YAS Podcast: Savannah Sly #153 Transcript
In this episode of YAS Podcast, host AM Davies interviews Savannah Sly, a seasoned sex worker and activist affiliated with New Moon. The discussion covers the intricate issues of white supremacy culture, ableism, and the unique challenges faced by marginalized sex workers. Savannah shares her journey into activism, driven by personal experiences with the war on drugs and her immersion into the sex worker advocacy community. The conversation also delves into the historical and current impacts of anti-sex trafficking campaigns fueled by propaganda and moralistic agendas. Savannah highlights the importance of local community organizing, mutual support among sex workers, and the necessity of engaging with various social justice movements to resist fascism effectively. The episode concludes with an overview of New Moon’s initiatives, focusing on philanthropic engagement, financial support for sex worker-led organizations, and capacity-building programs aimed at empowering the sex worker rights movement.
*This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* *This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* Begin transcript after opening credits.
AM: Hi everyone. My name is AM Davies, and I will be your host today on YAS Podcast. Thank you so much for being here with us. Um, before we get into today’s episode, I want to remind you that YAS Podcast is produced by Yes Work, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing public perception through media.
If you love our podcast and you’ve been listening, please consider donating donations like yours. Keep this project going. Head to yesper.org/donate. Let’s talk about today’s guest today on YA Podcast, we have Savannah Sly, a sex worker activist who works with New Moon, which provides support to sex worker and survivor led organizations in the US working to advance self-determination for people with lived experience in the sex trade.
Hi Savannah. How are you today?
Savannah: I’m doing great today and it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
AM: Oh [00:02:00] my gosh. Thank you so much for being here. So can you please confirm with our audience what your pronouns are?
Savannah: I go by she and they.
AM: Great.
And do you identify as a sex worker?
Savannah: I sure do. Uh, perhaps too much.
So it’s a part of my identity.
AM: It’s,
Savannah: Yeah.
AM: So how long have you been doing sex work for?
Savannah: Since I was 18. So over 20 years.
AM: Okay. Yeah. That’s a while.
Savannah: It’s a while. Yeah. And I, um, amm so glad to have found sex work. Uh, yeah. The moment I turned 18, so.
AM: Right,
right on. Oh wow. Like, that’s so great. Like when I was 18, I definitely wanted to get into it, um, but my mom wouldn’t let me but she’s like all about it. Like she understands so much more now. She’s gotten a lot of education over the last 20 years, so, um, but yeah, that must’ve been so great. I started when I was 21, but 18 would’ve been [00:03:00] rad. Yeah.
Savannah: It just helped me become more financially stable.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: While I was school.
And it sure be working at a box office for a minimum wage part-time.
AM: Is that what you were doing initially
Savannah: around school. Yeah,
AM: yeah, yeah.
Savannah: So stressful. I started getting gray hair
AM: at 18
Savannah: ’cause of financial stress and then I just started, just never looked back.
AM: That’s awesome. I love that. So what about your sex worker advocacy?
When did, when did you start doing that? Like what drew you into doing sex advocacy that you’re into now?
Savannah: Well, my family was impacted by the war on drugs when I was in eighth grade. Uh, our house in Vermont was raid by the FBI because my father had been caught crossing state lines with a whole lot of marijuana.
And that’s when I learned that my musician, artist, parents sold weed. And that’s where our stable income as a family came from. And my dad had to go away to prison on a mandatory minimum sentence. And so I learned very quickly about the [00:04:00] war on drugs. And through that I learned about propaganda. Um, I. I studied Nazi Germany in high school and propaganda there, and so I always was interested in propaganda, propaganda and also understanding that law enforcement isn’t necessarily here to protect us, uh, because it had ripped my family apart and made life much harder.
And my dad was a good guy. And it just seemed like such a waste of resources and very cruel. And so flash forward to, I guess I was in my mid twenties. I was in Seattle being a dominatrix, minding my own business, and I had found sex worker community for the first time. Pretty much I’d found SWOP Seattle.
Uh, we were doing brunches and all this light, fluffy stuff. And then all these headlines about sex trafficking started popping up in the news and then people’s in calls started getting raided and our review board got shut down. It was sex trafficking, this and that. And my swap buddies thought we would be, you know, proactive and reach across the aisle and go to these town halls about sex trafficking and be like, Hey, [00:05:00] you know, some of us have experienced exploitation in the sex trade and what you call sex trafficking.
It doesn’t look like this. Let’s work together ’cause you’re hurting sex workers. And we quickly realized,
AM: yeah,
Savannah: there’s no interest in that, that this was a specific campaign to eradicate the sex trade. And I’m like, oh, this is propaganda.
AM: Mm.
Savannah: They’re saying
that they wanna help victims of exploitation and violence in the sex trade, but really their goal is a morality campaign to eradicate the entire adult industry.
And I got all fired up, all that, all that anger from eighth grade, ninth grade, my dad being in prison. Um. Came bubbling up and I’ve been, um, a haphazard and sometimes clumsy, but diehard advocate for sex workers’ rights ever since.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, I find interesting what you said, like you were, you guys were just minding your own business, going to brunch, and then sort of almost out of nowhere, like all of a sudden all this anti-sex trafficking stuff came up and it kind of made a light bulb [00:06:00] go off over my head.
I’m like, wait a second. Yeah, they weren’t always so anti-sex trafficking. When did that happen? Why did that happen? How did that, just because it wasn’t so, and now it’s like they’re getting millions and millions of dollars through grant funding to fight sex trafficking, which we, the people in the sex trade see as highly problematic.
