Yesterday, June 2nd, we organized a community altar build and picnic in Chicago’s Palmer Square Park for International Whores Day.
Check out this archived post from Survivors Against SESTA, this video from Alianza Mexicana de Trabajadoras Sexuales (in Spanish), or read the IWD NYC 2020 zine to learn more about the whorestory and legacy of this day of celebration and resistance. There’s also this documentary, Les prostituées de Lyon parlent (1975), about the events that led to IWD, and this book, Prostitutes: Our Life, is a must read!
With our organizing crew small, and our capacities limited due to THE WORLD, we still wanted to gather outside, in the sun, share a community meal and build a meaningful space to voice memories, hopes, and of course a righteous collective scream. We also wanted to make sure people had resources and support in writing letters to our incarcerated comrades, and time to do so together.
A beautiful cohort of fellow workers and co-strugglers joined us, brought food, contributed to the altar, and wrote letters to our comrade Rene–we are so grateful to all y’all who contributed, joined in, sent us well wishes, and held space with us. Thank you for also sharing memories and stories to call our loved ones, who are no longer with us on this earth, into our space so that we could uplift, and feel, them with us.
One of our comrades wrote this, in celebration of the day:
“Today (and every damn day) celebrate ALL of the sex working, trading and hustling people of this world AND that means your incarcerated, queer, trans, drug-using and criminalized survivor-comrades! Sex workers are with you in revolutionary struggle, and we are many! Honor the revolutionary struggle of sex workers resisting police repression and sexual violence! Uplift sex working parents and caregivers! Support building radical formations of care and political education informed by whore politics! Be unapologetic in your advocacy to decriminalize all survival! Commit to seeing sex working people as comrades and co-conspirators! Champion bodily autonomy for all! Give thanks to all your whoremothers, living and sunset, who you’ve learned from! Love live the whores of Lyon! Abolish police and borders!”
