...is shutting down the 'erotic services' portal of this widely-used internet community. As of today, ads will expire in seven days:

http://www.wowowow.com/entertainment/craigslist-remove-erotic-service-ads-response-philip-markoff-craigslist-killer-295220

This is CL's response, after receiving much scrutiny from a recent case involving a pretty, white boy med student who murdered female sex workers he met through CL:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/04/Craigslist-suspect-to-face-RI-charges/UPI-76051241467924/

Mariko Passion's (organizer for Sex Workers Outreach Project-LA) response:
"CL claims to be so progressive and grassroots and from San Francisco, but they aren't reflective of the many SF activists that have worked hard to bring attention to the violence that happens to sex workers on the internet, on the streets and everywhere. (5/13/2009)"

I couldn't agree more with Mariko. CL's response is yet another, classic reaction to violence against sex workers, throwing a blanket over it and pretending its not there anymore. But it's not fair to say that only CL is not doing enough. I went to the discussion forum of craig's list (searched: 'craigslist killer' and 'killer') surprised to see a lack of dialogue around this, just pock marked with a few, right-winged sexist, 'I told you so's', and a lot of focus on how we shouldn't stigmatize craigslist by calling the killer 'craigslist killer' because it's just an 'isolated incident.' Frustrating, I know. Violence is never, and will never ever be an 'isolated incident.'

I am not certain of CL's decision-making process, the pressures they endured, or how and when they felt it proper to eliminate all erotic services ads, but this move frankly, pisses me off. It is reactive, totalizing, and unproductive. And for an on-line community boasting that it is all "community moderated," silencing and attempting to discard a large part of the community is hardly that. So CL is now going to have more stringent moderators, new policies around language, so what? The culture of sex work, from cyber space to the streets, is resistant, transforming, constantly morphing language to bypass, to connect, to create, to survive. It'll find a way. CL's response is a confused, pointless attempt to address violence against sex workers. Instead, it just heightens the criminalization and disempowerment of sex workers, those forces which normalize that very same violence.

This makes me reflect upon the meaning, dimensions, ability, and potential of cyber "communities." Like I said earlier, there is a lack of voices, in negotiating and processing these events and actions taken up by CL. Why aren't folks taking more ownership over these processes? And how can we? Are these spaces, literally a place to deposit your old mattress, look for employment, find free shit? What's the boundary between servicing each other and really becoming an informed, connected community? Is that possible? What would be the most ideal way CL could respond? Blah Blah Blah (Insert your questions here)?

I hope to hear more voices around this in the next few days...