Tru the Sex Worker Vote2024 features Libertarian Presidential Candidate, Chase Oliver

hello everyone welcome so I'm Mistress of Ceremonies um I'm a sex worker here in Alaska welcome from Alaska can introduce themselves in that chat over there um the question answer you can kind of talk about things in there I guess but thanks for joining us and stop the raids we're going to talk about the upcoming 2024 elections and it's consequences for our community including a review of some of the presidential candidates records plus we're going to have a vote to demand representation for our economic and social rights so we know that the sex worker nation is we're we're a large group of you know people with diverse backgrounds different priorities different issues and different political and party affiliations also needless to say I'm not a tech wizard you know I figured things out as needed but so bear with us today as we're kind of in this learning process group right we're all going to work together to make a better community and this is just part of the process um let's please exercise tolerance today with each other as the presenters as the panelists discuss issues facing our community at the federal level in in the election cycle so we understand that folks are in different states different time zones um and your vote is your vote so whatever it is just vote um our final goal here today will be to craft a demand letter to whomever is seated as president including a press release that can come out of this whole process as well so be sure to post those comments or questions that you have in the question thing and at the end we'll also have a questionnaire um and this is going to be helping us to focus on the five main ask for the incoming Administration so right now I'm going to turn it back over to Maxine I just wanted to first start with reminding everyone about oural candidates came to ask the state party for their endorsement we marched through the California state democratic convention to demand repeal of fosta Doms against Donald Trump did a fosta D in on the steps of the entrance so all the Democratic presidential primary candidate SAU all the Statewide legislators and their legislative saw us this visibility played an important role in helping pass Senate Bill 233 which created immunity for everyone in California from prostitution arrests when were victims or Witnesses reporting serious crimes this law also removed condoms as evidence from prostitution cases when we fight we win I'm going to review kamla Harris's record on um her time as the San Francisco uh district attorney uh that because it will give us some clues about what to expect from her if elected president and what we as a community need to do to further our economic and social rights I did a public records request of kamla when she was the district attorney in 2006 because I wanted as an activist uh to find out what the government is doing around prostitution arrests um and how it is that we could hold them accountable and to find places where we could demand change kamla didn't provide the documents I had a right to and didn't respond to the public records request in a timely manner here's a copy of that violation order issued against her by the San Francisco Sunshine Tas Force when we don't have transparent government we don't have good government America also as district attorney commus Crusade against prop k a San Francisco Citywide ballot measure that would have removed criminal penalties for prostitution she is the source of the false and misleading statement that is used widely to this day by anti-prostitution ISS who repeat this dishonest claim that we have to um be you know subject as consensual adults you know used an actual sex trafficking victims to the violence of prostitution arrest as a means to investigate forced labor in the sex industry when clearly they do not need to arrest us to investigate that see like others who oppose our rights are literally holding us hostage hostages and that is completely unacceptable commus Crusade against back page is another place where she used the power of her election elected position as California State Attorney General that brought trumped up charges against the back page owners twice and those charges were dismissed twice the second time when she brought those charges was right before she left for her State um from her State Attorney General position to take the US senate seat so when she was seated as the US senator she used her power to continue her Crusade against them by yelling at them in a senate hearing where they couldn't defend themselves because they had to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because of the charges she had filed against them right before she left as a state attorney general so she demonstrates that she's willing to use her power in conjunction with unjust laws to strip citizens of our right to defend ourselves against these same unjust laws to further her career and nobody in that case was convicted of sex trafficking let alone sex trafficking of a minor the DC 2020 platform had a statement or the I'm sorry the um the Democratic National Convention 2020 platform had a statement that said we recognize that sex workers who are disproportionately women of color and transgender women face especially High rates of sexual assault and violence and we work with States and localities to protect the lives of sex workers this was removed from the 2024 platform and shame on the Democrats also at the Democratic National Convention was a punchdown from congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas who was allowed to say that Donald Trump had 34 felonies to impeachments and one porn star as if Trump had possession of the porn star which is pejorative that congresswoman should have thanked stormmy Daniels publicly for her sacrifice but instead used her and our industry is a political Trope the congresswoman would never have had those 34 felonies to talk about without stormy congresswoman Jasmine Crockett didn't even even say her name and she demonstrated that woman unwoman violence in the public spheres is okay when it is not and she owes Stormy Daniels and our community an apology a public apology what we as a community should be most concerned about is comma statement regarding decriminalization of prostitution in the 2019 Roots interview her response again show shows the usual political double speak conflating our male clients with men who force people into the sex trade let's be clear here the sex trade is not supporting this type of phony model that would leave our clients criminalized the research shows that leaving our clients's ability to gree to our solicitation for sex criminalized leads to more surveillance and violence against us the erotic service providers leaving our clients criminalized violates our rights to negotiate for our own labor and our own safe work conditions allowing people who don't work in our industry to dictate the terms of our work conditions that they themselves won't be working under is called an unfair business practice so let's be aware of this rhetoric and continue to be United in complete decriminalization for both the erotic service providers and our clients I'm going to end by saying that we as a community should make the new Administration aware of how many young women of color have been actual victims of sex trafficking who are now convicted of federal sex trafficking charges and have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives these cases should be brought before the next president to get them a full pardon meaning that they should be released from all punishments and disabilities erase all the criminal records and have no sentence to serve and All rights restored this group of folks were wrongly identified by cops and overzealous prosecutors who furthered their careers on this vulnerable population's backs I know that many in our community are not going to be voting for Donald Trump because of the porn band name in Project 2025 and for other reasons however in reviewing Harris's record um no matter who will be leading the next Administration we're going to have to be United and fight because when we fight we win all right thank you Maxine okay next next up that was very enlightening very thank you for doing that that was amazing um next up we have Bella Robinson now Bella needs no introduction but she is the founder and executive director of coyote Rhode Island so without further Ado Bella thank you Amber so um much like most other people here um I've been a a sex worker for 40 years I've done Street based work escorting and I had the opportunity to move to Rhode Island and I work worked under decriminalization and it was wonderful it's a GameChanger when people can't threaten to tell on you it takes all the power away so Harris was also really responsible for creating fosta and I remember when the what was it one of the child acts in 2014 I had to go talk to Senator Sheldon and I didn't know oh my God I was scared of death so anyway we did a survey two weeks after it fosta passed because we wanted to understand the immediate effects and then we did one in 2022 because effects change over time SES are pretty smart we start to figure things and adapt to like changes so we did this uh four years of s fasta that um and it it was the survey and um what we found out is what we already knew we were going to find out but we have the data to prove it so fosta increased violence and trafficking within the sex industry it created dangerous work conditions increased violence and exploitation and increased Street B work Street based work it increased um it decreased black uh Blacklist so these are like databases that we put bad clients to warn each other it made screening less possible when you know who someone is and where they work they're less likely to murder you fost to decrease Community Support among sex workers um increased homelessness fosta negatively impacted Public Safety and fosta harm survivors more and how we know this is even doj wrote a report that once all those websites moved overseas where they didn't have to comply to us subpoenas they couldn't investigate trafficking they always said that back page was the best um tool they had to fight trafficking it was like the Walmart of escort ads and now they're what on a thousand