Category: Intersectionality and Politics

Universal Periodic Review (UPR) 2020

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Every five years the United Nations reviews the human rights record of the United States in its totality in a process called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Sex workers and trans people have been able to use this process to bring attention to human rights abuses. Join Penelope Saunders (BPPP), Monica Jones (the Outlaw Project), NJRUA, the Black Sex Worker Collective, and Cris Sardina (Desiree Alliance) to learn about what recommendations our communities would like to see made by the international community when the US is held accountable by the United Nations

Joyful Heart Foundation

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PA Report: Backlogged [Rape] Kits Have Dropped By 97% : In 2019, Pennsylvania passed S.B. 399, requiring state police conduct rape kit audit. The 2020 report, released in May, showed that since then, Pennsylvania state agencies have reduced the number of untested rape kits by 97%—with less than 100 still untested.

Support CA SB233

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CA SB233 would prohibit the arrest of individuals engaged in sex work when they come forward as a witness or a victim of specified violent and serious crimes. It will also end the practice of using condoms as evidence of sex work related offenses.

Sex Worker Founded Dead and Burned in Upper Arlington. Police refuse to call it murder. | Mockingbird Paper

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Police have a term for murdered sex workers. The term is “Less than Dead.” This is the literal station house and locker room phrase and has also been used to describe the level of zeal when a crime is committed against sex workers. It was not suprising hearing those words echo from the bushes in Upper Arlington this morning. Viewing this latest case, and the context and the official reaction makes the echos loud. 23 year old Bobbie Renee Simpson, whose body was found burning in a bush on the side of a park trail by a jogger the previous morning. The police are investigating the crime as an arson and abuse of a corpse. Arson is a felony. Abuse of a corpse is a misdemeanor. In the eyes of the police the burning bush was more alive than Bobbie Renee Simpson. - Mockingbird Paper / Ohio

Town hall with Suraj Patel marks turning point in sex workers’ rights movement by Jenavieve Hatch

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Patel’s campaign and Survivors Against SESTA organized the event. The panel and town hall focused on FOSTA / SESTA, legislation enacted in April that sex workers say drastically affects their ability to do their jobs safely. The bill amended section 230 of the Common Decency Act. Through tears, Doroshow and Gentili, both of whom are trans women of color, spoke of the violence that’s plaguing their community, and how that violence is getting worse under the new legislation.

“Our community is getting raped, beaten and killed,” Doroshow said. “I don’t have the capacity to bury another fucking girl.”