Legal Solutions to Sex Work Criminalization
Legal solutions to the criminalization of sex work in the United States is a hotly debated topic, not least among those who are invested in ending sex trafficking. Multnomah County chooses to highlight the leadership of survivors of sex trafficking as experts on which solutions will do harm and which will reduce or eliminate trafficking in the future. Below you will find a link to a group of survivors sharing their diverse perspectives.
Survivor panel second draft.mp3Please click on the audio to the left to listen to Survivor Perspectives on Legal Solutions to Sex Trafficking and Safety in the Sex Trades. This panel includes the perspectives of 3 survivors of sex trafficking. They have used chosen names and their voices have been altered to protect their identities. Recorded in 2022. Facilitated by Kat Salas of New Avenues for Youth.
You can read a transcript of the panel audio here.
Land Acknowledgement:
Multnomah County exists on the ancestral land of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes. We are here because this land was occupied, and its people displaced and killed by colonists and settlers. We acknowledge and honor all of the descendants of the original caretakers of this land. We recognize and honor the resilience of those descendants who are among us.
We also acknowledge that Black people were not allowed to live independently, own property or earn wages in Oregon until 1926. The history and current reality of anti-Black policies are evident all around us in the segregation of our neighborhoods and deeply disparate treatment of our black and brown children, among a myriad of other evidence. How Black and brown people are policed in this community is our life and death concern.
We work in solidarity with all who would dismantle institutions of white supremacy. We recognize that many among us have been trained to uphold these institutions and maintain these oppressive systems in ways that, if unstudied, will remain unconscious and complicit in ongoing violence. We recognize that those among us who are white benefit directly from the systems we wish to dismantle.
We encourage you to think beyond this acknowledgment and consider how to work in solidarity to uplift the collective power, leadership, creativity, and wisdom of Indigenous and Black communities in Multnomah County and beyond. Please take a moment to offer respect and appreciation to the Indigenous peoples whose traditional homelands and hunting grounds are where residents of Multnomah County live, learn, work, play and pray.
Taken from the Equity Subcommittee of the Multnomah County Coalition
Against Domestic and Sexual Violence