different sites right so um resiliency and distrust of those uh who were less impacted Believe It or Not were were um those who entered as minors um I think they get Street Smart when they're thrown out in the streets and they' got to offend for themselves um so we you know we have a right to negotiate for own labor and safe work conditions allowing people who don't work in the industry to dictate what we're going to do um even if they work in the industry I have no I have no right telling Amber or Maxine what to do or how to do their work um and this idea that we don't know what we're doing and they would somehow not to do it better is kind of funny so um we want to be aware of the rhetoric and continue to um keep supporting um buold decriminalization so 2018 we some of us attended U the 2018 sex workers Summit and we wrote a real simple statement um of our anti- criminalization principles we offer these principles to our movement as a working template or National platform general statement we advocate for people impacted by labor issues social stigma and criminalization and we condone any attempts at restricting our autonomy and self-determination recommendations for all people supporter centers struggle for justice and human rights and against those who would deny us access to the same services or rights because of our work respect us as experts in our lives without assuming we are flawed in some way we do not want punitive intervention recommendations for sex workers we insist on sex worker leadership at every level of decision-making on policies around sex work we reserved the right to ourselves the right to maintain our own health we demand the right to speak asex all public channels of communication and choose those who speak for us and to be recognized by the media public officials and others as authorities on our own experiences rights of sex workers to make our own sexual and relationship choices without having it inval inval excuse me valuated consent to access social medical and Justice service without discrimination in any form including but not limited to gender sexuality race citizenship status or the way we choose to work to have our choices and body automony respected including the right to decline services and to be free to work in a manner of our own choosing without any regulation that is disrespectful to us of our agency so I wanted to tell people that um in September 5th 15th we'll be able to purchase one of our books on um Amazon that is packed with about 10 years of surveys um with all this data and um a lot of personal quotes and experiences of sex workers but I want to say one thing last you know not only has the government funded this misinformation campaign because we know they don't care about kids that's kind of obvious right um they when they say we're creating awareness about trafficking they're really creating stigma and violence that's what they're doing they're stigmatizing even victims I think all of us at some point has been taken advantage of or something bad has happen you know even if you're not a sex worker it's just life um and you know when we look at how they take care of our children uh in state care well they found him in Rhode Island Housing him in a mental hospital and not going to school for months at a time right so um but it's also clickbait it's entertainment for society it's like the Hunger Games they can turn it on they click um and we need to be more than their entertainment but uh thank you all for joining me and uh thank you thank thank you Bella yes criminalization kills definitely next up we do have Tara Burns and um I will let Tara introduce herself I'm Tara Burns I am a sex worker of few decades in Alaska and I also have experience as a sex trafficking Survivor as a young person um both being forced into work and also you know under the federal definition um working on my own on the streets uh where I wasn't being forced to work but my working conditions were much more dangerous um so I'm G to be talking to you about a lot of things a lot more things than I had originally planned on but we we had some rearranging of things um but just just kind of like a background for all of this right our working conditions in the sex industry are very clearly shaped by lawmakers and by police so police police officers and our state and federal legislators have the ability to decide if our work is going to be dangerous or if we're going to be able to work together in safety or if we're going to be arrested for trying to report serial killers um those are all things that are created by our state and federal policy makers and law enforcement and when we look you know we can see really clear Trends in how legislation has affected our lives and our safety and the rate of us being murdered in the sex industry so we have a this whole weird crazy Christian nationalist thing going on I'm not going to talk about project 2025 because I haven't read the book um but I am going to talk about some of the legislation the state level legislation that we're seeing coming out of those that community of Republican Christian Nationals legislators which is kind of a minority I think of the Republican legislators at this point but may not be for long um so we're seeing things a lot of these bills Mex can you go to the next slide a lot of these um have to do if you hit the slideshow button too it'll make them bigger um a lot of these up at the top there a lot of um a lot of these bills what they're using this kind of trick of redefining things right so they're going to redefine pornography and make pornography mean anything from a drawing of a nipple to uh somebody wearing a bikini where you can see their nipples through the cloth and then they're going to say well it's pornography there's pornography on Twitter um or they're going to redefine sex trafficking and they're going to redefine sexual exploitation they're going to they're just there's so much redefinition in all of these bills and we've seen that right with our in our community with the constant redefinitions of sex trafficking over the last few years so we have to be very careful that we understand the legal definitions of the words that are being used which often have different legal definitions in different states and also at the federal level so these age verification bills usually create new definitions of online pornography that are very broad they would include most of our escort advertising photos um they would include drawings in some cases and so these bills are being build as targeting porn companies but what they do is they create a civil liability or a fine for anybody who posts pornography to the internet that is seen by a minor so for example if you post a picture on Twitter that meets the definition of pornography and you do it from a state that has that state law you could be fined um these these builds also try to get porn pornography websites to Institute like thirdparty age verification databases that keep our customers IDs and those can be C have can and have been hacked and um information leaked to the public um another thing that we see if we go to the next one Maxine happening at the federal level and this is actually across all parties um the Dem the Democrats and the Republicans are doing this are these expanded non-criminal definitions of sex trafficking right so we have this at the federal level where if a minor engages in a sex act and receives something so this can include a minor who um goes on a date with their boyfriend who's the same age and engages in a sex act and receives a free meal even right is sex trafficking at the federal level and this is a definition that is part of the criminal law it and also you know in vawa um and it's used primarily right for service providers so that service providers can say well we served 100 million m v minor victims of sex trafficking last year and people think that that means 100 million minors have been trafficked in the sex industry so now we see these state laws are trying to starting to bring in these same definitions and we're being told that this will bring more funding into the state but they turn around and they use these high numbers as if they are the numbers of be people being actually trafficked in the sex industry um and they use that to pass broader and broader definitions of sex trafficking to get more criminal prosecutions because everybody wants all of the sex trafficking the the actual sex trafficking cases to be prosecuted so when they you know bring this to the legisl the state legislatures and say you know our service providers are reporting 100 cases of sex trafficking of a minor last year but there were zero prosecutions for sex trafficking of a minor legislators don't understand that that was probably a hundred miners who were trafficked according to this non-criminal definition of sex trafficking and that there's not actually a need to make broader and broader laws to charge sex workers with trafficking ourselves okay next slide so and then we're also in the in the federal and also the state laws seeing this F further criminalization of our clients so at the federal level you know we've seen that clients who agree to purchase sex from fictitious miners that the FBI is pimping out um are now charged with sex trafficking um under at the federal Level under you know the 1591 the same um code that actual sex traffickers are charged under right so and some of those cases I mean you read the charging documents in some of those cases you're like wow this guy is a really bad guy it's a good thing that they caught him and then some of them you look at them and you're like well how was the guy even supposed to know that this 40-year-old cop was actually pretending that she was 17 like the hints that she dropped about possibly being 17 we're not very clear um but broadly speaking these bills will change the name of prostitution or solicitation to customers to sexual exploitation or to patron of a victim of sex trafficking and under these really broad state laws a victim of sex trafficking can basically be any sex worker in some states and they make solicitation a more serious misdemeanor or sometimes they make it a felony for the third conviction or sometimes they just make it a felony and this completely alienates our clients from the police and our clients are our First Responders