magical mutual aid

After getting unjustly fired, without being given a reason, other than “my services are no longer necessary.”  …But then being told, “you know, wendy, it is clear that your goals are not in line with our goals.”   When all I have done is stand up and speak out, refuse to be silent, when I fear something is happening that is not okay…

I was walking home tonight, and there was a woman selling Streetsheet.  And she told her story and I told mine…

She said, “Don’t stop speaking up,” and gave me a big hug….and I held on kinda long, I so needed that hug. (I think I might have freaked her out a tiny bit).  “If you are still unemployed after a month, go to the salvation army, and they will pay your rent, or catholic charities might be able to help.”

We talked a little while longer, introduced each other, and then went our separate ways.

Then, I see somebody on the sidewalk calling out to somebody’s window.  As I get closer, I recognize him as a friend of some friends. He said hey, how are you?  and i answered honestly.  “I have been hearing a tiny bit about some of the stuff that is going on, and its really messed up.” and he gives me a hug and says, “It will alll work out okay and good things always come out of these things.”  His face looked a tiny bit pained like he was trying really hard to believe what he was saying….like he really needed to believe it.

He hugged me again, and we said goodnight.

A few blocks later, I see a huge crowd of people on the sidewalk, and for some reason, I decide to just try and make my way through the crowd.  And all of a sudden, I see a super dear old friend, who had moved away.  I called out to her when she saw me, her face lit up and she jumped up and gave me a big hug.   “Oh my god, I have been hoping I would run into you, because I am back but I lost your number.”   And it turned out that she had just shown her film, and still she pulled me away from the crowd of people, and asked what was going on, and gave me lots of hugs, and we made promises to have tea.

And I got home, and my housemate had some really beautiful music playing in the front room, but the front room was empty…and I sat there and cried, and felt grateful, and full of love.

Self Care on a Rough Day

Thank goodness I found the time to do sneak in a little self-care before my outreach shift.  Well, actually, I guess, if someone else is helping it even goes beyond self care.  Finding myself with a little extra time before the shift, but still needing to pick some stuff up, I stopped by the clinic well in advance before my shift.  I was also hoping to get acupuncture for all the ailments I am currently experiencing, that queasy stomach, the resurfacing pain in the toes that I broke over a month ago, the lingering cough, the rough couple of days, months….I remember one time when I was doing reiki in the clinic, when I asked the community member what they wanted, they asked for a good day:  just one good day, would be so nice.

I wonder how that person’s day was after that?  I often wonder how the reiki affects people afterwards.  And definitely today I was dreaming that there would be a good day, good mood, just make everything better point the acuncturists could stick a needle into and just make me feel a little more cheerful.

Well, I get to the clinic and filled out all the paperwork, suddenly realizing it had been a while since I had actually gone and just registered for services.  The person working registration told me there was no acupuncture, raising an eyebrow as he gave me the news, because, shouldn’t I know that?  I work there, after all.  Well, I had thought about checking the schedule but did not actually find the time to do so before I rushed over there.

I was trying to content myself with the idea of just getting  leisurely grab those extra supplies I needed for outreach, when he told me there was reiki.

So I signed up.  And you know, I only actually had time for a quick shot of reiki, but maybe I could ask for that good day…test it out for myself.  It had been so long since I had actually just received reiki.  And well I asked for something slightly more involved then a good day, but when Dhami Boo finished and asked me how I was doing, I just started giggling.

In fact, I kept silently laughing to myself for no good reason as I packed the rest of my outreach supplies.

You know, I have been thinking a lot about how to take care of myself so that I don’t get so bogged down by the sadness and anger of the world, especially while doing things like outreach.   And as I look at all the tiny little pieces of pain I have accumulated into a larger heavier lump, I wonder where all my self-care tricks went over the years…but damn, if I could fit a reiki session in before every outreach shift, wow, would my work be so much better.  I was able to slow down and be present, and even get mad about the beat cops harassing the homeless people…One homeless guy said he got a ticket for jaywalking and he didn’t even jaywalk! He was just standing on the corner!  Let’s digress for a moment, because actually this WAS going to be the main topic of my post tonight:

Police target homeless people, give them tickets, sometimes for things they did not do.  With this guy, they searched for warrants for a long time, found nothing, so they gave him a ticket he could not pay.  Then that unpaid ticket turns into the warrant so that the next time the police catch that guy being homeless on some corner, they can arrest him and before you know it, he’s in jail.  That’s San Francisco’s method of cleaning up the streets.  I am sure Gavin Newsom thinks clean streets will look good for his campaign.  But he is using some dirty methods.

