Labor trafficking doesn’t always involve chains or cages. Sometimes it looks like contracts written in legalese, passports held just out of reach, or threats veiled as “rules.” It’s coercion in a cocktail dress. It’s violence dressed up as opportunity.

She was twelve the first time the bruises should have mattered. The teacher noticed. The nurse filed a report. A caseworker visited the...

Myth #4: Sex Workers Can Just “Get a Real Job” Reality: Many already have other jobs. Barriers like discrimination, criminal records,...

This myth isn’t just about who people imagine when they hear the words “sex worker.” It reflects who feminism has historically chosen to see and who it has chosen to leave out.

Reality: Evidence from New Zealand and parts of Australia shows the opposite—decriminalization can improve safety, reduce exploitation, and increase cooperation with law enforcement for actual trafficking cases.

We bring you facts, figures, and context - not only so you can hold your own at the next policy meeting, but also so you can dismantle lazy arguments at the dinner table, on social media, or even in the comment section of that “concerned citizens” Facebook group your aunt keeps inviting you to.

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup coming to North America, it’s already shaping up to be the “new” Super Bowl for trafficking rhetoric, complete with recycled myths, inflated statistics, and the same cast of anti-trafficking organizations eager to cash in on the global spotlight.

This week, the national conversation once again spiraled around the so-called Epstein “client list.” The same question resurfaced:Where is it? Who’s on it? When will it be released? And just like every other time, the obsession with the list revealed more about the public’s craving for spectacle than their actual commitment to justice.

The sex worker rights movement has long explored how the public—and too often, the courts—struggle to grasp the realities of exploitation, especially when it hides behind wealth, consent, or celebrity. We’ve written about coercion, manipulation, and the blurry gray lines that survivors are expected to define in black and white.

On July 2, 2025, a Manhattan federal jury delivered a split verdict: Sean “Diddy” Combs was acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking, but convicted on two counts under the Mann Act—transporting individuals across state lines for prostitution. The public reaction was swift and polarized. Some called it justice served; others saw it as yet another reminder that wealth and fame insulate men from real accountability.

When a certain child rescue organization—you know, the one whose name sounds like a Christian indie band—published their recent reflection titled “Mistakes happen in anti-trafficking work. We must learn from them,” a strange thing happened across the sex worker rights community.

Remember when tariffs were marketed as the golden ticket to economic salvation?

In what could be seen as the most expensive DUI in Massachusetts history, Karen Read was found Not Guilty this week of second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

It started with a question. “What college degree do you have?” Tasha had just been released and was sitting in the intake office of a...

For years, prisons were called “crime schools” because people learned more about how to survive in the underground economy than how to build a stable life.

Good morning, Red Umbrella fam. Hope your coffee is strong and your boundaries stronger, because this weekend delivered a full-course meal of carceral nonsense, QAnon fever dreams, ICE agents crashing into elementary school zones, and a grown man throwing himself a military parade for his birthday.

When people imagine what “freedom” looks like for trafficking survivors, they often picture a dramatic rescue or a courtroom triumph—handcuffs off, a predator jailed, a survivor walking into the sunlight.

There’s something about Friday the 13th that makes people lose their ever-loving minds.

Education is more than a classroom, a test, or a diploma. For criminalized women, survivors, and sex workers, it’s a form of resistance. It’s a survival strategy. It’s a way to reclaim power in systems designed to keep us voiceless.

Education is often sold as the golden ticket—the “way out,” the “great equalizer,” the shiny ladder out of poverty. But for women who’ve...