in cases of actual sex trafficking if somebody is being sex trafficked and being isolated and controlled the only person that they're ever alone with are clients and so we need our clients to be able to call the police and report sex trafficking if a trafficking victim asks them to without having to fear that they're going to lose their jobs their families and their freedom next one so again this is following Federal Trends so the federal government does not regulate prostitution however they are regulating prostitution and a lot of that we'll talk in the next slides about kind of the funding streams that are creating that but just really really broadly over the last 20 years we see that states are following the federal example they're following what the federal task force dollars are asking them to do they're turning a lot of things that have been prostitution into promoting prostitution and they're turning things that used to be promoting prostitution into sex trafficking so we have sex workers in many states and also at the Federal level we have sex workers and sex trafficking survivors who have not hurt anybody and who sometimes are working completely independently being charged with sex trafficking for aiding or facilitating their own prostitution or for having a place of their own prostitution and now more recently there is a push in many states to make that a sex offender registry crime so that if you are charged with aiding or facilitating your own prostitution you can have a record for sex traffic in and have to register as a sex offender okay next slide so this is this is like this huge thing that I've been working on wrapping my head around and I cannot explain in 10 minutes but I'm going to do my best to kind of get it get pieces of it from my brain to your brain um so the Department of Homeland Security has made human trafficking so the Department of Homeland Security is focused on defending the Homeland on on terrorism right and one of their 12 Focus areas is human trafficking but on the ground the definition they're using of human trafficking is prostitution right and what this looks like is that they will do end demand stings where they arrest customers it looks like Homeland Security agents getting hand jobs at massage parlor and then arresting and some sometimes deporting the workers the Department of Homeland Security has a blue Campaign which is a public awareness campaign and it's also used to train law enforcement in how to do prostitution stings and engage in sexual contact with us and then arrest us and turn around and tell the media that they've rescued us from sex trafficking um and so in this way the kind of it the you know you don't think that prostitution which is a misdemeanor crime is something that would get you on the terrorism watch list right but actually a group of I think three or more people organized around illegal activity is a terrorist group our sex worker rights groups are terrorists groups under the federal definition and that allows them to surveil us and to violate some of our constitutional rights because we are on these Federal terrorist watch lists so then we can go to the next slide mine there's all of this Federal funding which flows through different federal Offices um but pointed at sex trafficking awareness or sex trafficking services or sex trafficking um police task forces through the doj and stuff right and so through that the Department of Justice the office for victims of crimes Etc all of these different federal Offices are able to impact um prostitution policy and prostitution policing on the ground the federal office for victims of crimes has put a a lot of money in Alaska just in the last few years it's I think over12 million into anti-trafficking Serv and some of what that looks like is our you know anti-trafficking task forces that Lobby the government to make the laws worse to Target us more which helps to create higher numbers of trafficking prosecutions that they can use to prop up the idea that they need more funding right um so in this month's edition of the anti-trafficking review which will be coming out in a few weeks here um Tatiana and a jaaya and myself have an article about anti-trafficking funds in Alaska and how they've been used and how the use of them has has actually inhibited or resulted in exclusion from services for some victims okay and then I was asked to also talk about the green party platform um I love the idea of the green party like I if they if the green party didn't hate me I would probably be voting for them um I'm just going to read you really quick um some of the things that they say directly from their platform page they say we urge that the term sex work not be used in relation to prostitution with the increasing conflation of trafficking which is the violent and illegal trafficking in women and girls for forced sex with prostitution so see that the way they use the that word conflate there with the conflation the increasing conflation of trafficking with prostitution it's impossible to know which is which and what violence the term sex work is masking no Source in existence knows which forms of prostitution comprise for sex and which comprise free will or Choice prostitution and then they go on to say that they support the Swedish model um and refer to prostitution as a form of violence against women and girls throughout their their thing which is really long and I know I've go gone over time now so I will pass it back to Amber thank you Tara so next up we do have Starchild and I will let them introduce themselves thank you okay hello everyone thank you for coming today um I'm a longtime sex worker here in San Francisco California and uh also libertarian pro- Freedom activist and the two are related in that um I've long had a passion for freedom and one of the reasons I chose sex work and it appealed to me is because it gives you so much choice in terms of how you work you know where you work who you choose to see um you know all these things you don't typically get in most jobs where you have to report to an employer deal with a lot of Regulation government control uh choice is good and uh we have unfortunately a political system in this country uh that is just the opposite it does not give us choice you know every four years we're told this is the most important election in your lifetime you know you have to choose between you know as as South Park satirically famously put it a a douche or turd sandwich you know those are our choices we don't like them too bad you know uh and this time this time it's uh Trump and Biden and then Trump and and Harris who you know we've had that history here in San Francisco Maxine when described about her and uh you know the duopoly cartel or two-party cartel as I call it is is systematically failing uh people it's undermining democracy in this country and there's a number of ways that this uh happens including uh balot access laws all parties except for the Republicans and Democrats have to jump through uh extra special Hoops to get on the ballot and many states they can't uh for about the past decade in California we've had something called top two which only allows the two top vote getting candidates from each primary election to go on to the general election which means usually Republican and Democrat but some places where it's heavily you know blue or heavily red you get two Republicans on the ballot in the general election or two Democrats and people have no other choice es unless they write somebody in and they only count candidates for wrin votes if those candidates specifically registered as wrin candidates and jump through a bunch of Hoops to even be eligible to get W in votes so it's um a completely rigged system in many ways the media doesn't call them out on this um another way that uh alternatives are excluded is uh uh in debates uh we have I think maybe tonight even I can't remember when the the Harris Trump debate is supposed to be taking place but of course they've once again as is true every debate since Ross perau ran back in the 1990s uh they're shutting out the Libertarians the greens uh all other alternative parties and independent candidates even uh JFK who was pulling polling uh double digits in uh many states before he uh dropped out of the race uh and that's one reason he dropped out of the race is because they weren't letting him in the debates they were keeping him off many state ballots um you know so he's out now so we've lost another alternative but um it's only part of this is due to the uh the voting system in this country uh and there are a couple specific reforms that could help with that one is rank Choice voting uh that would allow people to list their choices in order so uh for example if you uh voted for President and you put somebody else as your first pick who's not one of the two-party cartel candidates um basically in each round of counting the results the candidate with the lowest vote total would get dropped uh and then it would go to your next choice pick so if that candidate didn't uh until somebody gets 50% um it's also called in instant runoff voting you can look that up on Wikipedia and more information about that um another more uh fundamental reform that I think would go a lot further towards uh ending the duopoly two-party cartel that denies this choice is proportional represent presentation uh which would be for state legislatures or any multi-seat body so that uh basically each political party would get a percentage of seats in that body uh proportional to the percentage of the vote that they got so if the libertarian party got uh 20% of the vote in a district then they'd get uh or not in a district but in a a say for congress then they'd get 20% of the congressional seats uh that would probably require a constitutional amendment so it's not on the near-term horizon but many other countries have this and the ones that do tend to have better true multi-party democracies than the United States does um there's also the issue of the media and the media has played a huge role in upholding uh all these uh restrictions and exclusions and um making people think like they have to vote for the douche or the turd sandwich um the uh I live in Nancy Pelosi's District uh she got elected first to the House of Representatives back in the 1980s and since the very first election