*sigh*

This is actually old news. They have been doing this for a long time. Its a classic way to pick on the homeless, and not deal with the issue of lack of affordable housing.  I just can’t help but continue to get totally infuriated every time I encounter it.  And I want to keep bringing it up, until everyone recognizes the hypocrisy.

As I walked my bike from that reiki session to where I was going to meet my outreach partner, I noticed that the sidewalks of Market street looked exceptionally clean. It was no surprise that the very next thing I saw were beat cops harassing some guy (who looked poor) in a wheelchair whose stuff had fallen over onto those nice clean sidewalks.  Then I saw yet another pair of beat cops turn the corner of the same block to join their colleagues.

Good thing I had that reiki session.  Because sometimes my anger about these things consumes me and breaks my heart.  And honestly, I am not very effective in outreach with a broken heart…bad moods rub off.  But at least, tonight I was able to take my time and be present with the folks we encountered.  And despite rain (and even a moment of hail) we actually got to talk to a lot of people tonight.

And then I still had the energy when I got home to tell you all about it.

Protest for Reproductive Justice in San Francisco: PLEASE POST WIDELY

Every year, around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, right-wing organizers bus thousands of people from all over the state of California into San Francisco for a gigantic March for Life.

And every year there is a small counter-demo.  It seems like most of San Francisco does not realize that this March for Life is happening.  Well, this year, I would like to see the San Francisco Bay Area in full force, letting those Right to Life marchers know that San Francisco will not stand for their sexist bigotry.

Please come out and make some noise.  Sex Workers, Queers, Immigrants, and more, please let these people know that we have a right to do with our bodies as we choose in a march for Reproductive Justice.

See you there!

Stop the War on Women

UNITE TO FIGHT THE RIGHT

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

10:30am

Music Concourse, Embarcadero, end of Market Street, San Francisco

Free Abortion on Demand, No Forced Sterilization!

Defend Immigrant Rights, Stop the Minutemen!

Civil Rights for Queers, Rescind Prop 8!

Join the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) to counter the right wing “Walk for Life”.

Community not Cops

Last Friday, I testified at City Hall against Mayor Newsom’s proposed budget cuts, which largely went to public health agencies, and other service providers to the city’s poor and homeless.  Supervisor Peskin was proposing alternative cuts which would have taken some of the weight away from the community-based organizations.  One of the things he proposed, was to ask the San Francisco Opera and Symphony to add an extra 1.75 to their ticket prices.  He explained that this would deal with a huge portion of the cuts, and that money could go back to the community organizations.

Using my legal name, I outed myself as someone who became a sex worker while trying to pay for an arts education, and as someone in support of the alternative budget cuts.  I am wholeheartedly in support in saving public health, even though it hurts to propose cuts to funding to the arts.  And I fear that tough times could pit communities against each other who might have once been allies.  However, the 1.75 added to opera tickets sounds like a great opportunity for the more affluent arts organizations to support the larger San Francisco community.

Now, with Newsom’s proposed cuts, at the clinic,  I was facing the reality that the outreach program was going to bear some of the biggest cuts.  It really concerned me how this was going to affect the sex worker community, especially those who we encounter during street-based outreach.  We are a peer-based outreach team.  We are the community reaching out to our own community – our peers and our friends.

We don’t just pass out harm reduction supplies – its not just that someone we see may have just run out of condoms and lube, or that someone may have had to use a dirty needle (because of course this happens), but that we are there for our community.  I can’t tell you how many times I have sat with a stranger while they cried because they had just had a bad date, or they want to change their situation and don’t know how, or because they just got a ticket they cannot pay for peeing in the street (and there was no public restroom).

