We’re out here today because Backpage is one of the most used sites for self-advertisement, screening, promoting our services and work.
Chicago’s Sheriff Tom Dart is attacking one of our best and last remaining working/advertising resources.
Due to these attacks workers are forced into hazardous conditions, we become vulnerable to harassment, raids and arrest from cops.
For Dart this is NOT an issue of saving girls, women so much as it’s maliciously attempting to criminalize sex workers. Tom Dart’s racist misogynistic transphobic policing is killing sex workers and our friends and families. Dart you are NOT saving anyone.
Whether you’re an outdoor worker, an indoor worker or you have a side hustle, this shit effects you. When the cops and legislators come to take away our little piece (and it’s REAL little) of “okay” we need to send a clear message that we are coming for them.
Tom Dart: Stay away from our safe, reliable avenues of income. We don’t want your phony saviorism!
The Chicago police ALREADY target outdoor workers harshly, which effects trans* folx and folx of color the most!
We say NO MORE! Do you hear us Tom Dart? No more raids. No more cops.
There will be nothing about us, without us!
We demand you cease all raid scheming. We demand you leave outdoor workers alone. We demand you leave indoor workers alone. We demand you leave ALL sex workers, our families and friends, alone!
We demand safe working conditions that WE determine! We demand rights NOT raids!
We demand the immediate end of attacks on folx of color, women, femmes, trans* folx, queer youth who are trying to survive in a world that doesn’t support them.
We have the right to survive, thrive. All workers should have this right free from harassment, criminalization.
We stand with Alisha Walker and any sex worker punished for surviving! We demand the right to live, work, and defend ourselves from violence!
Our labor shouldn’t be criminalized. Our labor is valid and should be respected.
Someone needs to give Tom Dart and all these Feds a history lesson –I’m happy to be the one to do that.
There haven’t always been cops. And we certainly don’t need them to be a facet of our life today.
We’re out here today standing in solidarity with the world’s oldest profession.
Whores saw the formation of police and we are going to see the abolition of them as well. –Red