she ran in she's not debated any of her Challengers not even the Republicans uh and the media don't call her out for this she just keeps getting re-elected year after year because too many people just think oh I have to you know check that box that Democrat or that Republican box and San Francisco is like 80% Democrat so she always gets it um but people think like well you know I would vote for somebody else I'd love to but I'd be wasting my vote and uh this myth of wasted vote is is perhaps the biggest thing that's stopping us from actually defeating the duopoly and and having more real democracy um I believe it was Audrey Lord who said uh um actually no I don't think it was Au I should written that down but uh someone said uh the most uh common way that people give up power is by assuming that they don't have any and that is very much the case with voting each election uh there's always the possibility for us to elect a Libertarian or green or some other alternative Party candidate that has better positions on sex work rights and a bunch of other issues than the two-party cartel candidates do um but people think oh I'm gonna waste my vote because those candidates can't win and I don't want to waste my vote you know voting's too important but here's the thing your one vote is not going to decide the outcome of any presidential election in the United States country of like 340 million people realistically it's just not going to happen you have better chance of being hit by lightning or run over by a bust or winning the lottery then you do uh your vote changing who next in the white house uh the alternative party candidates that you might be considering have a better chance of getting elected president than the chances are that your one vote will change the outcome so what it's really doing is like voting in an opinion poll and when you vote in an opinion poll if if you get asked for example like what's your favorite flavor of ice cream vanilla chocolate or strawberry and your favorite is actually strawberry but you think most people are probably going to say vanilla or chocolate are you going to answer vanilla or chocolate just because you think that's what most other people are going to say no but unfortunately a lot of people do vote that way you know they think that like Well because most people are voting democrat or republican I have to if I want my vote to count but again mathematically that's not the way it works your vote actually has a greater proportional impact if you add it to someone with a smaller total say one added to 10 million being a greater proportional difference than one added to 100 million in either case you're realistically not going to elect the next president with your vote even if you lived in Florida in the year 2000 when there was a once- in a-lifetime close election between the two cartel candidates Bush and Gore you would have needed to convince like 500 other people to change their votes in order for your person your vote to change the outcome and who gets in the white house so it's really important to understand this because if people understood this and just stepped outside this mental box we could really change this system and uh we could get then a lot of more ideas including around sex work into the dialogue uh if the Libertarians were seen as having a realistic chance of getting elected even if uh we didn't ultimately win uh more people would see that yeah our political party stands fully for G criminalization uh it's in our uh platform respect the right of sex workers and clients to consensually exchange services without being criminalized and this stance like the rest of libertarianism and what the party stands for generally is based on the non-aggression principle which is the idea that each person has the right to live as they choose so long as they don't initiate force or fraud against others and this is a philosophy that respects everyone's basic human dignity on autonomy which I think is is very important for individual sex workers we've long said you know consent matters but it doesn't just matter when it comes to sex really consent matters in all aspects of our lives and I would uh encourage people to check out there's a great site on the non-aggression principle it's history uh ideas and spirituality around it uh the non-aggression principle.com I will put that into the uh the Q&A for people to see and um I'm at about 9 minutes I'm going to I'm going to end a little bit early here um so we can give others more chance to ask questions and and Chase more chance to uh to speak and answer questions so thank you okay my unmute button would not unstick thank you star child that was very enlightening um I uh I wanted to say that quote is actually from Alice Walker and there's another quote that kind of goes along that if it doesn't matter how strong your opinions are if you don't use your power for positive change you are indeed part of the problem and that is ketta SC Scott King um as you can see Maxine has just put up the poll and we do have a question so I wanted to unmute the um attendee to be able to to ask their question um their name is analie LF analie um are you ready to ask your question thank you nice to meet you all H my name is anay and Mexican and I I I'm here um I'm I'm sex worker I work in Mexico I talk before with Bella but my English is not the best so my I'm also a film a film director and my producer Gabi she's from United States and she will ask the question for me because my English is not very good so Gabby you are here you can um put so if you mute to gab for she can ask the question for me I'll will appreciate a lot thank you for for all hi yes hi thank you for uh giving us a chance for question and answers uh yes I I work with an she's a a filmmaker and I'm helping her produce a film uh about sex work Anna's also a sex worker and she's doing it from a from a personal perspective but uh we wanted to ask uh an was recently um granted a uh artist residence to go to the United States and explore these topics so hopefully there'll be some chance to connect with everybody uh in person that would be awesome um but yeah we wanted to know if if uh if you all had any plans to to uh maybe like have any kind of presence at the uh the UN General Assembly that's coming up in New York oh do tell do tell us about that you know we wrote a um an uh an oped about the UN and their recent bad um about the the special sex trafficking rapar and how she uh came up with some of that really horrible Prive language similar to what Tara described as the green party's position and um yeah maybe we should all go do a stop the raids in New York when is it Gabby just because there is a protocol the protocol of palmo and that protocol don't make a difference between sex work and traffic and I don't know if you have any H if you want plan to try to do something about the protocol of palmo or about the fosta do something in the Senate because we have the plan to like give to the lauu in New York or in the in Washington H give a petition I don't know if you want to uh yeah like uh doing something like a a demonstration or or something like that is totally um something that we would love to take part in um anay really wants to create a petition to to submit at at the at the assembly um so if anybody's interested in helping out with that or um you know joining forces on on uh doctoring the position um that that would be really great yes for try to do something about the first because the fow not just affect sex workers in the United States affects people H people in all and different parts of the world because ER fa Facebook Twitter Instagram are are um um social media from the United States and I are ruled by the government of United States and that ER rape or human rights as a a sex worker in Mexico because in Mexico the sex work is not illegal but in United States yes and that limit us for speak freely in of our rights in Mexico and for that Reasons I'm trying to make a petition where with a lot of workers around the world and from the United States to give it to the senate for ask them to derogate or reform the falow and I don't know if you want H to write this petition with us and give this petition with us and and I I will go to United States in in October to New York and Washington for give these petitions I don't believe in the politics I don't believe in the Democrats also I don't believe in the Republicans they are a a a Duo polio they are very fascist and they don't recogniz don't make any difference between sex work and and traffic of persons and for that reasons I I don't have any hope to change something but I want to try it and I I I hope if you can help us to write this petition um and and give this petitions I will appreciate a lot and I don't know if you could understand me because I I tell I I can speak a lot of English no you're you're great anahi um do you know the specific dates for the general assembly meeting that you're talking about where you'd like to present this petition I don't think they H let us in at the assembly because in the on are very fascist person uh but I think I maybe just given to someone outside of the United United Nations the assembly is starts the I think the 10th of September and it's all September it'll be a lot of meetings there and and but I don't know who who is the person who I can give this petition because you you know the United United Nation are very fascist person and they ignore the rights of of the sex workers and for that reason I like to know if somebody here knows someone in the United Nation who who can recite this petition for reform the protocol of palmo I don't know who say that in English protocol palmo yeah yeah you're talking about the Poo protocol yeah it's the root of all evil it's at the UN it's what started all of these um you know renaming us you know as sex traffickers and sex trafficking victim like their plantation owners or something that they get to rename us and so I'm going to hook you up with um some of the sex worker rights people in New York and um yes we would love to co-write you know a petition you know to stand there maybe some of us can fly over to the UN we can um you know make a day or two of it and hand out those flyers that we're condemning them for even entertaining you know this renaming us business you know we could do