War and Pizza

Listen to sex workers and trafficking survivors

Decriminalize consensual sex work

Decriminalize the purchase of sexual services from consensual sex workers

Advocate for a higher minimum wage

Advocate for free higher education for low income students

Advocate for more government money being allocated to homeless shelters, DV shelters, LGBTQ youth centers, food stamps, housing assistance, and affordable mental health programs and drug treatment programs

Advocate for police transparency and an end to police brutality and inter-departmental corruption

Advocate for comprehensive sex education and better sexual health services

Advocate for the court system to treat rape like the serious and violent crime it is

Destigmatize sex work by standing up against a mainstream culture that jokes constantly about violence against us

Ways NOT to help prevent sex trafficking and the exploitation of sex workers:

Talk over sex workers or trafficking survivors

Criminalize all sex work regardless of consent

Criminalize the purchase of sexual services regardless of consent

Advocate for laws that treat sex workers and sex trafficking survivors like criminals

Create “exit programs” that basically force sex workers into domestic labor or “skill-building” programs that don’t teach any marketable skills

Think that making our livelihoods a crime and lumping consenting workers together with victims of exploitation will do anything other than make everything worse and literally endanger all of us

Seriously

None

Of

This

Shit

Helps

this picture

Gabourey Sidibe - Portrait by Sam Spratt

A while back, I asked Gabby to come to my studio. Work immediately began and the beginnings of several sketches and pieces started to come together, but I didn’t want to rush the main painting so I shelved it while the usual pattern of clients interrupting personal work took over. Many paintings never get finished or see the light of day, both personal and professional, but Gabby was special. I wrote these notes back during her visit:

Her time in my studio was mostly light, filled with her bubbly energy as we cracked open some beers, exchanged embarrassing drinking stories, taking group photos as if we’d known each other for more than the actual hour we had, and her trying to convince me that she has an actual medical condition where she finds everything adorable. You’d be fooled too if you were lied to by an Oscar-nominated actress with her talent. But when I asked her, stripped of any pretension, that if I were to paint her, how she’d like to be portrayed, she said “I don’t really care about how I’m portrayed” and then she paused and continued “I guess … did you ever watch the show Community? Ya know how the school’s mascot is the human being? I mean, I don’t want to be a grey faceless spandex blob like that, but I’d like to just be a human being. Not someone’s message or idea of what I stand for because of what I look like, just a human, how you’d paint me if I were anyone else".