Thread by @ENBrown

So it's been a week since @reason published my feature on the founders of Backpage (reason.com/archives/2018/…) & mostly I've just RT'd other people's shares so far, b/c tbh I was a bit burnt out …

... burnt out b/c I did much more research than is apparent here (a few follow-ups already planned!). And b/c it was hard at times to cope w/the immensity of this story, which of encompasses as victims not just Lacey & Larkin—

... but also so so so many known & unknown people hurt & destroyed by this 2-decade+ criminal-justice charade…

just the ones I've covered personally over past 4 yrs make a long list. Monica Jones. "Kamylla." Amber Batts. Julie Haner. "Tahoe Ted." Jabong Kim. Celeste Guap. "Sally Anne." Hope Zeferjohn. Hassan Abdallah, Ibrahim Bazzi, & Ali Chami. Sunny Kimnam. Edeme Missiadan....

(If you're interested in more about any of the above stories, see this link list: docs.google.com/document/d/1A8…)

… & of course there are the many, many sex workers assaulted by cops, of which we've seen new evidence this week w/ #DonnaDalton to add to the ever-growing chorus of stories:
reason.com/blog/2015/10/1…
& reason.com/blog/2017/10/1…

.... … the Korean massage parlor owners & workers in NYC…
reason.com/blog/2016/04/1…

… The members of K-pop band Oh My Girl reason.com/blog/2015/12/1…

… The girls forced into Courage House. reason.com/blog/2016/09/2…

… The interracial couples & famlies detained as part of paranoid airline sex panic reason.com/blog/2016/01/1…

… The Somali men and women prosecuted as part of a giant racist sting
reason.com/blog/2016/03/0…

… The workers at legal Nevada brothels being targeted reason.com/blog/2018/05/0…

…. The men arrested in The Review Board Sting reason.com/archives/2016/…

…. All the homeless, trans, gender-nonconforming, & non-white people targeted under bullshit loitering to commit prostitution laws reason.com/blog/2017/08/0…

Lacey & Larkin, the founders of Backpage, should absolutely be understood as part of that unfortunate cohort I listed above, those victimized by determination to stamp out consensual adult prostitution, often disguised as a war on child sexual exploitation or human trafficking

So I want to highlight a few things from the (admittedly quite long) story I wrote about them, a tl;dr thread & hopefully fuel for some to seek out more… reason.com/archives/2018/…

...The thing people have been most surprised about is that the founders of Backpage go back decades in journalism, specifically alt-weeklies

They wound up w/ newspapers in 18 cities -- & pissed off the people in power in each one (including, often, those @ the daily papers)

It may seem strange that Backpage's founders have fought back so hard on the adult ad thing… until you realize that they've been fighting back against gov't overreach (& winning) for nearly 5 decades.

Their 1st big legal battle, in 1971, was also over ads—related to abortion

...Since then, they fought across the country against censorship, and used their papers to expose corruption in politics, business, law enforcement, & activism.

They fought w/ACLU for the rights of prisoners to read newspapers. They fought DOJ over a deal w/ Village Voice ...

...The founders of Backpage fought Joe Arpaio over his demands for years worth of data on readers of the Phoenix @phoenixnewtimes Times (& wound up in jail after middle-of-the-night home raids in 2007)...

...Since Arpaio came on the scene in the '90s, they pushed back against his treatment of inmates & immigrants.

When they got a $3.75 million prize over Arpaio arresting them, they tried to use it to fund a border and migrant studies program w/in the journalism school at ASU ...

...ASU eagerly accepted & announced it. Then Cindy McCain complained. ASU backed out.

So Lacey & Larkin founded the Frontera Fund, which gives money to immigrant rights causes
laceyandlarkinfronterafund.org

... In 2016, Frontera Fund funded a major get-out-the-vote campaign targeted at young, first-time voters of color in Phoenix, & there's evidence it helped contribute to Arpaio's first-time-in-2+-decades defeat

“People must resist," said Michael Lacey—more than 10 years ago—in an ACLU dinner speech.

"As we sit here … Sheriff Joe Arpaio is blockading the streets of Phoenix and jailing… Mexican immigrants. Here, in this desert, it is Selma time."

It's sad to think what kind of good Lacey, Larkin, & their papers may have done had they not had to spend the past 10 years winning the same argument over & over again in court over Backpage... reason.com/archives/2018/…

... I have to admit, though, when I headed out to meet Backpage's founders in Phoenix, I was a little nervous.

What if they were creeps? Not condone-sex-trafficking kind of creeps, but more run-of-the mill skeevy pigs? ...

.. my worries were unfounded. In meeting not just Larkin & Lacey but their families, longtime friends, former writers & editors, etc., I was welcomed to a portrait of 2 men who couldn't be further from the horrid caricatures of them reason.com/archives/2018/…

...They were funny. Normal. Quick witted. Kind. Sure, it could all be some master sociopathy. But in this case, we have 40+ years of material on these men for comparison. And in lengthy profiles long before Backpage came along, they come across about exactly as they do today

Both Backpage founders—but especially Lacey—emanate with endearing earnestness.

Was I simply being taken in? Perhaps. But then I'd be one in a long line of reporters.

"He's got this bonkers sincerity about him," Mark Jacobson wrote in New York in '05 nymag.com/nymetro/news/m…

And here's former New Times writer Renz Jennings on Lacey, in a Phoenix mag profile from 1990:

Here's the last story I want to tell… It starts over lunch w/the Backpage founders in July.

Lacey has HOLD FAST tattooed across his knuckles, & I ask why. Part of the explanation--it is an old sailor tattoo, & his dad had it--appears in my @reason story reason.com/archives/2018/…

... Lacey tells me that he remembers seeing the words flying at his young face from his dad's fists. (He made peace w/the old man, & got the matching tattoo, only when was himself in his 50s.)

Lacey's dad also took his anger out physically on his mom...

“I have a little boy now, he’s one. I don’t understand how people can abuse children,” Backpage founder Michael Lacey told Phoenix mag in 1990.

“I don’t understand about my own childhood… anger, it never really goes away.”

A year later, Lacey would write in @phoenixnewtimes about his mother's abuse, in the context of then-current AZ events.

The AZ school superintendent had been raped & beaten by her husband & was seeking a divorce...

... Local papers described her as a "sex captive" & panned her for not leaving her abusive husband sooner. ...

In New Times, Michael Lacey criticized the sensationalism AND the victim blaming, esp. coming from outlets heavy w/splashy features about rape rates & domestic violence.

"Were these pieces written only for submission to journalism contests?" phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-bishops…

Lacey's criticism here—written 27 years ago now, & 13 years before Backpage's founding—holds just as true for recent coverage of sexual exploitation ... phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-bishops…

... Sex workers make for great victim narratives, & occasionally great female empowerment tales. But their actual lives & indignities & abuses tend to be of little media interest. Like the lives of actual domestic abuse victims. Like Backpage founder Michael Lacey's mom. ...

At every turn, Backpage heads cooperated w/authorities on things that could actually stop abuse while refusing to endorse symbolic gestures.

That they've been cast as villains in our national sex-trafficking panic shows how little changes wrt media respect for women or truth