leaves me with no choice but to think you're using your site to support sex trafficking and illegal prostitution. If you're taking money from prostitutes, and not offering them a free, reputable way out that isn't law enforcement or a church, then you could seriously be viewed as supporting sex trafficking, or even "pimping" which if you take money from an illegal prostitute, it's pimping and a felony.
It doesn't matter if you are "just a website". When I was arrested in 1984 for felony pimping for taking service fees and screening fees on the clients, LAPD also arrested my hotel manager, the cab driver that had driven me to the hotel, my nail lady, my dry cleaner AND my mother they had photographed as handing me a bucket of KFC and her handing me a $20 bill for the chicken. So if my mom can be charged with pimping over taking a $20 bill from me to pay for KFC - as that is "taking money from a prostitute" - then you can too for taking ads as I see still are being placed for escorts while also blocking my ads. Which could be considered as supporting the criminal behavior of illegal prostitutes and their pimps - which is considered a felony also of conspiracy to support criminal behaviors. If you're aiding them to be a prostitute, but also blocking my ads to get them out - again that makes it appear you're supporting and benefiting felony traffickers and pimps and could get you right in the same mix Backpage found themselves in if I start filing complaints and lawsuits.
Now if you have any questions for me, you can reach me at (702) 749 3129. Otherwise, I'll try to place my ads again in two weeks and if they are blocked instantly again - then I will proceed to take steps legally as I've outlined I'll be forced to do. This nonsense from you has gone on long enough! We have young kids out there prostituting without condoms or protection encouraged by women like Bonnie Blue right now (the 1000 guy porn performer), and this is posing a serious health crisis to America right now if nothing else - so this isn't even really about prostitution or not at this point.
I hope you just stop blocking my ads and we can move on from here.
Sincerely,
Jody Williams
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