Sex Work Decriminalization Advocates Step Up Political Battles

The passage by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of FOSTA/SESTA, laws supposedly designed to crack down on “sex trafficking,” but that according to sex worker right groups have made the lives of sex workers more dangerous, has galvanized advocacy groups to make a new push for decriminalization of consensual sex work, and their efforts are covered in a new article by Rolling Stone magazine. “Since the law was passed, there has been a swell of protests, political actions and new forms of grassroots organizing among the American sex worker rights community,” wrote Rolling Stone reporter Tina Horn. “For now, various community groups are focusing their energies on supporting one another in an era of urgent crisis, but there’s a long-term goal for many within the movement: Decriminalization of sex work, across the board.” But the long-term goal is taking a very specific shape in some cases—support for political candidates who have made sex worker rights, and opposition to FOSTA/SESTA, central to their platforms. Sex worker rights groups rallied behind New York congressional candidate Suraj Patel, as AVN.com reported, in his June primary election. First-time candidate Patel lost his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Carolyn Maloney, a strong backer of FOSTA. But according to a report on the investigative news site The Intercept, another political candidate is now taking up the cause of sex worker rights—and earning ardent backers in the sex work community. Julia Salazar, a 27-year-old first-time candidate running on the Democratic Socialist platform, is running for state Senate in New York and hoping to duplicate the success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the novice candidate who toppled longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in her Queens, New York, congressional district. Ocasio-Cortez stated her opposition to the FOSTA legislation, according to The Huffington Post, but Salazar has made the issue a stronger piece of her campaign, spurring groups of more than 100 sex workers and advocates of sex worker rights to stage fundraising and canvassing events for the Brooklyn candidate. “Sex workers are workers and they deserve to be treated with dignity, including protections and decent working conditions, rather than the abuse and criminalization that they currently face,” Salazar said, as quoted by The Intercept. “I’m dedicated to defending workers’ rights, reforming our criminal justice system and ending exploitation, and we know that criminalization puts everyone in sex work at risk rather than protecting them.” The FOSTA/SESTA law is supposedly aimed at curbing sex trafficking online, but sex workers have said that the law makes their jobs far less safe by pushing their work back underground and onto the streets—and off of the internet and social media where they can more easily screen and manage their clientele. Even some police groups have lamented their lost ability to easily spot and track illicit sex traffickers who previously advertised online but have now been cast out of the internet spotlight where police often simply cannot find them. “Sex workers and their advocates across the country agree that the movement towards decriminalization must allow those with experience in the sex industry to build their own policies,” Horn wrote in her Rolling Stone article. “Although SESTA-FOSTA represents a setback in the fight for sex worker rights, many activists spoke of finding strength in the industrious resilience of their communities.” Photo by MS Mornington / Wikimedia Commons