a press release somewh in in New York um or work with New York people to get some New York Press and you know put our position on the map and you know raise our hand and say you know what we're not down for being renamed we are not your slaves we you are not a plantation owner you do not get to rename us and Define our work without our permission so thank you so much uh Gabby and annaite for being on the uh call today because it just it just really makes a big huge difference to um you know to hear from what the concerns are because those are concerns that we have um I put my email address in the in the Q&A so please uh please email me to or send me your email address and I'd be happy to help write language for petition my my email also thank you very much thank you so I think that Bella has your email address and so I'm hoping maybe Bella could send an introductory email to you and to the whole stop the raids gang and then you could let us know what dates you're going to be in the country and where you're going to be so that we can help to network you with groups wherever you're going to be thank you very much he be be great thank you who's next so I believe Chas is next so we're very happy to have with us an actual presidential candidate today uh who is the nominee of the libertarian party the leading alternative party in the United States by most metrics in terms of number of registered voters uh percentage of the vote recent national elections Etc and um we have been having some controversies in our party the last years and it wasn't clear at all that this year we were going to get a good uh nominee that I could feel really comfortable about and so I am so delighted that chase and his running mate Mike termont uh got the nomination I think they're the best uh ticket that realistically we could have nominated this year and uh um I think Chase is very supportive of our agenda and uh he's uh been a longtime peace activist even before he was a Libertarian and uh someone who's been involved in his community where he lives in Atlanta Georgia um out and gay and um outspoken in defending the underdog in a whole bunch of different issues and and championing people's rights and freedom so I'm very happy that he's been able and the campaign's made time for him to be here with us today um so um go ahead Chase and um how you have I believe 10 minutes is that correct and then we're gonna take Q&A is that right Maxi okay and and you have to unmute yourself Shay there you go great yeah thanks well uh first off thank you for having me uh you know I want to just kind of start off with where our party stands on sex work and kind of go into my personal experiences uh so that I can give you guys a little bit of insight as to where I came from so our party's platform is very short and sweet we don't get a lot into the weeds uh we're but uh we do have a platform playing on sex work uh which reads the libertarian party supports the decriminalization of prostitution we assert the right of consenting adults provide sexual services to clients for compensation and the right of clients to purchase sexual services from consenting sex workers Point Blank we believe that your body is your body and you have the right to use it however you want to uh zero judgment here uh and frankly um I think much of what we've seen from uh anti-sex worker legislation anti- prostitution legislation is a hold over from the puritanical founding of this country like it kind comes from a place of this kind of weird moral whatever kind of Christianity and I'm a Christian myself uh but I'm 100% supportive of sex workers and their rights to do what they want to do with their body and to be protected as much as possible um from harm and much of that has to do with decriminalizing prostitution because when we criminalize it you create an entire Black Market that increases the propensity for violence in that Marketplace and so decriminalization ation first and foremost protects the rights and protects the well-being of sex workers across the country um and that is something that our party has stood for for a long long time and as it standard bear in 2024 um I will continue to support that notion that people should be able to own their own body um and that an open and free market is a safer Market both for the consumer and for the provider uh and that includes sex work it's no different than any other Marketplace uh in that effect now just to give you a little bit of my background as child mentioned I am out and gay um I have you know live I live in the city of Atlanta and uh you know I know many sex workers I know many people who have been in the industry in the past are currently in the industry uh I worked in gay bars and go-o bars I know plenty of people who utilize the sex work Marketplace to help them survive and to help them thrive in their lives and they did so is completely consenting uh and willing participants so I've also seen the bad side of sex work because of the black market nature of this where people have been exploited uh and unfortunately uh law enforcement conflates those two things far too often uh and that leads to us not seeing the forest from the trees it's way harder to treat those who are being exploited when you act as if all people who are entering into sex work are being exploited which just is not the case it's not the truth and it's something that actually harms those who are consenting and willingly engaging in this Marketplace uh and it also makes it way harder for those who are being exploited to have their story being brought to light uh it makes people more afraid to bring their story to light uh and it makes it way harder for us to punish those who are actually doing the wrongdoing of exploiting people and exploiting their bodies and exploiting their labor uh just as it is in any other industry you make it harder for whistleblowers to blow the whistle when you criminalize their behavior uh and that's just the plain truth of it and so you know I know people who have worked in varying stages of the industry uh from being you know a sex worker uh you know working out of the go-o bar to people who work in pornography uh to people who have been professional escorts for years one of my best friends uh first coming out into the gay life uh of Atlanta was a professional Dom who was the first person who taught me about protecting my drink and making sure that I knew who I was going home with and understanding like the most safe practices if you're going to be cruising around looking for sex in your 20s uh particularly if you're gay uh and I'm thankful for that thankful that somebody who had that relevant experience was there to identify me as somebody who might be taken advantage of and say Here's the way you prevent that because I'm actually in this industry and I have to do this on a regular basis so happy that that person's in my life uh I do want to give a little anecdote uh about this campaign you know me campaigning for president I've traveled to all 50 states um and I was in an event here in Atlanta with a friend of mine who had you know he brings everybody across all of gay Atlanta every stripe of the rainbow comes to his parties and so we're there I'm passing out campaign literature like hey guys I'm running for president I'm the first lgbtq candidate that's trying to run all across the country and a young man walked up to me named Toby and he asked me a series of questions and in this series of questions he just happened to say well how do you feel about sex work and I said well if you're an adult your body is your body do what you want to do with it it's not my job to regulate it certainly I don't think the government's going to best regulate sex work I think sex workers can best regulate sex work uh and I think that's really where that lies and let's just keep the government the heck out of it so long as you're not hurting anybody and you're everybody's consenting right um months later I was at an event in Miami Florida and that same young man came to my event and he kind of outed himself as a sex worker he's like you know I asked you all those other questions really didn't care so much I put the sex worker question in the middle of that because I didn't want you to know I was a sex worker I didn't want you to buy your answer around what I did for a living uh but you answered exactly the way you needed to answer and so I'm coming here to support you he donated money he had friends donate money um you know I I recognize the human dignity in all work sex work being no different and as a politician you know I come from a way more immoral world than any sex worker does I come from the world of politics Which is far more immoral and far more full of criminals uh than the sex worker industry and so I'm somebody who as I as I navigate the waters and the extremely immoral and compromised world of electoral politics I'm going to do my best to represent the values that I think need to be heard and that involves supporting the body of the autonomy and dignity of all people and that includes sex workers and that's why I'm here is to hear your stories to hear your Insight about what matters to you and to hear what you think needs to be done at the federal level to uh to decriminalize your industry as much as possible to remove stigma from your industry as much as possible and so I'm thankful for the testimony that yall have provided here um you know I'm thankful for knowing Starchild who is a radical activist out there in San Francisco who is themselves a sex worker uh you know and allowed me to be able to come and speak to this audience uh and so I'm just kind of thankful that y'all gave me the opportunity to kind of speak my piece and kind of tell you where I'm coming from uh and I hope to earn your vote you know if you're know Blue State like California you know you can vote for me don't feel out of fear as Starchild said it's very hard to sway the election with just one vote and if you're in Alaska which I know a couple of other panelists have mentioned being up in Alaska you have a rank Choice ballot you can put the prox worker candidate first and your lesser of to evil anti-sex worker candidate as your second choice in the ballot and signify that you're you want somebody who's going to actually listen to your industry to listen to the stories that are being told and