Do you have any idea, you sound like you might have, you might know the answer to this. How did that start?
Savannah: So this is gonna be very broad brushstrokes history.
AM: Sure.
Savannah: Okay. But, um, so within feminism sex work has been a highly contentious issue. Our, our late and Great Carol Lee, AKA, the Scarlet Harlett coined the phrase sex work in the seventies.
’cause she was going to these feminist conferences, um, where they were using phrases like the sex use industry. Uh, we know that feminists are very divided on the issue of the sex trades because some people see it as inherently exploitation and violence against [00:07:00] women. And then some people see sex work as a form of labor, uh, where workers should be protected.
Um, and so Carol Lee coined sex work to start engaging in this conversation and saying, no. There, there’s, there’s another side to this. It’s not all exploitation. That division in feminism is so fierce. Um. That, uh, there’s actually a great article that I’ll send you later. Maybe you can put it in your podcast notes about strange bedfellows where, um, anti-sex work feminists.
SWERF’s.
Mm-hmm.
Started collaborating with, um, groups, essentially like the Heritage Foundation, these far right. Conservative entities who are also opposed to the sex trade because they had a common goal now of eradicating the sex trade, but for very different reasons. Right. Um, and so flat, you know, and then the sex worker rights movement in the seventies, eighties, nineties is gaining momentum.
Sex workers are humanizing themselves. Um, we have groups like SWOP popping up in the early aught. Sex workers are becoming visible. And, uh, essentially onto the scene [00:08:00] comes this woman named Swanee Hunt, who is a US diplomat, uh, lives in Massachusetts, very well connected, uh, connected to oil money. Word on the street is that men in her family, perhaps her husband.
I used to see a lot of sex workers. This is just the word on the street.
Okay.
I, I can’t prove that. But Swanee Hunt is maybe a scorned woman who hates whores.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: Uh, just suggesting that, just saying,
AM: yeah.
Savannah: But, um, I’ve talked to people who were part of her think tank when she, uh, as a wealthy person, um, also a feminist connected to these feminist movements.
Decided to put together think tanks on how do we eradicate prostitution in the us. And there have been leaked notes from some of these meetings and it’s been corroborated through some conversations I’ve had with people. Um, that, uh, essentially this, uh, sex workers have done a great job of humanizing themselves.
They can’t just be rounded up and arrested as bad women anymore. Um, we need a new story. We need to flip the narrative. We need to frame them as victims. [00:09:00] Um, and this is something that’s been done before we had the white slave panic over a hundred years ago to prevent, uh, racial mingling between black men and white women.
So essentially it’s a recycled narrative of trafficking hysteria.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Um, that was very much manufactured and funded. And when you have the right players who are politically connected, you can turn this into a SWERF-y feminist issue. Um, you can get a lot of feminists on board with this because, I mean, not many people know sex workers.
Right,
AM: right.
Savannah: Um, it’s easy to. Buy into the idea that the entire sex trade is exploitative and violent, right? You can also, um, if you’re a diplomat and you have political connections, you can start talking to, uh, the Democratic party and other political entities about how we really need to stop this sex trafficking thing.
And this is where you start to see a lot of federal engagement, uh, but essentially, um, through Suwanee Hunt’s initiatives, there was a couple of targeted cities around the us. Seattle was one of ’em. It was Seattle, Chicago, Boston, I think Denver. They tried San [00:10:00] Francisco, but they got ran outta town because the sex worker history there was so vibrant there.
But essentially they, uh, did paid policing campaigns where they would, in some cases hire entire positions onto the, um, local prosecuting attorney’s office to work with local law enforcement to a, do mass media around sex trafficking, but to do all these stings and these raids. So it was a manufactured hysteria around a real problem, which is exploitation of the sex trade.
But it didn’t help anyone just like the war on drugs, which is why I got so pissed, AM.
AM: Yeah. Geez. Wow. That was really,
Savannah: that’s your lightning history.
AM: Yeah. I love it. And I just, I. You know, I know that there’s big money behind these campaigns. I, I’ve seen it firsthand in the, um, grant writing and review process, um, that I’ve been a part of.
And you can even, like, you go into the bathroom right at a random, like, you know, rest stop. And there’s like sex, are you [00:11:00] being sex trafficked signs all over the bathroom. And it’s like, and it’s these anti-sex trafficking. Messaging is everywhere, which has to be, has to use up a lot of money. And then there’s no money going towards the actual- or very little, I should say not. No, but there’s much smaller amounts of money going to the actual organizations that are helping these people on the ground, like actually helping them and not further exploiting them, which is what we’re finding through the anti-sex trafficking organizations or movements that they’re doing, like literally when they get raided, they’re being abused by these people who are claiming to help them.
It’s just so like, it’s like a circus. Like I can’t wrap my head around the, the logic of it.
Savannah: It’s certainly not making anything better for anyone.
AM: Right. Right.
Savannah: It’s creating all these jobs in what we call the anti-trafficking industrial complex.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Um, but fortunately, um, I mean, I’m an example of one [00:12:00] sex worker who became activated through the sex trafficking hysteria.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: I’m one. Hundreds or thousands potentially. We’ve seen the movement for sex workers’ rights explode in the past 10 years. Um, we’ve blog post this about this on New Moon’s website. Um, whereas in 2015 I was at swap USA and we could count 30 or 40 sex worker led organizations in the us. There could have been more, but now at New Moon, we maintain a list of 300 and growing, so that’s like 1000% movement growth.
