One of the most interesting presentations was by Maggie McNeill, a retired sex worker who blogs at The Honest Courtesan. Her talk debunked a variety of common myths surrounding sex work, and made a compelling case for decriminalizing prostitution. Moreover, she argued that the criminalization of sex work undermines everyone’s liberties, even for people who never intend to buy or sell sex, and that the “War on Whores” is beginning to take the place of the War on Drugs.

Increasing enforcement of anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking laws enables the state to target the same people they’ve targeted under drug prohibition, McNeill argued. She explains that when young people join gangs, one of their roles is bringing in revenue. Men largely do this by selling drugs, while women often do this by selling sex. Thus, the War on Drugs enables the police to arrest and incarcerate young men of color for selling drugs. In the case of prostitution, however, the men in the gang can be arrested and indicted as “traffickers” or “pimps.” In both cases, McNeill argues, young men of color are criminalized.

Another similarity between prostitution prohibition and drug prohibition is the way they empower police to detain, search, and arrest people for utterly absurd reasons. In some cities, police arrest women for prostitution simply for possessing condoms. Yes, the desire to have safe sex is considered evidence of prostitution, especially if you’re a transgender woman of color. In my home state of Utah, police can arrest someone basically for “acting sexy.” When Andrew McCullough and I argued before the Utah State Legislature that this law was overly broad and would criminalize perfectly legal speech, especially that of strippers, the bill’s proponents adamantly denied this. However, our view was grounded in direct quotes from the bill’s text, while the bill’s proponents never referenced the bill’s text and instead indulged in paternalistic fear mongering about prostitution. The bill was sponsored by Democrat Jennifer Seelig and argued for by Chris Burbank, a police chief who is praised for his liberal approach by ordinarily skeptical commentators like Radley Balko.

Anti-prostitution laws often get support from liberals, progressives, and even some leftists, largely because they are promoted in the name of protecting women and stopping sex trafficking. Just as prison abolitionists invoke the name and the moral appeal of the struggle to abolish chattel slavery, anti-prostitution activists cast their work as a struggle against slavery and name their movement for increased police state power after abolitionism. One anti-prostitution group calls themselves “Demand Abolition,” for example. Conflating prostitution with slavery has a long history. The early 20th Century movement against so-called “white slavery” was used to criminalize people of color and lay the groundwork for the surveillance state, Thaddeus Russell argues.

Today, pro-criminalization radical feminists smear opponents of criminalization as misogynists. Amnesty International has been repeatedly attacked for supporting the decriminalization of prostitution, for example. Feminist support for criminalizing consensual sex acts and enabling racist, misogynistic, and transphobic police repression represents a disturbing theme that Angela Keaton explored in her talk at the NOLA Conference: the co-option of liberation movements by the state. Keaton pointed to Gay Inc’s silence on the plight of Chelsea Manning, the push to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the imperialist armed forces, and the Feminist Majority Foundation’s support for war in Afghanistan (against the wishes of feminists in Afghanistan). Other examples include the push for hate crimes laws and the carceral feminist positions on both domestic violence and prostitution.

Presentations at the NOLA Conference by Maggie McNeill, Thaddeus Russell, and Angela Keaton all touched on this crucial issue in various ways. I’m glad young libertarians were introduced to serious and radical thinking on issues of social oppression, as well as critiques of the co-option of liberation movements to serve the interests of the state. There are still more SFL regional conferences happening this fall. Check here to see if there’s one coming up in your area.

Questa è una storia vera. Katiele sta combattendo per poter trattare gli attacchi di epilessia di sua figlia con il CBD (cannabidiolo), una sostanza estratta dalla marijuana e proibita in Brasile. Prendendo a pretesto la lotta alla droga, i burocrati dell’Anvisa (l’ente brasiliano che controlla la salute) hanno deciso che la marijuana non si può usare per usi medici.

Come spiega Katiele nel suo video (giustamente intitolato Illegale), nessun’altra medicina disponibile in Brasile può curare la malattia di sua figlia. Nessuna. Tranne il CBD. Ostacolo: Il governo brasiliano proibisce la marijuana tanto per svago quanto per uso medico. Cosa fare? “La disperazione nel vedere che tua figlia ha crisi giornaliere, ad ogni ora, è così grande che abbiamo deciso di affrontare la questione comunque, anche a costo di importare la medicina illegalmente, che è quello che abbiamo fatto,” dice.

Secondo lo stato, questa madre ha agito da criminale. Secondo chi ha un minimo di senso della giustizia, ha fatto la cosa giusta. Ci sono casi in cui le persone per bene sono costrette ad andare contro la legge, fino alla disobbedienza civile imprenditoriale. Se, andando contro la legge, non fai male a nessuno o addirittura porti benefici, generando valore, questo di per sé dimostra che la legge in questione impedisce il benessere della società generato attraverso la libera produzione, lo scambio e l’associazione. Questo è ancora più significativo quando il valore generato è la salute di una bambina epilettica.

