[Motherboard] On Monday morning, Senator Kamala Harris announced that she’s running for president. This was no surprise‐Harris’s run has been rumored for months.
As the daughter of immigrants, with a record of upholding rights for marginalized communities on several occasions, Harris should be an ideal progressive candidate. Many sex workers and sex worker rights advocates, however, vehemently disagree.
Last year, Harris, the former Attorney General of California, helped champion the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a piece of legislation sex workers and advocacy groups warned would have a disastrous impact on sex workers’ lives‐and they were right. FOSTA passed in April 2018 with Harris’s support, and she released a statement touting how proud she was to have helped move this bill through Congress, saying she has "witnessed firsthand the difficulty of charging sex trafficking sites‐even for crimes as egregious as pimping minors."
Harris and other FOSTA supporters claimed its passage would allow authorities to shut down websites like Backpage.com‐an escort advertising site that was an alleged hotbed for trafficking activity. It was also a primary source of income for many independent sex workers. Backpage and other advertising sites allowed sex workers to be financially independent and find and screen work for themselves, off the streets and away from actual traffickers or abusive "managers" and pimps.
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