When Everything Is Criminalized, We Must Unlearn the Language of “Innocence”

I ’ve been an organizer for half of my life now. What a strange thing to write.

I’ve been involved with struggles to abolish the death penalty, worked to kick racists and war criminals off campuses, to fund and expand abortion access, to form unions and strike committees; I’ve slept on concrete during youth rebellions, navigated supporting criminalized survivors of gender based violence, taught people how to reverse overdoses and test their drugs, built peer education amongst sex workers toward decriminalizing our labor, organized too many vigils for fallen comrades, gotten arrested symbolically and against all my best efforts, and liberated resources from institutional spaces and moved them to community as often as I could. I’ve done more, but I shouldn’t put it in writing (and neither should you, lesson one).

May this find you grounded in community and living your values, even as your survival, your labor, and your basic needs are vilified, exploited, or criminalized. For some of us, these are all too familiar conditions. For people organizing within the sex trades, or whose harm reduction work occurs outside the law, public scorn and carceral violence come with the territory. As someone who has done (and continues to do) movement work within these spheres, I want to share some thoughts, and lessons I’ve learned, with people who are trying to do the work of collective survival in these environments. If you are not a sex worker or involved in harm reduction work, you may also have something to learn from people whose political work often occurs outside the law (or in direct opposition to it). As authoritarianism tightens its grip, more and more people are going to face criminalization upon choosing to organize as workers, resist unjust policies, or practice mutual aid. If you are grappling with the difficulties that come with this kind of work, here’s what I can share.

I cannot stress enough how crucial it is to have a small, tight-knit crew you call your chosen political family. These can be people you actively organize with, or used to, or maybe you’re all involved in different projects now, maybe you met at the club, clinic or on the stroll, but these are your people who know you, trust you, are conflict brave, and can gut check you. You’ve engaged in political education together, you have shared values, and you have experience — these are qualities that are earned and grown collectively. There are no substitutes for these kinds of relationships. Lots of people will tell you what to do; these are the people whose advice you should consider first and foremost.

That being said, it is the criminality of the work that I need to focus on. Or at least the impact of criminalization on our waged work, our organizing work — our political work (because all labor is politicized).

Unlearn the language of “good,” “innocent,” or “wrongfully.” This is not just a rhetorical shift, but a shift in values. Let go of any preconceived notions you had about “criminals.” In fact, let me officially welcome you to the criminal class. Divorcing oneself from respectability politics can be hard, especially when there are so many barriers to resources when you’re perceived as criminal or charged as such. There are no “good ones,” there are only people, fellow workers, co-strugglers. Innocence is irrelevant because the laws have already betrayed us. And it is my belief that no one should be caged, tortured, detained, or deported by the state — all carceral violence is done wrongfully. We cannot pick and choose who rightfully and wrongfully experiences the hell of carcerality. If we do this, we are affirming the very system that seeks to kill us.

You must commit to unapologetic politics. It might be tempting to give into something we call the whorearchy — or the hierarchical stratification of sex working/trading people whose perceived value or worth is ranked based upon the associated stigma of their particular form of sex work (i.e., “I’m better than them because I work indoors instead of on the street”, or “I don’t deserve to be arrested because I’m paying for school, not drugs”). Whorearchy exists because of classism, colorism, substance stigma, racism, xenophobia, transmisogyny, ableism and other forms of discriminatory, oppressive ideologies. But whorearchy thrives because of the criminalization and stigma of the sex trades. There are no shortcuts to liberation, and winning rights for some at the expense of others in our criminal class is a kind of soul-death. When building a broad coalition, and involving people who have feminist and abolitionist politics, make sure you’re not so quick to win them that you abandon your lived experiences for respectability. Remember, those elites in power don’t actually care if you pander to them now, if your existence threatens their agenda, they will never honor your humanity, no matter how “good” and “respectable” you try to be. Remain illegible and unruly.

