Mourning with Asian massage workers in the Americas

Excerpts below are from a press statement by Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian and Migrant sex workers, organizing transnationally.

“In the wake of the deaths of multiple Asian women massage workers in Georgia, we are sending radical love, care, and healing to all of our community members. We acknowledge the ongoing pain and grief from continued violent assaults on our Asian and Asian American, APIA community, which has been compounded by the alienation, isolation, and violence brought on by racist rhetoric and governmental neglect in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic . . .

“We reject the call for increased policing in response to this tragedy. . .  We understand the pain that motivates our Asian and Asian-American community members’ call for increased policing, but we nevertheless stand against it. Policing has never been an effective response to violence because the police are agents of white supremacy. Policing has never kept sex workers or massage workers or immigrants safe. The criminalization and demonization of sex work has hurt and killed countless people—many at the hands of the police both directly and indirectly. Due to sexist racialized perceptions of Asian women, especially those engaged in vulnerable, low-wage work, Asian massage workers are harmed by the criminalization of sex work, regardless of whether they engage in it themselves.

“Decriminalization of sex work is the only way that sex workers, massage workers, sex trafficking survivors, and anyone criminalized for their survival and/or livelihood will ever be safe.

“We are asking that the community stand in solidarity with us and all immigrant and migrant massage workers and sex workers . . . ”

Contact:
redcanarysong.org, redcanarysong@gmail.com