Sex Workers Chant And Protest Los Angeles Cracking Down On Street Whores Before The Olympics

"Sex work is work!" chanted a coalition of sex workers marching and holding "die-in" demonstrations throughout Los Angeles on Monday. Sex workers rallying outside Los Angeles City Hall demanded that sex work and human trafficking be treated as two separate and distinct issues. They specifically called out and booed City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto (D) for what they describe as plans to arrest sex workers ahead of the Olympics under the guise of stopping human trafficking for the sake of the city's image in the eyes of the international community.

Dominatrix and 2016 presidential candidate Tara Indiana (who ran on the Female Supremacy Party ticket) described that she's participating in the die-in protest because laws like FOSTA/SESTA forced sex workers offline and back onto the street. In fact, she says, she had retired from sex work herself in 2013 and became a BDSM educator, but the FOSTA/SESTA destroyed her online business, which caused her to begin doing sex work again. Ironically, she describes, legislation meant to curb sex trafficking instead put sex workers onto the street, where they are subjected to arrest.