In 10 years for a highly stigmatized, criminalized population that’s making themselves visible. Uh, we don’t have hard data around why that is, but one of our theories is that this sex trafficking hysteria, which has led to increased, increased policing censorship online, uh, SESTA/FOSTA, things like that, banking discrimination with all their, uh, trafficking flags, um.
People are coming outta the woodwork as sex workers to try and advocate for [00:13:00] themselves. So, um, yeah, that’s where we’re at and that’s why I’m here is because of all the anti-trafficking bullshit, but also the tides are turning. There are real anti-trafficking service providers now who recognize that they’ve been fed a bunch of garbage about what sex trafficking is, and there are groups that actually work with sex workers now.
To mitigate exploitation. So the Cupcake Girls in Oregon and, um, Nevada is a great example.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Freedom Network, USA, which is the biggest network of anti-trafficking service providers. They have a very firm statement about being, uh, pro decriminalization and not harming sex workers. So sex workers have done a good job of flipping that narrative.
So yay us.
AM: Oh my God, yes. I love good news. It’s so nice to hear good news. Um, so, so literally they, they flipped literally. They were like, we’re we’re anti-sex work. And then they learned something new. They learned new stuff and they were like, oh, we get it now. Like that [00:14:00] happened?
Savannah: Well, it turns, so there’s political operatives and then there’s service providers.
And then there’s people with lived experience in the sex trade. If you’re a political operative and you don’t like sex work, you don’t like prostitution, you can spin a bunch of bullshit to convince the public and the government to crack down on sex trafficking, right? You can spread propaganda. Um, and that’s going to affect people with lived experience.
And those people with lived experience at some point are going to encounter service providers. Service providers are not necessarily political operatives. A lot of people get into social work and service provision because they wanna help. And so if you’re, uh, wanting to help, if you’ve been told that there’s hundreds of thousands of sex trafficking victims who have been chained to a radiator and gang raped.
At a very young age, uh, and that, that is all that there is. That’s, that’s what the entire sex trade is. Um, you’re gonna go into your profession looking for that. And when you don’t find that and you find something very different, or when you [00:15:00] see that police raids are actually hurting people in the sex trade or the services you’re providing are not competent or relevant, um, um, you’re gonna start getting angry that you were fed a bunch of bullshit.
AM: I see.
Savannah: And you’re gonna start wondering how you can actually help people.
AM: Yeah. I see.
Savannah: Yeah,
AM: because there are actual sex trafficking victims. Yeah. That, that need to be helped. And my concern is, are you actually helping those people with these laws and with your, the systems of, you know, raiding and, and doing X, Y, and Z, that’s harmful and like, so are the actual sex trafficking victims being helped by these organizations?
I don’t expect you to know the answer to that.
Savannah: I’ve met people with a lot of different circumstances.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: I’ve met people who. Have benefited from a raid and rescue situation.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: Um, but then I know a sex trafficking survivor who was straight up being pimped out and there was an [00:16:00] underage girl in the same house being pimped out.
Police bust down the door, she gets arrested as the trafficker, and now this tra trafficking survivor is on a sex offender registry, um, as a trafficker, despite having been subjected to exploitation herself.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: And then also the police can sometimes be a source of violence. So it’s like, and just in the United States, we’re just really backwards about how we extend help.
We, we tend to force help.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: On
people without asking people. What is helpful, right? And when you lead with law enforcement, um, it can be traumatic, you know, it can be a different kind of trauma on top of what you’re already experiencing,
AM: Right.
Savannah: So, um, yeah, if you wanted to learn more about this, I’m not a service provider, but there’s so many great people you could talk to.
Uh, SWOP Behind Bars or any is an amazing resource about this or anyone from Cupcake Girls or Freedom Network. USA.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I do read Swap Behind bars. I get their, um. Notifications. I read their stuff [00:17:00] quite a bit. Um, yeah, they do incredible work. Um,
Savannah: they do,
AM: thank you so much for, you know, sort of getting into that.
’cause uh, you know, I, I know a decent amount, but I’m also still learning it. It’s such a, it’s such a huge topic. Um, and it’s very nuanced. And complex. So yeah. Thanks for breaking that down for us. Um, you’ve, you’ve mentioned at one point in our correspondence that, um, you, uh, you mentioned that you’ve been learning difficult but necessary lessons about white supremacy culture, um, ableism and the hierarchy. Can you expand on that a little bit and how those lessons have changed your advocacy work?
Savannah: Sure. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of stumbled into activism. I saw the sex trafficking hysteria affecting my community in Seattle in really dangerous ways, and I was connected to swap Seattle at the time, and we decided to take action.
Um, not a lot of us had [00:18:00] very much experience with activism. I, I had none. Um, I was a white kid from Vermont. Um. Who had a lot of trauma that was dredged up through seeing propaganda and realizing this was the war on drugs all over again. So I was compelled with a powerful energy to get involved and to take action.
Um, and so I stumbled into activism without knowing how you actually change a law, how you actually know who your lawmakers are or how to talk to them, how to talk to the media. How to community organize. We, we, a lot of us do these things instinctually, but also I stumbled into it as a super white privileged person, not understanding.
How different people in the sex trade are affected double e, EE, multiply by systems of injustice.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: So
I had zero analysis around racial justice, um, trans justice, uh, the, you know, what [00:19:00] immigrants go through or ableism. Um, I didn’t know about any of these things and I’m still learning every day. And, um, so, um.
