Last year we sat down with Women’s March to talk about the case of our comrade Alisha Walker and why all feminists should fight for sex workers’ rights and decriminalization!
Women’s March 2017 Transcript
Sophie:
Hi everyone. I’m Sophie from Women’s March, and I’m here with Red, whose an organizer with a Chicago-based group called, Support Ho(s)e. Can you tell us a little bit about what Support Ho(s)e is, what you do, and also, thank you so much for being here.
Red:
Thanks so much. Hi, Support Ho(s)e is a collective of sex workers and trusted accomplices, working here in Chicago to build radical community for all sex working people. We fight actively for decriminalization of sex work and also for bodily autonomy and agency of all sex workers in the commercial sex industry and trade.
Sophie:
And you, personally, you’re an organizer with that organization?
Red:
I am, yes.
Sophie:
Right. And can you just quickly share which pronouns you use for folks in the comments and [inaudible 00:00:45]
Red:
Sure. You can use They/Them for me, please.
Sophie:
Okay, great. Thank you so much. And I use She/Her. So Women’s March proudly supports sex workers’ rights fully and completely, but we know that there is disagreement within the feminist community about this topic overall. So can you talk a little bit about that? A little bit about what you’d like to say to people who conflate all forms of sex work, which is a wide trade with a lot of diversity-
Red:
It certainly is.
Sophie:
… with the very specific problem of sexual exploitation of women.
Red:
Of course, absolutely. And I would say that, putting it mildly, it is one of the largest frustrations of the organizing efforts that sex workers do, not just in this country, but all over the world. And so I would say that dispelling some of these conflations, it’s incredibly important for how our movement’s progressed and how we build solidarity. I would say to paraphrase Melissa Gira Grant, feminism has a real problem with work. And by work, I mean, labor, addressing labor and having a labor analysis.
Red:
And I think that that’s been an issue for quite some time. Sex worker exclusionary feminists who don’t recognize bodily autonomy or economic agency of sex working people really have no business calling themselves feminists. I think either you respect people’s self-determined struggles, their methods of survival, and their organizing efforts for safe decriminalized work, or you’re on the wrong side of history. And I think that that’s where I put my foot down on it. I would demand that people actually listen to sex workers and respect our calls for solidarity.
Sophie:
Right. And I think there’s just generally a lot of confusion about this. There’s a broad assumption that no one chooses sex work or, or even what choice is, and what choice, based on the absence of other choices, and full choice is. So just to be clear, we’re very specifically talking about sex workers who this is their job, and this is what they do. And that’s a very different thing from sex trafficking, and that’s something that can be addressed at another time, but that’s not what we’re talking about in this moment.
Red:
Sure. Absolutely. I think that distinction is incredibly important. And to just put a finer point on it, we currently live in a society that compels us to labor, to support ourselves and our families. And so choice is an interesting word to use, right? When we’re all compelled to labor for a wage and for our survival, and to try to not just survive but thrive. And so I would just say that as well.
Sophie:
Right. And there are far too many people for whom their job is not the ideal thing that they would ever choose.
Red:
So many people, most of us, I think, right?
Sophie:
But for some reason, we always see people harping on this very specific idea when it comes to sex work. But there are plenty of professions where, again, it’s absence of other options.
Red:
Absolutely.
Sophie:
So you touched on this a bit, but why is it important for women, specifically, to support sex workers’ rights?
Red:
Sure. I would say that sex workers, erotic laborers, those engaged in survival sex within the commercial sex industry or trade, overlap with a variety of different communities and identities. That just socially right now, and historically, have a harder time of accessing resources, of working in safe conditions, avoiding harassment, et cetera. So I would say, for instance, our sex-working community is incredibly queer. It’s incredibly trans, it’s incredibly gender nonconforming, it’s differently abled, both physically, mentally, emotionally, and involves lots of folks of color, black folks, cash-poor people, people with prior arrests and convictions, and people who are undocumented. So when you support sex workers, you’re supporting workers within all of these communities and lifting up those broader struggle, for justice, respect, safe working conditions, et cetera.
Sophie:
Right. And that’s why as Women’s March, we say that we fight for all issues, because women are impacted by all issues. The identity of women overlaps with so many other identities. And so just as we are not fighting for all women, if we are not fighting for say undocumented women, we are not fighting for all women if we are not also fighting for women who are sex workers.
Red:
That’s absolutely right.
Sophie:
So you briefly mentioned the term, survival sex. Do you mind just explaining for folks who are watching what-
Red:
Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, so definitions are very personal to lots of different people, but just in the shorthand, I would say survival sex would be engaging in sexual favors or sexual acts to make sure that you have a roof over your head, to make sure that you have some food, make sure that you have access to bus fare or rides, you might stay in a relationship. Performing sexual acts so that you can be okay, so that you can get by, not necessarily having a set wage, not necessarily having an advertising platform for your particular services, but rather getting by and surviving while what you can to do so, whether that be sex acts or favors, et cetera.
