Season 2 episode 10 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Elio. They organise with SWARM (a UK-based collective founded and led by sex workers who believe in self-determination, solidarity and co-operation) and are a branch organiser for United Voices of the World (UVW, a grassroots trade union of low paid, migrant & precarious workers and we fight the bosses for dignity and respect through direct action on the streets and through the courts!).
“Our focus is less on convincing the outside world that sex workers deserve dignity, and [more on] providing dignity to sex workers”
“Urgency will never end…but what might end is your capacity to be able to respond”
– Elio
Show notes, links
SWARM: community building, community resourcing
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Swedish Model (aka The Nordic Model)
New Resource: ‘How We Ran A Mutual Aid Fund’
UVW sex worker organising: helping to organise sex workers as workers
The United Sex Workers branch of UVW
Strippers union United Voices of the World (UVW) wins landmark legal victory proving strippers are ‘workers’, not independent contractors
Decriminalised Futures: popular education, arts
Their Lady of the Night School
The Decrim Futures archive includes both recording from their 2019 conference, and also videos from the “We can build a different world” event
The Decriminalised Futures exhibition at the ICA in London, running from 15 Feb to 22 May 2022
Some other projects:
Decrim Now, a campaign group pushing for the full decriminalisation of sex work
The Dialtone Project, giving old phones you don’t need to the sex workers who do
Volunteering with the English Collective of Prostitutes
You can buy a copy of the acclaimed Revolting Prostitutes book
And finally, the most succint “political outlooks on sex work” meme out there:
We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there’s always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!
Transcript
ALI
This is Resist Renew,
KATHERINE
the UK based podcast about social movements,
SAMI
what we’re fighting for, why and how it all happens.
ALI
The hosts of the show are
KATHERINE
Me, Kat.
SAMI
Me, Sami,
ALI
and me, Ali.
SAMI
I’m recording this now, baby!
ALI
Shit, it’s a podcast!
SAMI
So, welcome everybody to the resist renew podcast, where we are joined here today by Elio. Do you want to say a little hello before I introduce you, Elio?
ELIO
a little Hello. Hello. Sorry, that was really… Hello! That’s a big hello. Oh, it’s multiple hellos of different sizes, shapes and sizes.
SAMI
Lots of variety: people can pick their favourite. Elio is a person who organises with SWARM, which is a UK based collective founded by sex workers who believe in self determination, solidarity and cooperation, and is also branch organiser with United Voices of the World, which is a grassroots trade union of low paid migrant and precarious workers that fight the bosses for dignity and respect, through direct action, on the streets and through the courts, which is a sentence from the website that I just really wanted to read out; and is also involved in other groups and things! And was also giving us some very helpful advice for our muscles and physical bodies before we started the recording. So thank you for that.
So, let’s get into the let’s get into the chat. Elio, what is that political contexts that like sex workers, and the groups that you’re linked in with are organising within like in the UK today?
ELIO
So I think the main context that’s the most important to think about in terms of the impact it has on sex workers is the legal context. So currently, in the UK, specifically, I’m speaking about England and Wales really is, sex work is not is partially criminalised.
So selling the act of selling sex and buying sex, for the most part is you’re allowed to do it, it’s legal, it’s fine. No one’s gonna stop you from doing it. But a lot of the, I guess, the infrastructure around those things is criminalised. So, brothel keeping, which can you know, range from someone who owns a building and they have lots of people that work there and you don’t have to give them a percentage to work there or could be just two workers working together for safety in the most part, you know, so you’re not working alone, that counts as ‘brothel keeping’ and it’s criminalised.
There’s laws around ‘control for gain’ which are criminalised, which is you know, meant to stop like, what is kind of understood as the ‘evil pimp’, with the workers that they’re exploiting, and they’re ‘controlling them for gain’; but often ends up affecting people like if a sex worker has a flat and they have a cleaner, or if they have a security guard or if they have a driver. Or if they have a partner whose rent they’re paying. All of these things kind of are criminalised under the laws affecting sex workers in the UK.
So I think for most sex worker organisations and groups, the things that they’re really concerned with on there kind of the, in terms of an organising or political activity is around those laws and how they affect affect sex workers in a day to day way. And so that’s why the kind of key movement for sex workers is the movement for full decriminalisation: the removal of any criminal laws relating to the sex industry or to sex workers.
Which just you know, give the addendum isn’t mean that like, exploitation is suddenly like, ‘Let’s go!’ Or like that rape is suddenly like, you know, legal; or like that violence towards sex workers is fine. It just says that for most sex workers, their day to day lives at work are going to be better if you remove the laws that criminalise their labour, and their work practices.
So yeah, I don’t know, I think for me, that’s the main political context and sort of the broader, the broader scheme of things. And then I think in like a kind of more like, talking about the left or something-level, it’s, the political context is trying to like, over the last, I don’t know, few years? SWARM have, like, SWARM who are group I’m involved in, I think we said that the beginning, you know, have been around for over 10 years now. And over that time, you’ve seen a shift in like, I wasn’t involved 10 years ago, but you’ve seen a shift in how people think about and talk about sex work and sex workers on the left, and there used to be an increased level of hostility. And now you’re seeing that sex workers are welcomed into more political groups, understood as being part of movements, often understood as being like at the sharp end of like, a lot of criminalization and a lot of laws and the ways in which sex workers are impacted is, you know, a bit of a ‘canary in the coal mine’ as people like to say, of how other groups and other networks and other people are going to be affected.
And so there’s a I think, a lot stronger connection to sex work and to sex workers, as being movements to like, organise around. So I think in terms of the political context that sex workers are organising in, that’s really key: this like shifting attitude towards recognising sex workers as comrades rather than as like, ‘victims out in the cold who kind of we try and ignore because it’s a complicated issue.’ Yeah, and that’s my answer.
SAMI
That’s a solid answer. I like it.
