Red Canary - Testimony DC Council

RED CANARY SONG
Rights, Not Rescue or Raids.
Dear D.C. City Council,
Thank you for listening to the lived experiences of so many sex workers in D.C. who have
long been left out of the decision-making table. For every voice that steps up to testify at
City Council, there are thousands of other stories left out due to overlapping forms of
marginalization: from criminalization and poverty, to immigration status and language
access, to lack of stable housing and adequate healthcare, to xenophobia, transphobia,
sexism, and religious intolerance.
Please recognize how special and important each voice is, just to be able to overcome these
historic barriers, and how difficult a road it has been for decades -- to pave the way for each
sex worker to testify directly to City Council.
My community in Queens, NY, is composed of Asian immigrants who are disproportionately

targeted by police in raids, allegedly in search of trafficking. The raids in New York City have
pushed many people outside of the state to places like D.C. and Virginia to find work.
However, most of us do not identify as trafficking victims, and very few arrests from these
“rescue raids” result in any convictions of trafficking. For most workers, while this work
can be difficult, it is still the best economic choice among limited working options --
including the exploitative labor environments of nail salon work, domestic work, and
restaurant work that many are seeking escape from, when they choose to enter into
massage work. Many immigrants in this industry are faced with similar labor issues as
other workers, but are unable to organize for better working conditions due to
criminalization.
Policing and the criminal court system is too broad a tool to regulate the finer grained labor
rights that workers are demanding, including better wage splits, shorter shifts, healthier
and cleaner work environments, a guaranteed base wage and overtime pay. Criminalization
gets in the way of addressing the issues that law enforcement call “trafficking”, which are
not unique to the sex industry.
Instead of receiving substantive help, most workers who are swept up in racially targeted
police raids, are hastily pushed through the justice system, and given criminal records that
make them more vulnerable to deportation and exploitation. Many are charged with
Red Canary Song 红莺歌

info@redcanarysong.org | www.redcanarysong.org
exorbitant fines or have their life savings taken away from them by law enforcement. If a
worker does not corroborate with police in naming a “trafficker” -- which most workers
will not do because they simply do not relate to their employers in this way -- then they are
punished for not fitting into an externally-driven, racist myth of the Asian trafficking
victim. There are few to no social services available for immigrant sex workers who do not
identify as trafficking victims.
Furthermore, workers report rampant police abuse, including inappropriate touch by

undercover cops who refuse to pay for services and ask for “donations”. In addition to the
abusive and extractive actions by police, the criminalization of sex work also creates
conditions in which violent criminals predate on sex workers by posing as undercover cops,
to sexually assault and steal from massage workers.
Since the passing of SESTA-FOSTA, there has been increased police targeting of Asian
massage businesses in the absence of ad services like Backpage, which had formerly
collaborated with police to identify potential trafficking victims. A 2017 Urban Institute and
the Legal Aid Society report shows that NYC arrests of Asian-identified people charged with
unlicensed massage and prostitution undergoing a 2,700 percent increase between 2012
and 2016.
It is criminalization that makes this line of work dangerous, especially for immigrants and
people of color. Workers are exploited on all sides: by bosses who underpay, clients who
sometimes take advantage of their vulnerability, predatory criminals who rob, police who
abuse their powers, and well-funded social service agencies that receive money from the
state to allegedly help trafficking victims, but that are instead profiting off the backs of
immigrant sex workers while promoting policies and policing that directly harm, rob, and
even kill us.
Everyone is profiting off the backs of immigrant sex worker labor, especially police
departments and nonprofit organizations that keep asking for more funding under the
banner of “anti-trafficking”. These are the most pernicious and violent of “pimps” who
make money from this industry, while directly abusing and speaking over sex workers.
Please read the attached 5-year NIH-funded study of Asian massage work in New York City
and Los Angeles, led by Professor John Chin of Hunter College, CUNY:
http://johnchin.net/Article_Files/MP_Study_10.11.19_FINAL.pdf