I learned a lot of hard lessons, um, as a white person, powerfully charged to get a lot done. Um, but just sort of stumbling through it and having my colleagues, um, call me out or call me in at different junctures and in different ways. Um, and so it wasn’t really until I, I, I remember. There was so many hard moments where people were upset with me and I wasn’t sure why.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing. And essentially they’re like, you’re replicating systems of harm. Uh, you’re acting in white supremacy, which when you hear these things, uh, can be, you know, startling. You know, you’re like, I am. I don’t think I am. Um, because you don’t know how you’re affecting other people when you’re embodying a culture of dominance.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Um. It [00:20:00] wasn’t until I found, I think it’s called Principles of White Supremacy Culture. It’s a document with clear bullet points. Happy to find that if you have show notes.
AM: I think I’ve seen that. Yeah.
Savannah: It’s so helpful for someone like me who’s white and middle class and privileged, uh, to break down what is white supremacy culture, what are its characteristics.
So, um, uh, progress is bigger, better, more, um, a constant sense of urgency. Only I can do it, uh, paternalism, uh, a word that I didn’t really know about until I read this document. Um, and then it provides antidotes for these things, right? So instead of only I can do it, um, it’s like learning how to work in a collective and how to share work.
And also you have to adjust your constant sense of urgency, right? If everything’s an emergency, we gotta do it now. Play progress doesn’t happen like that, and you can’t move together with a constant sense of urgency.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Worship of the [00:21:00] written word. There’s uh, so many different principles in this document that were like holding up a mirror to myself and realizing like, oh, okay.
So what I’m seeing here is the way that I organize naturally instinctually is a product of my upbringing, of having had a certain kind of education of, um being in a culture that rewards entrepreneurialism and a certain kind of corporate sensibility. And so, um, I was, I was like, for instance, like I wasn’t, uh, prioritizing relationship building.
I was prioritizing goal setting and getting the goal accomplished, which is like, we gotta change the law. It’s like, we gotta be in this for the long haul. Um, we could change a law and they could fucking flip it the next year. And that happens.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: If we don’t have strong relationships in communities and networks, we’re not gonna have the sustainability to hold the line over the long term.
Um, also the only I can do that, I, I see this a lot, this, um, sense of- [00:22:00] I’m the only activist who’s passionate enough about this. Um, I have the bandwidth, you know, um, I have the time. I gotta do this. And just feeling like you have to, it’s like that leads to burnout. That leads to only one or two people making important decisions.
Um, it means you’re not getting to know the communities that are also affected by these laws, but maybe in ways that you don’t understand or know about. You could end up accidentally throwing a whole sec- portion of your community under the bus. Um, and so you have to be in consultation and relationship, uh, with the movement and with, um.
People who also engage in sex work who might not look like you, work, like you, move like you, because you need to understand what their priorities are. Otherwise, you might just be adding to the problem. And what you’re doing might not be very successful. Like
AM: Right.
Savannah: We all have diverse skill sets and things that we bring to this and we can talk to different kinds of lawmakers.
Yeah. And, um, we gotta be working together so that, yeah. I [00:23:00] had a crash course in these hard lessons. And, um, wanted to talk about it today.
AM: Yeah, we definitely should link that in the description. I also found that document to be extremely helpful. Um, specifically I remember the words that stood out to me were perfectionism, um, you know, yeah.
And then definitely the sense of urgency thing. That was something that I had struggled with for a long time. Like, it has to get done. It has to get done now, now, now, you know, and being frustrated when other people weren’t getting it done at the pace that I was able to get things done and now I’m just like the only person, the only person putting that urgency in the room is me.
Savannah: Yeah,
AM: yeah. On myself and then on other people, you know? Yeah. Because even if you’re not saying, oh, you’re taking too long, it’s just the energy and how you show up in the room. Right.
Savannah: Which is
gonna shut people down. ’cause also that’s a privilege thing. It’s like I was showing up with. You know, all systems go, [00:24:00] we gotta stop this bullshit sex trafficking thing in Seattle.
Uh, I was a dominatrix. I was making fine wages for myself. I was stable. I’m able bodied, um, I have access to computers and technology.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: So I can. I can respond very quickly. And that is not respecting people with different capacities. It’s not respecting people who maybe, um, have disabilities, you know, who just can’t show up like that right then and there.
Um, it might not be reflecting the fact that people’s lives are more complicated than mine, you know, and, you know, or they have other bigger urgencies in their life,
AM: Right.
Savannah: That might have to do with like. Fundamental needs, you know? Yeah. Or not everybody has access to a computer and they can’t hop on a call right then and there.
Right.
AM: Yeah.
Yeah.
Savannah: Not everybody has a car to get in to go to the State House right then and there. Right.
AM: Totally.
Savannah: Organizing has to shift around the collective and that really took a while for me to learn and I, um, and I had wonderful colleagues [00:25:00] who, um, helped me learn those lessons and stayed in communication with me even when they had to.
Kind of smack me around a little bit.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: To get to really listen.
AM: Yeah, I get that. That’s great that you, that you had that, um, I given like the atmosphere in today’s world, right? We’re current. We’re right now, we’re recording on, um, August 21st. Uh, this recording will come out in October. Um. So things might be very different in two months because things are changing very rapidly.
And so with that in mind, um, you know, I’m still maintaining my okay, you know, one day at a time. Nothing needs to be rushed. At the same time, watching this rush of heavier and heavier things come down on us. Like what advice would you give or what, or how are [00:26:00] you coping with the, like deluge, am I using that word right?
