CAAAV's Women’s Worker’s Project
CAAAV'S Women's Worker Project (WWP) mission is to “build cooperatives, develop alternative health care programs for undocumented working women, engage in campaigns which will challenge racist and sexist immigration and labor policy, provide peer advocacy, and build community among all Asian women workers who labor in the informal sector.” [1]
In New York City, Asian women are one of the most exploited in the sex work industry.
The sex industry itself is nothing new, and its growth directly correlates to the United States military imperialist presence in Asian countries, like Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. CAAAV reported that Asian women in the United States enter into the sex work industry under extreme circumstances - from being abandoned wives of soldiers to sex trafficking. Systemic racism and sexist hierarchies by law enforcement deemed brothels with Asian, Latino, and Black sex workers were heavily targeted, while those with white women were often left unchecked. The WWP advocate for these sex workers to have fundamental rights of access to health care and living wages.
In 1994, the NYPD published "Police Strategy No. 5: Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York," a new directive policing low-level crimes that relied on short-term responses, like raids on brothels. At the same time, the NYPD established a 600 member "public morals" task force that focused its efforts on neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, Queens, with high concentrations of Asian residents. According to Giuliani, sex work was an activity that threatens public spaces, which showed "visible signs of a city out of control, a city that cannot protect its space or its children." [2]
With new regulations under Police Commissioner Bratton gave the task force the authority to handle issues of prostitution with little oversight. Each time a brothel closed, the city profited from collecting large fines, and landlords profited off the remaining rent and security deposit. At the same time, the women often lose all their possessions because the parlors also serve as their homes.
Each time women get arrested, they risk being reported to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They now have criminal records, which render them deportable under recent federal immigration legislation even if they have legal resident alien status. During these raids, sex workers "are repeatedly arrested, harassed, solicited for bribes, robbed and assaulted by police officers looking to boost their "crime-fighting" statistics and profit on the side." [3]
CAAAV Digital Archive
On October 15, 1997, "Mrs. O" was raped in Queens by her employer and immigration sponsor. In this image, members of the WWP led the Justice of Mrs. O Coalition to "ensure that the Queens District Attorney's office prosecutes the case to the fullest extent of the law." [4]
The WWP focused their efforts by offering English classes in a Korean massage parlor in Manhattan. These classes also offered women practical information and were able to bring out issues of violence and other working conditions. There was also an emphasis on access to health care services, which had been slashed under Giuliani's budget. CAAAV worked in conjunction with other NYC aid organizations to get free STD, HIV, and counseling for the women on a semi-regular basis.
The sex work industry is a vicious circle intertwined with systemic racism and sexist hierarchies. Women are ostracized from their communities, often by the men in their communities who partake in their services. Then these women are criminalized and harassed by the police. The WWP's work was also meant to destigmatize the ethics around sex work. Often these women are looked down upon as unskilled or lazy, which upholds the "moral judgments which scapegoat women who work in prostitution without considering the context in which women, especially working-class immigrant women, must live and work." [5] Many of the women were vulnerable to employers because of immigration status, criminalization, sexual harassment and assault, isolation and poverty, and violence by the INS, police, and other law enforcement institutions, often taking these jobs for survival.
The WWP also worked to "organize against the triple jeopardy of gender discrimination, labor exploitation and exclusion, and anti-immigrant policy and practices that compel and coerce Asian immigrant women in the domestic sweatshop."[6]
Domestic Workers in New York City struggled during the Giuliani Administration. The industry was primarily made up of undocumented immigrant Filipina and Indonesian women. Being undocumented left them vulnerable to abuse by employers, like not receiving overtime or health insurance benefits. The WWP worked with domestic workers to "provide a safe environment for the women so that they can organize a collective model for working that ensures them certain rights" as they were the most suspectable to abuse and harassment due to their immigration status. [7] Their efforts kept these women from becoming invisible and forgotten because of their legal status.
In 2000 members of WWP co-founded Domestic Workers United (DWU), which advocated for unionization and standardized labor practices in the domestic worker industry across New York City. After years of advocacy, the DWU was instrumental in the passing of the 2003 New York Domestic Workers Bill, the nation's first legislation protecting domestic workers in New York City. Most recently, the DWU successfully campaigned for the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which was signed into law in 2010.
[1] The Voice, CAAAV Newsletter, Summer 1996
[2] (New York Police Department, 1996)
[3] The Voice, CAAAV Newsletter, Fall 1998
[4] Ibid
[5] The Voice, CAAAV Newsletter, Summer 1996
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid