Great news from Turn off the Blue Light, the anti-criminalization campaign in Ireland launched by sex workers and supporters. Google has changed its mind on prohibiting the group from buying an AdWord, one of those little paid links you see at the top of some Google searches.
I mean, it's a pretty small victory in the grand scheme of things, but what the heck. Take the wins wherever they come, especially when the issue is sex work. You just don't see many wins if that's your cause.
The power of social media and electronic distribution lists were certainly obvious to me after I wrote a column on this subject (it'll be the June 24 blog post below this one) and then used Facebook and two sex-work-friendly researcher-based distribution lists to get the word out as far as possible. I've now got new "friends" in Bangladesh and Thailand as a result.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that my Victoria column was the reason Google changed its mind, prompt and thorough use of Facebook and distribution lists notwithstanding. But maybe it helped a little.
The Blue Light organizers were prepared to protest outside Google's European headquarters in Dublin when they got word from Google that it had taken another look at the group's Web site and approved them to advertise.
Google had deemed that the group was selling sexual services,which it doesn't allow. But when the company took a closer look, it must have seen what Blue Light had been telling them all along: The Web site, and the Blue Light campaign, is strictly about human rights, not selling sex. 

An inquiry into murdered sex workers, without any sex workers taking part in the proceedings - how well do you think that's going to work? This story from the Globe has a comment from the Attorney General's ministry that would be amusing if it weren't so tragic.
In defence of the government's refusal to cover legal costs at the Pickton inquiry for groups representing the interests of aboriginals and women, the government lawyer suggests his team could assume the interests of aboriginals and women for the purposes of questioning witnesses.
Yeah, that'll work. A bunch of largely white, largely male privileged people with law degrees, reimagining themselves as impoverished aboriginal women working the Downtown Eastside stroll.
I get that it's painful for government to pay the legal bills of all the groups that Pickton inquiry chief Wally Oppal has said need to be heard at the inquiry. But it's completely unacceptable to deny legal support for virtually every group with a connection to the victims. Whose voices should be louder at this inquiry than theirs? 

Google decision snuffs out human-rights ad for sex workers

Everybody’s got an opinion on the sex industry. But when you’re Google, what you think really matters.

So when Google yanks the online ads of a small group of Dublin sex workers trying to talk about human rights for people in the industry, it’s a big statement. I’m going to have to rethink everything I thought I knew about Google.

Ten escorts launched “Turn Off the Blue Light” earlier this year, responding to a major campaign in Ireland right now to outlaw the last legal vestiges of prostitution.

The anti-prostitution campaign is called “Turn off the Red Light.” The escorts picked their name as an allusion to the blue lights on Ireland’s police cars, and the impact of criminalization.

Ireland’s prostitution laws are essentially the same as Canada’s. The sale of sex is legal, but everything else to do with the industry is a crime. As in Canada, that has led to a thriving industry that operates almost completely in the shadows.

The Red Light campaign - a broad coalition of 39 religious groups, unions, non-profits, feminist organizations, political parties and so on - is pushing for Ireland to follow Sweden and make the sale of sex illegal. Sex workers in both countries contend that only increases the risk to workers.

Desperate to be heard on the subject, a few Dublin escorts and supporters struck up their own small rights campaign and bought a Google AdWord - those paid links that you’ve probably noticed at the top of some of your Google searches.

The ad linked to the Blue Light Web site. Here’s what it said: “Turn off the Blue Light: Sex workers in Ireland need human rights, not legal wrongs.”

It ran for several weeks without issue. But in May, Google yanked the ad, having suddenly decided the content was an “egregious violation” of company ad policy.

Google contends the ad is selling adult sexual services, a sector the company prohibits from advertising (with an interesting exception for stripping or lap-dancing services).

But Blue Light isn’t selling sexual services. It’s campaigning for human rights. Unfortunately, Google won’t budge.

As if to add insult, the company then sold an AdWord to a religious organization leading a campaign against sex trafficking in Ireland. With “Turn Off the Blue Light” worked into the ad’s keyword search, the anti-prostitution site is now the first to come up on Google’s Irish search engine (google.ie) when anyone looks for information on the Blue Light campaign.

What does Google have to say about all this? Not much.

I got two very polite responses from the company’s press department after a little prodding. But neither addressed the questions I’d asked - like why an ad for workers’ rights is considered to be selling sexual services just because the workers happen to be escorts.

Blue Light knew its tiny Google ad wouldn’t make much of a splash in the face of widespread and aggressive opposition. But it was better than no voice at all, says a campaign organizer I talked to this week.

The sex workers appealed Google’s decision. They lost, or at least presume they did. Google said they’d get an email from the company within three days if the appeal was successful, and no notice if it was rejected. The three days came and went a while ago, with no further word.

The sentiment in Ireland feels overwhelmingly against people in the industry, says the Blue Light organizer. Even the unions have joined the anti-prostitution campaign, as have a long list of women’s organizations. Google’s rejection was one more blow.

How Google managed to find the tiny Blue Light ad amid the gamillion AdWords that generate almost $28 billion a year in revenues for the company - well, that’s an intriguing question.

