NY: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Written by Administrator2
Thursday, 24 December 2009 12:43

Listen to the broadcast segment here.

Members of Sex Worker Action New York march at Pride 2009

December 17th was the 7th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Originally conceived by Dr. Annie Sprinkle and started by the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA as a memorial and vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle, Washington, this event now calls attention to hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe, from Montreal to Sydney.

According to the Paulo Longo Research Initiative (a new policy institute focusing on international research on sex workers),

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LV: March of the red umbrellas

On the scene as sex workers take to the Strip

Abigail Goldman

Tue, Dec 22, 2009 (7:10 p.m.)

“I don’t mind strippers,” the woman says, shrugging with open palms as if to say I’ll give you that, “but I have a problem with prostitutes, ’cause of the diseases they spread.”

This doesn’t go over well.

“That’s a myth,” someone snaps. And before the woman can respond—standing in sweatpants on the Strip, surrounded by people holding protest signs—another person pounces:

“If your pussy is your money, you keep that shit clean.”

SF police probe death of trans woman

by Seth Hemmelgarn
s.hemmelgarn@ebar.com

San Francisco police are investigating the death of a young transgender woman whose body was found last week in her North Beach residential hotel room.

Mariah Malina Qualls, 23, was found dead in the Golden Eagle Hotel, 402 Broadway Street, on Wednesday, December 9.

Stephen Gelman, administrator for the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office, said that the manner and cause of death are pending.

Maureen D’Amico, an inspector with the San Francisco Police Department’s homicide unit, said police are investigating the death as a murder. As of Monday, December 14, she said that there had not been any arrests, but police do have leads. She couldn’t offer descriptions of any possible suspects.

Memorial for Catherine Lique

Vancouver: Mona remembered

24 HOURS VANCOUVER
DHARM MAKWANA
p. 4.

Memorial

When Pamela Masik returned to Vancouver from the New York Art Academy, she realized the story she needed to tell was right in front of her.

The svelte artist spent four sometimes-tumultuous years creating a series of 69 eight-foot by 10-foot portraits of women who had gone missing from the Downtown Eastside.

“When I would leave the studio and wake up the next morning the first thing on my mind was the women I was painting,” she said. “Many times I would break down in the studio not thinking I could get through it. I’d actually get sick and pass out.”

Masik unveiled her portrait of Mona Wilson, a 26-year-old aboriginal woman who Robert Pickton was convicted of killing after she went missing in 2001, at the Terminus building in Gastown.

The artist also announced her involvement in an arts program sponsored by the Union Gospel Mission.

“If I can change the life of one woman who’s using the shelter that’s my purpose,” Masik said.

And of the portrait of Wilson said Masik, “She’s my sister. They all are.”

– DHARM MAKWANA, 24 HOURS

Older Stories: Hookers unite!

San Francisco sex workers are on a mission to decriminalize prostitution here and across the country.

By Ann Harrison 1/28/2004

IT SEEMED TO be the seedy underbelly of paid sex in the city. On Jan. 14, federal agents raided four suspected brothels in San Francisco’s Sunset District. Investigators say they busted a sophisticated international prostitution ring in which Asian women were allegedly smuggled into the United States and forced to pay off a $40,000 debt to their traffickers by selling their bodies.

The Standing Against Global Exploitation Project (SAGE), which works closely with local police departments, immediately condemned an underground industry that promises foreigners better lives with good jobs but instead forces them into sex work.

“Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery,” SAGE’s Linnette Peralta Haynes told the Bay Guardian.

Mark Wollman, special agent in charge of the Northern California Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which raided the brothels, was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying the six women detained in the raid are being treated as victims rather than criminals. Yet some say that’s a strange distinction in a country that uniformly deems prostitutes – regardless of how they got into the business – criminals.

Sex workers rally against discrimination

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
By: Jonathan Miller

 

In brief

Taking a stand against social stigmas, the Sex Workers Outreach Project, an activist group for workers in the sex industry, staged a protest Dec. 17 in Washington, D.C., for recognition of their legal rights by police.

Sex workers not only face the risk of contracting disease, but also must deal with the possibility of assault, battery and worse. Police rarely investigate claims by sex workers, however, and use the criminalization of sex work itself as a bludgeon to discourage legal charges.