And so it sounds, so I think, what’s what’s coming across to me in that is that, like, sex work is like the like the sex worker struggle, I guess, for want of a better way of phrasing it, is like really embedded, and like linked to a lot of the other struggles that like the left is more recognised as organising within.
And, and so like, I think part of the reason (this is my take, and maybe not necessarily that useful) but like, part of the reason that I think there has been a lot of like a larger increase in sex worker solidarity on like ‘the left’, I think it’s partly to do with the work that like SWARM and its previous instantiation, or whatever of like, Sex Workers Open University did in terms of like, doing a lot of like, link building with a lot of other groups.
But I think is also because people are like seeing sex work as like, in a really practical sense, just linked in with other struggles, like I do a lot of stuff around like immigration raids, and it’s hard to talk about immigration rates without like thinking about like, like high profile immigration raids on brothels, because like, it’s just so often one of the most visible aspects of like, immigration enforcement. And I think that’s true of loads of stuff. Like if you work on homelessness, if you’re work on drug use, if you work on migration, if you work on whatever. Like, there’s just such clear links with, like, the struggles that like sex workers are living within, and so much of that is linked to criminalisation.
ELIO
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that’s partly why I’m, like sex work organising, or politics of solidarity with sex workers is, you know, really the, the frame through which I operate a lot. Because if you look at that, you see how it connects to all of the things; and like, I’m not saying that, you know, organising around housing rights doesn’t mean you like, they have to think about migration, or you have to think about gender, you have to think about work and stuff, like, you know. I think any issue of this kind can lead you to see all those connections between different things.
But for me, sex work, sex worker organising is such a, as a central site for the ways in which so much of that stuff all connects up. And it’s why it’s so important to organise on those issues, or to centre sex workers of, you know, various different experiences in the kind of organising or politics that you do. Because if you establish better conditions for sex workers in the world, then that will like, you know, that’s going to establish better conditions for a lot of people. There was something else you said as well, that made me think of something, but I just don’t remember what it was.
SAMI
I’m not gonna lie. I don’t remember what it is either. I say things, and they’re just immediately gone.
ELIO
It’ll, come back to me. Oh, yeah, this is, this is what it is. So I also run this project called Decriminalised Futures, which is kind of more of like an art and popular education project. And it is focused on like experiences and lives and perspectives of sex workers, but very specifically in connection with other like, you know, struggles for racial and economic justice, trans liberation, queer liberation struggles, and we’re constantly framing it in the connection to that, to build those connections.
And something that we’re doing at the moment, we’re recording in October. So we’ve been doing this series called Lady of the Night School as part of Decriminalised Futures, which is like an education course. And you can sign up and there’s lectures and seminars and readings. And it’s a way of kind of trying to focus in on issues that are related to sex worker struggles, and sex worker organising. But other things that maybe we don’t always get to go as deep into, because I think a lot of sex worker, public facing political work has to be very introductory, has to be trying to convince people like ‘this is why you should be interested in this. This is, here’s some basic arguments, here’s the legal models internationally. And this is why you should think about it,’ and Decriminalised Futures are kind of try to take the opportunity to be like, let’s really get into some specific stuff.
But the first session is talking about a history of criminalization in the UK in terms of in relation to sex work. And it was a lecture that we had a lecture that was done by this woman called Dr. Julia Laite, who’s really amazing. She’s at Birkbeck, and she talked about some of the history of how sex work was criminalised.
And she has quotes from 1922. So like 100 years ago, talking about the conditions that sex workers were facing, and also the political struggles that surrounded it. And what you see at the time is loads of like suffragettes loads of like early feminist organisers, were like, you know, you need to decriminalise sex work, because even though we’re like morally against it, that’s what’s gonna make the conditions for these people better and this is what should happen. And so the people that were the feminists who were the ‘saviours’ who were there, like well offs, not always, but sometimes, like wealthy women like this is their cause that they’re taking up. They’re on the side of decriminalisation and they’re in that fight.
Whereas nowadays, what you see is those people who tend to fit into that category are the ones who are arguing in favour of the Nordic model, which is, you know, a legal model that sex workers argue is very harmful to their working conditions. And who, are tend to be kind of in the opposition, opposition opposition, but they kind of present that oppositional position as being like their ‘natural position’ like, “Oh, we’ve always been against this. And like, you know, being in favour of sex worker rights is like the brand new thing,” but actually supporting decriminalisation and supporting sex workers is the position that has has been the longer term one. It’s the one that like people have, like, you know, changed from because of, you know, changing understandings of what it means to be a feminist.
Anyway, I’m kind of going off on one, but just what I mean is that like this connection, and like, this understanding of criminalization is something that people who are engaged in political movements have had for a long time; and then it kind of dips and wanes, how people know and understand it. And in the UK, particularly over the last 10, 20, 30 years, it’s groups like the English Collective of Prostitutes, who have done amazing political campaigning work to really fight for the rights of sex workers and to really push like that being important and central and maintaining that as being a like an integral part of like leftist organising.
SAMI
No, thanks. That was really useful. And I guess one thing in case like, me and Ali had a chat about this before we started this interview about like, how we want to frame things. And generally this is like, this is a series that we interview, like organisers to talk about the work they’re doing within, like, the groups that they’re a part of. And so we’re quite intentionally not asking you kind of like ‘Sex Work 101’ questions, but what we will do if you are listening to this, and you’re like, I have no idea what’s being talked about, we will put some links in the show notes for some like other videos, and because a lot of resources out there that are doing that kind of like 101 explanation. So if that is you, check out the blog post that comes to this episode, and you’ll probably find some help.
ELIO
I will also add that Decriminalised Futures, you know, worked with SWARM a couple years ago to run a conference that talked about a lot of issues that face sex workers talking about migrant sex workers, talking about the Nordic model, talking about sex workers of different experiences, talking about access, like disability, talking about race. And if you go to the Decriminalised Futures website, which is decriminalisedfutures.org, and you go to the archive, there’s all these recordings with like disicu- panel discussions and transcripts about really specific issues that affect sex workers. So.
