Every year, on December 17, sex workers from Bombay to Zagreb gather to demand that the world stop killing their colleagues. American sex workers are today more organized, and more oppressed, than they have been in years. Sex workers have responded with ferocious activism. More surprisingly, Democratic politicians like New York state senators Jessica Ramos and Julia Salazar have listened to them, canvassed with them, and even promised to introduce laws to decriminalize prostitution.
On February 22 sex trafficking made its way into the headlines when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a billionaire septuagenarian and Trump crony, was arrested during a series of prostitution stings on massage parlors in three Florida counties and charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.
During the seven months police spent investigating the parlors, they secretly installed cameras in massage rooms and made videos of the women as they gave handjobs to their customers. If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary. One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime , and Portside is always free. Police described the investigation as an anti-trafficking operation, but no trafficking charges have been made.
Four women who ran the massage parlors were arrested. Among other crimes, they were all charged with prostitution. All of them have spent more time in jail than any of the men they allegedly serviced.
Police, ICE, rescue industry lackeys, out of the parlors. At the rally, Xu was preceded by local politicians who promised to decriminalize sex workβsomething unthinkable even two years earlier. But a month later, I saw a breakthrough just as great. When two New York City Council members announced a new crackdown on massage parlors, local reporters did not just reprint their press release or blithely praise them.
