Here's the Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) team with a crew...

Here's the Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) team with a crew of young people from Streetwise and Safe and the Hetrick Martin Institute, plus New York City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D - district 25) at our advocacy training on February 24, 2012.

Though there's a lot of focus on national politics, especially in a presidential election year, for people in the sex trades, the laws that really impact our lives are made on the city and state levels. Criminal codes are state laws, and most states have lots of them, with little lines of legalese that make the lives of people in the sex trades, or people profiled as such, much more difficult. In the RedUP advocacy training we walk participants through things like the convoluted process of how bills become law, where ideas for bills come from, and how individuals and grassroots groups can make an impact on this process.

This year, our advocacy trainings are focused on getting New York State Bill A1008/S323 passed, which will make it illegal for condoms to be used as evidence of prostitution. In the training with the young people from SAS and HMI, we talked a lot about their concerns around profiling. They are especially concerned with the ways that the use of condoms as evidence intersects with the NYPD's abusive stop and frisk tactics, and how the combinations of these two things creates harm for people of color, trans women, gender non-conforming people, and street involved youth. Their perspective on this bill is much needed, and a bunch of the members of the group will be lobbying in Albany in April. New York State elected reps really need to hear these voices.

And speaking of reps listening up - we were really excited to be joined for an hour by NYC Council Member Daniel Dromm, whose district 25 is in Jackson Heights in Queens. I met Dromm for the first time at the council hearing I testified at in December, and he's a great ally who actually seems to get and care about our issues. I'm looking forward to working with him further, and I'm really excited that we're starting to be able to get the ears and time of elected officials. He gave some really great advice, and really encouraged folks to speak their personal truths to legislators. Though we also emphasized the value of statistics and reports in making our arguments, he told us that connecting on a personal level with legislators is really important. He said that especially in cases in which the representative might not be on our side, the only way through is to appeal to their humanity and their empathy.

The RedUP advocacy trainings are part of our Speak Up! workshop program, which also includes our media training, which was our flagship program. The trainings are geared toward people who have had experience in the sex trades and who want to learn the skills to speak up for themselves in policy contexts, in public forums, and in both community and mainstream media.

All Red Umbrella Project programs are led by people who themselves have experience in the sex trades. This is a really important aspect of our work, because there are many service oriented agencies that provide support to sex workers, and its less common -but vital- for a group to be run and led by the population. This year, we're doing three  advocacy trainings, and then we're collaborating with other organizations to do a lobby day in Albany on April 17th. We have a short training on April 4 at the Gay Men's Health Crisis that will just focus on talking points for the lobby day, and then on Sunday, April 15 at the Urban Justice Center, we have a full day training that will teach both content and strategy (more info here). I'm really excited that our work is growing in this way, and we're becoming able to support more and more people in being awesome and learning the skills to speak up and fight back.