actually have some relevant you know some some friends and colleagues that they know who are in that industry and can get true Insight on the ground so um I hope to earn your vote but I'm going to continue to listen to y'all and answer any questions you have or or if you have any other questions for the panelists I look forward to them answering it as well because um I think it's an important conversation to have uh and as an out and proud gay man I think we need to destigmatize sexuality as much as possible um it's a human function of just reality um for many people you know shout out to my Ace friends do have asexuals out in the world but you know by and large sexuality is and even for asexual sexuality is a part of your identity whether you practice or not so um you know I I just want people to destigmatize that as much as possible support bodily autonomy and you know let people be people and that's kind of where I come from but thank you guys for giving me the chance if you want to check out my website it is vote Chase oliver.com uh go there check out the platform we are going to be adding I hope sex Lang sex worker specific language the platform um in general you know it's part of the libertarian party platform we might get a little bit more in-depth and of course we look forward to hearing maybe some policy language that might need to be added but thank you in the book policy recommendations are in the book yes I need to get a copy of that book at some point website there is a mailing address uh if you send me the book I'll read it I right now have eight books that I have to read that have been given to me by different people a VAR rang of topics I'm going to read all of them even if it's after no November and I'm going to do podcasts where I review all of those books so if you send me that book there will be a podcast where I review that book awesome question fase thanks for being here so a lot of the um sex worker nation is involved in activities that have to do with um what's called harm reduction so they you know they've got Public Funding of different sorts and they're out there on the street doing um you know condr distribution um syringe exchange um giving out safe sex information um and so I I mean I know that traditionally the libertarian parties are not supporting like public money going for a lot of things like harm reduction so I just kind of want to know what your position was around that um so I support harm reduction uh locally in lots of different areas um you know as a Libertarian I don't think the federal government should be funding a lot of things okay so harm reduction strategies and federal funding um as a Libertarian there's not a lot of things I think should be really funded at the federal level I think most funding for anything if it's going to be government funded should be done at the local or Community level as much as possible um that being said I absolutely support harm reduction strategies uh I think it's an excellent way to make a difference in your community um even if I think government might inefficiently be funding it putting regulatory hurdles and red tape in the way um any kind of harm reduction strategy is good um I'm a big fan of a group called Shred the stigma out in Oklahoma City they pass out free Naran fit all testing strips uh condoms uh clean needles all sorts of things to reduce harm mostly for um uh Community suffering from addiction uh but in doing so they have saved over a thousand lives um with Narcan alone just with the Narcan that they passed out um ideally I think we could be able to fund that at the community level without using government as a mechanism to do those things um but absent that perfect world environment for me um which you know I I don't live in my perfect world environment right now I don't think any of us do um I would like to see harm reduction be done more at the community level more at the local level because I don't think at the federal level uh they know what strategies are needed for say for San Francisco or for Alaska or for Atlanta or for anywhere else that should be done more at a community level that knows the needs that are stressed by that community in particular um so that way if resources are going to be run through government it's you know I think the local government is the most efficient way possible but again uh in a perfect world in my libertarian Ideal World we would just facilitate that without the need of a government we would just put the money where it needs to go towards organizations to uh you know provide mutual and direct Aid um and harm reduction just that way but yeah absolutely I'm supportive of those strategies I just don't think the feds uh are the best people to facilitate it theara's got her hand up so I have two questions um and I'll start with the easy one um if you are elected will you do anything to change the national suspicious activity reporting initiative uh yes uh you know so I so the biggest thing that I think libertarian can do in order uh with regards to sex work and with regards to trafficking is is changing the way we actually handle this all together as other panelists yourself included have mentioned the the correlation or the the trying to blend the ideas of prostitution human trafficking together ridiculous I don't know specifically exactly the legislation you're mentioning um but if it's something that is basically being used to uh identify and criminalize sex workers that's [ __ ] um but what is what is a specific uh so the naal suspicious activity reporting initiative was instituted you might be more familiar with the term fusion centers which are kind of related right but it was instituted after 9911 to facilitate the communication of different law enforcement agencies within each state about people who are engaging in non-criminal behavior that could be pre-operational to terrorism including prostiution um Muslim right yeah anything coming out of 911 is uh much of it is fear-based policy that was made kind of as the country was kind of freaking out and uh let government never let a good crisis go to waste uh to you know abcon with our Liberty and to kind of violate our privacy uh it seems like this is something that was done in the name of protection right hey we'll let our law enforcement agencies talk to each other more but what it does it creates almost this Minority Report style free crime kind of thinking like if they're tracking non-criminal activity for the purpos of saying well this might lead to Crime uh yeah that's kind of that's kind of Beyond The Pale gross um frankly if I could wave a magic one I would do away with the DHS altogether I think the homeland security department has wholesale been a violation of Liberty and a lot of what they do could be folded into doj or the Department of Defense without all these extra agencies that violate our Liberty ice is another one that does the exact same thing um of course that criminalizes all kinds of stuff anyway uh yes the short answer is absolutely as a Libertarian that sounds shady as [ __ ] pardon my friend yeah so there have been a number of Congressional hearings about this and and my next question is about you know the whole machine of the federal Administration targeting sex workers through the doj and through um you know the FBI and Homeland Security and you know the ovc which is part of the doj of course um and these law enforcement task forces and these Community agency task forces what is your plan if you're elected to stop or change that machine and would you direct the Department of Justice to back resarch on sex worker LED um investigations into our working conditions so uh short answer is if I were elected president much of the doj would just be wholesale gone there' be wholesale scaling back of much of what that agency does uh because frankly it's too large and too expensive and too intrusive into our lives this would be uh no different with regards to invading the you know the the industry of sex work um we don't need a giant Federal apparatus to fight uh to fight sex work or to even fight the exploitation that can happen within the industry I think again uh that needs to be happening more at a local level that we don't need a federal task force to um basically crack down upon this industry uh I think we need to be more laay fair when it comes to sex work certainly at the federal level uh but with regards to investigating working conditions I absolutely think a per one of the purposes of the justice department one of the purposes as a minarchist that I think government should have is to protect the civil liberties of people and if you're being exploited through your labor there should be absolutely a mechanism uh to where the doj and other agencies can defend your civil liberties from being exploited um again I don't know if that's best facilitated through the doj federally or if that's something that a state should be handling uh but in any instance where the Department of Justice can investigate wrongdoings for anybody in any industry regardless of working conditions um that's kind of something that I would like to see but yeah I am a I would like to strip down the federal government as much as possible to its minimal existence and so much of the responsibilities that we are currently seeing in the hands of federal government would be uh sent back to the states or the localities in many of these instances um and as part of that streamlining process we'd of course be doing away with a lot of these task force that you're mentioning I see Bella has her hand up I I don't know if Tes was up for another question or not but maybe Bella if you want to ask yeah so I got a couple questions so first of all I know you you probably don't know this you're not an expert I'm not an expert on climate change but I am an expert on this so Hulk versus United States 1913 Supreme Court law says the federal government cannot regulate prostitution it's left up to the states and this is why they invented trafficking because now they can do it federally the FBI was created over prostitution so I want to know on day one if you become president will you make um will you give sex workers protection for hate crimes we're not covered under hate crime legislation uh doxing us which is outing our legal names um and actually in New Zealand it's illegal and you can be arrested