VISION
We are Bay Area Workers Support (BAWS) a group of Bay Area advocates that work for the health, safety, and livelihoods of sex workers in the wake of Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA/SESTA) legislation. These laws took away the online marketplace where workers advertise and vet their clients. Because sex work and sex trafficking are continuously conflated this severely hurts sex workers while doing nothing to actually prevent exploitation or “trafficking” in the sex trade.
While our government is busy legislating against us, WE are organizing our community resources, skill-sets, knowledge, and power to set up community care systems.
It is our goal to provide sex worker communities:
Support, information & resources. You are not alone
Providing immediate relief/connections for emergency needs
Creating strategic action around sex worker safety, media advocacy, and policy
BAWS recognizes & welcomes diversity within all sex workers. We believe in the importance and power of intersectionality within our communities. We are an anti-racist, anti-transphobic, anti-whorephobic organization, pledging to always do better.
“Sex worker justice is inherently tied to the justice of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQ, disabled, undocumented, poor or low-income, and drug using communities. We live in a time where civil liberties are threatened by legislation and doctrine. From net neutrality, Black Lives Matter, the Bay’s housing crisis, to immigration laws, marginalized groups are experiencing heightened levels of persecution and violence. It is crucial that we recognize sex workers within these struggles.”