This summer is flying by comrades–we remain grateful for any moments where we can slow down, pause and reflect collectively. This summer, such moments have been hard fought for and won.
At the end of June, Donna Dante and Kai recently tabled for us at the American Library Association‘s Zine Pavilion! This was our second ALA tabling experience, and we were honored that the rad librarians wanted us back! Public libraries are at the forefront of resource distribution and harm reduction and are committed knowledge-workers against white supremacy and fascism. While we didn’t meet our fundraising goal from zine sales, we did have meaningful conversations and several sign-ups for our newsletter–welcome all!
Earlier this month, Red and Donna Dante tabled at our pals’ Midwest Perzine Fest at their biennial zine fest at the Chicago Athletic Association. We distributed over 250 condoms, 100 drug testing strips, 5 vials of estrogen, 50 doses of Narcan, 12 doses of Plan B, 10 boxes o birth control, and almost 50 KN95 masks. We also met our July commissary fundraising goal! Unfortunately, we were a couple hundred shy on our mutual aid fundraising goal. BUT we had such a blast talking with all the perzinesters and attendees–it was a really radical and wholesome time!
Recently, we held our summer collective dinner and zine making night! We’re hard at work on our Year TEN zine! It’s wild to think that our beautiful, rowdy crew have been a formation and a force to be reckoned with for over a decade. Amazing things can happen when you move at the speed of trust!!!
News! News! News!
Our long-time collaborators at Hacking//Hustling have debuted a 4-part sex worker movement oral history podcast! Our comrade Red was on their collective and podcast team. Even after their sunset, they’re still sharing fire content! Let Us Survive: An oral history of sex worker movements before and after FOSTA-SESTA, is an oral history project by sex workers for everyone, and covers a decade of American sex worker justice movements, roughly 2013 to 2023. It also gazes towards the future: of the industry, and of our labor organizing. Check it out here.
Our comrades at BAWS (Bay Area Worker Support) are at risk of folding–please follow their work and donate if you can! From their social media: We’re the last peer-led organization of our kind providing material resources, information, and cultural advocacy for sex workers in the Bay Area. Maybe you know us. Maybe you’re a part of our community. Maybe you’ve been positively impacted by our work. Maybe this is your first time hearing about us. Either way – we’re glad you’re here. ♥️ Here’s the truth: Without additional funding, BAWS will close by 2027. The hurdles to institutional funding for a peer-led SWorker org are real and significant. We have plans in motion, and we need time to get there. We are raising $150k to power us through the end of 2027. We can get there with your help.
We’re opening up our Sex Working Parents & Care Givers cohort again! If you know someone who’s currently incarcerated and in need of commissary support, who identifies as a sex working/trading/hustling person, and also is a parent/care giver please fill out this form on their behalf (after you get consent to do so). We’re accepting 3 additional people into the cohort, on a first applied, first served basis. Want to show your support for sex working parents and care givers? Snag one of our benefit tees!
Upcoming Events & Where to dish with us next!
On September 9th from 7 – 8pm at Pilsen Community Books, join us for a conversation between Sophie Lewis and our comrade Red, about Sophie’s new essay collection, Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe, an original diagnosis of femmephobia in our culture, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all. We’ll have some of our mutual aid fundraising zines on hand for sale!
“To be femme is to embody a dispossessed femininity, to be freighted with freedom, to refuse to be made proper or institutionalized. To love it is to embrace love for women (be they butch or not) in the broadest sense. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. Femme labors deserve our care, respect, and support, but instead face dismissal from masculinist antagonists and feminist allies alike.”
We are still mourning & remembering Emi Koyama
Emi Koyama passed away, Wednesday, June 10th 2026, surrounded by chosen family. Emi is/was such a source of wisdom, care, and community. Our world is assuredly less dim without her living light, but her legacy and works will continue to burn brightly.
Emi is/was a movement elder, zinester, organizer, self-proclaimed rogue intellectual and cherished comrade. I always loved how she introduced herself in her site’s faqs: “Emi is a multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life.” She authored the groundbreaking TransFeminist Manifesto, in the summer of 2000, but then continued revisiting it, updating it, and wrestling with her own theory-making alongside others in pursuit of even more liberatory thought and politics. Emi was brave and honest like that.
The last project I had the honor of working with Emi on, was now years ago–a sex worker focused toolkit for supporting criminalized survivors that Survived and Punished & Justice for Alisha Walker helmed. Our authoring crew, Dani Boachie, Zara Raven, Kate D’Adamo, Alisha Walker and I knew we had to have both Elene Lam and Emi as readers–and emi thoroughly and supportively filled that role alongside Elene, and made this resource even more rich. Now Emi joins Dani Boachie aka Mistress Velvet as an ancestor. You can access the toolkit we co-created here.
I am so grateful for all she taught me, and taught the movement spaces I’ve been apart of for the past fifteen years. Her zines are essential reads, her organizing work full of lessons. Emi’s thought work and theory on transfeminism, coupled with her work building Aileen’s and other organizations, she laid many foundations and offered robust models to think and act with for sex working people, criminalized survivors, drug using people and of course trans fam. There is/was no one like emi. If you haven’t yet or it’s been a minute, please revisit her site, and read her powerful words: http://eminism.org
Emi Koyama, presente! Eminism, forever!
In love & remembrance, Red
Mutual Aid calls:
- We’re in need of urgent funds to support THREE workers who are currently struggling to support themselves after a car accident, unintended pregnancy + loss of work, and emergency relocation respectively. If you have $5 -$20, or more, to spare please Venmo us @SxHxCollective or Cashapp us $SxHxCollective (and put a 🌹in the memo line). Everything helps.
- We also hope you’d consider donating to support a Cleveland sex worker facing thousands in legal fees after a recent arrest, her CashApp is: $daizshmoney