ALI
Amazing it’s another another resource. Yeah, I can see Sami, like scurrying away now looking at that, so that will make it through to the show notes. I feel like like, my, I feel like sex worker struggles has become like, yeah, as you said, like, more prominent, more recently, and like through that dipping and waning process, like it feels, yeah, like it’s, it’s on on the up, again, at terms of like understanding and integration with the left. And also what you’re saying about like, I feel like loads of groups. And you said, like, lots of, if you look really closely at any struggle, they are all really, really interconnected. But I feel like the way that sex worker interconnection is presented and like, it feels really tangible in ways that other group other things like environmental things, even though you can do it, and it is super tangible, and it is super connected, it feels much clearer. And maybe that’s a communication thing that is going on, because it, maybe because it comes down to like individual lives, a lot of the time of like, sex workers are also migrants who are also in shitty rental situations or whatever, you know, like, because it comes down to a person, it feels like it comes across way more tangibly, to me at least I don’t know.
ELIO
I think it’s also like, you know, as, as we experience climate change, and as particular, you know, yeah, as we experience climate change, and as you see, like in the Global South, more places become uninhabitable, or like less easy to survive in in terms of like economic stability, you see more people migrating. And you see the ways in which border controls that are supposedly like to ‘protect against trafficking’, or to make sure that, you know, sex working women aren’t exploited in certain ways are actually used against migrants who are facing the brunt the brunt of climate change. Or who do make it into the UK despite these like horrific border regimes, and then are in a position of like precarious, like, status, and then maybe are relying on sex work as a way to earn an income. Like, I think it’s just every issue that you can think of, you can see how that connects help with like sex worker politics and organising, even if it’s maybe not like ‘environmentalism and sex workers’, like what’s the link and then it’s like, oh wait, because the reason these are connected is because of like borders and because of work and because of austerity and things like that. Yeah. And yeah, just you know, what real expectation is, which, yeah.
ALI
Yeah, all the structural stuff. Come comes. It’s all there and it all comes together in people’s lives. Funnily enough. (Laughs)
You mentioned stuff around how SWARM and other sex worker organisations are fighting for, like better, better conditions. Do you want to elaborate a bit more on like, what are these organisations about what you’re trying to achieve? And how are you going about it?
ELIO
So I think different organisations operate in different ways. So SWARM are very much have done a lot of work over the years, advocating for decriminalisation and doing a lot of work around that. And over the last few years, we’ve seen the group Decrim Now kind of come into being, which is a coalition of lots of different people and organisations fighting for decriminalisation in the UK decriminalisation of sex work.
And so SWARM have kind of had a little bit more space to be like, we’re not having to constantly just do policy work and fight to be like, get basic, like legal dignity, we’re able to turn a little bit more to focus purely on community and building up our community and doing services and resources for that are, you know, for the community who are, who are connected to SWARM and most impacted.
And, you know, doing that in a way that is focused on mutual aid. So it’s not like, oh, like, it’s a just a bunch of, you know, SWARM is very much a mixture of people who are sex workers and non sex and allies, non sex working allies who are kind of supporting that work to happen.
And creating, not kind of imagining the sex worker as this abstract person who no one’s ever really met, but you know they’re really victimised and they just need support and resources. And these people have decided what they’re going to be, and they’re going to provide them. But it’s very much led by sex workers knowing what they want, saying what they want, and putting that stuff in place, in a very much the context of mutual aid, where it’s not just, Oh this organisation gives you things, and now you have done but it recognises that as being part of a wider sex working community, or supporting sex workers. That it’s an exchange of like, this is a community that supports itself and supports each other.
I’m not sure if I’ve said that very well. But hopefully, like, you kind of get the idea of what I’m trying to say of like this, this SWARM is kind of focused on building community and supporting sex workers of all different kinds across the UK in lots of different ways.
And I’m gonna just talk a little bit about maybe just about, I guess, how we imagine doing that, I guess, or what the organisation is about is that it’s kind of the right moment to do that?
ALI
Yeah, yeah, great.
ELIO
So SWARM. Last year, no, 21, what year is it? So in 2020, SWARM ran this mutual aid fund, a hardship fund, because the pandemic, you know, put sex workers in this position where, for many the industry just disappeared overnight, and people didn’t have any work, and kind of no way to survive.
And you saw a lot of people who, you know, like, oh, it was like, Oh, go on Universal Credit. But a lot of sex workers, you know, were already on Universal Credit. And that wasn’t sufficient for like their living needs. And so doing sex work was a way to like top up, and suddenly, they kind of lost that top up. And were having to survive on an amount of money that was insufficient, or, like, just didn’t have their lives or their whatever, together enough to be able to deal with Universal Credit and deal with those kind of like logistical practicalities, or people who have no recourse to public funds, for whatever reason. And so sex work was how they survived. And now suddenly, that was gone, and they had no other way to have any money.
So there were a lot of ways in which people were affected, particularly like sex workers were affected by the pandemic. And so SWARM set up a mutual hardship fund, which basically fundraise money and gave it away to individual sex workers. So that they had like a little bit of a cushion to be able to get through a lot of the time that was like, going towards just putting like gas on the metre, so you can get through the rest of the month, or like just quite, you know, simple things that were just all that people needed just to get through that month, where they kind of dealt with the sudden change to their circumstances, either because they ran out of the tiny bit of savings they had or they were like, Okay, I’ve got no money now, and I need to do this.
So we raised and gave away like, I’m gonna say it wrong, because I looked at them in a while, about like, a quarter of a million pounds to like sex workers across the UK. And it was like, over 1000 sex workers, like got a payment. And all of that money was raised through private donations. So just people being like, Yeah, this is important to do, I’m going to give money towards it. And that was like a really amazing thing to do.
