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A local activist group called Sex Workers and Allies Network sent in the following release.
On Sunday, community members and advocates gathered in Fair Haven to speak out against violence towards people in sex work, in solidarity with the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The event was organized by the Sex Workers and Allies Network, or SWAN, a group that does daily outreach and harm reduction in the neighborhood, handing out winter clothes, clean needles, condoms, and naloxone (a medication which reverses opioid overdoses) to people working on the street. The group reported that this month one of the naloxone kits they distributed was used to stop a potentially fatal overdose. A SWAN member read the names of those who have lost their lives to violence doing sex work in the past year in New Haven and around the world.
“Sex workers in our community in New Haven are beaten and experience sexual assault, and their claims are ignored by the city and even by health care providers. The stigma and criminalization of sex workers has to end.” said Beatrice Codianni, the founder and director of SWAN.
People who do sex work face violence every day: physical violence, but also the violence of stigma and the violence of being policed. The vigil was intended to recognize and combat that violence, and to remember those who have suffered from it.
Around 50 people gathered in a parking lot at Grand and Ferry and marched to the corner of Ferry and Chambers, where they laid signs and candles in a makeshift memorial. The area in Fair Haven was chosen because it is where two women, Lisa Ann Calvo and Evelyn Frisco, went missing over a decade ago when they were doing sex work in the neighborhood. Evelyn Frisco’s mother was in attendance at the vigil.
Advocates and allies called for a citywide decriminalization of sex work, which they said would increase the physical safety of people working on the street. They also called for housing and improved drug treatment for sex workers.
Prostitution is an abomination. That being said, it is so sad that violence occurs. However, stigma and policing are not violent but required societal measures by which both the prostitutes and the decency of the public are protected. Legitimizing prostitution by equating it with valid work while simultaneously illustrating the various harm reduction methods only proves that prostitution is explitlty filthy and therefore not work at all but rather slavery that must be eradicated by calling what it is: an abomination. Activities that are done for illicit drugs are rarely legitimate vocations. At least not for long...