Savannah: Yeah. It’s totally a deluge. It’s,
AM: you
know,
Savannah: they’re just dumping
AM: right.
Savannah: Terrible things on us, and it’s affecting the whole world,
AM: right.
Savannah: So there’s a lot there to talk about. Um, how am I coping? It’s a vacillating experience, you know, in my personal little bubble in Vermont, things seem fine. It’s summer, it’s beautiful.
Um, but I also work in philanthropy now through New Moon. So it’s like I’m getting emails and I’m on zooms every day about the global funding crisis.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: That is totally unnecessary, you know, but a lot of which is because of the Trump administration. Yeah. Cutting off pepfar, uh, you know, U-S-A-I-D, you know, we also have the global fund at the UN that’s being reduced and shifted around.
And then we have conservative governments, uh, like in the Dutch Parliament, and they’re cutting their feminist funding, uh, [00:27:00] significantly over the next four years.
AM: I didn’t hear that.
Savannah: Yeah, so there is a, anyways, so it’s like I’m getting. I’m fine in my little world, but then when you tune in, or you have friends living in Los Angeles or Washington DC which are occupied right now.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Um, or if you have trans friends who cannot get their passports Right, right. Or you have migrant friends who don’t want to leave their houses. Um, it’s all very, it’s right here and it’s really happening. And so, uh, this leads me to, uh, a state of fear. I think a lot of us experience a state of fear.
And I’ve been
really trying to, with ev with, in light of everything we just talked about with privilege and being in movement, um, reminding myself to root into these principles as opposed to, um, leaning into the comfort of privilege. Right? Um, it’s very tempting to lean into the comfort of privilege, uh, when shit’s really going down, but it’s a temporary sense of safety because they’re coming for everybody, [00:28:00] right?
Um, anybody who’s not their dominant culture type, you know, a white man, um, is in the crosshairs. Um, and so leaning into comfort could be, um, not taking action, tuning out, um, leaving the country, you know, like
AM: mm-hmm.
Savannah: Absolutely. Thinking about that. Um,
AM: yeah.
Savannah: Maybe hiding, you know, changing. I’m gonna change my shit.
I’m gonna stop doing all this activism stuff. I’m make myself a smaller target. Right. Um, these are all things that have gone through my mind.
AM: Yeah, mine too. That’s why I
am reacting. I’m like, it’s like you’re in my head.
Savannah: I had
the FBI raid my house and my dad went away for a long time and that was for a fucking marijuana charge.
So it’s like, if you know what they’re capable of personally, it’s terrifying, you know? Um, but then. You have to remember a, you know, this is not going to solve itself. Uh, this is [00:29:00] not going to go away without millions of people taking action. And are you gonna be one of those millions? And then we need to remember, um, the role that privileged people have in the, in these moments, in resistance.
And I mean, if I, as a white middle class able-bodied. Person, am feeling scared. Imagine how my colleagues are feeling if they are trans or black or brown or migrant. Um, or um, or counting on, um, different types of, you know, social services.
AM: Yeah,
Savannah: public good, um, snap, Medicaid, all of that. Imagine how scared they are.
Um. I have more choices than other people. Not everybody has any choices. So if I decide to disengage or if I decide to flee, um, I’m not saying don’t keep yourself safe. You need to balance this. And this isn’t about being a human [00:30:00] sacrifice, but this problem is not going to stop if we don’t show up and do something about it.
AM: Right?
Savannah: And privileged people gotta really show up around this because, um. Everybody has so much to lose, especially our colleagues who are not as privileged. Um, and so what can you do? Um, I think one of the most terrifying things about what’s happening right now is the seeming total lack of a game plan.
Right. And the swift dismantling of all of our institutions and laws that we just thought would somehow be upheld. But we’re dealing with total thugs. Um. High powered smart thugs that had been planning for this for a long time.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Um, and they’re very well coordinated. And they’re very well funded. Um, and so I’ve, I think getting local is where it’s really at right now.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: Um, you have to be in community locally. Um, you need to be engaged in your local elections. Who’s in charge? Who’s [00:31:00] doing what? Who are those people? How are they responding in this moment if they’re on our side? They’re actually standing up to this bullshit. They need to know that we have their back, like elected officials who are resisting need to know that their constituents are with them.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: I can only imagine what it’s like to be an elected official right now who’s a reasonable person. Right. Terrifying. Right, right. It’s like, you know, we’ve, we’ve had politically motivated murders happening, um, in Minneapolis, right? Yeah. Um,
AM: yes.
Savannah: Knowing who your elected officials are so you can get really engaged and be really supportive.
And also try and combat any bullshit candidates who are gonna try and continue to take power. Um, I’ve been getting plugged into, um, my local Indivisible group. Um, ’cause you know, it’s like they’re, they have a visibility brigade and so I’ve been standing on bridges with them and holding signs for anybody who drives by to be like, you know, whatever the message is, you know.[00:32:00]
Free the files and free dc you know, or, um, stop bombing Gaza, you know, or whatever they’re doing. I am doing that with them.
AM: Right.
Savannah: Um,
and they’re in charge and they’re leading. Um, but so get plugged in with your local resistance group and Indivisible is a great place to start.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: Yeah. Also just talking to.
Everybody locally about this. Like, people ask me how I’m doing and this is what I wanna talk about and be like, I’m fine. But the world is not
AM: exactly
Savannah: talk about it because, um, I have people in my life who voted for Trump. They are all white men, and they, if they wanna have a friendship with me, we’re gonna talk about this almost every time I see them, you know, so that I can understand why they voted that way and so that they can understand the impact.