Sophie:
And that really, I think, demonstrates also why sex work is such a specifically important field to address, because I think it does cross a barrier between what we view as the intimate and the professional. And what you’ve demonstrated in describing survival sex is, is that is a fine line where there’s a lot of blur and, I think, just, again, respecting the individual choices and needs of different people [crosstalk 00:06:28] to.
Red:
Our lives are very complicated. And I think that it behooves us to have compassion and wants when we talk about the ways in which folks need to get by.
Sophie:
Right. And there’s a Maya Angelou quote I love so much, just when people tell you who they are, believe them. So when people tell you what they’ve decided or what they need, believe them.
Red:
Yep.
Sophie:
So can you talk a little bit about what campaigns Support Ho(s)e is working on right now and, specifically, the campaign for Justice for Alisha Walker.
Red:
Absolutely. I’d be happy to. Currently, we have two main focuses for the organization and it’s a collective and we’re quite small. So two is fine. We’re happy with two, because they’re big projects. Just to talk first so that I can expand on Alisha’s case and support work for her later, we’re focused on political education for ourselves and our community. So that takes the form of reading in discussion groups. So we have formal and informal gatherings about biweekly, where we read contemporary and, sometimes also, historical or theoretical texts even, to better understand our hoe herstory, and to inform our organizing efforts. And what that ends up being is that we discuss the social, economic and political climate that we’re currently working, living, existing and resisting in. So basically we talk about the need to smash the racist, classist, sexist, hetero, patriarchy, all the time. That’s pretty much what we discussed at every meeting.
Sophie:
They’re my favorite things.
Red:
Yeah, yeah. They should be everyone’s favorite things to do. And so that’s one tenent of the struggle, right, of our organizing efforts. Our second main organizing and fundraising effort, that’s around the case of our friend and fellow collective member, Alisha Walker. Alisha Walker is a young, black woman and sex worker, who is wrongfully imprisoned right now in the State of Illinois for self defense and survival. She was attacked by a violent client, and she saved her own life and the life of a fellow sex worker when she participated in this radical act of self defense.
Sophie:
So can you talk a little bit about what her trial was like? I know she was sentenced to 15 years in prison, right?
Red:
She was, yes.
Sophie:
It’s a long time.
Red:
It’s a long time. It’s an absurd sentence for survival. Because we’ve got to be very clear about what she was sentenced for, and it was for protecting herself and protecting her fellow worker and friend, and surviving. That’s what God Alisha 15 years. Okay? So Alisha’s case and trial highlight not only the discrimination against sex workers by the carceral system.
Sophie:
And just to be clear, the carceral system is the prison system.
Red:
Prison system, the ramping up of policing, surveillance, state violence, et cetera.
Sophie:
Got it.
Red:
All of those things are equally and intimately intertwined. So just to define that. But her case also underlines racism and classism and the misogyny of the courts as well. So just to make it very clear for folks, Alisha sat at Cook County for over two, actually almost three years in pretrial detention. So she was not convicted of anything, she had not gone to trial yet. She sat in a place designed for maximum, what, 90 days of holding people before trial for almost three years. Okay? I mean, that’s a separate issue that we can also address, because that is a rampant problem in our country.
Sophie:
Right, right. Folks who follow us on our socials might know that we’ve talked before about the case of Kalief Browder, who was held in New York City at Rikers Island for about three years without ever being convicted of a crime.
Red:
Yeah.
Sophie:
And ultimately, that just does destroys lives.
Red:
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. Breaks down family ties, and it’s designed to break down the person who’s incarcerated. And so I would say that Alisha’s trial was also rife with prosecutorial misconduct when it did come around, reprehensible behavior from the judge, that’s Judge Obbish, remember that name, if you do harm reduction voting. And also absurdly poor representation, which is again, another issue, if you’re a cash-poor person and needing representation, there are not a lot of great options. So everything was stacked against her.
Red:
And, currently, to give people a little bit of an update about Alisha’s case we’ve filed for that appeal, right? Her legal team has filed for that appeal. However, the State has now asked for its second extension. So it’s really trying to stall the process of justice and to get a new trial. And this is also a tactic that the State generally employees, when it knows that once you have good legal representation, you have a fighting chance of winning against them.
Sophie:
So she has new legal representation.
Red:
Yes. We are incredibly excited that we have Kirkland and Ellis as her pro bono legal representation. That was a long fight coming, and we’re really, really happy that she has good, good representation now.
Sophie:
So how does her case connect to, and we you spoke about this a bit, but just to expand on that, how does it connect to larger issues of anti-blackness, Alisha’s a black woman, the stigmatization of sex workers, the stigmatization of women who are perceived as sexual, and the larger criminal justice system?
