When Ashanti Carmon, a 27-year-old Black trans woman was killed in DC, a local news report included a quote from a neighbor complaining about sex work and condoms on the street rather than highlighting the needs of Black trans communities at increased risk of violence due to employment discrimination, housing discrimination, racism, transphobia, and cissexism.
Despite widespread moral panic about sex trafficking, most ordinary people don’t understand how their responses to street-based sex work might be contributing to violence, exploitation, and trafficking in the sex trade. The reality is that many communities, and especially Black and brown trans women, are pushed out of traditional forms of work, turn to underground economies like the sex trade to meet their needs, and then face criminalization and homelessness (and worse: the criminalization of homelessness) that makes them vulnerable. 90% of street-based sex workers have experienced violence in the course of their work, and often, that violence comes directly at the hands of law enforcement.
At the same time, with the rise of gentrification and the influx of more affluent, often white new residents, neighbors are increasingly turning to the police to make complaints about their Black, brown, and poor neighbors occupying public spaces. 2019 data from the Community Service Society of New York shows that quality of life complaints increased by 166% in long-standing communities of color that had had large influxes of more affluent, especially white new residents. Consistently, wealthier (mostly white) residents move in to neighborhoods and use their complaints to police the behavior of longtime residents of color as a way to establish new neighborhood norms that make communities of color feel less welcome and safe. Instead of advocating for increased resources to address the root causes, neighbors use their complaint calls to police to displace marginalized communities.
Street-based sex workers and their more stably housed neighbors have a shared goal: community safety. For Black, brown, and poor communities, policing is a primary source of the violence. And for new neighbors, calling the police is often all they know. So, how can equip communities with new strategies for building safety without calling the police?
While some gentrifiers might truly intend to push out neighbors of color that they deem “undesirable” by calling the cops, we can still reduce harm by providing neighbors with alternatives, understanding, and education. As organizers, we need to educate communities about the reasons that people trade sex on the street and the risk factors that make them vulnerable to the violence, trafficking, and exploitation that we have a shared interest in disrupting. As we’re innovating new ways to use technology to better support people in the sex trades in the wake of FOSTA and SESTA, we also need to get creative about fighting the traditional ways that technology has been weaponized against those who are most marginalized in the sex industry.
Ending the criminalization of sex work is an essential part of the strategy to curb violence against people trading sex and people profiled as sex workers, and in places like Washington, DC and New York, sex workers, advocates and lawmakers are working to pass comprehensive legislation that seeks to decriminalize the buying and selling of sex among adults, whlie also targeting the many other laws that criminalize sex workers for surviving, like the #WalkingWhileTrans ban that acts as “Stop and Frisk” for Black and Latinx trans and cis women, and the criminalization of housing sex workers that puts people at increased risk of trafficking.
But this policy change won’t happen overnight, and it’s not enough on its own. Apart from decriminalization and decarceration, we have to change the social norms that stigmatize and harm sex workers, which disproportionately impact those working on the street. And we have to fight stigma with education.
Research shows that art, when paired with education, can change behavior. With support from Hacking + Hustling, and Decrim NY worked with the NYC-based artist M on new art to tell our stories: the stories of street-based sex workers and sex workers who have experienced police violence, and to urge neighbors to stop calling the police on their neighborss. We’ve plastered the art throughout neighborhoods like Jackson Heights, Prospect Park, and Hunts Point and our canvassers have engaged in dialogue with neighbors about the real problems of trafficking, violence, and exploitation in the sex trades and in public spaces, and helped them understand that our communities need more resources, not more policing.