ABOUT
Mission
We are Bay Area Workers Support (BAWS), a peer-led resource organization. We work for the health, safety, and livelihoods of people in the sex trade. In the face of criminalization, stigma, and inadequate resources, BAWS mobilizes. We harness our community power and build local partnerships to provide material resources, information, and support. We create space to increase strength, justice, and love for Bay Area workers.
Our primary goal is to provide Bay Area sex workers with more:
Mutual aid
Information and resources
Social support and care
BAWS recognizes and welcomes diversity among all sex workers. We believe in the importance and power of intersectionality within our communities. We are an anti-racist, anti-transphobic, anti-whorephobia 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.”
our values
We believe that sex worker justice is tied to other social justice issues. We pledge to show up and support these intersecting causes, leaving no community behind in our fights for justice. Our gatherings and work reflect our commitment to intersectionality and pledge to continually educate ourselves in anti-racist and anti-oppression organizing practices. We value and prioritize restorative justice and community healing.
We pledge to make our meetings and events accessible and will always share accessibility information.
We aim to support sex-working families by providing childcare at as many events as possible.
We recognize burnout and interpersonal conflict are real issues in sex worker activism and work to reduce these harms. It is our goal to bring support, connection, pleasure, and care into the labor of sex worker organizing.
our HISTORY + structure
BAWS was founded in 2018 by Arabelle Raphael and Maxine Holloway. Raphael and Holloway started gathering local workers in Oakland living rooms to share information about the landscape-changing legislation, FOSTA-SESTA. These meetings evolved into a network of info and resource sharing and are now a leading mutual aid effort in California. We are sex-worker-led and open to all folks in the sex trade. When it is safe to do so, we have open community meetings. Our leadership, the “Tops Team,” is a group of local volunteer workers who keep the resource programs running.
CURRENT PROGRAMS:
Community Building - BAWS creates spaces for the Bay Area sex worker community to come together. Our gatherings, events, and meetings are sites for community-building, friendship, support, collaboration, and resource-sharing. In-person gatherings are currently in flux during covid-19.
Grants Program - We provide funds to community members who are experiencing hardships. Applications can be found online here: bayareaworkerssupport.org/grants
Cash-In-Hand - We want our funds to easily reach workers who may have limited or no access to our online grant application. BAWS is now partnering with local organizations that have pre-existing relationships with outdoor workers. We will be providing three months of funding to these organizations to distribute directly to folks in the sex trade.
This quarter we are partnering with the Transgender Intersex Justice Project (TGJIP)
Home Boost - We have learned a lot from providing mutual aid to sex workers for the past three years. We identified that housing insecurity is one of the most consistent barriers to our community's health, safety, and well-being. This past year, we were awarded a community grant from the Third Wave Fund to support individuals taking steps to secure housing for themselves.
We are currently partnering with TGJIP, other on-the-ground organizations, and community members we have connected with through our grants program to provide housing stabilization for our community members.
