Let Us Survive: An Oral History of Sex Worker Movements Before and After FOSTA-SESTA

“Sex working people are unbelievably gifted at figuring it out, but also wouldn't it be nice for folks to not have to do that, not have to always be strong, and just enjoy life a little bit?” — Elizabeth Ricks, legal director of the Trans Life Care Program at Chicago HouseYears after passing, FOSTA-SESTA has barely been used for its stated purpose. But it has done exactly the kind of collateral damage that sex worker advocates predicted it would. In our final episode, "The FOSTA Effect and the Future of Sex Worker Justice," we recount all the struggle we have endured in the wake of FOSTA-SESTA. We also discuss what comes next: a renewed push to decriminalize all kinds of sex work in the United States, and all the hard work that will come after that, too. How can we continue to build a legacy of solidarity together?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.

“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 JusticeThe 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.

“SESTA-FOSTA meant that these were no longer singular, discreet events. This was going to now become a trend in federal law that threatened our access to cheap, low threshold advertising as independent workers. In the context of that, it was so hard to have any more faith. It was so hard to not see these constant ‘How to's’ to be anything less than like the flailing of the few, of like the small swaths of sex workers who are privileged enough to be able to survive the latest blow. SESTA-FOSTA meant that the blows were never ending. They would never stop. Sorry, I don't mean to paint such a bleak picture, but that's what it felt like to me at the time. I feel like we were always bracing ourselves for the next individual blow. And I feel like we were always watchful for the broad language in anti-trafficking legislation that wasn't actually attuned to the needs of trafficking survivors that could possibly be used against us. But I don't think we understood or I don't think every sex worker on the street or even every common sex worker in the movement, understood that this would be the ultimate end, you know, of those two trends. Maybe we understood in theory, but those of us who had been just privileged enough to be able to maneuver and keep our scant livelihoods, we thought, ‘Well, I survived the last one, I can survive the next one.’ You can't really imagine something like SESTA FOSTA is coming up in the future because then you can't keep going.” — Caty Simon of Whose Corner Is It Anyway in MassachusettsRight from the start, activists knew that if the bill package known as FOSTA-SESTA became law, it would be devastating for sex workers. And that it would basically do nothing to protect victims and survivors of forced sexual labor. In fact, it would make us all less safe.In our opening episode, we explore the landscape of online sex work and the activists fighting against stigma and criminalization. We detail the federal raids on advertising websites such as RentBoy, and how sex worker rights movements saw the FOSTA fallout coming.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.