Il cinque aprile, Katiele e sua figlia hanno conseguito una vittoria giudiziaria. Con una decisione storica, la corte costituzionale di Brasilia ha stabilito che l’Anvisa deve fornire alla famiglia il CBD necessario al trattamento della malattia.

Purtroppo non finisce qui. L’ente può ancora ricorrere in appello. Il divieto all’uso medico della marijuana in Brasile continua, e la guerra alla droga, con tutte le sue conseguenze sciagurate, va avanti. A quanto pare, in questo paese bisogna fare ricorso contro lo stato se si vuole avere la possibilità di curare un male perfettamente evitabile e curabile. E tutto perché qualche burocrate ha deciso che la marijuana è un male.

Posso immaginare la sofferenza di questa madre. Mia sorella soffriva di epilessia dalla nascita. Sarebbe stato triste vederla soffrire senza cure, con crisi frequenti, solo perché c’era qualcuno che le impediva l’accesso ai farmaci.

Nota: La questione non è l’assenza di cure. Non è che la madre non ha i soldi e i mezzi per procurarsi le medicine. E anche se non avesse avuto soldi, avrebbe potuto sperare ancora: con le donazioni da parte di istituzioni filantropiche, ad esempio. Il problema è che lo stato si mette in mezzo tra lei e l’accesso legale alla cura.

In un articolo scritto per Center for a Stateless Society, Marja Erwin ha sollevato la questione di come una società libera, anche una anarchica, potrebbe affrontare il problema dei disabili, e se lo “scambio, di per sé, include pienamente le persone disabili”. Le società basate sullo stato negano sistematicamente l’accesso a medicinali e cure con pretesti paternalistici, talvolta diventando l’ostacolo principale, imponendo barriere poste all’innovazione medica e incrementando i costi delle cure.

Cercare di ridurre la sofferenza di qualcuno non dovrebbe essere un atto illegale. Al contrario, illegale dovrebbe essere lo stato che condanna la figlia di Katiele alla sofferenza perpetua. Illegale dovrebbe essere l’esistenza stessa dello stato, i cui atti ricordano l’iscrizione sulla porta dell’inferno dantesco: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

That is a true story. Katiele struggles to treat her daughter’s epilepsy with CBD (Cannabidiol), a substance derived from marijuana and forbidden in Brazil. As part of the Brazilian war on drugs, Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) bureaucrats have decided that the medical use of marijuana is impermissible inside the country.

As Katiele explains in her video (fittingly titled Illegal), no other medicine available in Brazil can control her daughter’s disease. None. Nevertheless, she found out that CBD is an effective alternative. The obstacle: The Brazilian government forbids the recreational as well as medicinal use of marijuana. What should she do, then? “The despair of having your daughter seizing every day, every time, is so huge that we decided to deal with it no matter what it took, even if we had to bring the medicine in illegally, and that’s what we did,” she said.

According to the state, this mother acted as a criminal. For anyone with a minimal sense of justice, she did the right thing. There are times when the only alternative for decent people is to break the law, including through entrepreneurial civil disobedience. If you, in breaking the law, do not hurt anyone and even benefits people, generating value, that by itself shows that the law in question obstructs society’s well-being generated through free production, exchange and association. That is even more salient when the value generated is the health of a epileptic kid.

On April 5, Katiele and her daughter had a judicial victory. In an historic decision, the federal justice in Brasilia determined that Anvisa should provide the family with CBD for the administration of treatment.

This is not the end, however. The agency can still appeal, the ban on medical marijuana continues in Brazil and the war on drugs, with all its dire consequences, goes on. Apparently, in this country, you have to sue the state to be able to get a permit to prevent such a very avoidable and treatable condition, just because some bureaucrat decided at some point that marijuana is evil.

I can imagine how this mother has suffered. My own sister had a birth condition and suffered from epilepsy. It would have been sad to see her going untreated and having constant seizures because there is someone blocking access to medicine.

Note: The point is not that there is no treatment. It is not that the mother does not have the money and the means to get hold of the medicine. If she did not have money, there would still be hope: Donations or philanthropic institutions, for example. The problem is that the state stands between the mother and legal access to treatment.

In an article for the Center for a Stateless Society, Marja Erwin brought up the question of how a free society, even an anarchist one, would deal with disability, and whether “exchange, on its own, fully includes those of us with disabilities.” Statist societies  have systematically denied the access to medicine or treatments on paternalistic grounds and are at times the largest hindrance to health care, either due to hurdles to medical innovations or due to the increased costs of treatment.

Trying to minimize someone’s agony should not be against the law. What should be against the law, however, is the nanny state’s condemnation of Katiele’s daughter to perpetual suffering. What should be against the law is the existence of such an institution as the state, whose acts within its borders remind us of the inscription on the door of Dante Alighieri’s hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Translated from Portuguese into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, Una madre contra una niñera abusiva.
• Portuguese, A mãe contra a babá abusiva.
• Italian, Una Madre Contro una Balia Oltraggiosa.