Thomas Breen photo
SWAN members gather at Grand Avenue and Ferry Street.
A dozen local sex workers and allies gathered in Fair Haven to remember two members of their community who died this year.
At 6 p.m. Monday at the corner of Grand Avenue and Ferry Street, a dozen New Haveners affiliated with Sex Workers and Allies Network (SWAN) held the vigil, the city’s second annual one, to remember sex workers who died or went missing in the past 12 months.
SWAN member Christine reads the names of sex workers who were murdered in 2018.
Holding small plastic candles and red, folded umbrellas, they stood in a semi-circle in the McDonald’s parking lot. There they read the names of recently deceased New Haven sex workers Inez Perez and Leila Rivera, and still missing local sex workers Lisa Ann Calvo and Evelyn Frisco. They also read the names of around 50 other American sex workers who met with violent deaths this year.
“These are the women that we’ve lost to the streets,” SWAN member and New Haven sex worker Christine said as she read this year’s memorial list of names. “Should there be better policing in our area, better law enforcement in our area, better laws in our state, maybe we will have a shorter list next year.”
SWAN members Sally and John.
The vigil was part of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, an occasion of mourning and remembrance that has taken place every Dec. 17 since 2003. Originally conceived in Seattle as a day to remember the dozens of sex workers murdered by the Green River Killer between the 1970s and mid-2000s, the local ceremony was organized by SWAN, a sex worker advocacy group that distributes condoms, clean needles, glass pipes, Narcan, and toiletries throughout Fair Haven and that also connects sex workers with social service and healthcare providers.
“It’s important to know and to remember that we’re all humans,” Phil Costello, a Hill Health Center nurse practicioner and SWAN supporter, said at Monday night’s vigil. “And that we’re all here to help each other. This is a very hard life.”
Supported by SWAN founder Beatrice Codiani to her right and William “Juneboy” Outlaw to her left, Christine read the names of women shot in Laredo, Texas, and stabbed in Patterson, N.J. and strangled in Ardomore, Pennsylvania.
Marching down Ferry Street.
When she got to the two New Haveners’ names, she said that Perez was strangled and “brutally murdered” right outside of her Fair Haven home. Rivera, she said, overdosed and died of exposure at the corner of Exchange Street and Ferry Street, just a block south of where the group was standing.
“We miss her, and we love her dearly,” she said.
A SWAN supporter who identified himself as John said he had a relationship with one of New Haven’s missing sex workers, Lisa Ann Calvo. He said the two had twins together.
“Every day they call me,” he said in between tears, “and they ask me, ‘Why? Where is she?’ And I can’t answer it.”
A memorial for Leila Rivera at Ferry and Exchange St.
The SWAN members then opened their red umbrellas, an international symbol for sex worker rights, and marched down Ferry Street, chanting, “Sex work is real work!” And “We will remember everybody missing!”
They stopped at the corner of Exchange and Ferry to lay the candles in the shape of a heart on the spot where Perez died in January. They then continued their march down to Wolcott Street, where they laid their signs at the base of a chain link fence.
A SWAN memorial at Ferry and Wolcott.
“We want to see closure for these families,” Codiani said. “Somebody knows something. The police know something. It’s been much too long for these families to suffer.”
These lives, full of hardship and sorrow, are no less valuable or worthy than you or me. I mourn these women and thousands of others --- my sisters and brothers all. God bless. There is little peace in this life.