The Power of Creation in the Face of Erasure Art has always been one of the fiercest weapons of survival for sex workers. When our histories are erased, art rewrites them. When the world refuses to see us, art makes us visible. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, art transforms it into something we can hold, share, and use to fight back. On December 17, as we remember those taken by violence, we also honor the beauty and power that emerge from within our communities - t

For many sex workers, “family” is not a word that brings comfort. Too often, biological families, faith communities, and social institutions turn their backs on us. Some reject us for the work we do, others for our gender, sexuality, or survival choices. What’s left behind is a painful truth: sometimes, the people who were supposed to love us unconditionally are the first to abandon us.

Sex workers do more than survive - they resist. Every act of joy, every community project, every gathering beneath the red umbrella is an act of defiance against erasure.

For most people, safety means calling 911, trusting social services, or turning to institutions for protection. For sex workers, those options often don’t exist - or worse, they make things more dangerous.

Too often, when sex workers make the news, it’s because of tragedy. The headlines focus on loss, sensationalize violence, and erase the person behind the story.

Stigma is a shadow that follows sex workers everywhere—often more destructive than the law itself.

Violence against sex workers doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. It is created and sustained by the systems around us - criminalization, stigma, and neglect.

What if the power to end violence wasn’t locked inside a politician’s office or a police budget - but sitting right in your hands?

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.

The idea that every client is a predator is one of the most persistent myths about sex work. While violence against sex workers is real and must be taken seriously, painting all clients with the same brush is inaccurate and harmful.

Heads up: this one’s messy, hard, and urgent. Charlie Kirk - 31, political firebrand and cofounder of Turning Point USA - was fatally shot at Utah Valley University while doing a Q&A about, of all things, gun violence. His last words to a crowd of 3,000 were literally “gun violence” before a single shot from a rooftop ended his life.

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.

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.

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.

There’s a version of feminism out there that wears a pussyhat, clutches her pearls, and still calls the manager when a sex worker speaks at a panel.

This past weekend, Los Angeles found itself at the epicenter of a fierce showdown: thousands hit the streets in defiance of ICE raids and...

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.

There’s a shady hustle circulating again—and this time, ts showing up in strip clubs across the country