I know from my own experience the difference it makes for me when someone is there when I am having a bad day.  It can mean feeling a tiny bit better so that I take care of myself.   This is harm reduction.  In hard times, it is even more important to the health of my community that we can be there for each other.

So, I suggested some additional re-budgeting: to the SFPD.

In fact, over the past three years, the total budget for the San Francisco Police Department has increased by several million dollars each year, according the San Francisco Budget Analyst’s office. From the 2005-2006 fiscal year to the 2006-20007 fiscal year, the SFPD police budget increased by 3% and over 23 million dollars.  From the last fiscal year to the current one, the SFPD budget increased 5%, and over 41 million dollars.

Where are these extra million dollars going?  This is what we can examine..

In the past several years, I have seen a drastic increase in police presence.  Sometimes on outreach shifts in the Polk, I will see four or five police cars circle around a block where sex work is happening.  Or I will see a team of beat cops giving a ticket to a homeless person.  What is this doing?

For sex workers, operating under this atmosphere of fear, they are needing to make quick decisions when negotiating with clients.  “Some of the things you need to say and do in order to ascertain if it’s a rapist might very much be at odds with you need to protect yourself from the police.” says Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, founder of the Bay Area Sex Worker Action Network (BAYSWAN).

It can be harder to tell ascertain if a client is safe or not, when one has to make a fast decision before jumping into a car.  There isn’t time for negotiating condom use, or types of sexual acts that will occur.  Time to negotiate these things are vital to the safety of a sex worker.

Heightened police presence jeopardizes this, putting sex workers at higher risk for violence and HIV.

Aside from that, the new police presence has affected the ability of the outreach workers to do their work.  Nick Grace, an outreach worker with the St. James Infirmary, describes an incident on a  recent outreach shift,  in which he and his outreach partner watched two transgender women get stopped by a police officer in an undercover vehicle.  The officer informed them that they were committing a crime, but then told the women that they would go easy on them tonight, and let them go.

“They were really shaken by that,” said Grace, “They didn’t even want to get any outreach supplies because they were really scared.”

What happens when a street worker is too scared to get condoms and lube from an outreach worker?  Other outreach workers have expressed similar concerns:

“The other night, there were four cops to just one kid who I could just walk up and talk to,” said Father River Sims, founder of Temenos, a ministry that practices harm reduction outreach. “He’s scared to death, and he’s high and doesn’t know what to do.  When you get 4 or 5 cops for just one kid – I have never understood that.  All I have to do is walk up and talk to them.”

Perhaps some of the money for the SFPD can be redirected into community organizations that are doing harm reduction and HIV prevention work.  By reaching out to our own communities, we can keep them safe AND healthy.

6th International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Please spread the word:

6th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
Candlelit Vigil
850 Bryant St. (Hall of Justice)
San Francisco
5pm, December 17th, 2008

We will process together to a Memorial hosted by Annie Sprinkle
For our sister and brother sex workers lost to violence
6:30pm, Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission Street (at 11th)
www.sexandculture.org

Vigil Co-sponsored by St. James Infirmary (stjamesinfirmary.org)
and Sex Workers’ Outreach Project (swopusa.org)

Bring a Red Umbrella in Solidarity
with Sex Workers & Our Human Rights

Justice, Violence, and the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers

Earlier this year, in Canada, Indigenous groups held an 87 day cross-country walk – Walk 4 Justice, to raise awareness about violence against Indigenous people.  There have been extremely high numbers of First Nations women who have gone missing, many of their cases ignored by authorities.  According to the article, “And Let’s go for that Justice,” posted in the Dominion, by the time they finished their walk, they had a list of 3,000 missing people.

“According to a Canadian government statistic, young Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence. In honour of missing and murdered indigenous women, the Walk4Justice began in Vancouver on June 21, 2008, Aboriginal Day. Many First Nations women, men and children participated from across the country, walking for 87 days, ending in Ottawa on September 15.”

The notorious serial killer Robert Pickton, made famous in the Sex Worker community for targeting sex workers, killed many First Nations women working in the trade.

This walk brings to mind the fact that in San Francisco, there have been many deaths (some of them obviously murders) of Transgender women who have received little media or police attention…and many of these women have been people of color, immigrants, and sex workers.  I also think of stories I heard, while in the Balkans of Roma sex workers, many of them transgender in similar situations – facing violence because of their ethnicity, gender, or work, and not finding any support from authorities.

