Why Seth and Alexi Meyers Support Partial Criminalization for Sex Workers
Alexi Ashe Meyers is co-chair of the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition and is a staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families. She's been fear mongering about her "concern" for sex workers, while demonizing us. Her husband Seth Meyers has been promoting her hateful attacks, and has been promoting, and funding anti-sex worker policy.
Alexi Ashe Meyers has the PRIVILEGE to CHOOSE TO WORK OR NOT. But chooses to OPPRESS MINORITIES IN HER FREE TIME. She CHOOSES TO TAKE THE ABILITY TO WORK (AND THEREFORE SURVIVE) FROM THE MOST MARGINALIZED WOMEN IN SOCIETY.
She thinks that making this her career and "charity project" makes her interesting and heroic somehow.
Alexi Ashe Meyers' job as staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families depends on the persecution of largely migrant communities. Most of their clients stuck with legal fees and years of trauma to face, comes from sending the police after marginalized communities. The police give them largely low level charges so they end up at the Human Trafficking Intervention Court, and they have to work to remain in the country, and remove their records to start over. All under the threat of prison or death.
Despite the propaganda The Meyers, the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, Sanctuary for Families, and all their accomplices may say,
By law this is criminalization
policy. People in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts are given charges (that's how they end up there), and that is how they "provide services" to "trafficking victims". They are "giving" [GETTING PAID FEDERAL MONEY] "services" for PROBLEMS THEY CREATED. They are in fact, defendants, and they are not FREELY PARTICIPATING IN THE SYSTEM, OR FREELY GETTING SERVICES. THEY DON'T HAVE A CHOICE.
Please Read the Report to Learn More (key points will be highlighted on here):
Un-Meetable Promises: Rhetoric and Reality in New York City’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts
A report by the Global Health Justice Partnership of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health in collaboration with The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center
Despite the fact that Sanctuary for Families is funded by Federal and State (According to their 2017-2018 report 66% of their funding comes from the government/public money), they don't believe in "hand outs". [Because they're a "nonprofit" they don't pay taxes either]. Link to the report can be found by clicking the image below.
Also in the report is Sanctuary for Families' Anti-Trafficking Initiative (ATI). They created a "Economic Empowerment Program" where they put mostly migrants, marginalized, and criminalized people to work in low level, vocational, and service oriented jobs. Because college and real upward mobility is for the upper classes.
In September 2017, they started working with another nonprofit called Empower Her Network.
They don't believe in "handouts". Instead they believe in "leaning into existing services". They believe capitalism (them profiting off of criminalized labor, and human misery) will solve all social problems including poverty and slavery. This is social entrepreneurship.
Looking at the system, it looks like they found a way to recreate slavery through the 13th amendment loophole.
I won't lie, the fact that Seth Meyers acts like he cares about migrants every night, like he's the opposite of the alt right, anti-immigrant hate groups is disturbing. To me, a migrant sex worker, a DACA "kid" who's 26 years old with my temporary right to work still up for debate in the courts, it feels like I'm the punchline to his jokes every night. Jokes that he gets to profit from and raise notoriety from. His bloodline will inherit his legacy and wealth, along with a dying world full of evil he's directly responsible for. No amount of "charity" in the world will make up for a 7.5 million dollar home.
And even worse of all. Him and his wife are afraid of us. They have a very scary hatred of sex workers and a disregard for the way they impact our lives.
Layleen Polcano died because of New York's Human Trafficking Intervention Courts. It's the reason why she ended up in Rikers. The Human Trafficking Intervention Courts fined her, charged her, and demanded she get counseling under threat of imprisonment. Because she couldn't meet these demands an order was sent was for her arrest.
"The 27-year-old Afro-Latina transgender woman was found dead in solitary confinement last Friday afternoon at Rikers Island Jail. Polanco was being held on $500 bail owing to misdemeanor charges for a prostitution-related offense, in addition to the lowest-level drug charge."
- The Intercept
On November 25th, 2019 Seth Meyers is hosting an event to announce a sex worker criminalization bill sponsered by Assembly member Tremaine Wright and Senator Liz Krueger. It'll launch their statewide campaign to further persecute and eliminate sex workers out of existence without having to hear their screams. They call it "the Equality Model" or "New Yorkers for the Equality Model" or "NobuyerNoPimpNY".
Alexi Ashe Meyers spends a lot of her free time trying to paint the sex workers and sex trafficking victims of DecrimNY as "white feminists" (which Alexi very clearly is). Maya Morena/Gilda Merlot wrote a response to the piece that Seth Meyers promoted which you can read here. I tried to get the nobuyernopimpny.com and org, but someone bought it already. Presumably they're getting the website ready because they already have a Instagram account for it. These are two of their posts.
One of them is of Layleen Polcano. They don't blame the prison system or manufactured poverty, instead they blame "sex buyers". They also ignore that they actively fought to increase arrests and incarceration. They are confused about what "lead her to prostitution" as if poverty and paying rent is an unfamiliar concept to them.
These organizations and self described advocates promote an "affirmative defense" for sex workers. Which basically means sex workers would be treated like children or "the insanity defense". This however, is not possible. Like anyone else that is heavily policed, it's easy to fine someone with anything, car traffic violations, vagrancy, drug and alcohol, fighting back, housing another sex worker, stealing, the list goes on. It's impossible for police to target sex workers and charge them with nothing. If you sent the police after any group, you would find a high arrest arrest rate for that community. But we only send police after certain racial and class groups.
In the bottom image from the same page, they erase that Sex Work was a term created by a sex worker. They believe that all sex workers are benefiting from the exploitation of vulnerable people. In other words...they are blaming marginalized people for their own enslavement. Carol Leigh coined the term. This is the people they hate and are afraid of.
The event location and time that Seth Meyers was going to be hosting was posted online. But when I started talking about the event and trying to plan a protest, the next day the post was gone. Why pretend to serve or care about a community that they avoid at all costs?
This is wrong. No one deserves this kind of hatred, this persecution, this gas lighting.
We don't want temporary working rights that depend on NYPD and years of trauma and legal fees through the T & U visa (both of which have caps - 5,000, to 10,000 respectfully). The Trafficking Visa never hits cap. Alexi isn't kind by doing the bare minuem and getting paid for it. We suffer and get nothing for it except handcuff, deportations, and laughter at a stage that Seth Meyers get's to host and play hero.
We deserve citizenship. We deserve college. We deserve permanent working rights and voting rights. We deserve to be heard at least, before we're dead.
Written in 4/3/2020