It was quite a lot of work for everybody who was involved in it, but it was, you know, really, really important because I think it sustained so many people. Like, it was a lifesaver for people just to get that little bit of money right when they needed it. And you also had like talking on the phone to sex workers across the UK who would, you know, be a bit suspicious like: ‘Why are you giving me this money?’ Because sex workers are not used to someone helping them out just because they’re a sex worker. They’re used to people being like, a lot more negative because they’re a sex worker. And so being like, ‘Oh, you’re like, one of me, and you’ve arranged this stuff, and you’re giving me money so that I can get by?’
Like, you know, it was just kind of an interesting, like, community building exercise of like really connecting with people who had never really spoken to other sex workers that much, or had only spoken to people about being a sex worker in the context of getting a service from people who were like, that’s their paid job. So actually speaking to people who are in community with them, who have been like, ‘No, we want to make sure you’re okay,’ was like quite a powerful thing.
And it made us think a lot about like, how do we keep building these strong community networks? So that when things happen, that people feel connected up in these ways? And how do we keep creating spaces where sex workers can meet with other sex workers and feel connected? And how do we do that in a way that’s like, where our work is voluntary, it’s reciprocal, you know, it prioritises exchanges of support and resources, while understanding that support and resources looks different depending on who the person giving or taking or, you know, receiving, maybe it’s a nice way to say that. You know, we’re really against the idea of one way giving, but also not like you have to jump through these hoops in order to get something from us. It’s about: by being a member of this community you are giving. And just like really focusing on, like, kind of building some of those connections, building solidarity, so supporting each other in the work that we do. And doing that, because we support the movement for our collective liberation, and that we’re dedicated to creating a better world for sex workers, and thinking still about public messaging and education. But our focus is less on convincing the outside world that sex workers deserve dignity, and providing dignity to sex workers who are connected to swarm and wider sex worker communities.
And using some of the funding that we’ve gotten through donations, and the ongoing funding that we get from people to do that work, because now there’s less need for the hardship fund, you know, people aren’t, there aren’t as many people in that kind of immediate crisis, which is good, which is what we want! We don’t want people to be in crisis. But then how do we build towards being able to respond to when there’s another crisis? Because there’s always another crisis.
And so thinking about building up like, grants to using that money and giving it to sex workers, not just because, oh, you’re in a crisis, and so you’re having a difficult moment, but being like, ‘Oh, you have a creative project that you want to do, or you have a zine that you want to make, or you have a thing to do, that’s going to like connect up the community. And that’s going to talk about your experiences of sex work in the UK and connect with other sex workers’ and kind of putting some of the funds towards stuff that builds community, doesn’t just like rescue community. And doing it in ways that are based around like, shared geographic locations, shared identities, shared experience, and just really thinking about how we can think about the different types of sex workers that are in the UK and how we can support them doing like… is this, kind of, am I meant to kind of talk a bit about some of the stuff we do? Am I going into too much detail? I love a bit of detail. So if I’m like, going to into the nitty gritties –
ALI
This is like how the stuff happens, this is what we want to hear.
ELIO
And doing stuff like this advice and support thing that we’ve been running, you know, for a year now, which is like a monthly drop in where sex workers can come and talk to other people about like issues they have applying for Universal Credit, issues they have doing tax stuff. You know, things that often come up for sex workers that have very unique needs around it. That they can speak to other people who are like trained up in like how to how to deal with that stuff. So it’s sort of like a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, but for sex workers specifically.
And just doing the stuff to be like, what knowledge do we have in this wider community? What knowledge do we have in people who are like supportive of the community and want to share it in ways that are like really respectful and supportive rather than like condescending? And how can we build up this up?
We’ve had to connect a project, the Dial Tone project, which is like phones, for sex workers, you need them, you know, sex workers often need a second phone so that their clients don’t have their private or personal number. Particularly, you know, sex workers might only want to, might only end up doing sex work for a year. And they don’t want in two years, some guy to be calling them because he still has that private number. You know, it’s just like, it’s both like a short term thing of like, oh, that helps to work and also like a long term thing of like thinking about how you get to navigate through the world.
And so kind of providing these resources that are direct to the work. And we’ve done you know, this healthcare project, with doing vaccines for sex workers through the pandemic, where sex workers, you know, kind of need a priority vaccine because they have that direct contact with people more often. But can’t necessarily go on to the government website and be like, there’s no category that says, ‘Oh, are you a prostitute? Thus you get to like book your vaccine earlier.’ So being like, oh, we’ll create these networks where that there are confidential, that places that people can go and get access to these things that they need, without having to necessarily have it written on their NHS record like something that they maybe don’t want people to know. Or they don’t want their GP, like in five years or 10 years to be able to see because that’s not what they do. And because they like it, you know, like maybe you can think of all the reasons why people who are like in certain positions might need access to a vaccine programme that’s aimed specifically at them.
Anyway, we do lots of other stuff like in terms of SWARM, like research papers, and like continuing the hardship fund, trying to create these projects, and I guess, like, what was the original question? What was your organisation about like SWARM as an organisation is very much about that community support community building, community resourcing kind of not in contrast.
But like slightly different to that is: so I’m a branch organiser for the United Sex Workers branch in UVW. And I just support the members of that branch to organise around issues that affect them. And that’s slightly different to SWARM because SWARM is very much about that community connection. Whereas UVW and USW is about workers rights.
And so what issues people are facing at work, whether it be the strip club they work in, or potentially brothel they work in or as a full service, sex worker who works independently or privately, or maybe someone who works online, you know, there’s all these kind of different sectors of sex work and different workplace issues that can come up. And it can be like a very unique thing, because some of those issues are ones that are really hard to navigate.
Because if you have an issue with your boss at your brothel, there’s no like that, that’s a criminal workplace. So you can’t go to tribunal and be like, my boss did this. But you also probably like can’t go to the police because the police would come – in like an ideal world – the police would be like, “Oh, I’ve never I never knew there was a brothel here, can you believe it? Who would have who would have thunk that this like workplace existed, we better go and like rescue those poor women!” and then they would shut it down. And so your issue with your boss then becomes a closure of your workplace and then no way to earn income.
