SAY NO to 970; NO MORE State Violence!
mapping state violence against Asian migrant massage work in NYC
CALL TO ACTION
Red Canary Song urges our community to call the office of Krishnan to voice dissent on a bill that would target Asian migrant massage and sex workers. To learn more about the years of racial targeting, read about our Body Workers’ Atlas mapping below.
Red Canary Song worked alongside a digital mapping team from Brown University to create body workers’ atlas, a mapping and oral history of the racist targeting of Asian massage spas in NYC.
By scrolling through the time frame, the heat map depicts the progressive range of prostitution charges to unlicensed massage charges to Dept of Buildings charges. The map shows that even in a legal landscape moving towards the decriminalization of sex work, the state has expanded its use of alternative strategies to crack down on informal labor performed predominantly by Asian migrant workers.
Using NYPD arrest records and Department of Buildings ticket data from the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), the map visualizes the decrease in criminal charges of prostitution and unlicensed massage common in the 2000s and 2010s and the parallel increase of DOB tickets targeting massage workers. The policing of prostitution has gone down through the years due to the gradual acceptance of Sex Work as legitimate labor. There is still a need for decriminalization, as BIPOC, LGBTQ, and workers who are closest in proximity to state and street violence are still targeted. Police, ICE, and building inspectors raid Asian spas on a continuous basis.
Excerpts of oral histories collected by RCS organizers are overlaid with the city’s data, narrating the experiences of massage workers across Queens and the ongoing harms of racialized policing. The oral history transcripts humanize the data of heat mapping, which veils the detailed locations of the spas, protecting workers’ privacy.
As a SW org that supports criminalized, migrant workers, Red Canary Song rarely collects and shares data with the public. It’s difficult to fathom how to collect data in a way that aligns with our values. What we have are our experiences and the stories and lives of BIPOC, women and TGNC, sex and massage workers— and we believe each person who needs our support. When institutions and foundations decline to fund us due to lack of data, it’s because they don’t believe our stories; they deem us unworthy of trust. We invite you to listen to the voices of workers and explore the interactive map at www.bodyworkersatlas.com.
To view on your phone, scan the QR code and hold your phone horizontally
Want to learn more about SW organizing?
Summer Institute:
Sex Worker Resistance with Chanelle Gallant, MA
Wednesday, July 16 · 6 - 9pm EDT
The Sex Work as Resistance Summer Institute flips the narrative of exploitation to highlight how cisgender and transgender women and queer people strategically leverage sexuality to gain access to money, mobility and bodily autonomy that is out of reach for marginalized people. MORE INFO & REGISTER HERE(sliding scale)
