HAPPY (almost) AUTUMN!
Did you miss us last month? While we may have missed our August newsletter, it was certainly not for lack of content! Now, we’re back, and we have so much to share with you.
Read on to catch up on everything we’ve been doing with our community for the past two months. ❤️
With the help of CalArts intern Laura Ohio, SWOPLA board member Mistress Lucy produced SWOPLA’s very first intro video! Please share our video to spread the word about SWOPLA!
The SWOP LA’s Annual Fund is LIVE!
Thanks to your support, within two months of launching our Annual Fund we’ve already raised 10% of our funds!
So far we have received at total of $1,930 to our Gofundme and $1,208 via paywallet donations, including a very generous $1,060 donated by PŌL.
You can find them on instagram here. Thank you, PŌL! ❤️
SWOPLA was also given an additional $10,000 thanks to the support of the Mobilize Power Fund!
We still have a long way to go until we’ve hit our goal of $98,700 but we know with your help we’ll reach it in no time. ❤️
Please consider donating or sharing our campaign with friends, family, and/or on social media!
DecrimSWCA TAKES VALOR US!
VALORUS, a national organization committed to advancing equity and ending sexual violen
ce held their annual statewide conference this past August in Anaheim, CA. This year’s conference title was “Collective Action for Equity” and one step they took to foster that theme was to have an entire track of four panel discussions/workshops focused on sex work and led by people with lived experience in the sex trade.
Eight members of the Decrim Sex Work California steering committee presented during the various sex-work focused panels and workshops, including our own Ashley Madness, who spoke on the panel “Decriminalizing Sex Work: Reducing Stigma and Sexual Violence.” The audience, which was primarily staff who work for anti-domestic violence and anti-sexual violence non-profits, were very receptive to the lessons & stories shared by the sex worker presenters, and each panel had an audience of around 50-60 people.
Decrim SWCA Steering Committee members (left to right) Ashley Madness, Michaé de la Cuadra, Fatima Shabazz, TS Jane, Cesar Espinoza Perez, and Lisseth Sanchez, together with our friends and supporters Minouche Kandel and alix lutnick, at the VALORUS conference Collective Action for Equity, 2022.
It was awesome for sex worker perspectives to be shared with such a broad audience that is doing impactful work, and to have time to delve into multiple sessions on sex work! Thank you Minouche, for telling VALORUS who the experts are and coming along to support from the audience!!! Thank you also to the DecrimSWCA folks who made the panels all fantastic, and to all the SWers, supporters, and advocates who helped us get here! Including alix lutnick, whose research helped make SB 357 possible and who was able to join our policy panel!
For more info on the conference or to watch the plenary speeches, you can visit:
https://www.valor.us/stateconferences/collective-action-for-equity/
MPOX CONCERNS AMONG SWERS
Board member Kim Fuentes spoke with the LA times recently to discuss the growing concern of monkeypox (MPOX) among sex workers. Since the disease is spread through intimate contact, our community is uniquely at risk, however there is a lack on resources available to keep workers safe. Read the entire article here, which includes input from sex workers, community
organizers, and public health specialists.
ABSTRACT ACCEPTED BY THE JOURNAL OF LESBIAN STUDIES
An article about sex workers’ queer art making practices written by SWOPLA members Kim Fuentes, Mistress Lucy, Ashley Madness, Wei Si Nic Yiu, and Lauren Levitt has been provisionally accepted to the Journal of Lesbian Studies’ upcoming special issue on sex work!
As quoted in the abstract:
“Centering the production of art by sex workers, this article will
illustrate how queer artists in the sex industry imbue their lived experiences into their artistic practices. Moving beyond the division of artists and sex workers, this article highlights the urgent need to attend to the voices of sex worker artists, which challenge the paradigm of respectability politics… [W]e demonstrate how queer sex workers create their own artistic forms to counter hegemonic representations of sex work and move beyond dominant narratives about sex workers.”
We look forward to sharing the entire article once it has been published!