This is the most comprehensive study thus far of working conditions. Of the 116 Chinese and
Korean immigrant massage workers interviewed in the study, most reported that the fear of
arrest supersedes fear of robbery or assault, and many women are reluctant to seek police
protection even when they are the targets of violent crime. Massage parlor workers report
suffering unnecessarily rough treatment during the arrest process and being arrested
wrongfully. Employers and clients may also use this fear of arrest to intimidate workers.
After five years of intensive study, the academic team behind this research recommends
scaling back law enforcement efforts that are focused on arresting massage parlor workers.
They also recommend that local governments should consider having law enforcement take
a secondary role in the oversight of massage parlors and instead have other government
agencies, such as health departments, take the primary role.
During the Council Hearing on October 17th, 2019, many anti-sex work organizations that
seek to end prostitution by “ending demand” through promoting criminalization of the
purchase of sex, advocate for a violent and harmful policy model called the “Nordic Model”
or, ironically, the “Equality Model”. However, sex workers from Sweden, Norway, Ireland,
France, and Canada that have adopted this policy model have repeatedly protested and
published research about the ways in which this form of “end demand” criminalization has
only served to push the sex industry further underground, making working conditions even
more dangerous for sex workers.
Please take a look at this report put together by European sex workers, public health
researchers, and human rights organizations on the failings of this “Nordic Model” in
Sweden and other European countries:
“Twenty Years of Failing Sex Workers: A community report on the impact of the 1999
Swedish Sex Purchase Act”
http://www.sexworkeurope.org/news/news-region/sex-workers-protest-stockholm-and-launch-report-20-years-
swedish-model-first?fbclid=IwAR2TjChpfkhCmx_u7lm3LeuXRZvtsk5PiL2g_CYA7Fym34MJMH8zq_TQQDs
Since the passing of these “End Demand” laws, sex workers have been evicted from their
homes in Norway (Amnesty International report), deprived of child custody in Sweden, forced
to work in more dangerous locations in France, arrested and targeted for deportation in
Ireland where there is no delivery on the promised social services that were supposed to be
available. In every country where the “Nordic Model” was adopted, migrant sex workers have
been the most harmed by these policies.

In Sweden, the End Demand policy model has resulted in increased police surveillance of sex
workers, including eviction and harassment of sex workers in their private homes. Reported
decrease in prostitution has been focused on street-based sex workers, but these numbers are
skewed by the fact that most sex workers have moved to onlline platforms in the twenty years
since the adoption of the law. Migrant sex workers are not protected from arrest, and are
generally deported. Fearing arrest, migrant sex workers continue to work in the most
dangerous conditions, and are particularly harmed under the End Demand model.
Most significantly, rather than giving sex workers the basic civil rights of an equal place at the
table, Swedish feminist organizations have shut out sex workers from all spaces of public
discourse and governmental decision-making. Over the 20 years in which sex work purchase
has been criminalized under the “Swedish Model”, there has been an increase in stigma
against sex work. Compared to 1999, when the law passed by a thin margin, social attitudes
against sex workers have worsened in Sweden, and now, most polled Swedish residents
believe that sex work should be fully criminalized. Thus, the transferring of stigma from the
sex worker to the buyer has not been achieved. Stigma makes every aspect of life more
dangerous for sex workers, who are excluded from equal rights and civic participation.
While there is little rigorous research demonstrating the actual benefits of the Swedish model,
there is copious amounts of peer-reviewed academic and human rights research
demonstrating that this model indeed harms sex workers, especially immigrant workers, and
does little to reduce trafficking. Only full decriminalization respects sex worker equality.
Therefore, as migrant sex workers in New York City, connected to others in D.C. and across the
country, we ask City Council to please listen to the voices of sex workers in your city and
around the world, who are being abused by police and nonprofit organizations that profit from
harming us.
This is an issue of basic human rights, dignity, and equal access to justice and participatory
governance for sex workers. It’s a global civil rights movement whose time has come.
Please stand on the right side of history, and make the decision to support some of the most
marginalized and invisibilized members of society as we speak truth to power.
Respectfully Submitted,
Kate Zen
Co-Founder & Interim Director

Red Canary Song


Red Canary - Testimony DC Council

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Red Canary - Testimony DC Council

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Red Canary - Testimony DC Council

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

RED CANARY SONG

Rights, Not Rescue or Raids.

Dear D.C. City Council,

My community in Queens, NY, is composed of Asian immigrants who are disproportionately

Red Canary Song 红莺歌

Furthermore, workers report rampant police abuse, including inappropriate touch by

Red Canary Song 红莺歌

Red Canary Song 红莺歌

Co-Founder & Interim Director

Red Canary Song 红莺歌

You might also like