Yes! We are celebrating Black children & Black August by organizing the second book drive for Black children. Black sex workers have always taken cared of the children! The children are our daily reminder of the war towards Black liberation. We believe in nourishing the mind and the body. Purchase a book in the link below. To mail any NEW books use address 234 glenmore ave Brooklyn NY 11207 ATTENTION to BHMA

https://www.myregistry.com/giftlist/blackhustlersbookdrive

The FREEdom Boutique is a mutual aid collective that works to build community solidarity by addressing material needs, providing political education, and promoting food sovereignty. Using this abolitionist framework, our efforts intend to prevent our people, Black people, from being fed into a colonial capitalist white supremacist criminal system by opening a moving store with material necessities where everything is FREE. Our goal is to keep our community safe.

The FREEdom Boutique provides personal care items (such as pads, tampons, & condoms), clothing, and highly nutritious groceries and nutrient dense meals and harm reduction kits. Through these efforts, our collective addresses period poverty and reproductive justice, food apartheid, and harm reduction in our community.

This project centers Black families, Black Sex Workers, Queer Trans Black People, and Black people, Black people who are housing insecure.

This is a living document that will change with who is involved.

This project is currently brought to you by a group of Black abolitionist organizers who are Haitian, GNC, Queer, Muslim, and No Gender.

This effort is out of Survival and LOVE.

Black Hustlers Mutual Aid Statement on the police reform proposal by the mayors office on 3/16/2021 on sex work

This proposal is nothing short of egregious, insulting and damaging. This is written by Black sex workers to address the issues we find wrong with this foolish proposal and what we, Black sex workers of Black Hustlers Mutual Aid demand:

First, it is insulting that regardless of the real organizing sex workers have done that stated we want full deciminalization, a “pre arrest” that we are assuming will be coerced and still requires police and other agents of the state to “trap” sex workers is the best the mayor can and “advocates” could come up with. If there is a “pre arrest” plan as oppose to a “post arrest” plan this means police officers are still survialling sex workers which then means the state is not deciminalizing sex work and continuing its legacy of being a primary organizer of violence to sex workers.

Second, this proposal says “drastically reduce the amount of arrest” which means arrest to sex workers will not end. The state and state interest aligned organizers/organizations have co opted radical movement language like “decriminalize” and harm reduction from sex working.drug using communities while doing nothing of this sort. This is not a decriminizaization proposal, if arrest of sex workers are still a possibility. It is not lost on us that the plan does not list how clients will be dealt with, we are assuming this detrimental proposal will not work to stop arresting clients which means, it is not a decriminalization of sex work. This type of model has been praticed by other states and have harmed sex workers ability to make a decent living.

Third, police, prisons and state surveillance are capitalist and white supremacist instiutions and systems and they are primary organizers of racialize and anti Black gender based and whorephobic structural violence, we do not believe these same institutions can provide us with alleviation of our struggles and needs. These same administrations and institutions are partnering with the state to continue to build jails in our city and criminalize our people. This means Black people, sex workers, LGBTQ people, people involved in the sex trade and steet base workers. This is a fraud proposal to increase funding for harmful institutions like police by trying to play savior for sex workers and doing nothing WE asked for. We know based on how these capitalist white supremacist systems/ instituions operate this is a trojan horse to increase police funding. The proposal stated frivolously it would help sex workers with safty plans and yet, this proposal does not even admit or addressing the ways police both on a instiutional, strucutal and individual level have caused havoc to the lives of sex worker especially Black sex workers.

We are not fooled, this is the prison industrial complex finding new ways to expand itself and further root itself into our lives through liberalism.

Therefore, BHMA demands the following actions from the Mayor in his new found need to support sex workers:

Defund the police. We do think the money needs to go to housing, healthcare and other listed community based services. We do not believe that these need to be married with the prison industrial complex and we are not willing to compromise our communities. Grass root organizers and organizations that actually do work to keep our community safe have proposals on how the money given to the collaborative death making institutions in the PIC would be better used.
Legalization of all drugs. Period. We know one of the strongest ways to increase the incarceration time of a sex workers arrest is if they have a drug that is allegedly “illegal” on them.
Free all incarcerated people in the city of New York. Even prior to 2020 we have lived in a public health issue of state mandated, funded and organized pandemic of kidnapping and holding our people captive and calling it incarceration. These are Black people, undocumented people, queers, trans people and sex trading/working communties. Now, our people have to experience TWO pandemics with COVID- 19. We want the mayor to FREE THEM ALL in NYC by closing all the jails.

BHMA calls on other sex workers to also speak out againt this cringeworthy proposal. Attached is the proposal.

https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/192-21/advocates-praise-new-effort-decriminalize-sex-workers-combat-human-trafficking