Every year, on December 17, sex workers from Bombay to Zagreb gather to demand that the world stop killing their colleagues. American sex workers are today more organized, and more oppressed, than they have been in years. Sex workers have responded with ferocious activism. More surprisingly, Democratic politicians like New York state senators Jessica Ramos and Julia Salazar have listened to them, canvassed with them, and even promised to introduce laws to decriminalize prostitution.
On February 22 sex trafficking made its way into the headlines when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a billionaire septuagenarian and Trump crony, was arrested during a series of prostitution stings on massage parlors in three Florida counties and charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.
During the seven months police spent investigating the parlors, they secretly installed cameras in massage rooms and made videos of the women as they gave handjobs to their customers. Police described the investigation as an anti-trafficking operation, but no trafficking charges have been made.
Four women who ran the massage parlors were arrested. Among other crimes, they were all charged with prostitution. All of them have spent more time in jail than any of the men they allegedly serviced. Police, ICE , rescue industry lackeys, out of the parlors. At the rally, Xu was preceded by local politicians who promised to decriminalize sex workโsomething unthinkable even two years earlier. But a month later, I saw a breakthrough just as great. When two New York City Council members announced a new crackdown on massage parlors, local reporters did not just reprint their press release or blithely praise them.
They asked Red Canary Song for comment. We want [the council members] to recognize the humanity of these workers and protect them, rather than do violence to them through sweeps, evictions and surveillance. We want the people of Queens to stop looking away in shame, and recognize that these people are part of our communities and they deserve to be treated with compassion and respect.
