Philadelphia is the poorest big city in the United States, and low-income women and trans people, especially those of color, have achingly high barriers in the way of their dignity and survival. At our Project SAFE community house in Kensington, we support women and trans people who have chosen sex work as a survival strategy.
For many of our workers, the trauma they experience comes from poverty, racial and gender injustice, and interactions with law enforcement β not from engaging in sex work as a means for survival.
Project SAFE is committed to helping people not only to stay safer while working in the sex industry, but also to supporting them when they want to change jobs or retire. We were thrilled when one of our members informed us that she had been offered a job on the books that would enable her to transition out of the sex industry, a change that she had been trying to make for some years. All she needed was to pass the background check. But then the call came β her offer was rescinded when her arrest record for prostitution came up.
She has now returned to street-based sex work, kept from the on-the-books economy by the criminalization of her survival.
Many voices in law enforcement β including U. It means that sex workers have to take more risks to find work, and makes it more difficult for sex workers to screen clients before a date. When then-candidate Larry Krasner was running for district attorney, he reached out to us, to learn what sex workers needed to stay safe.
