Sienna Baskin is an Equal Justice Works Fellow providing legal services at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. Her work with SWP combines organizing, legal services and impact litigation for and by sex workers and trafficked persons.
Melissa Ditmore, Ph.D., was the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Board of the Sex Workers Project and is a research consultant on issues of sex work, mobility and migration, HIV and sexual health. She edited the Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work (Greenwood Press, 2006) and edits Research for Sex Work, the journal of the Network of Sex Work Projects. She has also written about sex work, migration and trafficking for The Lancet and SIECUS Report and has contributed to Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered (Paradigm, 2005), Affective Turn (Duke, 2007) and Women Across Borders (Black Rose, 2008.) Dr. Ditmore has spoken about prostitution, migration rights and research ethics at the United Nations, the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, Columbia University, Cornell University, Hong Kong City University and numerous academic and political conferences.
The U.S. law that prohibits sex workers and drug users from attending the IAC from abroad is a frightening sign of the times. As co-directors of two U.S-based sex workers rights organizations, we stand with sex workers in their global fight for rights.
It seems that stories of young girls victimized by prostitution, are selected to overcome an enormous barrier – that we are not disposed to believe or care for people who engage in sex work, so editing to find the “perfect victim” is necessary.
