By Aída Chávez
Julia Salazar, a candidate for the New York state Senate,
is doing what few Democratic politicians have done before: taking sex
workers’ rights seriously. The 27-year-old democratic socialist, who is
shaping her policy by consulting the sex work community, is one of the
first candidates to definitively support those workers, including by
proposing concrete steps toward decriminalization.
Sex work — which refers to the willing
exchange of money or goods for sexual labor, including escorts,
prostitutes, pornography actors, and phone sex operators — intersects
with labor, gender, immigration, race, LGBTQ, and criminal justice
issues. It is often conflated with sex trafficking, which involves
forcing someone into sex work through violence or other means, and as a
result, nearly all mainstream political movements have failed to address
the concerns of the sex work community. Salazar, who is challenging eight-term incumbent Democratic state Sen. Martin Dilan,
has centered her campaign around affordable housing and other policy
positions championed by the insurgent left. But her plan to defend sex
workers’ rights has energized a community that has been understandably
skeptical of electoral politics.
One hundred sex workers and their
allies have signed up to attend a canvassing event in the Brooklyn
district for Salazar’s campaign on Sunday, ahead of the September 13
primary. This follows an event earlier this month, when upward of 120
sex workers and activists hosted a pizza party for Salazar to discuss
labor rights and decriminalization.
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Source: The Intercept_
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