5 must-read resources that'll change the way you think about sex work

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If you're interested in human rights, these should come in handy.

5 must-read resources that'll change the way you think about sex work

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Interested in learning more about the fight for decriminalizing sex work but don't know where to start?

I've been there. For the years I've been writing about social and cultural issues, one topic consistently flew under my radar: sex work. As I'm neither a sex worker nor part of the industry's clientele, I was pretty ignorant on the subject as a whole.

In the past year or so, I've become more interested in the topic from a human rights point of view. With the help of some informed friends, I wanted to share five of my favorite resources on the topic below.

1. The Red Umbrella Project's website and journal

The Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) is a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to the welfare of sex workers. From their website:

"We strive to build the capacities of people in the sex trades both as individuals and as a community, so that we can engage in debates about issues that affect us and make positive changes both on personal and political levels. Because of the stigma, discrimination, and violence our community faces there are major barriers to our participation in civic and political life. We create programming that supports the development of skills, confidence, and political analysis among our members so that they can better navigate social and economic justice issues."

RedUP's literary journal, "Prose & Lore," is a great read that features stories from the perspective of the workers themselves.

2. Melinda Chateauvert's anthology "Sex Workers Unite"

Chateauvert's "Sex Workers Unite" is an anthology covering the past 50 years of sex-work activism, focusing on how the fight for sex-workers' rights intersects with other movements (such as gay rights, civil rights, labor, and reproductive rights).

This book is worth reading if you're mostly interested in learning more about why it's important that we all fight for the rights of sex workers.

3. Sex Workers Outreach Project, an advocacy organization

At its core, the Sex Workers Outreach Project is an education-based advocacy organization aimed at putting an end to the stigma and violence sex workers face. Its website is a great place to stop by for some basic Sex Work 101 information.

How can you be a good ally to sex workers? SWOP has an entire page of info just for that.

4. Tits and Sass, a website known for keeping things real

When it comes to keeping up with current events that might affect the sex-worker community, Tits and Sass is an awesome site to check for information. While mainstream press has a tendency to sanitize or otherwise skew news about the sex-work industry, you'll find the whole story here.

For example, Tara Burns' feature on Alaska's case against Amber Batts is great reading you won't find anywhere else.

5. Melissa Gira Grant's book "Playing the Whore"

Melissa Gira Grant is one of the (if not the) world's premier journalists covering issues affecting sex workers. She's the author of the 2014 book "Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work," and her writing has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to The Guardian to The Atlantic.

Here she is giving a talk titled "The End of the American Red Light District" at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. It's lengthy but worth a watch for anyone interested in learning more about the history of sex work in America.

You can read an excerpt of "Playing the Whore" here.

The media doesn't often take into account the lived experiences of sex workers. As people. Let's change that.

Tory Burch

Tory Burch Empowered Women

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This woman found out shelters in LA don't accept women with teen boys. So she made sure hers did.

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Judy Vaughan has spent most of her life helping other women, first as the director of House of Ruth, a safe haven for homeless families in East Los Angeles, and later as the Project Coordinator for Women for Guatemala, a solidarity organization committed to raising awareness about human rights abuses.

But in 1996, she decided to take things a step further. A house became available in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and she was offered the opportunity to use it to help other women and children. So, in partnership with a group of 13 people who she knew from her years of activism, she decided to make it a transitional residence program for homeless women and their children. They called the program Alexandria House.

"I had learned from House of Ruth that families who are homeless are often isolated from the surrounding community," Judy says. "So we decided that as part of our mission, we would also be a neighborhood center and offer a number of resources and programs, including an after-school program and ESL classes."

She also decided that, unlike many other shelters in Los Angeles, she would accept mothers with their teenage boys.

"There are very few in Los Angeles [that do] due to what are considered liability issues," Judy explains. "Given the fact that there are (conservatively) 56,000 homeless people and only about 11,000 shelter beds on any one night, agencies can be selective on who they take."

Their Board of Directors had already determined that they should take families that would have difficulties finding a place. Some of these challenges include families with more than two children, immigrant families without legal documents, moms who are pregnant with other small children, families with a member who has a disability [and] families with service dogs.

"Being separated from your son or sons, especially in the early teen years, just adds to the stress that moms who are unhoused are already experiencing," Judy says.

"We were determined to offer women with teenage boys another choice."

