The Daily Hampshire Gazette has put up a special web page to monitor the “Northampton Porn Debate”, saying,“The announcement in June that Rhode Island-based Capital Video was planning to open a pornographic video and magazine shop on King Street has stirred some of the most vociferous debate seen on any issue in Northampton in recent years. […]
NPN Submits More Petition Signatures to Mayor, Total Tops 1,100
NoPornNorthampton today submitted 201 new petition signatures to Mayor Higgins at the City Council meeting. The petition calls for Northampton to adopt adult-use zoning and viewing booth health regulations. This group of signatures was collected between August 18 and October 5. Northampton residents represent 167 of the signatures, with 34 more coming from non-residents.Since our petition […]
Is Fred Contrada Biased Against NoPornNorthampton?
It’s fascinating to see how the same event is reported by different people. Take our August 2 public meeting. NoPornNorthampton invited members of the community to meet with us and give us feedback.At the start of the meeting, we began videotaping. Our motivations were to keep a historical record and enable us to accurately review […]
Response to “State tells anti-porn group to stop soliciting money”
The Republican for some reason is making a big deal out of the state’s request that NoPornNorthampton register as a charity. We are not professional fundraisers, so some of the niceties of political action are new to us, but we have no problem with registering with the state if that’s what the law requires. We […]
Long-time Feminist Voices Support for NPN
Preserving the charm and historic character of Northampton is important to me. I was there last summer for a seminar at Smith and was pleased that some of my writing is housed in the Smith archives in copies of “Equal Times”. In the 70’s I was known as Marcia Womongold, feminist author and activist.Jendi and […]
Gazette: “Proposed rules for ‘adult’ businesses find favor”
Wednesday’s Gazette reports on the 9/28 ordinance committee/planning board meeting. It notes how residents near 135 King Street expressed concern about a porn shop locating there: “It’s a neighborhood that has made halfway houses and recovery programs welcome,” Mike Kirby, of 17 Summer St., said of the area around the proposed adult video store. “It’s […]
Pro-Porn Protesters Shout Out Slander, Make Threats
A lone member of NPN decided to swing by 135 King Street late this afternoon to see if there was any activity there. We observed about eight pro-porn protesters. On seeing the member of NPN, some of these protesters began shouting “pedophile”! In this picture, the protesters appear to be interacting with a passerby in […]
A Response to J. Wesley Boyd, “The sexism of porn critics”
J. Wesley Boyd manages to pack nearly every bad argument in defense of the King Street porn shop into his 10/4 Gazette guest column, “The sexism of porn critics”. He declines to engage with the evidence of secondary effects presented at NoPornNorthampton. He absurdly equates a porn shop with a supermarket. He ignores the actual […]
Mopornnorthampton Returns, Mocks King Street as “Unspoilt Jewel of the Northeast”
Mopornnorthampton, offline for weeks, returned to service in late September. This site, a creation of Jeff Hobbs, Jennifer Ruggieri, and perhaps others, tries to make the King Street porn shop issue a matter of “free speech” and “free trade” with arguments that we address in our FAQ (see on the left).Recently moporn decided to indulge […]
New York City Planners Document Secondary Effects of Adult Uses, Support Zoning
Porn defenders tend to dismiss the notion of secondary effects, that adult uses can reduce property values, create economic dead zones, heighten crime and change a neighborhood’s character. The fact is, however, that secondary effects have been extensively studied and documented. Here we make available a major Adult Entertainment Study published by New York City’s […]