New York’s Red Umbrella Project is currently accepting submissions for Issue Three of its Prose & Lore literary journal. We’ve written about it here and here, and here’s Caty’s interview with project founder Audacia Ray.
Some folks are working on a documentary to honor the work of Civil Rights pioneer, Stonewall veteran, former sex worker, Black transgender activist and mentor to young trans women, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. On Monday, another woman featured in the film, Melenie Mahinamalamalama Elenek, sadly passed away. It was originally reported that Miss Major herself had died. To celebrate the life of Melenie, family and friends will gather on Thursday, September 19, 2013 from 6:30PM to 8:30PM at Duggan’s Serra Mortuary, 500 Westlake Ave., Daly City, CA.
Feministing posted a decent article critical of Operation Cross Country: “Some rescue: The FBI’s dubious war on street girls.” Alternet followed on its heels with another critique of the same operation.
Labor trafficking and other labor abuses occur on fishing boats in Thailand. More on this from the Cambodia Daily. In a twist that sounds familiar to the sex workers’ rights movement, fishermen often have trouble getting the message across that while the trafficking is limited in scope, their real problem is the labor abuse.
Police make an arrest in the murder of a 72-year-old sex worker in Toronto.
Lily Burana reminisces in the Atlantic about what it was like to work at the recently-shuttered Lusty Lady.
A former California cop was arrested for raping street sex workers while in uniform.
A new HIV vaccine proves successful in phase 1 human trials.
Dancers at Rick’s Cabaret in Manhattan win a four-year court fight for guaranteed minimum wage.
Two men plead not guilty in a sex trafficking case in the UK.
Feministe came out with a shockingly awful and confused piece from a non-sex worker who rode along on street outreach and then took her raging pearl-clutching to the internet. Stay tuned for a more in-depth response from our contributors Kate Zen and Robin D, who might know a bit more about all this.
Here‘s more on the Bangladeshi brothel evictions we posted about last week.
Police make an arrest in the murder of a 72-year-old sex worker in Toronto.
PandoDaily featured a profile on SafeIQ and other possible sex work bad date list based apps.
Europe considers the effects of criminalizing sex work.
As transmission due to sex grows more common, health programs tackle HIV infections among Chinese sex workers.
AllAfrica profiles the life of a transgender sex worker in South Africa. We could do without some of the stigmatizing descriptions.
I noticed that once more than 1 sex worker started commmenting on the Feministe piece, they closed the comments. They’ve become far less sex work-friendly than they used to be.
I think they did post my comment, which stated that I was aghast that Feministe had posted a piece like this rather than one BY a street sex worker. They justified closing the comments periodically with “exhaustion.” I’d check to see if they were open now and keep the heat on them.
I’m not a street sex worker, I don’t know about Kate Zen, but we have a number of experiences that are relevant (survival sex work (e.g. for housing), doing street outreach to sex workers and drug users, being homeless, working with homeless youth organizations, being non-consensually pimped, doing sex work underage, etc.). We might ask others to join us.
…and they were never very sex worker friendly, as I recall. I think the proliferation of End Demand has simply made them bolder.