Next week, on Wednesday December 17th is the International Day to end Violence against Sex Workers.   As we hold our events across the globe, and grieve the loss of our friends, family, and co-workers, lets also especially strategize to end oppression against people of color, immigrants, Indigenous people, transgender folks, and poor people.

The Triple Life…(and then some)

Hey Readers, This is a post I wrote about nine months ago…I found it floating around in my drafts.  It gets slightly more personal then I usually get on this blog, and I get shy about sharing certain things in this forum, but I think there’s some good stuff in it:

On public transportation, I am reading the latest issue of $PREAD magazine, and getting a nice fix of inspiration from my fellow sex workers….who are wondering about the absent voices of street-based workers, running their art gallery on money they made with porn, putting their stories out there for their anxious and hungry audience – last night, at St. James, nearly everyone was reading a copy of $PREAD – as they got acupuncture, as they waited to do intakes, or for their number to be called – staff and community members getting services were all engrossed in the newest issues.   When I made the announcement that I was doing short interviews for the next issue, and several people volunteered immediately.  Now, I was enjoying my first chance to read the latest issue.

My commute quickly passes, and I grab my bicycle and get off the train to head to a job- babysitting.  Yes, you heard me right: In an effort to have a stable income in case for whatever reason I need to not do sex work, I have been filling some of my weekdays with childcare.  Its refreshing to work with children – they aren’t dealing with the same problems as many of my friends in my community.   And getting a laugh, or even a smile out of them feels like such a success….and I guess this is temporarily fulfilling that weird biological need that keeps catching me off-guard.

Eh, it’s funny to be babysitting. One of the mom’s recently marveled at ‘my interesting skill set’ – and I realize I have revealed many of my hats:  clown, journalist, public health advocate, musician, writer…I can speak several languages, and do some bicycle repair.  I can engage with children for hours, or take a break and talk local politics and community organizing with one of their relatives.

Yeah I am privileged white girl with a  college education, and that gives me advantages in the job market… Sex work allows me to explore all sorts of different interests and roles – giving me the freedom, to be an activist, and an artist, and and whatever else I am currently obsessing about.  Recently, a client (with whom I also have a pretty deep friendship) and I were talking, and he said that it is easy for me to leave the industry if I wanted.  I could go make a lot of money somewhere else – well, yeah, if I wanted to ’sell my soul to the man’.   I happen to have a choice, and I choose to do sex work partially so that I can remain in-line with my ideals.  That is one way in which I am using my sex work….

But you know, secretly, I have sometimes felt that I couldn’t really do anything else. Sometimes, I have felt a little stuck in the industry – once a whore, always a whore.   And yes, I do also happen to mostly really like my work and yes, it has  at times been really hard for me and not always what I wanted to be doing.  (Please don’t take this confession as proof that sex work is bad or that I am a victim after all – who likes their work all the time?) Some of this has to do with the simple fact that because sex work is stigmatized, and criminalized.  You can’t exactly include your amazing skills as a sex worker on most resumes.  No wonder its easy to get stuck. Thank goodness for living in San Francisco and having access to a really supportive and organized sex worker community that helps me through those my own internalized stigmas…and definitely being involved in the St. James Infirmary has been one of the most crucial ways that I have been able to do this.   Long before I worked there, being able to access a non-judgemental community of peers did wonders for my mental health…

Anyway,  it is interesting to return to one of my first jobs I ever had and have reflected back to me that I have a ton of skills I could probably twist into a resume that could get me many different types of work.

Yes, I do have the sex worker rights movement, in the larger, general sense to thank for that.  Definitely working at the St. James Infirmary, the peer-based clinic for sex workers helped me to develop some of my job skills, and definitely it has profoundly shaped the direction I am taking my non-sex work- in terms of public health, community organizing and more.  And having just been given the opportunity to contribute to $PREAD has also already allowed me to further develop my journalism skills.  Communities doing things for themselves  – like providing their own health care or voice in the media is a powerful concept, indeed.  This is just one more example.

