We’re taking time to reflect on the last seven years and invite you to support our work by sharing our online resources, celebrating the launch of our latest toolkit collaboration with Survived & Punished (https://sxhxcollective.org/…/SP-Sex-Work-toolkit-single…) and purchasing copies of our benefit zines + buttons! Here: https://sxhxcollective.org/store/ or from Quimby’s Bookstore(Chicago) or Bluestockings Cooperative (NYC)
In late March of 2016, we organized our first demonstration in solidarity with Alisha Walker and all criminalized/incarcerated sex workers who had survived violence. It was our first formal action as a collective. Since then, we’ve fundraised, visited, developed friendships and organized alongside Lili and other comrades inside, protested, found pro bono legal aid (a few times over), and maintained a grassroots campaign for clemency and her release. (Check out the hashtags we used over the years to see the online archive of this work: #FreeLeLe#StandWithAlisha#SexWorkersUnite)
We’ve compiled and shared a syllabus/reading list for political education reading groups for our sex working comrades and accomplices in adjacent queer communities utilizing our original reading group materials. https://tinyurl.com/SWerSyllabus
We’ve taken public space, held teach-ins, trainings, knowledge shares, hosted letter writing events, Know Your Rights events, spoken at virtual vigils + actions, and crafts workshops to demand rights, respect and protection of sex working people.
We’ve created art and print resources like zines, posters, banners and more to artistically intervene with sex workers’ resistance in visual culture. https://youtu.be/vhWH5NSlpTk
We created guides for Letter Writing to incarcerated folx, best practices for Academics, as well as Media and Health & Wellness professionals to become sex work competent and create more ethical conditions for working with sex workers. https://sxhxcollective.org/digital-publications/
Through Alisha’s inside organizing, we’ve built many comradeships with others inside at Decatur and Logan Correctional Centers/Prisons. http://titsandsass.com/if-u-only-knew-how-they-were…/
We saw and celebrated the release of one of our comrades over two years ago, Judy, who we’ve co-authored a book chapter, in “We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival,” with. https://bluestockings-bookstore.square.site/…/we…/1714
We saw and celebrated the release of our comrade Ada almost two years ago, and have crowdsourced and fundraised for her to be able to support her daughter. (( Her CashApp is $ada3636 ))
We welcomed Alisha home (at long last!!!!), seeing her released early, and able to organize, and turn up with friends and comrades on this side of the wall! ( Alisha’s CashApp is $SxHxAl ) We worked with our comrades at Hacking//Hustling to design a support/knowledge sharing effort called the “Formerly Incarcerated Worker Support Program” https://sxhxcollective.org/…/formerly-incarcerated…/ —more to recap that work soon! Alisha has recently joined QTPOC sex working folx and practicing therapists to found Equitable Care Certification, check out this essential work here: https://www.equitablecarecert.com
Our comrades Donna/Dante & L have traveled, hustled, created, and explored tremendously in this past year—their reflections on their recent experiences of surviving and thriving are coming as blog posts soon! ( Donna’s CashApp is: $thisispoetparty and L’s Venmo is: @Miss-Lydia-312 ))
Red started a new academic program, and has been focusing on making zines and toolkits, writing, conferences, and doing more relationship building/behind the scenes support work.
Aa has been busy teaching, publishing, attending conference and doing research for the collective, you can support our underpaid/overworked academic wing too by sending love to our Venmo ( @SxHxCollective ).
We believe we can always be doing even more as a community. We’ve got to keep lifting up our incarcerated sex worker family and work to get them free. More people are learning about and deepening their mutual aid/care practices and it’s so hopeful to see. It’s going to take all of us to resist the death blows of capitalism and the racist whorephobia of criminalization + punishment. We’ve got a long fight ahead of us, but having these years behind us, we’ve learned a hell of a lot. We are a small, extremely small, formation, and yet we feel committed and focused. We’ve learned hard lessons, and have fortified bonds of trust and love. You can be small and make shit happen.