“All of us were local organizers, moving to a national scale. We did what we do, you know? There's a threat and you get your people together. That that informed a lot of our decisions, because we were all place-based organizers who also were community organizers and labor organizers where, you know, our workplaces under threat. We just got to get our people into the same room and talk about what's happening. I didn't know what else to do.” — Kate D’Adamo, of Reframe Health and Justice
The authors of FOSTA-SESTA positioned online platforms as potential villains in the fight against sex trafficking. But sex workers and trafficking survivors have always understood that these platforms are simply a neutral communication resource. And that FOSTA-SESTA threatened much more than it stood to protect.
Activists weren’t just the canaries in the coal mine; we were like Cassandra, the Greek myth of the woman screaming prophecy, whose tragedy is that no one listened to her. Until it was too late.
In Episode 2, \"The Cassandras in the Coal Mine,\" we explore the early days of FOSTA-SESTA before it became law: how the movement responded, what it stood to change, what we had to fear, and what gave us hope.
Let Us Survive interviews Lakeesha Harris of Chicago Volunteer Doulas; Desiree Collins of the Colorado Entertainer Coalition; Jared Trujillo of CUNY Law School; Chibundo Egwuatu of HIPS (Honoring Individual Power and Strength) in DC, Elizabeth Ricks of the Trans Life Care Program at Chicago House; Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore, Marla Cruz, a sex worker and writer from Texas, Caty Simon of Whose Corner Is it Anyway in Massachusetts; Kate D’Adamo of Reframe Health and Justice, and M of APAC (Adult Performer Advocacy Committee) in Los Angeles, along with Danielle Blunt, Red, and zara raven of Hacking//Hustling.
This podcast was hosted, produced, written, recorded, and edited by Tina Horn and Mickey Mod, with additional production support from Christopher Holloway.
Let Us Survive, an oral history project by sex workers for everyone, covers a decade of American sex worker justice movements, roughly 2013 to 2023. It also gazes towards the future: of the industry, and of our labor organizing.
To learn about this project, other research by Hacking//Hustling, and more about the past, present, and future of sex worker movements, please visit HackingHustling.org.
These interviews were conducted in 2023. Some facts and perspectives may have evolved since then.
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