OPINION | Why did the Seattle City Council screen video footage of sex workers in Aurora?

by Megan Burbank

Something strange happened earlier this month during the Public Safety Committee meeting to discuss Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison and City Councilwoman Cathy Moore’s proposed SODA and SOAP zones, which have been controversial since their creation and would, among other things, ban sex workers from a designated area on Aurora Avenue North, a major corridor of Seattle’s survival sex trade. In a bizarre moment during her presentation, Moore showed a video of sex workers engaged in what she described as “commercial sexual exploitation,” because, she said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The video, dated July 19, carries a warning about “partial nudity” and essentially shows only sex workers milling about on an Aurora street corner — nothing that will come as a surprise to anyone who’s driven down that stretch of road in the past decade. But the video, which Moore dramatically described as “an hour-long snapshot of sex trafficking on an Aurora street corner,” seemed oddly familiar. It looked like surveillance video and reminded me of the prurient YouTube account I reported two years ago, which showed sex workers milling about in Aurora, seemingly without their consent.

Consent and collaboration are important when you’re talking about supporting sex workers and survivors of gender-based violence. But the SODA and SOAP proposals, quite transparently, aren’t about creating more robust support for sex workers or people who use drugs: they’re about getting them to go somewhere else. And that dehumanizing, detached approach was evident in the rhetorical tools committee members used during the meeting, perhaps most notably in Moore’s video.

Even setting aside the privacy concerns it raised, showing videos of sex workers at a recorded meeting that was also posted online — without giving anyone in the video a voice — is an odd way to try to prove how opposed to exploitation you are. It’s an exploitative act in itself, and a reminder of how out of touch the city council is with the communities it serves, including not only concerned neighbors — many of whom spoke at the Tuesday, August 13, meeting — but sex workers themselves.

Notably absent from a panel the commission convened Tuesday to discuss the issue were the voices of people currently working in the sex industry. The panel relied heavily on the savior narrative of helping people “escape” the sex industry, a framework that ignores people who can’t leave the sex industry — or don’t want to — and also deserve safety and dignity.

But sex workers did show up for the public comment period and spoke out against the SODA and SOAP zones. So did public defenders, the ACLU, business owners, organizations that advocate against gender-based violence, and volunteers from the Green Light Project, a mutual aid group that delivers supplies, food, and peer support to sex workers in Aurora twice a week.

Their opposition was clear and rooted in personal experience. “This legislation will harm survivors of gender-based violence,” said anti-violence advocate Shannon Perez-Darby. “It will criminalize people who experience violence. I care deeply about the safety of every member of our community. Putting safety for some above safety for all is not the answer. We can do better.”

“(I)f you want people to stop being trafficked or to stop doing sex work, you have to give them tools,” said one sex worker. “SOAP orders and profiling are a barrier to lifesaving resources and lasting change. Protect our most vulnerable. Vote no on this bill. Listen to sex workers.”

Listening to sex workers is precisely what Moore’s proposal misses. The proposal would simply revive a practice that the council has historically abolished because of its disproportionate impact on people of color.

But she is right about one thing: a photo is worth a thousand words. And the images shown during the Public Safety Committee meeting say a lot about how policies like Moore’s are treating people in the sex industry: as a problem to be solved and a source of sensationalized fear, whose presence is equated with violent crime, even though the council has produced no concrete evidence that sex workers themselves have been involved in recent shootings along Aurora. It’s hard to see people as human when you’re looking at them from such a distance.

In contrast, the advocates and sex workers who attended the meeting offered a powerful counterargument that should serve as the basis for any legitimate policy regarding sex work going forward.

A volunteer with the Green Light Project put it this way: “The women of Aurora are not abstract concepts to us. They are our friends. They are our equals. They are us. This bill does nothing for them except make their lives more dangerous. I implore those of you who support this bill to actually read it and see what it does, which is arrest the victims you seem to want to protect, and actually talk to the people who are in these communities and hear what they have to say.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, it seemed like the city council wasn’t listening. But if they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, they’ll have to.

The South Seattle Emerald aims to provide space for diverse viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect among community members.

The opinions, beliefs and positions expressed by participants on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and positions of Emerald or the official policies of Emerald.

Megan Burbank is a writer and editor based in Seattle. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as an editor and reporter at the Portland Mercury and The Seattle Times. She specializes in corporate reporting about reproductive health policy and stories at the intersection of gender, politics, and culture.

📸 Main image: Councilmember Cathy Moore presents CB 120836, an ordinance regarding prostitution, during the special meeting of the Public Safety Commission on August 13, 2024. Screenshot from a Seattle Channel broadcast of the Public Safety Commission meeting on August 13.