But as Google notes in its correspondence with Blue Light, the company acts when it gets complaints. And it obviously feels little compunction to verify the accuracy of a complaint before it acts.

Responding to my interview request, Google first sent me an email detailing how it handles political ads, noting that it strives to be neutral and fair. I hope CEO Larry Page reads that policy with more intent sometime soon.

The company followed up half an hour later with a second email on its sexual-services policy, reiterating that escort services are prohibited from advertising.  

As are legal workers who dare to speak up on their own behalf, it appears. That’s a frightening development in a company that controls the world’s information.

***

Please urge Google to reconsider their decision. You can comment on the Google wall on Facebook (you'll have to "like" it first), and I notice that my post from this morning is already gone!) and on the walls of Larry Page and Larry Page/Sergey Brin. 

Here's an idea: Pull together a panel of average citizens and ask THEM to take a look at health care and what they think needs to be done. The Globe's Andre Picard summarizes here what the group of 28 Ontarians recommended as part of the Citizens' Reference Panel on Health Services.
If you like your information full-on, read the full report here. It's 44 pages, but there's also a one-page summary. 
Nothing world-shaking in the panel's findings, but that's the point. It doesn't take shiny new equipment, expensive new drugs and an influx of even more health-care professionals to fix much of what ails the "health" system - it just takes common sense and policy-makers brave enough to get beyond the individual interests of the big players.
Note the recommendation to end the fee-for-service pay system for doctors. Yes, please - the incentives are all wrong in that system, resulting in high costs to taxpayers with no assurances that all that spending is actually resulting in a healthier population. Governments are all about "outcomes" these days - why should the medical system be exempt?

Just bite the bullet, government - developmental disability is for life

I can feel for governments on issues like health spending, which has no top limit to its growth. As long as there are people desperate to stay alive and clever entrepreneurs eager to capitalize on that, no amount of money will ever be “enough.”

So yes, let’s have a heart for the plight of government in trying to manage that challenging issue. But that’s no excuse for why they’re not better at managing other costs that are far more predictable year over year.

The crazy stuff going on right now for people with developmental disabilities in B.C. is a fitting example.

Yes, there are cost pressures on that front, too: double-digit growth in autism diagnoses in Canada; expanded services on reduced budgets; more private-sector interests finding ways to turn a profit in the delivery of social services.

But allowing for all of that, the big costs for a funding body like Community Living B.C. still ought to be relatively predictable over the long term.

When it comes to a lifetime condition like developmental disability, you can budget with assurance knowing that the people needing services and support today will still need them tomorrow. The number of babies born with developmental disabilities every year is also stable enough to be built into the spending plan.

And unlike the health system, caps on care are common for developmental-disability services, restricting the number of people who can access support.

In contrast to our all-you-can-eat health system, there are multiple tests to take, professional assessments to acquire, hurdles to overcome and “analyst” scrutiny to bear before anyone gets CLBC funding. It all adds up to more budgetary certainty.  

Yet here we are again, acting like the cost of caring for British Columbians with developmental disability has caught us by surprise.  Here we are again, trying to downgrade the housing support and work opportunities for people who we know with certainty can’t manage without them.

B.C. looked progressive back in the 1980s when it shut down the big institutions - Glendale, Tranquille, Woodlands - where “the retarded” had been locked away. But the years haven’t been kind to the chronically underfunded community system that developed as a replacement for institutional care.

The creation of CLBC in 2005 was supposed to improve things. The Crown corporation was conceived as a parent-driven initiative that would finally put people with developmental disabilities and their families first in establishing spending priorities.

Not quite. The TC reported this week on the concerns of group-home operators facing a 19 per cent jump in B.C.’s minimum wage this year. Some overnight staff at the homes earn minimum wage, and agencies are wondering where they’ll find the money.

Not from CLBC. The Crown corporation told agencies to cut client services if it comes to that.

“We would encourage your members to continue to explore new and more cost-effective ways to meet individuals’ disability-related needs,” wrote the CLBC’s Doug Woollard in a letter last month to the Community Living Agencies Network, which had raised the issue.  

Much has changed for the better for people with developmental disabilities in the last 30 years, mind you.

The level of integration in our school system now would have been a distant dream in the days when I was in elementary school and the mentally handicapped kids were hidden away in the basement.

In terms of employment, the best that any of those kids could hope for back then was a seat in a sheltered workshop, where they’d maybe make a few dollars a week. Now, there’s the possibility of getting a real job - for real money - at the growing number of community-minded businesses stepping up to do their part.

But those gains are worthless if government waffles on its commitment to people’s basic needs. The closure of group homes this year is destabilizing decades of effort to create those homes and bring a little certainty into people’s lives. Recent cuts to work programs and job training are just plain cruel.

Everybody has to be prepared to give up something in a recession, I suppose. But should that include secure housing, social connection and job training for a few thousand extremely vulnerable people who we know won’t make it in this world without our help?

People with developmental disabilities need a lifetime of support. It’s frustrating, inefficient and sad that government still resists that reality.