and get a fine for it and I want to know if you understand what affirmative defenses because it's a they they they want the public to think that you know they're helping these victims there is no trickle down effect they keep all the money for their offices and fundraising we we can't even get a rescue sandwich or per flip-flops when we go to jail so affirmative defense means they arrest you you end up on the news and when you go to court say you're a victim they can't prosecute you and some states make you prove you're a victim and I think you understand with the Internet by then they've ruined your life the traumatic arrest no one's ever this is the one thing no one's ever going to forget you can steal cars you can be on drugs you can do a lot of things and come back from it but this is the one thing that Society does not forgive you for so um I know you have a lot to learn about the subject and we'd like to engage with you especially before you put things up on your website thank you so um so the first off doxing is should be you know uh I I support privacy rights um as far as hate crime legislation um I am somebody who thinks that all crimes are done out of some sort of ha or malice I think we can create stiffer penalties for certain crimes I don't uh the designation of know I I think if somebody commits violence against you whether it is because you are a uh sex worker or because you're a woman or because you're a Christian or because you're a gay man or whatever it is uh it's still being done on a malice and so I support defending people's Liberty I don't know if I support creating a whole new designation of crime hate crimes you know it's against religion it's against race we're the only ones not included in it lgbtq crimes trans haate crimes we're the only population that are not included under hate crimes legislation yeah and and philosophically I think you're I think crimes against sex workers should be treated just as just as just as uh vociferously as you would against any other crime against anybody else I don't know if we need to create designations for anybody for hate crimes does that make sense like I think all crimes should be treated uh understanding that whoever is committing it is doing it with a certain amount of malice and hatred we can create stiffer penalties for certain crimes uh but I don't think you know Frank as a gay man if somebody attacks me and harms me I don't care if they do it because I'm gay gay or if they want my wallet uh either way it's a crime against me uh is kind of my viewpoint um and so I view sex work any violence against a sex worker is wrong whether it is a is done because they are a sex worker or because that person just happened to pick you randomly down the street uh it is a crime of malice and a crime of violence if that makes sense but philosophically I absolutely support the right of sex workers to be protected from violence I think it's ridiculous uh one of the reasons why I oppose the criminalization prostitution to begin with is because in that industry when you criminalize it it creates a higher propensity for people to be attacked and harmed because the perpetrators know hey they're not going to go report the crime because they don't want to get arrested for prostitution and so it's far easier for someone to take advantage of a sex worker than it is for anybody else because they their industry is not criminalized you know if I go assault a fast food worker they're going to go to the police and say that guy punched me while I was you know while I was serving food uh but if you attack a prostitute if you attack somebody who is uh engaging in sex work you know that perpetrator knows that person is less likely to go to the police because now they're worried about themselves being criminalized uh and I think that's one of the the crime that's that's one of the biggest shames of uh the way we stim uh sorry the way we um stigmatize sex work is because it allows for that violence to come to the surface um but yes I would act absolutely welcome any input into policy team um I do have a policy team that uh is helping to create sex work worker specific language and of course I would welcome your input in that and yes please send me the book again I don't know how to stress this enough send me the book because I will read it it's a vote Chase oliver.com vote you have started a fundraising campaign to be able to start our next litigation against the state of California to injunct 647b which is the anti-prostitution law here so you can donate to that campaign so we can afford a lawyer do subscribe to Tara substack she's got some great uh she's our researcher on the spot so let's see I'm just looking for any other questions to wrap up um I will be posting it on the YouTube channel the sex worker Nation YouTube channel and if you send an email to info vot Chase al.com that goes to me and the top people in my campaign um and so we can make sure any information gets passed along so just again info bochas oliver.com if you want to send any resources you have any literature to look at any policy language uh we're happy to take a look at it and the Oliver trat campaign awesome I'm gonna allow you to talk now Gabby I found the button it's always that button we gotta find huh so have a million questions but due to time constraints I'm going to um just keep it around harm reduction um I'm a former libertarian I do understand um the the principles behind less government in our lives um but I also have run an outreach program for the last seven years and I understand Community needs if we stopped Federal funding um people will die because local funding um um even County funding and sometimes even State funding is nowhere near adequate and to give a quick example um two weeks ago I had to take um somebody I was advocating for into the Pennsylvania State Police dep Department to um make them file a missing children's report for her 12-year-old child um where there was strong suspicion of child sex trafficking um at first they didn't want to do the report and then they did the report um so of course like hey we need resources I live in West Morland County um a little over an hour outside of Pittsburgh our public transportation is [ __ ] there is nowhere I can walk to and get public transportation to get to any resources I also live in a food desert so I understand what it's like to live in a rural community without access to a vehicle um because thanks to criminalization I can't get a car car loan so rural areas don't have funding um the state police informed me that they had a lot of funding for um sex trafficking specifically so the funding they G or the resources they gave me that they have with this funding was um the children and youth services which does nothing but take people's children off of them um they do very little to protect people um here in Western Pennsylvania and the rest of the resources were for um the Pennsylvania State Police which live about 20 minutes from where the parents and the child who is now home safe live so we're not talking about like very far so the state police have all these resources so they tell me to call 211 for any other resources which is Pennsylvania's helpline the closest resource for sex trafficking to my rural county is 22 27 miles away and they only take clients if you come to their County and stay there for the duration of your mental health treatment so you have to pay for a hotel to go there um so here we have no resources and it's not just simply um for sex trafficking it is the same thing with domestic violence it is the same thing with drug users who want support so basically how would you make a transition where removing the federal funding would not cause the most vulnerable communities to die in the process well thank you for the question uh you you know when I talk about you know I wish I could wave the libertarian magic wand and make it happen all at once what we're talking about is a gradual movement away from federal funding for these things and block granting that money back to States and localities meaning that the money wouldn't disappear it's just the facilitator of those funds would be blocked granted back to States or localities to be able to manage and and in the long run as a Libertarian I would like to see the state fully removed from that apparatus you know you saying like well you know the state requires you or the county requires you to stay here for the time period that requires me to get a hotel room to access these Services well when you start using Services outside fully of the scope of government and your community organizing a way from the Monopoly of forest and from the the red tape and the bureaucracy of government we can more easily facilitate helping people directly now that's a philosophical argument I recognize that's not a day one thing that can happen but what we can do if I'm elected day one is start taking that funding that is currently being facilitated and parsed out by the federal government and just sending it back to the states to where it's really their responsibility to kind of parse that funding out at if at all based the nth and tth Amendment um my purpose in being present would be to get our federal government back in line with where it should be constitutionally which leaves much if not most of government governance out of the hands of a federal government into the hands of the states or at the best uh to local individuals um via the n9th and Tenth Amendment so those that's why philosophically I think we need to move Beyond those things but we would do anything in a gradual manner I'll you know social security for instance I'm a Libertarian I don't think Social Security is something that's really a valuable system personally I think younger workers like myself should be able to invest in retirement on their own uh but I also know that my parents live on a fixed income and if we like pull the rug out from people who live under a fixed income uh we'd be in a really really screwy environment and so what we as Libertarians have to do is to recognize that we didn't get to State control of retirement accounts like social security overnight we're not going to peel away from it overnight uh and so we have to look at how can we gradually move ourselves away from State Control in a way that provides the least amount of harm