The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center announces historic $1.2 million grant to expand nationwide advocacy and education to destigmatise and decriminalise sex work

Source (institute/publication)
The Sex Workers Project (SWP) of the Urban Justice Center (UJC)

This week, NSWP member organisation the Sex Workers Project announced a donation of $1.2 million from the Sex Work Rights Fund to significantly increase their capacity, size, scope, and impact. In their announcement, SWP outlined that this funding would go towards hiring a Director of Communications, Director of Development, Director of Research, Organizing, and Advocacy, and an Associate Director for State and Local Campaigns, as well as locally based organising consultants.

SWP provided more details on their plans in their statement.

“While continuing to focus on legislative efforts in New York, SWP will also focus on building a statewide campaign in Oregon to decriminalize and destigmatize sex work, partnering with SWR and other national, statewide, and local human rights organizations through 2020 and beyond.

In a movement that is critically under resourced in the United States due to criminalization and sex shaming, a gift of this size is exceedingly rare and desperately needed. Compared with other human rights movements, the sex worker rights movement has lacked needed infrastructure and resources to change public opinion and policy at the local, state, and federal levels for decades.

The impacts of criminalization extend to housing, education, travel, parenting, migration, and employment in the formal economies. The burden of criminalization falls most often on transgender and cisgender women, especially Black/African, Asian, and indigenous/First Nations women; migrants; and those working in street-based economies—preventing these communities from securing their human right to sustainable livelihoods. The ability for SWP to engage in decriminalization and destigmatization campaigns in multiple regions of the United States means exponentially more hearts and minds will change their views about sex work and sex workers, thus increasing public support for full decriminalization of consensual adult work in the sex trades—a broad career field that is inclusive of sex therapies.”

You can read SWP’s full announcement on their website.