Newsletters

This February, Ricci Joy Levy celebrated 20 years as one of the founders of Woodhull Freedom Foundation in Spring Hill, MD.  The focus of the organization’s mission includes “fighting censorship, eliminating discrimination based on gender or sexual identity or family form, and protecting the right to engage in consensual sexual activity and expression. We do…

  How are inaccurate definitions and understanding of legal terms impacting policy and legislative efforts to decriminalize or legalize sex work? Rochelle Keyhan, CEO and Founder of Collective Liberty, remains haunted by one particular case she litigated during her 6-year tenure as Assistant District Attorney, Family Violence and Sexual Assault (FVSA) Unit, Philadelphia District Attorney’s…

  Is sex work a viable job for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses? It’s a cold, blustery December day in Cleveland. Saturday, December 17, 2022 to be exact. Better known to Jeanne (pronounced jay-nee) Li and her fellow members of the Cleveland Sex Worker Alliance as International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.…

 Why is it important to retain correct definitions of ‘human trafficking’ in laws and new legislation? Bill Woolf can’t get into details about the lawsuit filed in October 2021 against his former employer because it’s not adjudicated yet, but he suggests that I Google it. So I do. Turns out that when he served with the…

Will funding small, sex-worker-led organizations facilitate the sex worker rights movement? Employed in various components of sex work for twenty years, Savannah Sly felt driven to step into a community organizer role roughly a decade ago. She had relocated from the East Coast to Seattle at a time when the Emerald City’s sex industry had…

SJN Newsletter #5: Does legalizing or decriminalizing sex work open the door for increased illegal sex activity? Alison Phillips and her business partner Dan Nash operate the Human Trafficking Training Center (HTTC) in Kansas City, Missouri. Their mission is to provide skill-based training for law enforcement officers in not only how to identify human trafficking…

Can sex worker advocates impact legislative changes to bring about full decriminalization? Fresh off of the first New England Sex Work Summit (NESWS), J. Leigh Oshiro-Brantly [pronouns: they, their, them] feels energized by how well and smoothly the inaugural event went. “It was really, really powerful,” says J., community organizer and researcher with The Ishtar Collective…

Sex Work: Will Legalization or Decriminalization Make a Difference? In each issue of this newsletter, I will profile a sex worker, advocate or expert and featuretheir beliefs and thoughts about whether or not sex work should be decriminalized.Briefly, legalization would allow the governing municipality to regulate sex work, forexample, dictating where it can be done…

Sex Work: Should sex workers be incarcerated? Much of the nonprofit organization’s focus is on helping women who find themselvesserving longer-term prison sentences. This happens to women in Florida, for example,because their third arrest is considered a felony and comes with a mandatory one-yearsentence. That imprisonment can be extended if there were any adjacent charges…

Sex Work: Are You For or Against  Legalization or Decriminalization Want to embroil family, friends or colleagues in a rich and deeply controversial topic of discussion? Ask them whether or not they believe prostitution or sex work should be either legalized or decriminalized. That’s what I’ve been engaging in the past five months for the…