possible recognizing there's never going to be no harm from doing that but I am trying to be as mindful as possible and if elected would try to facilitate ourselves away from federal control and more to state local control with the least amount of harm being done uh if that makes sense thanks so much so we've got one last question this is Kaylee Kaylee I'm gonna unmute you so you can ask your question go ahead hi Chase so I would like to know if you support Universal basic income and also what your thoughts are on increasing affordable housing yeah so uh the Ubi question first um you know uh I'm a follower of Milton Friedman who was a big negative income tax guy um I if we could if we could wave the magic wand and replace like all general welfare and entitlements and all those things and turn it into a Ubi um I think it would be more efficient um I don't think that's ever going to happen um it would always be a Ubi built on top of everything else so um principally I don't necessarily support it maybe not from the federal level again I know some cities have experimented with it um you know maybe see what comes out of that in terms of like a laboratory of innovation create some proof of concept um but generally it's not something I'm super supportive of at the moment um and I'm sorry the second half of your question was about uh it's about housing housing of course that's why I didn't think of it because I was thinking about sex worker stuff uh housing um the first thing we can do is uh get zoning requirements out of the way so much of what the housing crisis is caused by is local zoning regulations that prevent low income or high density housing from being built um not necessarily something you can do too much from the federal government level other than being a someone shotting from the bully pulpit here in Atlanta uh obviously it is a huge issue here in this city affordable housing um I've been somebody who's been very supportive of changing Zone requirements to even create transitional housing what I call Tiny House Villages where you build um you know several small uh dwellings with shipping containers and a in a lot to allow people to have transitional housing off of the streets um you know private organization can facilitate this transitional housing until you know uh you get yourself in the ability to move somewhere else then you move someone in in there um but really the biggest problem with this are nimes NIMBY Liberals are the worst about this like people who typically vote Democrat and they vote the left they say they love the poor but when it comes to approving low income or uh high density H zoning in their area they absolutely oppose it with like every fiber of their being as if they're like being assaulted I always tell the nimes this uh you have two choices you can either build you know high density housing in your area or you can continue to have a homeless population in your area uh those are really your two options you're forcing people in the streets when you're not building housing what affects your property values more right like what's gonna what's going to affect your gentrified pricing more right uh so in the bottom of my heart I absolutely oppose nimbyism uh and from the local level I will always fight to remove these restrictions uh to make more housing available I also think and this is a big thing we are due for a housing bubble to burst we've been pumping up federally the housing market so much over the last uh you know since 2008 we've repeated the cycle that got us into the 2008 burst the thing we do not need to do when the bubble bursts this next time is bail out the big fat cats on Wall Street we do not bail them out we let them fail we let their we let their resources be liquidated and reallocated at in the marketplace to better facilitated and you're going to see more and more uh uh you know real estate uh organizations coming on line as opposed to centralizing it to two or three Banks you're going to break that down into a lot of smaller smaller resources which is better for the marketplace so those are the two things we can do to support housing a support uh ending nimbyism in your local area supporting more zoning ending zoning requirements that prevent highdensity housing from being built and then secondly when it does go tits up and it will will go belly up at some point when it does we do not bail out the fat cat Bankers we let them fail and we let them fall and then we pick up the pieces and we build back better awesome I just really appreciate everybody's uh participation and your time Chase uh for spending some time with us um I think uh we've all benefited from this discussion so without further Ado I'm going to wrap up and end this um webinar today and thank all the attendees and the participants from for com coming you know today and um you know being with us and um uh keeping you know keeping our interest out front there because if you know we're not fighting for us nobody's going to fight for us and so we're here to fight for us because it's important um so I'll just let uh if any of the panelists the other panelists uh Bella or Amber star child or Tara uh you guys want to have last word um I just uh put it in the Q&A but I'll just mention for everybody uh uh I have a Meetup uh group meetup.com decriminalize uh it's for you know any future events uh this kind of thing can get posted there uh encourage people to join it it's good uh visibility for our movement on Meetup um initially I had some issues with Meetup um maybe not wanting to allow even though it didn't specifically say prostitution you know uh but they have allowed it and I'm you know pretty clear in the description of the group that it uh is talking about decriminalizing prostitution so I think that's a good uh uh Meetup tends to be pretty visible that's where we get most of our local um new attendees for libertarian party meetings is through our LP Meetup so meetup.com decriminalized I encourage everyone to join that um I am at Starchild SF onx uh welcome to follow or connect with me there or email real reform earthlink.net and um thanks especially to our our immigrant uh guest uh I wasn't quite sure if anahi your name looked like or you were saying anali but you and G Gabby or Gabe thanks so much for joining us and I look forward to working with you on a petition to the UN thank you so much Starchild Tara I just want to thank Maxine for bringing us all together here today and thank you everybody for coming I love that we are doing this we've we haven't had this um with past presidential elections and you know we are stronger together and I hope that next election we'll have two or three times as many sex workers um presenting and and and will'll be so important that the Democrat and Republican and green party candidates come and try to win our votes too awesome thank you Bella thank you um from small states many of us that do policy work and are doing lobbying understand we don't win the first time it's you know we don't go in there expecting to win but when you're in a public hearing and it's recorded and it becomes public part of public records they can't say later they didn't know the harm they did and much like Alaska Rhode Island it only takes 30 or 40 votes to win lose in local elections and sadly you want to vote for people who aren't in your District but that's how sometimes we can have the power um you start voting the mail thank you thank you Bly yes all those down ballot the down ballot races down ballot races means that it's not only the presidential candidate it's the Congressional uh uh candidates that are running it's your local mayor who's running you have state representatives that are running uh you have local council members and Board of Supervisors who are running and you should get out there and go ask them what is their position on decriminalizing sex work um you know I myself belong to the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and we have a questioner and decriminalizing sex work is on that questioner for every single candidate we don't care if you're running for dog catcher you're going to get asked about what your position is on decriminalizing prostitutions so um if I don't see any more hands you know I just want to encourage everybody to get out there uh Starchild you had one last thing you wanted one quick thing you just reminded me actually I'm not sure if he's on the call or not but there's a guy named Keith fredman running from Air here in San Francisco uh he expressed interest in coming on the call I sent him the link and told him I'd give him a a shout out he's supported uh uh Express support for decriminalizing prostitution um he's not one of the Front Runners but again you know you're you're vote even for mayor here is probably not going to change the outcome so encourage people to vote for who they think is actually the best candidate and uh he might be that person for me we'll see I'm gonna unmute you Keith you got two minutes my your Market set go unmute yourself Keith and tell us can you hear can you hear me okay um yeah while I'm running for May I I published i i p posted in a link to a letter to the editor to the San Francisco Chronicle they wouldn't publish an oped and they made me squeeze it down into 200 words but it's it's there um star trial and I disagree a little bit um I I'm I'm more on the legalization side and I understand where you're all coming from and how how having the government involved at all can be a terrible thing um but part of my issue is that you know we have to kind of sell this to the public and I think it's going to be an easier pill to swallow if we talk to people locally about legalization rather than decriminalization one thank you you for coming okay thank you yeah um okay we're gonna wrap up and I thought he said D but yeah semantics to some extent but okay so I'll say goodbye to everybody and thank you for your time and see you on the YouTube channel um sex worker Nation so we can uh share our information about what we're doing but thanks everybody talk to you later oh in my t-shirt yeah Antonia Crane made it Antonia Crane made the shirt so I'm going to put her her link and everybody's links in the show note on the YouTube channel so you I'm sorry she couldn't join us but thanks to all my fellow panelists and and to chase um I'm glad we're able to do this