So like, how do you kind of support sex workers in those situations with those workplace issues within the context of what is criminal and what their legal rights are? And in strip clubs, you know, the UVW won a case to say that strippers dancers in strip clubs are workers. You know, it was recognised that that is that person that is a category of worker and that, just because, you know, people have these stigmatised attitudes, it doesn’t mean that that person isn’t a worker in a workplace with who deserves workers rights.
And so often it’s responding to issues around that. So I think that’s kind of different because it’s very much like people will join UVW or USW because they’re, they understand themselves as a worker who maybe has workers issues or who wants to be in solidarity with other workers in a really specific way.
And a lot of our cases are around unfair dismissal or people needing to be able to claim sick pay or holiday pay. Sometimes people get fired because of like union organising because, like, even more than other industries, sometimes bosses who employ sex workers or strippers or dancers or other types of sex workers are like kind of outraged that they would dare unionise because they see them as like a group that can be taken advantage of because of the like social attitudes towards sex workers.
So there’s all these different ways that sex workers are impacted at work, and UVW does organising around that. And also there’s a lot of organising around licencing for sexual entertainment venues in the UK. Over the last like three to four years, we’ve seen this big uptickin so called feminist campaigners trying to get sexual entertainment venues so strip clubs around the UK closed down because they say it’s like causes violence, and it’s exploitation and it’s bad for women.
And you see all these people who work in strip clubs being like, why are you trying to close my workplace, I mean, make it so that I can’t earn any money? Like, what they want is for those vendors to be able to stay open, but for the workers rights that they have, and for the the conditions in those workplaces to be improved. And it’s hard to fight your boss to have the conditions in your workplace improved when you’re having to fight with your boss to keep your workplace open. And then to even feel like all like you’re kind of grateful to your boss that they’ve kept employing you rather than like actually you’re a worker who’s able to advocate for your rights.
So UVW kind of has a slightly different angle in terms of like, how it’s supporting and connecting with like sex worker rights movements in the UK, and I think those are very complementary because it creates space for each other. The more organisations you have advocating around sex workers’ rights and more space that you have for those organisations to focus on what feels really important to them. Yeah, that’s fine as an answer.
ALI
That’s more than fine! That is extremely comprehensive and like very helpful to go get those two different angles and also yeah, the hardship fund is an amazing, amazing achievement, to have raised that much money and to have all these different projects and forms of community support going on is just like incredible. And like very, I feel like mutual aid is something that we’ve probably all heard about through the pandemic. But this is like a very concrete and specific version of it, but probably has been going on in like sex worker communities for longer than the pandemic and got like deeper roots and stuff.
ELIO
I think just the only thing I’d add to that is that I think that’s like that kind of mutual aid and support has been happening: like all SWARM did was formalise it slightly, and that only was formalised in order to access the resources of the wider world. You know, that’s, those practices of support and like sharing of money and resources are things that happen with between sex workers, you know, all the time.
ALI
Yeah, it’s just like a thing people do to look after each other. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You’ve used the word like organising a few times and I’m wondering if like is there a specific way that you mean that in those different contexts? Like, for SWARM is organising is building the community organising in itself, and that’s where it goes and in UVW is organising a different thing? Like, I feel like it’s a word that people throw around in groups and can mean quite specific things and I think you’re pointing to different aspects of it.
ELIO
Yeah, I’m in my position at the moment which I may change is that organising is bad and the whole concept like should be abolished. You know abolish panels abolish organising abolish all this like stuff. I think in SWARM organising looks really different, because it’s not trying to get people organised to do a thing. And it’s not like a top down model.
You know, I think a lot of organising and certainly organising and other organisations, I’m a part of is about: someone comes who knows things and gathers people who care about a thing to get them to achieve something in relation to that, whether it’s like around housing, or their workplace or their whatever.
But SWARM is not that kind of top down. You know, there isn’t someone who’s the organiser, who knows there’s people who are like, being led by the community saying things that they want and need. And people are being organised to be able to spend time together to build community. You know, sex work for a lot of sex workers is a very isolating industry, people feel very alone. The political context means people feel very alone. And it’s really powerful for people to be able to spend time together and to share information, share resources, and just share a sense of like, ‘Oh, I understand what your experiences is like.’ And that can often look very different to what is publicly facing, you know, what people have to say in public is different from what they’re able to say in private to each other, particularly in a political context where like, there’s this very anti-sex worker sentiment. What I would call anti sex worker sentiment. If a sex worker expresses publicly like that they’ve experienced violence at work, they don’t know if that’s just going to be used by someone to say, “well see, that’s why the industry should be abolished.” So this is real kind of policing, on what people are able to say publicly about their conditions and their experiences. And so creating those private spaces where people can, can share about what those experiences are, and how they feel about them, and what they think should be done about them is, is really important. But it’s not organising people to be like, ‘okay, you’ve, you’ve thought of this, and now you have to go and do this.’ And, you know, me, Elio, or something, as the organiser is gonna come and help you do that. It’s literally just kind of like being responsive to what people say, and trying to create things that are sex worker led and sex worker supportive.
In UVW, it’s very different because my job is, you know, to organise this branch and to be like, Okay, there’s these workplace issues that come up, and I’m gonna, you know, turn to other people who are within the union who have knowledge about workplace issues. And I’m going to turn to members who have knowledge about sex worker issues, and sex worker workplace issues, you know, they are the experts in what a sex worker workplace looks like.
Even though there’s amazing people and UVW who have incredible knowledge of the law of how unions work of what workers rights are, they don’t always know how that applies in a sex worker workplace, or to sex work issues. So often my job is kind of being the hinge between those two pieces of knowledge and bringing them together in order to be able to like fight cases.