But today I was babysitting- reading books, making silly faces, and finding my favorite animal in picture books.  Several hours quickly passed before I was rushing back to the city to do switch gears back to sex work activism and do my last interview for $PREAD before deadline.

The woman I interviewed had a day and week more hectic than mine to say the least.  In between dealing with some hard news this week, she also saw clients, ran her support group, and planned for an upcoming performance….(which we will both be performing at, we realized, and suddenly we were brainstorming a way in which to perform together).  We got really excited over post-interview sugar and caffeine, and soon we had our planners out to schedule a time to put a short performance together.

I looked at my planner and realized how crazy I was to be adding anything else to it, while she chatted about how she needed to go see a friend she just found was in jail, and maybe she could do that in between doing this thing and that.

And when was the time to have fun and take care of ourselves?  Right, and she, like myself and many of my friends, struggles with that thing of learning to receive even a tiny portion of what we give to the world.

Well, in the spirit of that conversation (which I am always periodically having), I only worked for a little bit after she left.   In my world, if I have to work or perform, I will show up, but it’s the parties that I usually flake out on.   I had bought tickets a week ago to go see Slavic Soul Party with my housemate, and that urge to tell him to give my ticket to someone else definitely reared its powerful head.

But!  I got dressed, put on a little make up, (and yeah, drank yet another cup of caffeination) and biked my ass over there, despite exhaustion from a long day and week.

Sometimes you know, you can be tired and go to the party anyway, only to find you should have stayed home.   But not tonight!   A little bit of (really good) music, a few friends, some dancing, and heckling, and I had chilled the fuck out.

A tiny bit at least.

Recession Blues

Two weeks ago, I returned home from my five week trip to the Balkans, and Germany. Some of the very first people, I saw were my dear friends from the St. James Infirmary.  I don’t know if I can explain what it meant to be welcomed home by them, without sounding cheesey. But at St. James, the people there are not just my co-workers – they are my friends and family.

And even given this, I would not have gone into work as soon as I had, had I not also returned home to news of huge budget cuts to the St. James Infirmary, that could would severely affect several programs, including Outreach.

I understand that we are in a recession, and cuts need to be made to budgets everywhere.  I understand that the AIDS office is doing the best it can with hard times, and yet it concerns me that public health programs, especially my beloved peer-run community clinic are in danger of losing funding, because our work is so important.

HIV infection rates and other STI transmission rates pretty low in our sex worker community here, and that has a lot to do with the fact that we have the resources to protect ourselves, as well as the fact being able to connect with our fellow community members is extraordinarily good for our spirits, and therefore our health.   (I don’t know about you, but I tend to take better care of myself when I am also feeling surrounding by a supportive community).

I preemptively started looking into other funding sources, and even checked out some of the funding sources for my friends in the Balkans doing similar work, but it does not seem that organizations in the United States qualify.  Understandably so, this country is supposed to be fairly rich, and even though we can’t count on the government for things like universal health care, we can in some round-about ways live off the fat of the land.

What happens when the corruption catches up to itself, and the fat dries up, or spoils?

You know, I started writing, this blog, in order to share some stories from outreach – in an attempt to use my privilege to share with other others about the realities of the street, and to share what I saw in outreach:  people taking care of each other in really beautiful ways despite hard times, and to share the wisdom of the folks I was interacting with that was shared with me…

It might seem like outreach is not as an integral part of a medical clinic as other things on-site.  But outreach to the community is a really important way for us to remind our community that we care.  Sometimes on outreach, we were the first friendly face our community members had seen all night.  Do you know what that means to us?  This is extremely important work – and outreach is mutually supportive -for us to connect with one another and find ways for us to take care of each other.

The sex worker community full of strong, caring people.  At St. James, we are working hard to make sure that  we are making the best of a difficult situation, and I think we are.   Already, there is a new focus around the clinic, not that our budget cuts are a good thing, but because we are strong, we will make the best of this situation and we will survive.

But hey, that doesn’t mean we can’t use your help.  If you are a member of our community, or an ally or a loved one, please consider donating.

