Friday the Thirteenth Again

By Maggiemcneill @Maggie_McNeill

Once again it’s Friday the 13th, the day on which I ask those who aren’t sex workers to stand up for our rights.  Due to the increasing presence of sex workers in the public eye, and statements by groups like Amnesty International, more people than ever before recognize the need to abolish criminalization; even some politicians are starting to take notice, and those who hoped to silence us by means of FOSTA are finding that their efforts have backfired, calling more attention to the harm done by criminalization than ever before.  And that means we need your support more than ever, because now voices calling for sex worker rights are more likely to be taken seriously than ever before.  If you can afford to contribute, please do so today:  donate to SWOP-USA, to SWOP Behind Bars, to the EFF or Woodhull Foundation to support their anti-FOSTA lawsuit, to individual activists (because traveling around the country to do this work is much more expensive than you might think), or to sex workers who have been harmed by increasing censorship of our ads.  And if you can’t afford to give money, I’ve written many times on what you can do; follow this link and you’ll find plenty of suggestions, including some Stacey Swimme provided on the last Friday the 13th in April.  If you can’t think of anything else, you could at least post the anti-criminalization principles a group of us (led by Desiree Alliance chair Cris Sardina) drew up last month in as many places as you can think of.  We can win this war, but it isn’t going to be easy.  And we absolutely can’t do it without your help.