And so at some point. Um, they feel challenged to also join resistance ’cause they’re, they’re not, you know?
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Um, and that’s a whole other conversation is talking about like, [00:33:00] why did men who have otherwise seemingly progressive values push the Trump button?
AM: Agree. That’s such
a great question.
Savannah: Yeah. Um, so you gotta talk to those bitches and, um, be like, Hey, you, uh, essentially stepped on a mine, a landmine.
For all of us, you know?
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: You’re not directly impacted and you’re not gonna feel the impact until it’s economic. Um, right. So it’s explaining to them that they voted against all the women in their life, all the queer people in their life, any black or brown person in their life, any immigrant in their life, they voted against everybody’s safety.
AM: Disabled
people as well.
Savannah: Disabled people as well.
Kid.
AM: Children.
Savannah: Children, they voting against children.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: And they voted against themselves in many.
AM: Yeah. Ultimately, yes.
Savannah: Because they’re usually working class or working poor white men, you know, um, who are feeling nihilistic right now. Uh, and so if you have the bandwidth, which not everybody does, this is also a thing of privilege, I think, is [00:34:00] talking to people who voted that way and being like, this is fucked.
This is not what you voted for. What are you gonna do about it?
AM: Right. Yeah, that’s really, that’s really helpful. That gives me a lot to think about. Um, I have, I’ve not done that quite yet, so that’s, it’s inspiring.
Savannah: It’s
so hard.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Hard. You have to have like a little self care plan around it. Um, yeah. Mine, uh, requires a physicality, you know, jujitsu for the past year and a half, and it’s like.
I go to the mats and I wrestle out these conversations.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: And if I didn’t have that in my life right now, I dunno if I can even handle having these conversations ’cause they’re so, so frustrating.
AM: Yes.
Savannah: And make me feel so much despair.
AM: Yes, I understand that completely.
The Queer Sex Workers Initiative for refugees in Kenya is doing incredible work despite the hurdles they experience in a country where being queer [00:35:00] or a sex worker is illegal, they pay rent to maintain a shelter for their community members. One where they provide food and teach skills like creating crafts and jewelry.
Their shelter and work is a safe haven for Kenyan refugees. That identify as queer and or a sex worker. Visit QSWIR.org to learn more and to donate to their mission.
AM: What about, uh, you know, sex workers resisting fascism in their local community and building community?
Because you mentioned Indivisible. Um, do they, do they talk about or rally around sex work at all, or is it a safe space?
Savannah: I, I’ve worked with Indi. I think that really varies person.
AM: Sure.
Savannah: Visual indivisible is a grassroots. Movement. So it’s a bunch of individuals and individuals have different levels of understanding.
That makes sense. Sense around complex issues like the sex trade.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I’ve worked with powerhouse indivisible [00:36:00] advocates here in Vermont and in Washington state who are super pro sex workers rights, and very much allies on a litany of issues. So, um, but also you don’t gotta front and center your sex worker ness.
AM: Right.
Savannah: Just to show for the protest or show up to the thing. In fact, maybe you don’t want, that’s. That’s your call, you know?
AM: Right, of
course.
Savannah: Um, but as far as what sex workers are doing right now, um, we have a book we can read that’s very exciting. It’s called Not Your Rescue Project.
AM: Yes. Mm-hmm. We just interviewed them.
Savannah: Oh, excellent. Excellent.
AM: Yes, yes.
Savannah: Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam Yes. Butterfly Collective in Toronto. That book is a playbook for sex workers resisting fascism and organizing.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: So, um. Gotta check it out. Uh, we also need to remember that most sex workers have been living under or evading authoritarianism just by nature of being sex workers.
AM: Mm-hmm.
We
Savannah: are so much further ahead of the game [00:37:00] than the general population because we have had to. Uh, avoid surveillance, um, navigate criminality, um, have multiple personas, you know, and separate our, like, our data privacy. Um, we just have a higher level of understanding of what it means to, um, kind of front and center, a certain kind of security culture.
And also we tend to have a natural analysis at some level of what’s going on. Like I had my analysis of the war on drugs, then being a sex worker has just helped me instinctually understand more of this bullshit in a deeper way than people with vanilla jobs. Right. Um, so check out Not Your Rescue, um, and then get with your local sex worker group, because I don’t know about you, but being in community, at the very least with other sex workers brings me so much energy
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: And joy. And it’s something that I need [00:38:00] to, to keep going, right?
AM: Yeah. Yeah,
Savannah: I, I, I find so much energy in sex worker comradery, more so than with a lot of my other friends. And I do have other friends
AM: same.
Savannah: But I just, I love us so much and I think that we are radical and we inspire me, you know? Yeah. So if you’re inspired by sex worker, boldness and audacity and daring, get with your local sex worker groups.
Um. Try to remember and center the lessons that we’ve learned during, like the George Floyd racial justice uprising, or what we’re calling the trans tipping point, you know, and understanding, um, you know, the realities of our L-G-B-T-Q and particularly our, our trans community members, uh, learn a lot about what’s going on with migrants right now and what they’re under.
Uh, and I’m saying this, I, I feel like I’m kind of talking to white people. Uh, I’m sure that all different kinds of people listen to your podcast.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: But we’re all under attack. And the more we know about how we’re all being [00:39:00] targeted, the better we can show up for each other.
AM: Right.
Savannah: And also protect ourselves.
