FSC Executive Director Expands on Task Force Goals in Open Letter

LOS ANGELES—Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Michelle LeBlanc on Tuesday evening issued a letter to the industry about the ongoing pandemic. FSC also gave an update on its Emergency Fund disbursements, noting it has so far sent a total of $90,000 to 300 people with more on the way. The open letter from LeBlanc, which appears on FSC's blog, is below in full:Dear Community, Protecting the adult industry is the mission of FSC and right now the most important aspect of that is our health and safety. We understand the extreme financial hardship that this global pandemic has brought to many of you. Our primary goal is to get everyone back to work as safely as possible, as soon as possible. When FSC called for a production hold in response to the coronavirus pandemic, it was aligned with orders from public health agencies calling for the closure of all non-essential businesses. Across North America, most of those orders remain in effect, with various regions planning for a phased approach to easing restrictions. Non-essential businesses like entertainment are not likely to be in the first phases of most plans. Last week, FSC convened a COVID-19 Task Force with FSC staff and FSC board members who are producers, performers, agents, and lawyers. The first order of business was to discuss the benchmarks for lifting the production hold and the guidance we need to provide to safely resume production under a continued threat of contagion.  Testing for COVID-19 will be an important part of the safety measures for returning to work. How that should be incorporated is part of a long list of questions that we are working to answer. The task force will seek input and involvement from the adult entertainment community throughout this process.  Some of the topics the task force are discussing include: testing protocols, cleaning protocols, personal protective equipment, high-risk and immunocompromised workers, liability issues and potential mitigation of those, and other risk reduction strategies like physical distancing, limiting the number of people on sets, and restrictions on travel. We want you to get back to work as much as you want to get back to it, but we do not want to sacrifice your health and safety in the name of expediency.Be safe, Michelle L. LeBlancExecutive Director ***  FSC's update on the Emergency Fund disbursements follows below: As of April 28, 2020Total raised: $144,000Total applicants: 489 Total disbursed: $90,000 to 300 people (in progress) The FSC Emergency Fund helps talent and crew who can’t work during the COVID-19 production hold.  We are so pleased to announce that we have now received enough contributions to send checks for all eligible individuals who have already applied. Please continue to help us raise more money so that we can reopen the application and help more people. We have been disbursing funds in batches of 100 checks at a time. Earlier this week, the next 100 people receiving checks were notified to confirm their payment information. Once that batch is processed, we will keep going until we have sent checks to all qualified applicants. If you have applied and you meet the eligibility criteria, please be patient. You will receive a check. For those who do not meet the eligibility criteria, we are emailing them individually to let them know. ALL APPLICANTS: Please add [email protected] and [email protected] to your email contacts to better ensure that our emails will go straight to your inboxes rather than your spam folders. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].