Moving Towards Liberation and Away from Criminalization
September 30, 2016Back in August 2012, members of a wealthy Atlanta neighborhood joined the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance to lead a campaign against sex work in the city’s Midtown neighborhood. This racist and transphobic campaign was targeted directly at trans and gender non-conforming people, identified by the Alliance as “transvestite thugs.”
Now a Black and trans-led coalition has come up with a solution to fight oppressive attitudes like these and support low-income and marginalized members of the Midtown community.
The Alliance campaign was based on the false claim that prostitution gangs were working throughout the neighborhood, even though crime rates in Midtown showed no such spikes. While these claims were not based in reality, they had a very real impact.