by Keith R. Green
via the July/August 07 edition of
Positively Aware
No one suspected what was going on in the upper level units of a residential building on Chicago’s North side. But for years, with just a credit card and a computer connected to the World Wide Web, anyone from anywhere could log in and watch.
The place was known as the CocoDorm. At any given time, there were between six and eight young Black and Latino men (age 18-24 on average) who lived there. Each young man signed a contract that was valid for 30 days and that could be extended upon a mutual agreement between himself and the proprietor—an older Caucasian man. Under this contract, the young men were required to perform sexual acts with each other and alone, at least three times a
day, every day. There were video cameras strategically placed in just about every room of the house that captured the action, transmitting it to paid subscribers via the Internet.The “Dorm,” as it was called, was a product of Flavaworks Productions. Flavaworks also produced a host of other pornographic websites, films, and print publications that mostly featured young Black and Latino men. I first encountered the company in the spring of 2004, when I was tasked with selling ads to be placed in the program book of the “Aware Affair,” TPAN’s annual gala. It was by accident. Really!
I had assembled a team of unorthodox social workers who also possessed capitalist mentalities—meaning we understood that effective social work requires adequate finances. With $10,000 in ad sales as our collective aim, we didn’t discriminate in any way when soliciting businesses for sponsorship. Ironically, Flavaworks was one of the targets on my list to call. Imagine that!
Read the rest.
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