Red:
Absolutely. I mean, of course, it does intersect with all of those things. And I think that Alisha’s case might seem unbelievable to some folks, however, this kind of whore phobia and discrimination is all too common. If people are looking to connect to these broader issues, like fighting against racism, fighting anti-black sexism, fighting mass incarceration, or the criminalization of our bodies, of workers, the criminalization of self-defense, which is a whole other thing that we could talk about as well.
Sophie:
The targeting of women who are seen as sexual.
Red:
Absolutely. Absolutely. All of those things. If people are concerned with those struggles, they should look, and need to look, at cases like Alisha Walker’s, cases like Gigi Thomas, Janet Duran, and they need to center those cases in their activism, because we need to free incarcerated sex workers, because all of their cases expose these interlocking oppressions.
Sophie:
Right. So what can people do right now to help Alisha Walker? I know that, currently, she’s incarcerated, currently her team is working to fix that situation, but I also know her mother right now is not able to visit her.
Red:
Yeah. And just an aside on that, so that folks are aware. To really just underscore the petty and arbitrariness of prison policy, which is almost entirely at the whim of wardens. Sherri, Alisha’s mother is unable to visit, even though her family is able to visit the rest of her… answering a questionnaire. And so because of that technicality, the warden caught that, didn’t like the look of it, and has decided to bar Alisha’s mother from visiting her. Alisha’s mother’s incredibly important to her. Their relationship is beautiful and strong and necessary, and so this is just another tactic to break inmates down and to break people down. And it’s just another form of punishment.
Sophie:
Right. And as women, specifically, relationships with our mothers, chosen or born or otherwise, the things that hold us together. I know the women in my life are the things that keep me together and going. And so I think the cruelty of, specifically, trying to deny someone that.
Red:
Sure, sure.
Sophie:
I mean, I know that people’s relationships with family look all kinds of different ways, right? But in this particular instance, this is a really detrimental banning of Sherri from seeing Alisha. In terms of what people can do, I want to urge folks to also look to other existing organizations for inspiration, guidance and call to action, right? And so I would urge people to follow the work of Love & Protect, Survived & Punished, and Mothers United Against Violence and Incarceration, to better understand the way in which the police, the courts, prisons, all those things, right, comprising of the carceral system that we talked about earlier, work to punish survivors and, essentially, dictate who’s allowed to survive and who’s allowed to have a body and a life worth defending.
Sophie:
And I would say for more instances of this kind of criminalization of survival, we could look at Marissa Alexander. We could look at Bresha Meadows. We could look at Ky Peterson, CeCe McDonald, Eisha Love, Kelly Ann Savage, Deborah Helregel. And I mean, the list goes on and on, right? And now we’ve added Alisha Walker’s name to this list. So we’re asking folks, specifically in supporting Alisha, to write letters of love and support to her. And if they’re able to also donate, if you intend to write and want a response back. Because the way that the prisons in this country and other places work, paper, envelopes, stamps, pens, all those things cost exorbitant amounts of money in commissary. And we need to ensure that we can empower folks to be able to write us back and have dialogue, which is so crucial, right, for folks that are inside. We want to empower people to be able to respond when we send letters of support, right?
Sophie:
So just keep that in mind, if you’re writing to anyone who’s incarcerated, donate what you can so that they can respond and have a pen pal relationship with you. We’ll definitely link in the comments information on how to get in touch with Alisha, including her mailing address, her inmate number, so that all of your mail can be received. Probably also a link to best practices when writing so that your mail doesn’t get tied up, because that’s also a thing that happens very frequently. So that folks are also aware, we’re doing a lot of our fundraising for Alisha’s commissary right now. And so if you searched Alisha Walker: Survived and Punished, on Generosity, that platform, you’ll find that support page that’s actually being moderated by Sherri, Alisha’s mom. And all of those funds go to support and enable her friends and family to visit her, as well as her commissary needs.
Sophie:
We talked earlier about securing good pro bono legal representation. So we feel very confident on that front. We have the Facebook page where people can stay informed. It’s called, Justice for Alisha Walker, that will also be tagged and linked in this video as well. And so I would just urge people to follow and stay in touch with us so that they can be best informed on how to support, not only our incarcerated family of sex workers, but sex workers who are out and fighting for decriminalization and for safe and fair working conditions as well.
Red:
Thank you so much-
Sophie:
Yeah, of course.
Red:
… It’s really great to sit down and talk with you. Thank you so much for sharing both the work that you do, the need for respecting and fighting for sex workers’ rights, and the specifics of Alisha’s case with me, with everyone, with Women’s March.
Sophie:
I really appreciate the time. Thanks so much for watching.
Red:
Thank you, everyone.