And we also have the benefit of caseworkers within UVW who can like kind of take on specific cases. And then maybe we can turn them into disputes and turn them bigger. But that’s definitely a situation in which I, my perspective on organising is that I try not to go into the branch and be like, ‘Okay, this is what’s going on, and this is what everybody needs to do.’ But to be like, ‘Okay, this seems like the things that you want to achieve. Here’s some ways that maybe we could achieve that. How does that sound? Okay, I’m going to get on with making sure and supporting those things to happen and connecting us up and with these different like resources and knowledge.’ So I think those are two very like different models.
And then you kind of have, I’ll just like kind of refer to it. But Decriminalised Futures, which is another project I run, which isn’t to me organising it’s a project. It’s an art project. It’s a political education project. But part of that political education is to make resources and knowledge and information available both to sex workers and non sex workers, so that they understand the political conditions of sex workers, but also in which sex work is happening. So that they are informed and knowledgeable and confident in being able to to do that work in the wider world.
So it’s kind of like that’s not really organising people to like, do something with the political education they get, but it’s providing it to be available, which I think is again, a different, a different angle on how what organising might look like? Yeah.
SAMI
Yeah, no, I think that’s really helpful. And I think it really, it’s the similarities of that the distinctions you’re making around like the organising that happens within SWARM and the organism that happens within UVW/the organisation, the type of organising that you are explicitly trying to not do within the context of UVW, seems quite similar to the distinction that we’ll often make as facilitators and the differences between like talking about like facilitation stuff and training.
Like around like, where is the focus around, like trying to support a group, and to achieve whatever it is the group’s objective is type thing, versus how much it is like being the person that has the knowledge that comes in to deliver some knowledge type thing. And like how, like the different tensions and like the pros and cons of those different approaches.
Like I think it’s always a live chat, right? There’s definitely, it’s definitely the feel like organising chat is in the zeitgeist you’d like? Oh, Jane McAlevey. That kind of stuff. I feel like it’s definitely a it’s a series of chats. Right?
ELIO
Yeah. And also, like, I think it I think it comes back to like, a conversation that’s been had for a long time about like the ‘nonprofit industrial complex’, which is like, people who work in that are meant to be like, you know, they’re organising around like, inadequate water supply in some mountain region. But once there’s adequate water supply, that person doesn’t have a job. And so you’re putting people in positions of like, that it kind of go against their own personal interest in order to like, reach a political goal. And that political goal might be actually really abstracted from what they, you know, they might believe in it like, yeah, we want people to have water. But it’s not, if it’s not their community or not their location, or they’re not going to drink that water, then it can kind of be at a distance. Which has nothing to say about that specific person, like, I’m sure they’re doing well. But we put people in these positions that are conflicted.
And I think it’s the same with like unions, in some ways, like a union organiser is that like, if, if workers aren’t being exploited, then what’s the point in, in having a union organiser? I still think it’s a point in having a union and having people connected, but having these professional organisers who go and like help the ‘damaged’ workers, like, take a stand and stuff like that, like, it’s kind of a weird thing, right?
Maybe this is like quite a bad analysis of how unions work or something. And like, obviously, I’m a union, like, you know, I’m talking about experience I have, and I’m not definitely not being like, ‘I’m gonna make sure this dispute goes badly so that workers stay exploited so I keep having a job!’ But like, it is like a kind of weird thing that this this structure of the organiser, where we see it repeated in these different places is kind of like that sort of doesn’t make sense.
SAMI
Yeah, I think it’s what it’s what the economists call a perverse incentive, right? Like, I’m not sure, I don’t think you’re making the case that you’re like an accelerationist saying ‘Let’s make people’s lives worse and worse until, until the revolution!’ But I think like, there’s a reason that it’s a common chat around, like unions specifically, right, this idea of like professional organisers, and it’s me, oh, sorry.
ELIO
Oh, just also the, I think it was on about this just before the call, but that being able to differentiate between like identities and structural positions, and how sometimes a paid union organiser who isn’t connected to a specific community or issue, but is just brought in because they have expertise on ‘how to organise’ even if they have no understanding of the context that people are in, ;ike, it’s like, is your identity an organiser? Or is your structural position a worker who’s trying to support other workers or other whoever or this or that and the other.
And if you bring in someone, they might be like the best union organiser in the world. But if you put them in a situation with sex workers, where they don’t understand the context of criminalisation for sex workers in the UK, then what they do might not be as effective because they don’t have that knowledge. And they can build that knowledge over time, but it’s because they’re being led by the people rather than they’re leading those people.
SAMI
Yeah, no, I think that’s really good point. And you’ve got so much and stuff around like the ‘nonprofit industrial complex’, but I’m not gonna talk about that now. But this is also a thing that we this is also thing that we talked to Ru about (if people remember season one), so like maybe there needs to be a nonprofit industrial complex, focused conversation in future, but I think that let’s leave that aside for now.
ELIO
I was gonna – can I say something about –
SAMI
No, you, okay you can say one thing and then we’re moving on.
ELIO
I think that would be really interesting, particularly in the context of the UK. When I first moved back to London like five or six years ago, whenever it was really popular to be like ‘pay artists, what they’re owed,’ like, ‘pay people for their labour and pay money.’ And it was very much this anyone, anytime anyone does something you need to give them money for it, and this kind of attitude of like, you shouldn’t be doing anything for anyone unless you’re getting like, compensated for it.
Like, regardless of what one thinks about it, and like my position has definitely changed over the years, like, I something I said a few years ago, I wouldn’t say any more. But like I think this attitude towards compensation being essential in order to do things and and how that shapes how we think about organising is, you know, good conversation.
SAMI
A good conversation for another day. [All laugh] And I think there was just one practical thing I was gonna say, for the people who maybe got a little bit lost in the acronyms before you mentioned USW, Elio, which is the United Sex Workers. Which is a branch of UVW the UNited Voices of the World. Is that correct?
ELIO
Yes.
SAMI
Perfect.
ELIO
Just No, I think that’s good to say.
