We were proud to join our comrades in Red Canary Song 红莺歌 at their teach-in this past Friday, March 29th, to counter the carceral anti-massage (and sex) worker narratives being pushed by CM Koo and the NYPD in Flushing, Queens! RCS distributed hundreds of pages of resources, know your rights documents, statements from migrant massage workers, information about direct service providers who support (im)migrant communities who are experiencing violence/criminalization, and more.
Photo credit to Emma Whitford and Decrim NY!
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Here was the statment one of our organizers read aloud at the teach-in:
The Support Ho(s)e Collective sends its love and solidarity to Red Canary Song and all of you today who want an end to the harassment and criminalization of our immigrant, migrant working communities.
There are a myriad of organizations in the struggle for decriminalization, sex workers rights and legitimate anti-labor trafficking endeavors. It’s going to take all of us, advocating and fighting to build a better world—one that recognizes our value, humanity, bodily autonomy and agency as sex working or trading people. A world that protects our trans and GNC fam, a world that is free from white supremacy and bigotry. A world that truly believes Black lives matter. A world that fully acknowledges sex work is work. A world without police, without prisons, and without the criminalization of survival.
The Police raids must stop. The violence of these tactics in the name of rescue has never been justifiable. The targeting of vulnerable communities like migrant or new immigrant workers must stop. If you’re concerned about labor trafficking, remember this, the Police traffic survivors of violence to the courts and jails not to support or services.
Like our comrades in Red Canary Song we want police out of massage parlors. We want an end to police demanding sexual services for free and entrapping workers! We want an end to you coercing people to become informants!
We want an end to threats and empty promises of protection! We know the police do not protect sex working or massage working people. We know that we must insist and demand on community-led solutions to harm. We know that we must listen to, and respect the self-determination of migrant working peoples if we are to see our movement for Decrim and our broader communities grow and thrive.
We will not have safer communities through policing! We will not have safer communities through demonizing outdoor and street based sex working and trading people! We will not have safer communities so long as elected officials only care about their wealthy and well-connected constituents who are dripping with respectability politics that shames their neighbors!
We will only see personal and political safety when those directly impacted lead their communities, develop solutions that do not relay on fear, arrest, entrapment, deportation and incarceration that the police bring. We will only see safety when the cops are out of parlors and massage workers are able to freely and openly address the real harms, grievances and struggles they already self-organize to address every single day without the threats and harassment they currently survive!
All power to migrant sex workers! All power to migrant massage workers! Solidarity forever!