audaciaray:

Speak Up! Doing Legislative Advocacy for Change in New York
For most issues that impact people in the sex trade within the United States, marching on Washington&nbsp;or asking the President to make a change is misdirected energy. States write their own criminal codes,&nbsp;as well as most public health, labor, and housing laws &ndash; all of which affect people in the sex trades. And&nbsp;cities have important powers too, regulating zoning, deciding how local money is spent, and making&nbsp;
the kind of decisions that affect us on a day-to-day basis like how late parks are open or where police&nbsp;patrol. The language &ndash;often just a few words&ndash; included in bigger state and city laws can have major&nbsp;impact on the ability of public services and law enforcement to place restrictions on us and penalize&nbsp;us for trying to make a living. On the ﬂip side, the absence of language that protects people in the sex&nbsp;industry can create space for law enforcement and public services to abuse us and violate our human&nbsp;rights.&nbsp;
Being aware of how state and city law making works is important because it gives us the ability to&nbsp;engage in our democracy and demand change for ourselves and our communities. This guide serves&nbsp;as a primer on how the legislative process works and what opportunities there are for people in the sex&nbsp;industry and our allies to engage in making change.&nbsp;
The Red Umbrella Project is a run and led by people who have wide-ranging experiences in the sex&nbsp;trades. We believe there is a lot of value in engaging in advocacy to change policies that negatively&nbsp;affect our communities, and that people with lived experience in the sex industry are the best people&nbsp;to do this work. But we&rsquo;re not going to lie: there&rsquo;s a lot stacked against us. The conﬂation of sex work&nbsp;and trafﬁcking, not to mention the social and legal stigmas associated with the sex trade, make it&nbsp;really difﬁcult to get our messages across. The truth is that ge