SAMI
And so a bit of a pivot now. Thought it’d be good to, to spend some time thinking about like, how do you like live the values of your organisation in terms of how you do stuff? You’ve talked a lot about, like the aims and how you meet those aims, but maybe thinking a little bit more about like, what the things underlying those aims are? How do you do them? In practice. You’ve brought a lot of practical stuff into the other bits. So what are some practical things?
ELIO
I really want to joke and be like: “No, I told you, I’m paid as a union organiser, I don’t share any of these values!. I’m just here for the paycheque!” No. So, um, I think.
So for SWARM, we kind of had this list of things that we want, which is, I’m going to just like, say a couple of them, which is: sex workers to feel connected to a national and international community of other workers; sex workers to be able to access spaces of support, action, exchange and learning; to feel supported by accessible resources and services that are relevant and reflective of their needs and lives; the sex worker movement to be one that is closely connected to other movements.
So I think those are sort of like, they’re not quite values, because they’re kind of more like goals, but they reflect the organisation’s values. And I think, like, in thinking about, like, how do you live the values of your outward facing work in your organisation? It’s like, well, we we try and embed this stuff into it.
Like, are you kind of talking about me personally? Or you’re talking about the organisa- like, how did the organisation of the values? Or like, how do we within the organisation as the way we interact with each other? How do we live those values?
SAMI
Let’s go with the latter last as an option, but if you go off track, all of the other ones also
Sound great.
ELIO
Okay, I’m glad that I’m being given permission to go off track. I mean, I think it’s in terms of like, okay, so let’s take ‘sex workers to feel supported by accessible resources and services that are reflective and relevant and reflective of their, their needs and lives’. You know, that is reflected in the Organising of the people who are very involved in SWARM of being like, we try and do it in an accessible way. Like, we try and book spaces, or we have our office in spaces, or we use venues that are accessible to people, and think about that in different ways.
We, you know, if people are like, Oh, I feel fucked this week, and I can’t do this thing. It’s like, oh, that’s fine. Let’s reschedule you know, and it’s not trying to be like, “No, but the funding that we got from whatever organisation says that this has to be done by March 2023. And, you know, you agreed to this.” Like, we’re not trying to be each other’s like, bosses or managers. Sometimes we’ll be like, “dude, like you said, you’d do this,” but like, in a kind of mutual aid, like we’re trying to cooperate and get stuff done and support each other way. But if people have stuff that means things take longer or stuff needs time, or it takes longer to do, like, we’re all humans, animals, it’ll be annoying, but like, it’s about supporting ourselves as to organise in ways that are accessible.
And to be like, actually, if we want this to be an organisation that is sex worker centred, sex workers often have quite chaotic lives, they might need to take a booking without very much notice. Or they might have had a really difficult booking and need to take a week off from having like responsibility, or a cost has come up. And so this week, they need to work flat out as much as they can, and trying to pick up bookings in order to like fund their lives.
And so if you think those are the people that are at the centre of the organisation, the organisation has to reflect those needs, by changing its working and organising practices to take that kind of stuff into consideration. And if the point of the organisation is to build a community of people who are sex workers, and people who are close to or love or care about or are invested in sex worker lives, then our aim isn’t to like get through the task list. Our aim isn’t to make sure that emails are responded to (although, I mean, it’s great when the emails are responded to), but like our aim isn’t to like, get work done. Our aim is to create space for people to feel in community with each other.
And if people feel like, constantly like aggro with each other, then that’s not going to do that. And what’s things that create like that aggro feeling? Stress. And what creates stress? Like, too much work and too much expectation and too much pressure.
So I think in terms of SWARM, like, some of the ways in which working together we try and reflect those values is to kind of remember what it is that we’re prioritising in terms of having this organisation and thinking about that, in terms of the work that we do.
I think in UVW, it’s, I mean, it’s not like different, it’s just there’s maybe different priorities. And I think it’s different in the United Sex Workers than it is in the wider union, you know, because the branch is very specific. And people have really specific relationships to each other, and connections with each other and a different basis for connections to each other. Whereas the wider union, you know, there’s different branches, there’s different relationships, there’s different structures, and there’s different stuff going on. So I feel like I can’t really speak to UVW, and how UVW lives those values.
But I think very much it’s that like, sex work is work, work is bad. Like, the reason we go to work and we’re workers is because, you know, capital wants to exploit our labour in order to create capital. I’m probably saying it wrong, some Marxists are gonna listen to this and be like, “No, no, no, that’s not how it goes.” But you know, like, basically, workers are exploited in order for, and like, we’re kept in a state of exploitation, we have to keep working, so that other people can make money from us.
And so when we’re organising together, when I’m organising with people from the branch, we’re not trying to exploit each other in that way. Like, I’m arriving as a person who’s paid to be in that space, the members of the branch are not paid to be there, they’re paying money. So I’m being respectful of the fact that I kind of work for them and take leadership and guidance from them. But at the same time, they’re respectful of the fact that like, I’m there as a worker, and if I’m like, I can only do this for four hours today. They’re like, okay, like, they’re not going to be like, wait, no, but we need you to do 70 things. Because we, like, you know, there’s that kind of mutual respect and an understanding, you know, an understanding that sex work is work, work is work, work is bad. But, you know, how do we get along? I mean, I think that’s kind of how there’s how the values fit in within the organisations. In terms of how we related to each other, at least.
SAMI
Yeah, thanks. No, I think that’s really good. And if you if you are a Marxist that has a problem with value form, please write in! [All laugh] I think I just wanted to make a comment. That’s like, I think that a lot of the things that you were naming in terms of like, I think what you you refer to it as, like, how you organise like accessibly within SWARM, in terms of like, is like, ways that you react to like, the fact that people within SWARM are like precarious workers and like, live precarious lives. And like, and I think that is, like, maybe people that are listening to this, maybe you’re not like, you’re not a sex worker, you’re not like necessarily organising with sex workers, or I guess the classic caveat with people that you know are sex workers. But I think like that, that that way of organising within people’s precarious lives and acknowledging each other like as, as people with like bodies and needs, and all this kind of stuff, is a really crucial and generalizable thing as as well as the like prioritisation of like, mutual aid and care and all that sort of things. Like, I think it’s a lot of the stuff that you’re saying really applies to a lot of other a lot of other contexts.
