Campaign to Stop New Prostitution Laws Kicks Off on Aurora Avenue

Volunteers canvassed neighborhoods around Aurora Avenue on Saturday in preparation for a City Council committee vote this week on whether to revive Seattle’s loitering prostitution law and establish a Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone along seven miles of Aurora.

I followed one of the teams and discovered that few neighbors were aware of the legislation and were eager to learn more, but some of them had urgent matters to attend to at that moment! There are so many busy bees on Aurora!

Seriously, though, the canvassers convinced more than a few neighbors to listen. Over the course of about two hours, the group of 11 volunteers split into five teams, left flyers on about 140 doors, and spoke with about 50 neighbors. The door-to-door officers, who oppose the bill, told residents that the bill could make it easier for sex traffickers to exploit their victims and that police would be arresting people other than traffickers and clients. They also stressed that if the City Council’s Public Safety Committee approves the bill on Tuesday, the full council could vote on the bill as early as Sept. 17, leaving opponents little time to educate the public about the dangers they see in the bill. Based on the responses we heard at the doors, many people seemed to view the bill as both unhelpful and potentially harmful, a stark contrast to neighbors who supported the bill at the last public hearing.

Madison Zack-Wu, campaign director for the dancer-led advocacy group Strippers Are Workers (SAW), organized the canvas and split off with a team of two other volunteers, an Aurora resident named Peach and Aaron Banh, a recent UW graduate. The first person the team spoke to at the door said she had heard about the legislation and made a “moderate” hand gesture when asked what she thought. That gesture summed up the reactions of the 12 neighbors Zack-Wu’s group spoke with over the two hours. One person strongly supported the bill, but otherwise the neighbors seemed either unaware of the legislation or opposed to cracking down on sex worker arrests.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Cathy Moore, would make “loitering for prostitution” a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. Under the bill, officers could arrest people for beckoning to passersby, approaching someone in a car or any other behavior that makes someone appear to be a sex worker.

The bill also creates a gross misdemeanor, “promoting prostitution loitering,” punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. This provision targets people who, for example, scam others for service on Aurora or otherwise support someone’s sex work. Moore is selling this part of the bill as a way to crack down on pimps and sex traffickers, but proponents fear that other sex workers and people who support sex workers could be arrested under the bill.

Finally, Moore’s bill creates the seven-mile SOAP zone along Aurora Avenue, allowing judges to order people to stay out of the area as part of the conditions of pretrial detention or sentencing for anyone arrested or convicted of a prostitution-related offense. Moore amended her original bill to prevent judges from issuing exclusion orders against people arrested solely for loitering.

In conversations with neighbors, the canvassers refuted Moore’s claim that the bill would help address gun violence in their neighborhoods, saying that Moore’s bill fails to address the root causes of gun violence, such as poverty, income inequality, and lack of supportive housing and community support systems, according to an analysis by the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (AGR). Other problems with the bill include the way it conflates sex work and sex trafficking, leading lawmakers to create “misguided” interventions that harm sex workers but not traffickers. For example, sex traffickers use fear of criminalization against their victims. When sex workers are arrested by police officers, they are less likely to turn to police for help, especially if they’ve already had a bad experience with officers.

The group’s pamphlets include a “non-exhaustive list” of organizations opposing the bill, including the Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington, the Organization for Prostitution Services, the Domestic Abuse Women’s Network, the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, and the King County Department of Public Defense, to name a few. This broad opposition from civil liberties groups makes sense given that Seattle repealed the law in 2020 after the city found that it disproportionately affected people of color, transgender people, and women. The city also found that the subjective nature of the law led officers to arrest people who were not involved in sex work.

At one point during the campaign, Zack-Wu and her group spoke with a shirtless man who was installing a security camera outside his home. He expressed concern about the subjective nature of the law, saying that officers would make arrests based on their impressions rather than evidence of a crime. The man’s wife drove up to the house halfway through the conversation with the volunteers, and the man joked to her that the campaigners had come to talk to him because his shirtless body could make him a target for officers under the proposed law. Another neighbor raised a similar concern more seriously, one of the volunteers said. That neighbor said that as a woman of color living nearby, she worried that officers would come up to her and question her as she walked to her bus stop.

When neighbors asked what they should do if they were against the bill, or what the group suggested as alternatives, volunteers said they wanted more transparency into how the Seattle Police Department (SPD) investigates shootings in the Aurora neighborhood, and more evidence from the SPD to prove that officers are already doing everything they can to stop shootings under current laws. The group also wants the council to increase funding for organizations that already do direct harm reduction and housing education for people in the sex trade, as well as for community-based early intervention gun violence prevention organizations. Finally, the volunteers suggested that the city could improve safety in the neighborhood by installing Eco Blocks at the entrances to streets in the neighborhood, which has helped curb the number of shootings on 101st Street west of Aurora Ave North. One neighbor appeared interested in testifying against the bill but later backed out. Otherwise, a handful of neighbors said they would review the information and consider sending an email.

Zack-Wu said her group came up with the suggestions after talking to Aurora residents and neighborhood groups who want to reduce gun violence along the avenue but who oppose the idea of ​​arresting sex workers, especially without funding for specific services and diversion programs for sex workers. However, Moore has so far not included any resident suggestions in her recently proposed amendments to the bill, and she has added zero additional funding for services; her amendments have only solidified the boundaries of the SOAP zone and excluded arrested sex workers from being subject to SOAP zone orders.

Moore’s amendment sought to address concerns about past issues involving SPD officers using force against sex workers and demanding services from them. In her amendment, she included a section that would require SPD to train all officers patrolling the SOAP zone in best practices for working with survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. Moore said the training would be provided by the Seattle Adult Survivors Collaborative (ASC) Task Force, which would also include The More We Love and The Silent Task Force. However, when The Stranger When asked how Moore selected these organizations to train SPD and whether the city went through a competitive bidding process for these services, a spokesperson for her office said she planned to soon file a revised amendment that would remove the section on training and the references to the ASC.

Those interested in submitting public comments on the prostitution ordinance and the SOAP zone can find more information on the City Council agenda and the city clerk’s website . The meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, and registration for virtual public comments opens at 8:30 a.m. For those who wish to comment in person, Councilman Bob Kettle suggested they come to City Hall between 8:30 and 9 a.m.