Remember Harvey Milk on the 30th Anniversary of his death

My friend, Sister MaeJoy B. withU – of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is organizing a candlelight vigil for the 30th Anniversary of the murder of Harvey Milk (the first openly gay Supervisor in San Francisco) and George Moscone (mayor of San Francisco at that time).

I hope everyone takes a moment to remember this infamous hate crime, and to honor the work that Harvey Milk did in advancing the rights of queer people.  This happened 30 years ago, and still today there are still hate crimes against the  GLBT community, especially transgender folk.  In honor of the legacy of Harvey Milk, I hope we all can work to prevent these crimes.

Here is the invitation from MaeJoy:

greetings san francisco friends & sisters and friends all over the world.

this thursday, November 27th marks the 30th anniversary of dan white killing supervisor harvey milk and mayor george moscone in San Francisco at city hall.

this bulletin is to invite anyone in the bay area or visiting the bay area for thanksgiving in joining a peace vigil at Dolores Park (where 20th street meets church) at 6:39pm.  from this location we will look over the city of san francisco and hold the vision for peace, gratitude & unconditional love for our community and others in the coming year.

at the approximate time of the shooting there will be a short exercise marking the number of bullets shot.  Other than that, the vigil will be silent.  All participants are asked to bring a white candle.

if you are in the SF bay area i invite you to join us.  if you are somewhere else and wish to do something for this anniversary i ask you to pull together folks in somewhat of the same manner, or light a white candle wherever you are, holding the wish of peace around the globe.

please please please help me circul8 this information to your friends, family members and any others that you think might be in town and wish to do something like this on thanksgiving.

about 8:00pm we will take all of the candles to 18th & Castro where they will be left in loving memory of Harvey Milk & George Moscone.

thanks for taking the time to read this email! i appreciate you tonzZz.

always,

maeJoy B. withU

Macedonian Sex Worker Activists Respond to Questions of Sex Work and Trafficking

A while back, I sent my friends in Macedonia the following questions about issues of Sex Work and Human Trafficking. Borce (an activist and organizer from STAR), collaborated with Katerina of HOPS, (Healthy Options Project Skopje, an NGO providing a drop-in space, medical services and more for Sex workers) to answer the questions. I just got word from Katerina that there have been massive police raids of the open scene, or the street based sex worker scene, over the past several days. She will be sending me more information on it, which I will share here.

1) Is there a difference between sex work and human trafficking? Please explain.
There is a big difference between sex work and human trafficking. Sex work, first of all, is a type of work. Trafficking on the other hand, is a type of migration. Sex work is voluntary work where sex workers are making decisions about the the type of sex work, frequency of work, about the prices of their services and it is type of free will and personal choice . Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor (including bonded labor or debt bondage) and servitude. It means breaking the basic human rights.

2) If prostitution were to be decriminalized, would it make it easier for human trafficking to occur? Why or why not?

No it wouldn’t. We believe that it would make easier the war against human trafficking. If sex work is decriminalized it means involving the elimination of state regulations that are more repressive than those imposed on other workers and businesses, such as the right to recognition and protection under labour and employment laws. Also this will reduce stigma against sex workers, which will make sex workers less vulnerable for human trafficking.

3) How would decriminalization of prostitution affect sex workers?

Decriminalizing prostitution would not only reinforce the right to earn a living but it would support the fight against sexually-transmitted diseases and the AIDS epidemic. With decriminalization, sex workers will have the avenues to redress when their rights are violated. By decriminalizing sex work, sex workers will have access to legal recourse in the case of abuse by client or police. They will have access to social services including health benefits, unemployment and retirement plans. They will have human rights protection, including the right to choose the career of their choice.
The society will also benefit from decriminalization, because:
Society will be more just, with everyone, including sex workers, enjoying their human rights.
The corruption in police and judiciary would be decreased. And we all will live in less hypocritical society.

Borce, activist and organizer with STAR, an activist group working on Sex Worker issues in Skopje, Macedonia

[Read more about Borce and STAR here: http://wendyvinaigrette.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/star-sex-worker-organizing-group-in-skopje-macedonia/

Katerina of Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS) an NGO providing services to sex workers in Skopje, Macedonia

Read more about Katerina and HOPS here:http://wendyvinaigrette.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/hops-skopje-macedonia/]