ELIO
But I think there’s also the thing of like, not taking the piss, right? So like, my, like, if my job is funded through through member dues, that’s, that’s how my position is funded, then I have a responsibility to the members to be doing the thing that they’re asking me to do. Because the whole reason I’m there is because they want to get together. And they’ve asked me to, like, apply my time or expertise or knowledge or help in order to do that. And there’s like, oh, yeah, we respect that you could only work four hours or we respect that you have accessibility stuff, and you you can’t work today, or you’ve been sick or this stuff.
But if you just never come to work, then like, that’s not me being like, “Yeah, I’m gonna fight the power by like, never working!” That’s me taking the piss out of people who are trying to organise around, like, quite important issues to them. And so I think there’s also a responsibility that comes with being like, “I’m not a member. So I don’t just get to decide about how much I give, I’m paid. This is my job, and my job is being paid by these people going to work.” And so if sex workers are going to work to earn money to give me to help them get organised, then I have to respect that they’re workers as well. But their work is like how I survive and so I need to, you know? I’m kind of, I just said the same thing three times in a circle, but like, it just feels kind of important, right? Like if you’re in that position of being paid to organise people that you have to be respectful to them and be led by them, including in thinking about what it is that your job is.
ALI
No, totally. But I agree 100%. And to go back to the SWARM piece, where it’s like a more of a mutual aid, everyone’s in the organisation in different positions but working together in that collaborative way. I feel like the way that you framed that was like, I feel like lots of groups talk about like burnout, and talk about overwork and talk about basically the things you say, around like, you know, take care and don’t, don’t, don’t see each other as means to ends and all that kind of stuff. But on more like abstract campaigns, it’s easy to fall into that task-based thing of like, we have to plan the action, do the meeting, do the event, blah, blah, blah.
But the way that you were framing that in the community, in the way of like a community of people coming together around the issue of sex work, to take care of each other, to support each other within that. It felt like the way that you were framing it, that it would be harder to do that, it probably still happens, because we all like focus on getting stuff done. And like, have lots of projects and like, want to make sure the stuff happens. But the way that you’re framing it felt like that might be harder. I don’t know if that resonates as well.
ELIO
Like harder to avoid burnout?
ALI
No, like, harder. Like the way that you are prioritising it meant that, like care and understanding for each other was more embedded.
ELIO
Yeah.
ALI
And therefore. Yeah, there’s more understanding for each other and less, like, “why didn’t you send that email? Blah blah blah.”
ELIO
I mean, I still will be like –
ALI
Less policing.
ELIO
Why has she not sent the fucking email? You know, like, you’ll still have the moments: not like everybody’s like a saint, but it’s just like, you’ll be like, Well, yeah, maybe she didn’t send, like you just get over it in a different way. Or you understand it, but I think it’s, yeah, I think it’s definitely more embedded. And so it’s easier to do. And it’s harder to like, kind of slip in to the more like, this task-based like dadadadada, like we’re an office and we’ve got to get stuff done. I think it, it can be harder to do that.
But I think also part of the reason that care is important is like we’re doing the hardship fund, like, you know, there were sex workers who had also faced loads of hardship as a result of COVID, making phone calls to other sex workers who have faced hardship because of COVID. And are hearing, really, you know, like, really difficult stories of people’s, like desperation and destitution and really difficult things. And it started to you know, you’d get to a point and be like, “Okay, shall we… You’ve been, you’ve been reading the emails every day for six months, do you want somebody else to take the emails over?” And people were like, “No, I’m gonna read the emails, no, I’m gonna make 60 calls today.” And you’d be like, “Oh, like you can…” Sometimes caring for each other was being like, at least for me, sometimes caring for other people in the collective was being like, “You need to stop doing the thing that you’re doing. Because you feel like you have to do it.” Because of this, you have secondhand trauma. And you need to take a break and be able to feel like a different relationship to this urgency, because every single case is urgent, every single situation is urgent, that urgency will never end. But what might end is your capacity to be able to respond. And so we need to preserve that and preserve you. Even if it feels like I’m being horrible to you by saying maybe you shouldn’t do so many phone calls or something.
And so I think it’s also important to think about care as being not just like, “Oh, we’re nice to each other, it’s fine if things don’t take time,” but we’re encouraging each other to do a little bit less, while recognising the context that we’re in, you know, like, I’m in the London Renters Union and sometimes you can’t do less because loads of people are getting evicted, and then needs to be responded to and dealt with and stuff like that. But you also need to be able to preserve people to be able to keep responding to those evictions by not being like massively burnt out and traumatised, and just in deep distress constantly, because all they can think about is how many people are being made homeless all the time. You know.
ALI
Care isn’t always the nicey nicey. Sometimes it’s a bit firm, like, “Stop working a bit.”
ELIO
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s an issue that I have sometimes with the way people talk about like care and organising and it’s like, “Oh, well, we’re just being nice to each other. And we all just get together.” It’s like no, sometimes I like go into a meeting with people that I don’t vote like very much, and I disagree with them about things. And we feel like kind of annoyed at each other. But we think that we do that in order to figure out how to do the thing that matters to us. And like it isn’t always pleasant or nice. You know, I’m an abolitionist. I organise around prison abolition and these issues like the people that we organise with or spend time with might not always be people that we think are like, everything they’ve done in their lives is great, but we find ways to work together and support each other to achieve the things that really matter. To us, which is like freedom and liberation for all.
SAMI
And like avoiding that conflation of like care and ‘niceness’.
ELIO
Yeah.
SAMI
And being mates.
ELIO
Yeah
SAMI
Into all like one kind of mess of how you interact with other people and making sure those things can be like, separate and differentiated. And I guess that’s why like group culture is really important, right? Like it’s group culture is in part a norm that people will try
