Remember the Craig’s List Killer? The one who was hiring women to perform sex acts, and then killing them? Remember what big news that was?

Today I read the news of a small town in North Carolina where at least 9 women who were sex workers have been murdered and/or are missing.

Since 2005, nine women who lived at the edges of the poor community in this small North Carolina city have disappeared. Six bodies were found along rural roads just a few miles outside town, most so decomposed that investigators could not tell how they died. At least one of the women was strangled, and all the deaths have been classified as homicides. Three women are still missing.

Police will not say whether they suspect a serial killer, but people in the community about 60 miles northeast of Raleigh do, and they’re impatient with law enforcement efforts to investigate the slayings.

This is a small town, so nine women gone is something that is noticed by a lot of people. As one of the women who used to work with the missing women said:

“I used to walk these streets and jump in and out of cars. But then when that first girl Melody got killed I stopped that because I knew he would kill another,” said Johnson, 41. “I hate for that to happen to her, but it probably saved my life. I have five babies.”

Counting the names on one hand, she added, “There’s probably five or six girls left around here that will jump in and out of cars. He really did kill the whole neighborhood.“

I knew without being told several aspects of the story: namely, the police didn’t really investigate what was going on until more women wound up dead. And even then, the families are frustrated because police don’t seem to really care. And the media isn’t really covering it all that much. And national pressure is non-existent, and money for body recovery is hard to come by.

And from what I can see, every single one of the women who are missing are black.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that sex work is any safer for white women then it is for women of color–but I DO think that people *care more* when the women who are killed or missing is beautiful, young and white rather than old or older, a mother of multiple kids and black. How the media has covered these separate crimes is evidence of that. When the Craig’s List murder happened, the media was stalking the court rooms, running police images of the suspect, talking to the murder victim’s families, contemplating over and over again–what would make such a beautiful woman *do this* (i.e. sex work)? She had her whole life ahead of her! She could’ve done anything! Oh, the tragedy of women being forced to sell sexual acts so they can survive!

Compared to nine women black women now missing or dead–and ONE article about in the national news.

Whose lives does the media find important? Whose PUSSIES does the media find important? Whose neighborhood’s does the media find important?

While I’m not a fan of the netroots nation conference–the one thing I am really glad of is that la Mala is repping. We must ALL feel the emptiness of a table with women not there because of violence and erasure. And for some reason, I don’t see many people at the “nation” caring much about these women, unless somebody is there to “remind” the nation about who isn’t there.