Our collective’s statement, that our comrade Julie read, for this evening’s vigil action for Yang Song:
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, and sex working communities.
Like our comrades in Red Canary Song, and all of you gathered here today, 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 the NYPD coercing workers to become informants against one another! We want an end to the stigma and shame that surrounds survival of any kind!
We have collectively mourned the murder, yes, we charge the NYPD with the murder of Yang Song, and we have held space for our righteous anger for three Novembers now. We were with you outside of the 109th precinct demanding justice for Yang Song on December 17th for International day to end violence against sex workers, again in this very spot last year as we built our own community alter of memory and resistance and here were are all again, our gathering now even larger, growing with resilience and rage.
We will keep coming back, joining together until we see a Flushing, and a New York, that respects and uplifts migrant massage and sex working people—their workplace needs, their access to community resources, their freedom of movement without fear of harassment from judgmental neighbors or police.
We will only see personal and political safety when those directly impacted lead their communities, develop solutions that do not rely 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!
[photo credit: Melissa Gira Grant]