Decrim now world news digest for August 2024

A First in Canada Sex Workers’ Film Festival aims to inspire empathy

Canada, Hamilton

August 1-2, 2024

Jelena Vermilion with Sex Workers Action Program Hamilton organized what she says is Canada’s first Sex Workers’ Film Festival. (on photo)

What’s being touted as the first film festival in Canada showcasing movies and documentaries exclusively about sex workers is set to kick off in Hamilton.

The goal is to shift the public’s perspective about sex work, says film festival organizer and activist Jelena Vermilion. 

"When sex workers aren’t being displayed as murder victims or as criminals or victims on the screen, it really allows people to engage with their humanity at a deeper level," said Vermilion, who runs the outreach group Sex Workers’ Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton. 

American activist Carol Leigh, also known as the Scarlot Harlot, began the first sex workers’ film festival in the United States in San Francisco in 1999. Leigh died in 2022 and Vermilion said she felt inspired to set up a similar festival in Canada. 

"We hope that people’s hearts and minds will be changed — and for the better," she said.

Kathleen Cherrington, a critical sex work studies researcher at York University, said these types of film festivals take place in many other countries, but this will be the first on Canadian soil that she knows of.

"These types of events are crucial for amplifying the voices and stories of sex workers, fostering understanding and empathy in the community and challenging harmful stereotypes," Cherrington said. 

She will be attending, and encourages "everybody" to try to make it out.

Sex workers are some of the most marginalized people in society and face "tremendous amounts of violence and stigma," said Cherrington. 

Hamilton’s inaugural Sex Workers’ Film and Arts Festival will take place at local movie theatres Playhouse Cinema Thursday 1^st of August 2024 evening and The Westdale Friday 2^nd of August 2024 evening. There will also be live performances and art exhibits. 

Source cbc.ca

Seattle sex workers alarmed by proposal to re-criminalize “prostitution loitering”

USA, Seattle

August 13, 2024

A proposal to criminalize street-based sex work has sparked widespread concern among sex workers, anti-trafficking groups and their allies, who say it could harm vulnerable community members. The draft ordinance would undo legislation the Seattle City Council unanimously passed in 2020 that, over concerns of racial disproportionality in enforcement, repealed criminal penalties against sex workers.

The new bill, introduced by Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore on Aug. 1, would revive criminal penalties against street-based sex work and allow judges to exclude people accused or convicted of the crimes from entering certain areas of the city. Moore, who represents parts of North Seattle, has said the bill is intended to address the presence of visible sex work along Aurora Avenue North.

Amber Bergstrom, a volunteer with the peer-led mutual aid group Green Light Project (GLP), said many street-based sex workers fear the new law could result in expanded police harassment. GLP, which is made up of current and former sex workers, has carried out twice-weekly outreach on Aurora Avenue North since 2019, distributing food, safe sex supplies and other resources to sex workers.

“We’ve heard from a lot of the people that we talk to that work on Aurora, and they’re really afraid of what [the law] could mean for them,” Bergstrom said. “And they are specifically concerned about the fact that if they get arrested and they go to jail, that can impact them further when they get out of jail, especially if they have children or they have apartments — how does that affect them in the long term?”

Several factors have made street-based sex work more visible in Seattle in recent years. In 2018, Congress passed FOSTA-SESTA, a law that banned websites like Backpage, which allowed people to post classified advertisements. This resulted in many sex workers losing their primary method to obtain and screen clients, with a lot ending up working on the street. Bergstrom said many of the people who were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic turned to sex work as a way to make up the lost income.

Bergstrom added that the city council’s 2020 repeal of the prostitution loitering ordinance improved the working conditions of sex workers. Without the fear of potential arrest, sex workers can now work in groups and keep an eye on each other to ensure their mutual safety.

“When we first started doing outreach, people were a lot more isolated, because they had to continually keep walking and moving to avoid arrest,” Bergstrom said. “And so they couldn’t stand on one corner in a group and work together, because that would attract the attention of the police.”

Bergstrom is also worried the outreach and support work GLP does could be criminalized under the guise of promoting prostitution loitering.

In an Aug. 1 press release announcing the ordinance, Moore’s office wrote that between mid-May and mid-July, 31 shootings occurred along Aurora Avenue North. Moore argued sex workers were being exploited by organized crime groups who engage in turf battles along the arterial.

Emi Koyama, the coordinator of Coalition for Rights and Safety for People in the Sex Trade, said sex workers were not the cause of gun violence nor the perpetrators of sex trafficking. She said going after sex workers would be ineffective and could in fact harm survivors instead of helping them.

“The focus [of the ordinance] is not helping the women or stopping the exploitation; the goal is to stop gun violence,” Koyama said. “And they see women as a conduit, even though people who are in sex trade are not responsible for gun violence — it’s scapegoating people.”

