Sex Workers Offer Condolences to Atlanta Massage Parlor Community

SAN FRANCISCO—The Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) has reacted to the murders that took place at Atlanta-area massage parlors Tuesday evening by offering heartfelt condolences and support to everybody in the massage parlor worker community, whether an owner, worker or client. “I started out in the industry by working in massage parlors,” said Maxine Doogan, president of ESPLERP. “I found a community there which supported me, taught me my trade, and taught me how to stay safe. So I feel so much sadness reaching out in this situation. I feel for the families and friends of everybody gunned down in Atlanta while simply trying to make a living.” Massage parlor workers, family members or friends of a massage parlor worker who wish to talk about the events in Atlanta may call 833-433-2746 (toll-free). "We have been flooded with calls from concerned workers this morning. We are here for you," Doogan assured. “This violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” said Claire Alwyne of ESPLERP. “Massage parlors have been long targeted by politicians, the media, law enforcement and religious zealots as ‘hotbeds’ of sex trafficking. They have been the subject of numerous unconstitutional police stings, like last year’s Florida raids, where the police characterized the massage parlor workers, many of them of Asian descent, as victims of forced labor and the owners as ‘traffickers’. After decades of anti-trafficking and anti-sex work rhetoric, it isn’t surprising that a fundamentalist took the message to heart and waged a crusade to eliminate locations he saw as ‘temptations’.” “The women murdered yesterday were working low-wage jobs during a pandemic,” said Reada Wong of ESPLERP. “They had to work to support their families. But they did so in a climate that demonized their ethnicity and criminalized their work, and left them vulnerable to violence.” The widespread public panic around massage parlors has been fanned by politicians and the media, and has been to justify a xenophobic broken immigration policy and the criminalization of prostitution, according to ESPLERP, which called on Congress to immediately pass a national ban on the criminalization of prostitution and reform the immigration laws so as not to leave so many people’s rights in a precarious legal limbo. The Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) is a diverse community-based coalition advancing sexual privacy rights through litigation, education, and research.