’cause the, you know, it’s like a lot of the things that they’re doing right now were things they tested on sex workers. Right. Different kinds of surveillance. Um,
AM: yeah,
Savannah: different kinds of, um, technological tracking of people and discrimination. Like we understand these tactics. So we know that what, what might affect one of our colleagues, uh, but doesn’t affect you immediately, will eventually come to affect you.
And the more we all understand that, the better we can move together.
AM: Yeah. I, I’ve been spending time lately like trying to say publicly, you know, sex workers are the ones that are seeing it and saying these things that have been already coming, first, and it feels like y’all aren’t listening. And then the thing comes and you’re like, oh, I didn’t know about this.
Because even though we were like a whole bunch of us, I feel like, and I feel like we kind of do it at the same time as these things come up, we notice it, we, you know, we [00:40:00] find these obscure articles and bring them more to the front. And we, we’ve been talking about surveillance, um. And they’re just like, I, sometimes I feel like we’re just screaming into the void.
And what I’ve really been noticing lately is that it’s like dawn on me. I’m like, oh, even like the left, like even the progressives aren’t really including sex workers in the conversation and they’re not really listening. And that realization lately has really kind of been bumming me out.
Savannah: Um, I’m sorry for your realization.
AM: So late.
Savannah: It’s a bummer. Welcome. That’s been a bummer that I feel like a lot of us have been experiencing. It’s like I’ve been doing sex worker advocacy for maybe 12 years or something. I know people who have been doing it for decades, and that bummer is a constant.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: But you know, there are people on the left who recognize that sex workers are canaries in the coal mine for creeping human rights violations.
And also, it’s not just [00:41:00] us. We’re not the only canaries. Black Lives Matter was all about police brutality, right?
AM: Yes.
Yeah.
Savannah: What are we seeing now with masked men? AB objecting people on the streets? Just brutalizing people like, it’s like Black Lives Matter. It’s like the police are unchecked and outta control and we live in a militarized society, so it’s like we’re not the only canaries
AM: of
course,
Savannah: but we are, we are.
We are definitely canaries. And we are canaries because sex work is so intersectional and there are people of color and, and disabled people, and migrants and all, all everybody, all the marginalized identities are represented within sex work, and so looking at how a society treats sex workers, is indicative of how everybody’s going to be affected.
Right, right, right. Eventually, and how whole entire communities are being overpoliced, surveilled, discriminated against, things like that.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Um, can we talk a little bit about what New Moon is up to? Are, are you able to [00:42:00] share some
Savannah: Yeah.
AM: Some of that work? Yeah. I would love to hear more about that.
Savannah: Yeah, thanks. So, um, in a nutshell, new Moon launched quietly in 2022. Um, we have three buckets of work. We’re national. The full name is New Moon Network. Um. Our three buckets of work are engaging philanthropy. So philanthropy is, uh, like charitable giving on a large scale. So everybody kinda recognizes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
You know,
foundations usually give out money for charitable causes or to advance things that are for the social good. Ideally. There’s also far right foundations, you know, that give out money for advancing fascism and Christian nationalism and all that shit,
AM: Right.
Savannah: So, but at New Moon we’re trying to talk to philanthropy about the role of sex workers in everything we just talked about.
It’s like, if you care about black liberation, if you care about trans rights, you know, if you care about any anything on the left, then you should also care about sex work [00:43:00] and you should be engaging in supporting the sex worker rights movement because again, we are a metric by which we can determine how these different communities are fairing, you know, and how they can advance their human rights initiatives. Um, so we engage philanthropy and then we try and unlock funding by different means. We might meet an individual funder and be like, Hey, you really ought to be giving your money over here, you know, or you can give it to New Moon.
And so we are what we call an intermediary fund. Our second bucket of work is to move money into the movement. Um, so occasionally we’ll get some funding or we’ll get a grant. Um. And we can disperse that grant to these sex worker rights organizations across the country, uh, of which we think there’s around over 300.
Um, uh, we offer five $1,000 microgrants every month, and any sex worker or survivor led organization can apply for those. Um, but then also we’ve been engaged in something called seed funding, where we found, uh, [00:44:00] 15 sex worker groups around the country engaged specifically in work that could, uh, prevent or treat HIV.
We got a grant from ViiV Healthcare and they kind of center HIV, they do HIV pharmaceuticals. They gave us some money to find those 15 groups and give them a thousand dollars a month to support their work. And um, and then our third bucket of work is capacity building, right? So we know it takes more than money.
Like if you had given fired up Savannah a thousand dollars a month, 12 years ago in Seattle. Savannah would’ve been like, fuck yeah, we’re gonna print out a bunch of stuff that I’m gonna write and I’m gonna print out because only I can do it. You know?
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: And then my colleagues are gonna see all this printed material and be like, this is really incredibly problematic language.
We just throw this all out story I wrote, I just, you just don’t know. You just don’t know until you know.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Um,
so we know it takes more than giving people money.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: Um,
and at New Moon, we’re trying to create the tools that we wish we had. As activists to be more effective in achieving our [00:45:00] goals. So for example, with these 15 groups that we’re giving a thousand bucks a month to, we’re inviting them into a cohort to talk about, um, HIV aids, uh, prevention and treatment best practices, and, um, also treating them as experts in leaders, as direct service providers and helping them know each other.
So we have a network of service providers in the US. Um, we host a school called Spokes Hub. Where, uh, sex workers and survivors come and teach on any topic, hard skills like engaging the media or just kind of deep dives, like, um, what is it like to be an unhoused sex worker? You know, and what do people need to know?