Courtesy of Judy Vaughan

Alexandria House also doesn't kick boys out when they turn 18. For example, Judy says they currently have a mom with two daughters (21 and 2) and a son who just turned 18. The family had struggled to find a shelter that would take them all together, and once they found Alexandria House, they worried the boy would be kicked out on his 18th birthday. But, says Judy, "we were not going to ask him to leave because of his age."

Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles. "[It] is considered the homeless capital of the United States," Judy says. "The numbers have not changed significantly since 1984 when I was working at the House of Ruth." The COVID-19 pandemic has only compounded the problem. According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), over 66,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area were experiencing homelessness in 2020, representing a rise of 12.7% compared with the year before.

Each woman who comes to Alexandria House has her own unique story, but some common reasons for ending up homeless include fleeing from a domestic violence or human trafficking situation, aging out of foster care and having no place to go, being priced out of an apartment, losing a job, or experiencing a family emergency with no 'cushion' to pay the rent.

"Homelessness is not a definition; it is a situation that a person finds themselves in, and in fact, it can happen to almost anyone. There are many practices and policies that make it almost impossible to break out of poverty and move out of homelessness."

And that's why Alexandria House exists: to help them move out of it. How long that takes depends on the woman, but according to Judy, families stay an average of 10 months. During that time, the women meet with support staff to identify needs and goals and put a plan of action in place.

A number of services are provided, including free childcare, programs and mentoring for school-age children, free mental health counseling, financial literacy classes and a savings program. They have also started Step Up Sisterhood LA, an entrepreneurial program to support women's dreams of starting their own businesses. "We serve as a support system for as long as a family would like," Judy says, even after they have moved on.

And so far, the program is a resounding success.

92 percent of the 200 families who stayed at Alexandria House have found financial stability and permanent housing — not becoming homeless again.

Since founding Alexandria House 25 years ago, Judy has never lost sight of her mission to join with others and create a vision of a more just society and community. That is why she is one of Tory Burch's Empowered Women this year — and the donation she receives as a nominee will go to Alexandria House and will help grow the new Start-up Sisterhood LA program.

"Alexandria House is such an important part of my life," says Judy. "It has been amazing to watch the children grow up and the moms recreate their lives for themselves and for their families. I have witnessed resiliency, courage, and heroic acts of generosity."

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We asked three people about how vaccines have impacted their lives. Here’s what they said.

Images courtesy of John Scully, Walden University, Ingrid Scully

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Since March of 2020, over 29 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the CDC. Over 540,000 have died in the United States as this unprecedented pandemic has swept the globe. And yet, by the end of 2020, it looked like science was winning: vaccines had been developed.

In celebration of the power of science we spoke to three people: an individual, a medical provider, and a vaccine scientist about how vaccines have impacted them throughout their lives. Here are their answers:

John Scully, 79, resident of Florida

Photo courtesy of John Scully

When John Scully was born, America was in the midst of an epidemic: tens of thousands of children in the United States were falling ill with paralytic poliomyelitis — otherwise known as polio, a disease that attacks the central nervous system and often leaves its victims partially or fully paralyzed.

"As kids, we were all afraid of getting polio," he says, "because if you got polio, you could end up in the dreaded iron lung and we were all terrified of those." Iron lungs were respirators that enclosed most of a person's body; people with severe cases often would end up in these respirators as they fought for their lives.

John remembers going to see matinee showings of cowboy movies on Saturdays and, before the movie, shorts would run. "Usually they showed the news," he says, "but I just remember seeing this one clip warning us about polio and it just showed all these kids in iron lungs." If kids survived the iron lung, they'd often come back to school on crutches, in leg braces, or in wheelchairs.

"We all tried to be really careful in the summer — or, as we called it back then, 'polio season,''" John says. This was because every year around Memorial Day, major outbreaks would begin to emerge and they'd spike sometime around August. People weren't really sure how the disease spread at the time, but many believed it traveled through the water. There was no cure — and every child was susceptible to getting sick with it.

"We couldn't swim in hot weather," he remembers, "and the municipal outdoor pool would close down in August."

Then, in 1954 clinical trials began for Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine against polio and within a year, his vaccine was announced safe. "I got that vaccine at school," John says. Within two years, U.S. polio cases had dropped 85-95 percent — even before a second vaccine was developed by Dr. Albert Sabin in the 1960s. "I remember how much better things got after the vaccines came out. They changed everything," John says.

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