Source realchangenews.org

In India Meeting on “Engaging with Sex Worker Rights” was held

India, Hyderabad

August 28, 2024

Hyderabad: Sangram, a voluntary organisation, conducted Hyderabad District Level Advocacy meeting on “Engaging with Sex Worker Rights” a sensitisation meeting under the leadership of Hyderabad District Legal Service Authoriy Judge Dr Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy at Central Park on recently. The CBOs Darpan Foundation and Asthithwam who works for the men having sex with men sex workers and transgender sex workers have facilitated this meeting. Judge Dr Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy explained about the importance of the judgment Buddhdev Karmaskar Vs State of West Bengal and the Supreme Court of India committee recommendations to the Government of India for the welfare and security of the persons in the sex work.

She explained that Sex workers are adult women, trans and men who provide sexual services for money or kind. However, their work continues to be stigmatised, conflated with trafficking and considered immoral. This stigma has led to the problematic conditions faced by sex workers including being arrested or forcibly rescued and incarcerated in rescue homes, outcast by families, face violence by law enforcement agencies. It would be fruitful to reinforce the need to strengthen the rights of sex workers through ensuring their access to justice, social and legal entitlements, protecting their right to timely assistance in the event of Rachana Mudraboyina, Transgender Hijra sex workers rights activist explained about the journey of sex workers movement in Telangana and with that of the LGBTQI Trans movement how they strived to get the sex work to a profession status all these years.

Avanthika Thangella , founder of Prema Jyothi Foundation explained that she has learned a lot during her mentorship with National Network of Sex Workers and also Sangram from a sex worker to be the founder of an organisation which she leads and works for the other livelihood trainings of the persons who are into sex work.

More than 70 transgender hijra MSM persons were present in the meeting and also more than 20 law students attended the meeting to explain the importance of constitution, fundamental rights and duties of all the Indian citizens including the persons who are into sex work. Many of the participants expressed that this district advocacy consultation may hopefully bring dynamic leadership and support of the lawyers, police and community leaders to build a peaceful society without disturbing the basic rights of sex workers.

Source bizzbuzz.news

The Population That Was Written Out Of Democratic Policies Is ’Terrified’

USA, Washington

August 30, 2024

he 2024 democratic platform leaves out millions of Americans who were included just four years ago.

The 2020 platform included a commitment to "protect the lives of sex workers," recognizing the heightened risks, particularly for women of color and people who are transgender. In 2024, the supportive language was removed.

"We don’t have a way to know if we will be safe. Personally, I’m absolutely terrified of what the future looks like," Electra Rayne, the founder of QueerCrush, told Newsweek. "Harris’s campaign is positing itself as super progressive...and then they completely eliminated the one mention we had. It’s really startling. It’s really alarming. It’s really concerning."

The lack of acknowledgment shows Rayne and others within the sex working industry how the Democratic party thinks of them, she said. Without any language for sex workers, they feel "less than human and less important." It’s evident that sex workers were "excluded from these conversations" in creating the policies, she said.

"If they want to be the party of change and hope then they have to be inclusive of these communities that are under-resourced and are so frequently harmed by their policies," said Rayne, who is a leading advocate for authentic queer passion and sex worker rights.

There are also concerns about Harris’s "long-standing history of direct harm" background in prosecuting sex workers and their industry.

Social justice network SWOP Behind Bars penned a letter to the Vice President, noting "some concerns we need to address before stepping into the voting booth."

Harris, while California Attorney General, helped bring down Backpage.com, a website founded in 2004 for classified advertising. The closure meant sex workers were financially insecure and felt less safe, according to Rayne.

"The results of that directly, extremely negatively impacted our clients and people that I personally know and care about," Blair Hopkins, the co-executive director of SWOP Behind Bars, told Newsweek. "That has been a very difficult thing to come to terms with. It makes it difficult to get excited about VP Harris’s run, which is too bad because I really want to be excited about it."

Within criticism against Trump’s campaign, there is also a dialogue around Stormy Daniels "to suggest that someone in the sex industry is a moral stain, something that reflects badly on one’s character," Mike Stabile, the director of public policy for the Free Speech Coalition, told Newsweek.

"Sex workers are workers and humans and citizens who exist at every intersection of every racial, socioeconomic, gender, geographic and other imaginable identity," Hopkins said.

Stabile also noted the censorship that the country is currently under around sex and gender.

"It’s not entirely surprising to see mentions of sex or sex work or sex workers’ rights disappear from the conversation," Stabile said. "When you have one party that’s making wild accusations that anything related to LGBTQ content is pornography and that exposure to that information is similar to grooming or child abuse, it makes it much harder to have intelligent conversations about sex work. Everything’s entirely inflamed right now."

That said, Hopkins and Rayne agree that people will continue within the profession no matter the election results. Rayne noted that a lot of people from marginalized communities—that make up a majority of the sex worker population—do not have the option to not be in the industry.

Source newsweek.com