Uh, what are safety concerns for male sex workers and how are they different from other kinds of sex workers? Like, so, like topical deep dives to try and understand each other better, right?
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Um, people can graduate from that program. And then we strive to support their work as advocates by, uh, offering them financial compensation, um, for advocacy work that they do out in the [00:46:00] world.
So if you’re talking to a journalist, you should fucking get paid,
AM: Right.
Savannah: Because hey, you’re an expert. Uh, you are uniquely positioned to inform that journalist. And also it’s, uh, you know, it’s a risk to talk to journalists.
AM: Yes, very much.
Savannah: Uh, and you should have somebody. You should get some compensation for that.
If you’re a graduate of Spokes Hub, you can access that. And also we’re here to cheer you on. And um, also if you need a sounding board, like, Hey, I’m talking to this journalist, how should I prepare? Right,
AM: right.
Savannah: We can try and help you do that through technical assistance. So that’s what New Moon has done since 2022.
Um. Those three areas of work, engaging philanthropy, moving money into the movement, and then offering capacity building support.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: But now we’re under fascism.
AM: Mm.
Savannah: How can we stay relevant in this moment? Uh, I have a co-director, melody Kg. She’s amazing. So we co-lead New Moon together. We’re very small team.
We work with a lot of consultants, but, um, we’re running a survey right now with anyone who has received [00:47:00] money from New Moon. Asking them a lot of questions about how they’re being impacted since Trump took office again. Um, how they as a team are being impacted as individuals and how their communities that they serve are being impacted.
What are their priorities right now? What do they need the most right now? What do they have to offer the broader movement? And so we’re gonna close this survey at the end of August. I know this is airing in October. Hopefully by then we’re gonna have some data about how our movement is being affected, um, what kinds of funding we’ve lost.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Savannah: Uh, we can take that information to philanthropy and also we as New Moon can adjust, um, what we’re offering, especially with capacity building. To be responsive to what the movement needs right now. So, um,
AM: Incredible.,
Savannah: The things that we have done to date, it’s like we’ve spent a few months in a security transition.
We’re trying to stop using US-based tech giants. Uh, it’s kind of a gamble as to whether that’s actually [00:48:00] more secure than sticking with Google.
AM: Right.
Savannah: But we’re trying to find new tools and get fluent in them. So if anybody else in our movement or our allies want alternatives, we can walk them through that transition.
Uh, we have offered different privacy security tools to individual advocates in our movement who are higher profile to help with their data privacy online. Um, and then we’ve deployed, um, a bunch of thousand dollar micro grants to direct service provider sex worker groups in the us. Encouraging them to buy supplies now that might become harder to get or illegal to get. So your plan B, your Narcan, whatever you use, a lot of that might be criminalized soon or cut off. Uh, we were distributing funding and raising funding specifically for that.
AM: Wow.
Savannah: But it’s really hard to know what to do in this moment beyond that.
AM: Yeah.
Well, that sounds like incredible [00:49:00] work. Thank you so much for doing all that and for sharing all of that.
Savannah: Yeah. I feel really, I love it so much.
AM: Yeah,
yeah. You can tell. That’s awesome. Is there anything that before we close out that you, you know, wanna say or that you want audience, our audience to know or in general?
Savannah: Yeah,
yeah, totally. Um, a new Moon, um, supports and works with anyone with lived experience in the sex trade, we wanna desi this whole sex worker versus survivor thing. We know that a lot of people have both experiences, so regardless of how you identify, um, you’re invited to Spokes Hub, which is our Peer Learning Academy online.
Uh, come take classes with your peers. Uh, we’re probably gonna have more peer support drop in spaces. That’s something people are requesting in this time. Strategize, drop in together, connect. Um, also learn some hard skills. So come check out Spokes Hub. Also, we do offer those five, $1,000 micro grants every month.
[00:50:00] Um, you can apply for one of those. Tell us about your work. We wanna know who you are, we wanna know what you’re doing. You can also just email us. Uh, let’s say you’re, um, starting a new sex worker initiative. Or let’s say, um, you’re interested in fundraising or you have a question about, um, Hey, how do we change the law locally?
You can reach out to us at any time and we will tell you everything we know,
AM: Right.
Savannah: We have a really well informed team and we love just talking it out with people, especially if they’re newer activists.
AM: Yeah.
Savannah: So drop a line anytime.
AM: Awesome. Thank you so much. And can you tell, would you like people to, if they wanted to find you personally, do you have an account like social media accounts that.
You let people follow. Did you wanna mention that?
Savannah: Sure.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: Well, first, uh, new Moon online, it’s new moon network.org. Uh, there’s also a, uh, uh, there’s, uh, there’s also, yeah, there’s other groups with similar names. Similar
AM: like a marketing
[00:51:00] firm I think
Savannah: I, yeah.
So for senior living activities.
AM: Okay.
Savannah: And, um, and I kind of love that, that we’re hard to find, makes it harder to dox.
But, um, new Moon network.org, you can find all this information there. I’m Savannah Sly. I deleted all my data off of Twitter. Fuck that place. Uh, so don’t message me there, but you can go to savannah sly.com and check me out. Um, or I’m on Blue Sky as Savannah Sly.
AM: Nice. We just got on blue sky, so nice. I’ll be sure to find you on there.
Yes.
Savannah: Cool. Yeah, that’d be great.
And thanks again for having me. This has been a great conversation.
AM: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us as well. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. And don’t forget to check us out on our website@yeswork.org and click that donate button if you liked what you listened to today.
Thank you so much. Bye
Savannah: bye.