Skill up as many people as you know, now. Your skill shares do not need to be large or public or perfect. They just need to happen thoughtfully, carefully, and often. Refreshing your own skill sets on gunshot wound care, overdose reversal, rescue breathing, needle cleaning/disposal, learning the right quantities of misoprostol and mifepristone, and testing drugs for fentanyl and xylazine is a priority. Getting people together in person to build safer sniffing kits, and gather other harm reduction supplies, creates social community opportunities to check-in on each other, engage in risk and movement assessments collectively, and share advice on using and caring for our comrades who use drugs. There is no substitute for off-line, in-person conversations about strategy, tactics, and navigating work outside of the law. It is both urgent and patient work.

Urgent in that these are timely skills that more of us need to learn and practice, especially since the majority of people will still call 911 even though they may be scared of the potential for police violence. Often this comes down to a lack of self-trust and lack of knowledge on how to intervene without the state in an emergency situation. When you’re a sex worker, and your client or fellow worker overdoses, you need to be able to act swiftly and without state intervention whenever possible. Remember, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, radical harm reductionists and sex workers have been making toolkits, zines, and DIY guides for decades. Find what speaks to you, and use it as a template, build from something that already exists and fact check it with trusted friends. It’s patient work because new skills may need to be acquired, language and practices change with new knowledge, and because people will say some really upsetting and problematic shit to you about drug use. I’m so sorry but they will. Even the comrades who you think should know better. You can’t see through everyone’s journey, focus on the skills, recommit to a politics of solidarity and care. It’s hard work doing peer to peer education, it can be draining, and you’ll need to ask for help, a lot. Take a deep breath, you’ve got this.

There are no shortcuts to liberation, and winning rights for some at the expense of others in our criminal class is a kind of soul-death.

Be discerning, and figure out who’s in the room. There’s practicing safer communication (what I used to call security culture before the term was wrecked, and the concept debased) and then there’s becoming obsessive and gate-keeping. What I’m expressly advocating, especially within criminalized workplace contexts, is moving things offline whenever possible. Learn how to assess risks as an individual within a formation, and collectively for the formation as a whole. Technology will change, adapt, and entrap. Work only with platforms that have clear terms of service that aren’t already committed to throwing you under the bus, or expressly work with platforms that are built by community-minded people. We often can’t control how we make money, or what platform consolidation means. But when it comes to our organizing work, we can opt in and out of using tools that don’t serve us. We can also control what we do and don’t say and to who. This is critical — you have to move at the speed of trust. That will likely feel slower than you desire to act. You’ve got to get to a place where trust, collaboration, and safer outcomes for your communities are prioritized instead of appearing to have all the answers on the internet, jeopardizing your own safety to respond to every direct service ask, or inflating your organization’s numbers too rapidly.

Yes, it will present new challenges and there will be learning curves, but an emphasis on safer communication means talking to the people you are directly organizing with, regularly — checking in on materials, assessing needs and risks, outlining safer methods to trade sex or obtain substances, discussing the political landscape in real terms, and making space to do visioning work beyond immediate crisis-related tasks. If you are doing work outside of the law, you cannot do this on a zoom call with 90 people who you do not know. You also cannot do this at a large general membership meeting of an organization that’s open to the public. It will mean you have to repeat yourself, schedule more meetings, and develop an ear for infiltration. Some of these skills feel intuitive, but I promise, if you and your crew are paying attention, they can be learned, practiced and modified for your own needs.

Sex workers, and really all workers in criminalized economies, have gotten really good at developing new languages, code switching, and sharing information to keep each other safe by getting creative and working both within and against the repressive laws and their enforcement of any given generation. You’re being hoisted onto the shoulders of some tough, resourceful worker-organizers. You too will build and experiment with new tech, new skills, new tactics. Something that remains, however, is how you embody your politics and values. Don’t let people shut sex workers and drug users out of spaces you find yourself working in — speak up, point to the outlaw legacies of harm reduction and mutual care, be bold in your comradeship.

Remember you’re not alone — like Eugene Debs said, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”